Tree of Yoga: Musings on life and yoga practice

Satya and Yoga Scandals

2012-02-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

This is probably a post I should keep to myself. I felt strongly that there was something important to learn in my own embarrassing and less than yogic internal dialogue around a big story that broke in the yoga circles last week. I will take a dive off a cliff and share this so maybe we can talk about what goes on when we get caught up in our 'Ego' mind.

Here is how the story goes:

1. Last Friday story breaks on major yoga-related web site about allegations of not so great stuff about John Friend (Note: I am not going to discuss them here or even provide links. If you want to find the information, it is out there in the blogosphere. This post is not about what happened and I really don't want to continue to feed any kind of gossip machine.)

2. I read the article as well as the web site that was supposedly exposing all of this stuff. I told some friends about it. I got amped up about the 'scandal.' There was a combination of shock, disdain, and then "I thought so" kind of stuff that crossed my mind. I found myself wanting to talk about it and wanting to let people know about this.

Let me set some context: I practiced Anusara yoga for many years. I know many dear people and teachers that I respect who still do. When I left this 'system' of yoga to pursue a teaching certification in Iyengar yoga, I had many reasons for doing so but the primary one was that Iyengar yoga more closely suited who I am as a person, teacher and practitioner. I had conflict for a time about this choice knowing full well that the Anusara system was on the 'rise' and more popular than my chosen path. It was cool and me standing over here in my Pune pants...well that is not cool. Staying in that system probably meant more 'success' in terms of the number of students and ' my marketability.' I thought I did not struggle with this anymore since I have found my yogic home. Have I been waiting for something to crack in Anusara-land order to defend and armor my own choice?

Why?

Here goes....taking a deep breath...some part of this is the story line that many of us get hooked on: See, my way of doing things IS better. Ok this ship of Anusara yoga is going to go down and we'll become the popular yoga again! My decision to pursue Iyengar yoga will be vindicated!

Isn't that what it comes down to frequently when strong judgments arise? We want to feel better about ourselves. My whole thought parade has nothing to do with John Friend or the Anusara system. But, it serves as an example of what happens when I don't examine my conditioned responses AND when I don't trust myself. The reasons for my switch were truly valid and came from my heart. That should be enough. I don't need continued proof that this was the 'right' thing to do since it so clearly IS on so many levels. Since I am big into busting my own assumptions about self right now, I chose to write about this and see if there is another way.

Yeah there is another way. I brought it up a few weeks ago in my piece about the homeless woman. We are all the same. I am John Friend and he is me. I am Manouso and Iyengar and they are me. Our external realities differ but we seek love, shelter, food and meaning. We are all 100% human. Don't judge anything until you have walked in someone else's shoes. I don't know what the hell happened with John and it doesn't actually matter. And honestly, our society spends a lot of time judging and deciding who is right or wrong. I can sit with compassion for JF and whatever pain, holes, ego-stuff put him in the center of this storm. I also feel deeply sorry for what his teachers (and the many Anusara students around the world ) must be experiencing right now.

To put it in perspective: what if this scandal was about Iyengar? How would I feel? What kind of fear and confusion would I be dealing with? What would my response be? I would be devastated. I would be sad and shaken to the foundations. Here is this person who has been saying one thing and doing quite the opposite (HONESTLY who on this planet can't say they behave like this on a regular basis). When that gets cracked, it is hard shit.

What would serve me if this had happened to my community? Certainly no one saying things like "I told you so," "my teacher is so not like that" or "my system is better than yours so maybe you'll finally see." I would seek my community and I would do my practice.

John, like Iyengar and Manouso, is just a man. And no matter the category we put people in: Iyengar, Anusara, gay, straight, pagan, wiccan, Republican or Democrat...we all have the capacity to royally fuck up and we all the have the capacity to forgive. And on that note, there is no one 'better' way. There is the way that works for me and then the way that works for you. When the shared goal is self realization, a kinder world, healthier minds and bodies, who really CARES how we get there if the endeavor is authentic?

In this time of division and a pathological categorization of people, I am going to drop the label. I am not an Iyengar yogi. I am just a yogi. I stand in support of all teachers and students everywhere. We are all seekers. The only thing I am responsible for is evaluating and holding accountable my own practice. The rest of what goes on is REALLY not my business and just increases the divisions that already exist. If I am doing my own part to heal the gaping wounds of judgement and cruelty, well then what else matters?

Anyone else care to join me? "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." - I think that's Jesus who said that

Breathe

2012-02-03T10:41:00.000-08:00

Coming back to more earthly topics today...like breath and pranayama practice.

Trying to write about this is almost a silly thing since it is so personal and indescribable. My home asana practice was easier for me to embrace. Maybe because it is 'grosser' and more comfortable. The same meditative presence exists on my mat that I find in my breathing practice, but pranayama is more provoking and at the same time subtle.

The breath is its own mood. I can see why Iyengar talks about the sheer 'boredom' of this thing. I sit down. I breath. I watch I do it again. I listen. I regulate. I surrender. I do it again. On some days I literally drag my sorry butt to my pranayama set-up. I do it even when crap knows I could sleep more, read more, cook more or whatever else I could be doing. Why? I ask myself that often in my struggle dance with this practice.

What is progress in this pranayama? Maybe that is part of it. I am kind of a perfectionist. I can't make shit happen with the breath or the whole thing blows up in my face. Asana has more tangible results. I can feel poses change my structure or feel the release of a long held muscle etc. The breath is the wild wolf of me running free....and when I start to engage with that, pay attention to that, and start to regulate and take some minor control over what happens to my breath...a whole other world opens up and honestly it scares me a little.

Breath has an endless vast quality to it. You can get lost in its width and depth. But at the same time, I feel like it takes me on a journey to the center of me. Maybe that is what scares me. Ok I am just the me now who breaths...all the stories, fears, hopes, and beliefs fall away. What to do now when all that other stuff falls away from the bone?

Just be? Who knew.

Body Talk

2012-02-02T15:52:00.000-08:00

I am still sitting in the swamp wonder of Lidia Yuknavitch's Chronology of Water. Her writing is bones talking...what the body would say if it could choose its words. Rules don't belong in this inner world. Blood coursing, heart beating, organs churning..the endless work of the body for which there is no voice.

When I give the inner police a day off, my words arrive seemingly out of nowhere and spill onto paper and screens. They contain pieces of my soul. That particular cocktail of letters strung together to make meaning and taste. It gets said best when the rest of me gets out of the way.

I make words up sometimes (flippajhante being a recent invention) when what is written in dictionaries feel too caged up or does not capture the blood meaning I seek. Mostly I rely on vocabulary that is part of vernacular speech and do not stray from the lexicon of acceptable words.

Reading Chronology of Water made me braver. Remove the veil of fear.

Words have started revolutions, freed slaves, and saved and lost lives. We speak them, push and pull them but mostly they pour from us seeking the light. The thing doing the seeking is us really..by us I mean the 'me' that is beyond my name, my origins, my body and any cognitive understanding I have of myself. Just pure being.

This week there has been a lot of: Look what you can do with all these wondrous drinkable words! Name the un-namable and write a voice into being or give a being a voice. Once only silence and fear. Now verbs and perfectly pruned participles.

A wordless domain the body. I wandered deep inside when I began yoga. It took a long time to get in...like really in. The dark wet spaces and bone hard tough corners and stringy muscles and endless avenues of blood and nerve that map me alive. I navigate all of this with my practice and slowly the words are starting to arrive like they have finally accepted a long ago invitation to the party.

For me, the words, the practice, the breath, the body...are celebration of nothing in particular except this moment right here. Bow down to your verbs, your pronouns, adverbs and the mighty adjectives..give them space to surprise you and express you.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way

2012-01-31T12:31:00.000-08:00

If I could go back, I'd coach myself. I'd be the woman who taught me how to stand up, how to want things, how to ask for them. I'd be the woman who says, your mind, your imagination they are everything. Look how beautiful. Your deserve to sit at the table. The radiance falls on all of us. - Lidia Yuknavitch

I am soul-rocked by a book. The bones rattled and all the things I believed to be true about what you can write about a body and soul experiencing a life was shot to hell.

Go immediately and get Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir The Chronology of Water. Just do it.

This book makes me want to lie down on its pages and roll around. It makes me want to eat the words off the page. It is like a body breathing in your hands as you read. It has a pulse and it throws you off your rails. It is not gentle. It is not polite. It doesn't follow rules.

She wrote from a place we pretend does not exist in us. And for that reason, it is WAY not comfortable. If this were a TV show, it would not be on network television. It shines the light right in your face and dares you stay. The swamp belly punk drunk truth of what it means to be a human. There is drugs, alcohol, sex, abuse, pee, poop, and pain and light. Move with her words..breathe into this book and be human. You turn the last page and you shine.

I am writing this here because this book is written how I want to do yoga. She turns away from no aspect of the body. It's filth, pain, strength and knock you to your knees vulnerability. Staying right in her skin she lives her life and writes through her skin. The words turn and move around you like energy and breath do in asana. Nothing is hidden and nothing is turned away. That is how I want to stand on my mat and in my life. Bare. Expressed.

When fear comes and I waver from that trust in self I am going to open this book and re-find what it means to be human. And remembering in this butt hard world that there is great beauty and the human spirit can shock you and heal you if pay attention.

The journey I choose to take on my mat is not a delicate floppy ankled kick back kinda trip. I am interested in find meaning here now in this moment. I have to smash into all the things I story tell about myself and others right there in Utthita Trikoasana. The limiting beliefs. The painful heart. The voices deeply buried you refuse to hear. Let em dance in you so they become you go through you....like water.

I am in a midnight blue room. A writing room. With a blood red desk. A room with rituals and sanctuaries. I made it for myself. I reach down below my desk and pull up a bottle of scotch. Balvenie. 30 year. I pour myself an amber shot. I drink. Warm lips, throat. I close my eyes. I am not Virginia Woolf. But there is a line of hers that keeps me well: Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

I am not alone. Whatever else there was or is, writing is with me. - Lidia Yuknavitch

2012-01-24T12:55:00.000-08:00

Experience Life Mind chatter Emotions Turmoil Chance Change Being-ness Sickness Little me Big Self Hurts karmic patterns

These things are the water in which we swim. Currents charge and flow and veer us off in directions both unbidden and frightening but only because there is a part of us that feels like we can control things. If we can let go of that even just a little, space and presence feel more possible. Then we take the ride and keep showing up over and over again for appears on the horizon.

Yoga and meditation are my islands of safety in turbulent water. They are a place to practice showing up for whatever is there with full attention and a compassionate loving heart. Tara Brach, my long-distance dharma maven, says that whenever we are feeling cut off from self and others it is because of an unmet need or 'severed need' as she calls it. When we can identify the unmet need from the inside out with mindfulness practices, we can lay down the sword and step out of the shame. Compassion for ourselves can begin here. Eventually this leads us to trusting our basic goodness and helps us hold with tenderness all the patterns and protections we use/have used to get our needs met.

Easily said. Not so easily done.

What is the choice? A life lived in that darker place of mistrust, self-criticism and struggle. What if we went around every day trusting in our essential goodness or buddha nature? How would it change our experience if all the things 'wrong' with us were simply acknowledged as things we do to protect ourselves...meeting the self with that soft heart would allow us to give so much more back to our community. As Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche says in Spiritual Materialism: "See past the tricks we have used to protect ourselves...what matters is embodying loving presence."

Easy right?

What is the choice if we want to live an awake life? I believe we all want to truly flourish and be who we were born to be. The stories and the 'stuff' get in the way of that. In asana practice, we learn to inhabit the body. We confront both what makes us comfortable as well as things that we would rather push away. We learn to stay with whatever is available in any given day in our Trikoasasna, Adho Mukha Svanasana and on and on. And this slowly, so slowly creeps into our lives and how we live.

When the water roars, I commit to staying right here in my skin. When the currents scare me, I will trust the breath and the presence of my body. When obstacles appear and bad days happen, I commit to staying with what shows up on all planes: body, breath, mind, and heart. I don't know anymore how else to be. I tried many different ways and I am tired of all the running and hiding. It feels like a train finally, slowly and carefully arriving in the station. The station of the big Self - I don't know but something that feels more true and more alive than where I was before. Bowing down at the feet of my practices, my teachers and the sheer stunning beauty of all that is human....I lay down the sword.

This wild and precious life of Mary Oliver. This tell all the truth but tell it slant of Emily Dickinson. This wanting the change and shining and disappearing of Rilke. This holding so much goodness of Whitman. And on and on. We are not alone in this quest. Today I decided to open my eyes and really see that...I am the rock at the bottom of the clear water. That presence has always been there and swimming a little closer to it I can see how beautiful it would be to inhabit my own granite strength...allowing what comes to me to arrive and pass. Really showing up with a solid belief in my own essential goodness. This coming home is meant for all of us and think what a gift it would be to the rest of the world. Maybe a little more love, a little more peace, and a little more compassion.

What path will you take to arrive?

When I see you and how you are, I close my eyes to the other. For your Solomon's seal I become wax throughout my body. I wait to be light. I give up opinions on all matters. I become the reed flute for your breath.

You were inside my hand. I kept reaching around for something. I was inside your hand, but I kept asking questions of those who know very little.
I must have been incredibly simple or drunk or insane to sneak into my own house and steal money, to climb over the fence and take my own vegetables. But no more. I've gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self.

The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival. -Rumi

At a Loss

2012-01-19T11:34:00.000-08:00

This post is going to ramble because the source of it left me with more questions than answers. Thank you ahead of time for your patience. A 'small' random thing happened on Tuesday that is burned into my cells. It is a moment of raw human experience.I nearly chose to remain silent. That would have been the comfortable choice.

There is no delicate way to talk about this so here goes: Walking back from the ferry building on Tuesday, a homeless woman, dirty and rumpled, had her pants pulled down and was relieving herself over a sewer grate on one of the busiest intersections in the city.

The emotions came fast and they hit hard. Repulsion, compassion, grief, rage, bone sadness, helplessness, frustration and fear. I witnessed her naked reality in that moment and also saw the vulnerable way she stood up with her pants around her knees wiping herself..images of a little girl learning how to use the bathroom or sitting with her legs hanging off the edge of the toilet talking to a long ago loved one all flashed before my eyes. And the witnesses. The palpable shock and recoil. Picking up their pace seeing and then erasing...walking on. I did that too. I didn't stop. I didn't speak. I turned my head back slightly to catch her face. But like everyone else I witnessed and walked on. It breaks my heart.

The question arises about the nature of my emotional response. She didn't ask or need me to feel sorry for her. She was living in her raw truth which bumped up against mine. My sadness which could quickly veer into pity has an implied judgement and pushes her humanity away from mine. The quick sadness protects me from really seeing her. And while I recognize it is a human and empathetic response I am not sure it allows me to fully sort this out. But I don't have an answer yet as to what this means when I am struggling to b a responsible, compassionate, and loving member of the human tribe.

A large part of me didn't want to write this because it feels like I am feeding off the misery of another human. Using it to BLOG about something that is loaded with questions about class, race, education and opportunity issues. And I have no answers for any of this so I could choose to just shut up. That was the cowardly choice for me and 2012 is about taking the gloves off and daring to be honest even if I say dumb stuff or piss someone off.

Homelessness exposes a raw nerve. I am not sure yet why but I think some of it is: What the hell am I doing to make a dent in any of this? I can't feed, house or clothe every person on the street and feeling guilty about it- well what does that do? Then the very uncomfortable question arises...what do I do? I can watch, react, feel sad and then nothing changes.

When I looked at this woman's face, I saw empty eyes. Her 'person-ness' gone far far away from the surface whether from mental illness, drug use, alcohol or the hard truth of living on the streets. I will never know. Her eyes and the raw scary exposed choice she made to conduct such a private affair in this public manner is something I can't make sense of. But alas she didn't ask me to or need me to if you think about it. This is her reality and my experience of it - well it is my problem. And this brings me to the meat of the matter....

She is me. I am her.

Isn't that our fear? And that is also our beautiful truth. How many dollars, choices, heartbeats are we away from such fragility? As David Whyte says: "...how you, in particular,live a hairsbreadth from losing everyone you hold dear."

All I know right now is this: The answer to what to do will come from my ability to see and hold her as another piece of me. To really stay with that truth. I will not be able to feed everyone or make everything better. But I want to dig underneath the guilt and the typical response to this kind of thing and figure out what is skillful action. Let's see what arises when I take off the polite gloves of the acceptable human response to suffering.

In the meantime, I will let what happened sit in the center of my heart. I am not pushing it away but seeking to understand what is trying to tell me.

There are no rules

2012-01-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

Well maybe just a few...

I get frequent questions from students trying to cultivate a home practice. One of the most common questions is about sequencing and putting together a sensible practice.

Before I address this question specifically, I wanted to state that: there really are no rules about home practice. (NOTE: I posted at length about this last year http://yogaalmanac.blogspot.com/2011/06/inner-teacher.html) The whole point of it is to really work with your own body and mind. And learning to listen and intuit what shape your practice will take on a given day will take some time. When I first started, I frequently would use sequences from a recent class or from web sites that published Iyengar sequences (more information on this below). These days that hardly ever happens. I will work my 'prescription poses' from Manouso into whatever is appropriate for that day.

Also, before I start listing guidelines for practice, I also wanted to say that you should break every rule that I write down here. Iyengar came up with his methodology by trial and error. And my teacher, Manouso, is always telling us to try it and see what happens. So, there are definitely rules around how inversions are practiced and what poses you would not do after certain things but maybe you should try breaking those rules to see what happens for you. You never know on a certain day doing backbends after forward bends might be just what you needed. I have done things like switch between backbends and forward bends in a practice and I have also started a practice in savasana. Otherwise, we are just blindly believing something written in a book. Then who's truth is it? Like the Buddha says:

Don't blindly believe what I say. Don't believe me because others convince you of my words. Don't believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts. Don't rely on logic alone, nor speculation. Don't infer or be deceived by appearances. Do not give up your authority and follow blindly the will of others. This way will lead to only delusion.

Find out for yourself what is truth, what is real.

Some general guidelines:

Head Balance (Sirsasana) should come before Shoulder Stand (Sarvangasana)
Sarvangasana is a cooling pose and would not generally be followed by deep backbends or arm balances. You can do twists, forward bends and any kind of supine work.
You can end a practice with Sarvangasana and its variations included Setubandha Sarvangasana
Pay attention to the energetics of poses - what feeling do they create in your nervous system? If you are planning on working on forward bends, it is probably not the best idea to do an intense arm balance practice as you will be ramping the nervous system up.
As in everything we are looking for balance. Over the course of a week, you want to touch the full array of poses: standing poses, forward bends, twists, back bends, arm balances and of course inversions.
When you are short on time, do what I call an 'inversion practice' - AMS (Downward dog) with the head supported, Uttasana with the head supported, Sirsasana, Setubandha, Sarvangasana, Savasana. The inversions will give you the most bang for the buck if you can't squeeze anything else in there.
If you get on your mat and can't think of anything at all to do, start doing standing poses: Trikoasana, Utthita Parsvakonasana, Virabhadrasana II, Parsvottasana, Virabhadrasana I, Ardha Chandrasana, and AMS and see what happens.
Another thing I do when I am uninspired is I put myself upside down immediately. I will do a downward dog or two and then do handstand, pincha and then do a very long Sirsasana. My body will usually tell me what it needs from there.
Practice savasana - like really practice it. Give yourself a nice long juicy 20 minute pose a few times a week.
Work with poses you greatly dislike. On some days I come to my mat and I find myself wanting to move into all my favorite poses and that can become a bad habit. So I will force myself to pick 2 poses I hate and create a whole practice around them.
When working with challenging poses, take them apart. What actions are required to do Parivrtta Trikoasana? In what other poses, would you be able to learn and access those actions? If you want to do backbends, what areas of the body need work? For me, my shoulders and arms are tight so I will start a practice that will end in deep backbends with Geeta's armwork in Tadasana. It is tedious but it does the job of warming up the shoulder area and teaching me where I am holding in my upper body.
12. Write down sequences complete with notes from your classes. I write down Manouso's sequences on a regular basis and those of any teacher I study with. I don't necessarily copy them verbatim on my mat though i could but they are a rich resource when I am looking to access certain actions or poses. He does it way better than me so why not use what is being given to you by your teachers. I keep my notes in Google Docs so I can both search them and share them easily.

I will plan a workshop of some kind around this later this year as I know a lot of struggle with cultivating the home practice. As I said in a post last year, start small and set a timer.

If you really have no idea what to do, here are some trustworthy resources for sequences:

A. http://iyengaryogainaustin.blogspot.com/
B. http://iynaus.org/books-and-articles/iyagny-sequences-practice
C. http://www.joanwhiteyoga.com/sequences10.htm
D. http://myfiveminuteyoga.com/

Let me know if you have any questions. I am such a fan of the home practice and am happy to support you however I can in this endeavor.

Please keep it down - Introvert at work here!

2012-01-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of jokes at work about my 'shyness.' I tell my colleagues that I am an introvert and well they burst out laughing. Impossible. I flap my jaws for a living in front of different groups of people. I am loud. I speak up. But they don't know that this is not naturally who I am. This is a learned behavior that became necessary for survival.

I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me. Words like 'painfully shy' were frequently used to describe me. I remember being 5 and none of the other members of my ballet class showed up and I was left alone with my teacher. I spent the entire class looking down at the floor and I wouldn't speak or look at him. Speeches in front of anyone made me sick to my stomach and I spent a lot of time alone reading or hanging out in the library with Heather Fern. This didn't improve much in college though I did force myself into situations where speaking would be required. There was a part of me that knew this was going to be a requirement for survival in both school and then in the workplace.

Susan Cain in Quiet: The Power of Introverts aptly describes what it feels like to be an introvert placed into these very uncomfortable situations. It is almost like you are violating some primal part of yourself when someone who is naturally quiet is required to be aggressive, loud or get up talk on a moment's notice. It was a huge RELIEF to learn there are others out there like me!

Did I mention I make a living talking? I regularly stand up in front of groups of people and speak. And I am an Iyengar yoga teacher who stands in front of 20+ people a few times week. All eyes on me and all ears on my words. In so many ways, it doesn't make sense given who I am! I am sure some of my childhood teachers would find this fact shocking given my girlhood silence.

After reading Quiet, I have a better perspective on what it means to be me in a louder, busier much more extroverted world. I don't like large gatherings of people and the word 'networking' makes me feel sick to my stomach. None of this is because I don't like people - I do but as Cain describes in this book - people like me prefer small gatherings of close friends where meaningful connection and conversation can occur. I suck at small talk and end up all clammed up in a corner when that is the main conversation event at a gathering. Instead of feeling badly about this, this book has helped me understand that it is built into my very nature.

Cain also describes how once we understand our natures - introvert/extrovert of some combination - that we can regulate our choices to help achieve balance. When I am overstimulated, I can remove myself from a social situation. When I am feeling a little blue and lackluster, I can meet a friend for tea. My energy comes not from other people but ample time spent alone - thinking, reading, and allowing the muse to roam. When I deny myself this, I am thrown out of balance. The same is true for those of you who draw your energy from interactions with others.

I love how everything in this world is so connected. Things come together in front of me like beautiful lines of poetry. This unexpected book led me down unexpected pathways of thinking about myself and others. And it reinforces the idea that when we understand different perspectives it makes it more and more difficult to judge others.

The world needs more quiet. Many of the world's great thinkers, inventors, and social activists were introverts. The most powerful point of this book for me was this: Balance. The Middle Way. Ying and Yang. The world is out of balance when only one way is perceived as better. We need BOTH introverts and extroverts to make things work well. This can be applied to anything really - religion, food preferences, politics and on and on. It is like darkness/light and joy/sadness. Another little tool for understanding each other.

I don't have children but it would have been great if my teachers had understood better about kids like me. "Just speak up" and "what is the matter with you?" were not helpful in getting a quiet, introverted girl to blurt out her opinions in front of the class. I believe in going beyond our comfort zones and that has happened to me over and over again but especially for those quiet, emotional, and more withdraw kids - more sensitivity as to what would draw them out and help them grow would alleviate a lot of suffering.

I highly recommend Quiet. There is lots I didn't mention in my little discourse but if you are interested in another perspective on human nature - check it out!

Please note that I am a contributor to From Left to Write which is a super cool virtual blogging book club with more than 100 members. I received a free copy of Quiet to read, think about and then write about here. Everything mentioned in my little discourse is my opinion. Keep reading!

Are you an introvert or extrovert? Author Susan Cain explores how introverts can be powerful in a world where being an extrovert is highly valued. Join From Left to Write on January 19 as we discuss Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain. We'll also be chatting live with Susan Cain at 1PM Eastern on January 26. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

2012-01-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

Today's thoughts are inspired by the tangential nature of my mind after the things I wrote this week about the NYT article, Manouso's birthday, and anti-yogic marketing campaigns from yoga studios.

I grew up in a dance studio. The mirrors never felt like friends but hired judges who never took a break. They exposed the raw root of you hour after hour. The technique that was not flawless, the hips that were too wide, the breasts that always felt too large, and the feet that didn't arch perfectly. For a girl with body-image and self-esteem issues, I am still not sure how I survived those young dancer years.

In those days, I was happy when what I saw in the mirror looked pretty - when the shapes matched some ideal I had in my head from magazines and from what I saw on the stage. I didn't know enough about myself or the real purpose of art to understand that superficial beauty and perfection are only surface-nice. Aesthetics and beauty, for the sake of admiring the ability and grace of the human form, are not inherently bad things. But when you don't look further than just that or when the thing being perceived, in this case me and my body, don't match an ideal and a set of rules put in place about 'good dancers' things get murky and darken more than brighten our lives.

Even though I eventually found my way to classes with Mark Morris and his dancers where I found other beautiful artists with hips and breasts. I was marked by those earlier years in ballet studios with anorexic bodies and perfect super-human technique. It mattered how close to your ear you could place your leg and it mattered how much external rotation you could push out of those hips. Your thinness - ethereal otherness - were valued in fact they were prized. If you didn't have those things, then my overachieving, driven, in love with dance self made the self-diagnosis of being way too fat, too untalented and ended up pushing my body past the point of injury in order to achieve an ideal I would never touch.

Fast forward to many years later and my encounter with yoga. Initially, the spiritual aspect of this practice was not even an aroma in the wind. I was there to put my body back together from injuries sustained during my dancing years. My body was flexible for 30+ years of training and I could make the shapes of the poses relatively easily. Make the shapes.....

That's all I was doing. Isn't that a pretty Virabhadrasana II? Look at my Hanumanasana. See I can put my entire torso between my legs in Upavistha Konasana. And in the place I was studying at the time, these abilities got attention and praise. Beautiful pose etc etc. This whole little dynamic began to be a reprisal of the dance years. I would look at Yoga Journal or at the web sites of other teachers and think "I am not pretty enough to be a yoga teacher" - "I am not thin enough to be a yogi" and all the while striving to make those pretty poses. No one ever really pointed out that this was not the point and injuries happen here.

Fast forward a few more years and I walk into the Abode and meet Manouso. And like a pan hitting me in the face, I finally understood these poses are vehicles for waking up. They are means for understand ourselves at the deepest level. Manouso doesn't give a shit about fancy stuff. Don't get me wrong - he teaches it - but it is taught in the context of understanding YOUR body and YOUR self in the process of sniffing at the heels of more advances poses. Action by action we dig deeper to see what is possible. As he always says: "See what is available today and it might be different than yesterday"

He openly states that showing off and grand-standing are going to piss him off big time. If you know what is good for you, then you won't do it. As a result the hold those damn mirrors have on my soul has begun to loosen. And it all arrived in one moment:

I remember the day we were in supported Halasana and my back was jacked and VERY painful from lifting my old dog out of the ca. Manouso was firmly but gently trying to get me to stop gripping my back for dear life and allow the sacrum to spread. I started to cry. It didn't matter how perfect I was or how nice my pose looked or how good I was at the fancy stuff. I was being asked to really KNOW myself and really show up on my mat in a way that eventually leads to peace. When he saw the tears, there was no fan fare but a simple touch on the arm and "that's ok it's what you are here for."

Poses will come and go. I will still do dumb stuff on my mat and ignore signals my body is giving me but it happens less and less. And a little seed of healing and wholeness has been planted.

To me this is yoga.

Dancing with Should

2012-01-12T11:37:00.000-08:00

This post was precipitated by something Manouso said to us at his 60th birthday. "Find something you love, sink your teeth into it and run with it."

The word "should" is defined as: Used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness How is this concept/word a force in your life?

We have certain duties and obligations that must be performed. For most of us it is a combination of going to work, buying and eating food, maintaining our homes, tending to our kids or keeping contact with our family of origin. How do you make choices about the places in your life where we are not so duty bound?

"What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver

There is precious little 'free time' in our culture today. We no longer ebb and flow with the seasons and the needs of the land. Everything is 24X7. Does 'should' creep into what you do with your down time or influence who you choose to spend time with? For most of us, part of our wildness gets locked in a box at certain time in our youth. We strive to be good, to perform as expected, to be dutiful children, and to move along the expected pathways of 'growing up.' There is nothing inherently wrong in this. It creates responsible adults and moves us through some of the important parts of coming into adulthood with our lives in tact. But a lot of us don't regain contact with the unfettered part of our soul - the part of ourselves that is not some manifestation of who we think we should be for other people - but the true naked wildly alive self. This is the part of us we seek on our yoga mat, in pranayama, and in our meditation practices.

Life is brief and time has the wings of a hummingbird. If I am not careful, I am going to miss it. "It' being the opportunity to really open my wings to span the width they were born to. What canyons do I refuse to cross out of fear? What paths don't I choose because they seem irrational or outside of duty-bound society? What am I missing when a lot of my week is spent getting ready for, arriving at, being at and coming home from a job that is pleasant but does not feed any soul parts.

I am not advocating that we all quit our jobs and head for the hills. However, I am trying to find a way to get in touch with my wild mind/self and start to express that in my choices and even over the course of what can feel like a duty-filled day at the office. It can be as silly as a little dance in the office kitchen. Embracing and encouraging more laughter in my interactions with colleagues. Allowing some of the energy that I relate to on my mat to express itself at work and at home while doing chores. It is a process of consciously stepping away from who I should be or what is expected of me by others and really asking myself - who are you in this moment?

I will write more poems. I will share more poems. I will stop apologizing so much for zany things I say. I will hike more often. I will turn off the radio and be in the car in silence. I will stop and really see the sunrise. I will laugh. I will speak what is in my heart. I will do my yoga. I will seek and cultivate authentic relationships. I will continue to work on presence and battling my false refuges. I will be kinder. I will pet as many dogs as I can.

Open your own doors and let them swing open.

A rant of sorts

2012-01-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

I got an email from a studio that will remain unnamed because it doesn't matter. The email is marketing private sessions with the studio's teachers and this is the title of it: "Get Addicted to Undivided Attention." I read this and I got really pissed.

Image of Patanjali

To set a little context:

In the midst of all the brouhaha this week about the How Yoga can Wreck Your Body article in the NYT as well as spending a few days at Manouso's birthday intensive and party, I felt the need to say something. Please forgive me ahead of time. I am going to take off the white gloves. I don't expect anyone to agree with me but sometimes skillful action does mean getting angry or stirring the pot a little or simply saying something.

The aforementioned articles raises important points. It elucidates the effects of commercialization of yoga. It is something to be sold and yoga teachers can be 'made' in a 200 hours or even less. To quote this great response to the NYT article: "Or, more popularly, in a mere 200 hours you can become a bonafide, registered yoga instructor. 200 hours is spit. It is a joke." There is a crisis in the skill and training of teachers and also what the students are doing in class. I see it many times when I am teaching: the student who totally ignores limitations, strays outside of the instructions, does not pay attention to the prop set-ups and goes well beyond an appropriate place for their bodies. I don't blame them. I am not sure most people who come to the practice today know about its history and purpose. The marketing of this ancient practice of 'waking up' as super duper cool new-agey thing to do and great way to improve your ass has created the culture of yoga injury, special yoga mats for better bliss experiences, clothes that will help your poses and the endless array of stuff we are being sold. All of this crap is not yoga.

I don't even know if I am doing yoga. I mostly just sniff at its heels. I persist with the encouragement and example of my teachers and because I can feel a soul waking up. A lot of the time it feels like stumbling around in the dark looking for the light switch and maybe that's ok. The minute the big "I" takes over on my mat - I lose the essence of what I am doing there.

I firmly believe there are many paths. And there is no one way to do anything. We just need to be very careful about what we are calling 'yoga.’ As Iyengar says: "Practice of asanas without the backing of yama and niyama is mere acrobatics." Or to use modern verbiage, it is mere ‘exercise.’ And hell that's fine for a lot of people and if it brings them physical release and some small joy - then go for it.

Ok stepping down from my own personal soap box and getting to my point:

The reason I got so pissed this morning when I read: "Get Addicted to Undivided Attention"

"Addicted" - Really? You are trying to encourage BEGINNING yogis new to the path to seek personal guidance from a yoga teacher and telling them to GET ADDICTED. I know this is marketing smack but it spoke of a grievous misunderstanding of the philosophical underpinnings of yoga and presents a dangerous message. Our culture is rampant with addictions of every sort: food, drugs, alcohol, email, exercise, sugar and and on. This statement flies in the face of one of the yamas "Aparigraha" or abstention from greed and one of the niyamas Santosha 'Contentment." Additionally, yoga is a practice of involution. To sell 'undivided attention' from an external source is kinda fucked.

While I recognize some marketing person completely detached from yoga wrote this stuff, all it does is contribute to the problem and feeds the machine of narcissism running rampant in our culture. Honestly, don't call yourself a yoga studio if this is the message you are putting out there for people. There is enough suffering already.

My questions to you are: What are your reasons for practicing yoga? Patanjali tells us that we humans are tormented by afflictions. The first two and most prominent are ignorance (avidya) and ego (asmita.) Our mind chatter is often the product of our avidya and asmita and is often the reason for our dissatisfaction with the state of things overall. Can you turn this dissatisfaction into tapas or motivation?

The more I work, the more insignificant my efforts appear to be.
I have to be content with this divine discontent which drives me on.
BKS Iyengar

To quote an eloquent Iyengar teacher from her blog: “A true yoga practice is not something that can be purchased. It is something that is earned through hard work. Your teacher is not a customer service representative, standing there to hand out information. Think of your teacher more like a tour guide in a vast, wild place that changes moment to moment. There is no end destination on the tour, and it's not always a lovely vacation spot. At times we are forced to dwell in scummy neighborhoods to clean up some long left trash heap before moving along to a more preferable locale.” - Kquvien

There are endless reasons people come to yoga and all of them are valid. And I think the 'making of a yogi' is a progression. For some, this is simply NOT their path to greater awareness and that's ok. The progression usually starts with some physical ailment or desire for a change in how the body behaves and then if the practice suits the person, they work hard and have the right teacher standing in front of them, it starts to push them inward and they begin to fully experience the true purpose of this practice: Learning how to be human beings on this planet with minds that never stop moving and telling stories. Learning how the HELL to find some kind of peace in all of this.

Days blessed by stars - on the occasion of Manouso's 60th Birthday

2012-01-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

As we rolled out of savasana on Saturday evening, we opened our eyes to find Patricia Walden standing next to Manouso. Rita (Manouso’s wife) had brought Patricia here to surprise him for this auspicious 60^th birthday celebration.

Manouso and Patricia on the right (and their spouses)

It was an emotional thing to be in that room on Saturday. She spoke about him and all his qualities and his long term continuous devotion to practice and the yogic path. The two of them have been studying with Guruji for 30+ years. There were in Pune when there were like 12 people in the class. As she was talking and I looked around the room, I almost couldn’t believe that all the choices, dharmic pathways, experiences, and random confluence of events had brought me to this room in this moment. It is startling to think that Manouso is my day-to-day yoga teacher. He is extraordinary and I am honored to be part of this lineage. As my other teacher, Gloria says, we are “Guruji’s grandchildren.” Both of my main teachers call B.K.S. Iyengar their yoga teacher. Cool as hell.

And being his student has taught me how to mend my own broken wings. Sometimes life is shiny and each moment feels blessed by stars. We learn in our practice not to cling but I would like to let the loveliness of the weekend sit there a little longer. I have felt for most of my life that I didn’t belong. Whether as a young girl or in the office, I have often felt like I am wearing shoes that are too tight.

This weekend with Manouso and my friends from the Teacher Training and I felt like I had found home and a place to belong. Going up into headstand I saw the 90 or so pairs of legs up in the air. How bizarre, how great, how sweet, how utterly ordinary and how I am right where I am supposed to be. We all need community. We all need to feel a part of something. Fiercely ourselves in a fierce collective of students seeking – seeking themselves or simply a little peace in quiet.

Manouso you kick some serious ass. Happy Birthday! And thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

American Sentences

2012-01-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

I have some secrets that I have kept far too long. The secret keeping was out of shame and embarrassment - like I was not good enough to do certain things. So if I did them in secret (well a few dear people know) then somehow I was safe. You might ask what does safe mean? For me, it meant that my vulnerability as well as my deep fear of failure were tucked nicely in a corner.

Allen Ginsberg

Living in the dark like this no longer feels like the right thing to do. Yoga is about exposing ourselves to ourselves. The asana work stripping away the layers of literal and metaphorical tightness. This work requires both fierce courage and incredible vulnerability as meet and greet all the sides of ourself - darkness and light. Pranayama is a further 'un-doing' - slowing and sometimes painfully bringing us closer and close to who we are. Fabulous flawed and wonderfully alive humans looking to be loved and to love during this 'wild and precious life.'

Back to the secret, I write poetry. I have done so for many, many years. I read poetry - lots of it. I cut out poems I love and stick them in my journal. There are line of poems that are burned into me - they rattled my cage - they woke me up - they spoke my truth - they urged me to keep digging for my own 'self':'

"Want the change. Be inspired by the flame/Where everything shines as it disappears." - Rilke

"Tell all the truth - but tell it slant." - Emily Dickinson

"Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly/let it cut more deep." - Hafiz

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do/With your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver

"You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." - Mary Oliver

"May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places/ Where your life is domesticated and safe/Take you to the territories of true otherness/Where all that is awkward in you Can fall into its own rhythm." - John O'Donahue

--------------------------

I do a writing practice as often as I can to jog images onto the page. Allen Ginsberg did not believe the English language was cut out for the airt of Haiku and came up with the "American Sentence" which is One sentence, 17 syllables, end of story. This is harder than it sounds but it is a great way of both working in a kind of poetic structure as well as exploring the edges of creativity. Kinda like our asana practice. We work in the structure of the pose and line up, consolidate and then from there we expand. Anyway, here are couple of examples of my American Sentences:

The notes as familiar as your cowlick curl my skull and I sit still here.

Cream uncurdled and floating on coffee waits for the lip touch and swallow.

She wore red shiny shoes hanging from her foot like an invitation.

And my current favorite: Her feral heart quivered although she lay like granite on the divan.

Raise a Glass

2011-12-29T13:49:00.000-08:00

This has been a year of unexpected changes. Deep digging and discovery. Loss. Darkness and light.

As many of you know, my long-standing class at Yogaworks was cancelled for reasons that do not need discussion here. My purpose in bringing this up is that what I perceived to be such a huge loss has created something sweeter.

The Monday night crew at Turtle Island rocks and would not exist if Yogaworks hadn’t dumped my other classes. You guys are the reason I teach. Your support, your dedication to the practice and your willingness to show up and learn week-after-week is really the biggest gift. It is a small class that allows for friendliness and shared experience. And it is a dream teaching situation since it is the same group of people week after week. I am able to get to know your practice and work with that to shape the classes. Hands down my favorite yoga thing to do every week is to teach that class! A deep bow of gratitude to my students who are willing to come and do this thing with me!

I passed my first rung on the Iyengar certification ladder this year. I got to do that with Steph and Anna which made the whole process immeasurably more enjoyable. Gloria’s insistence on teaching simplicity and teaching correctly carried me through that process. She’s fierce and what I learned from her gave me wings.

I get to learn from Manouso week after week. I have come to love him deeply and I say this without some windswept, stars in the eyes way of thinking of one’s teacher. I love him not because of any particular thing he does or says or gives to me. I love him because he is entirely 100% himself and every single bit of his teaching comes from his own truth and from many years of devoted and dedicated practice. He’s human and flawed but I know, without a doubt, that his reasons for teaching are to ‘move us along on our path.’ I can ask him anything about my students, my practice, or my personal struggles. All of it is treated with care and kindness. And best of all, no performance is required to be his student. Show up. Do the work. And the rest will follow. He’s not interested in you making pretty picture poses for magazines but in you healing, growing, living in the practice. I hope to carry a teeny tiny bit of that to my own teaching.

My home practice became a refuge. I do it now without thinking. The sacred space of time alone on the mat – it saves me, it frees me and it is my best teacher. I finally got what Gloria means when she says that class is for learning and what happens at home alone is your practice.

Pranayama also took root. It has been a slow getting to know you process with the breath. And I see more and more how it’s a reflection of my internal world and also a way to manage how my internal world and external world interact. I can soothe, awaken, slow down and deepen. I can change the state of my mind by paying attention to my breath.

Tara Brach and her book Radical Acceptance entered my world. She got my ass back on the meditation cushion. This time I do believe it will stick.

Sarah. I had 2 shrinks in the past 40 something years. This one came from a random day and a random google search. She kicks my butt hard and my relationship to the things that hold me and to my own heart are changing. She won’t read this so I can use this space to say how incredibly grateful I am to have stumbled upon her wicked ways.

My sweetest sweetest love passed this year. Idge was a mountain of love on 4 furry stumpy legs. She traveled with me a long time and her absence and presence are always with me. The loss of her was, in my mind, unsurvivable. I grieve for her still but there was a deep acceptance of her leaving. She taught me well and her work and her body were done. She is one of the greatest teachers I will have in my life. My sweet black dog, seal, alligator, Idger, Podger, baby Bhujangasana, woobie, deer footed love your helicopter tail and hang 16 are burned in my memory.

Here’s to letting 2011 slip away with a gentle bow of the head. Let 2012 have more kindness, more presence, more shine, and more time standing on a mountain side in the sun.

Namaste.

A Brief Detour

2011-12-28T09:47:00.000-08:00

Lots of serious things going on lately. I need a break from it. I am going to indulge in making a list of some favorite things - to be specific -the music that fueled my 2011. I am not going to stick to music released in 2011 though that will be the mainstay of the list but rather share the soundtrack for this year.

Music is one of my great loves. My grandfather was a band leader and played many many instruments. I grew up in a house that had music on and while I never learned to play anything it is in my DNA. I do not listen to the radio other than to NPR so my music comes from stuff I grew up with and I also do a fair amount of reading and poking around for new and interesting stuff.

For something to get onto the Ipod, it has to be authentic, unique, and strike my emotional bell Sometimes this can be Lady Gaga and sometimes this can be Dolly Parton and this is always Miles Davis.

Here's my list of music I most loved in 2011 in no particular order:

Florence and the Machine, Ceremonials: This is a 2011 release. Her second album. It felt bigger, juicier and somehow more poignant than the first one which I also quite loved. This has been in near constant rotation since it was released. If nothing else, that girl has some pipes.

Feist, Metals: I didn't really like Feist before this album. I have a subscription to Rolling Stone and they reviewed this one and I bought it after checking out one track. Maybe because she recorded it on the cliffs over Big Sur. It is about nature, love, loss and its quiet and it also stomps. Love it.

Tom Waits, Bad as Me: This album is nuts. Its meandering and drunk. Keith Richards plays on it. And he when he sings the lines "I'm the last leaf on the tree. The autumn took the rest" in that voice that comes from Dante's hell piled high with bourbon bottles and crumpled cigarettes I am smitten. This one is really a shiny brilliant penny you find on the side walk and keep your pocket to reminder yourself of possibility.

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue: This album goes with me everywhere. I will not listen to it on any kind of iPod shuffle. It gets all my attention every time from start to finish. For me, one of the soundtracks of my life time. The curl of that horn and the quiet breath in the notes it both slays me and reminds me that we are capable of great beauty.

Ahmad Jamal, A Quiet Time: Jazz pianist who's been around a long ass time. Listening to him play is like being baptized in warm butter. The effortless ripple of the music pokes at my heart edges and makes me smile.

Afrocubism, AfroCubism: The title of this album says it all. It has both Toumani Diabete and Eglis Ochoa. Joy. Melancholy. Sheer loveliness and perfect.

Pistol Annies, Hell on Heels: I am always attracted to girls that sing with hick accents and wear pointy toed boots. This is a super group of sorts with Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Anjaleena Presley and it is sheer brilliance when it comes to strong women singing old school country music. Its jaunty, irreverent, and saucy. I loved this one.

Ryan Adams, Ashes and Fire: I was way over this dude. He had some ok stuff a few years back but there was something about it that never cut deep. I resisted this album and then fell in love with it. Its great and common all at the same time. It creates a pang in my heart and also melts me at the same time. Not bad :)

The Steeldrivers, Reckless: I am not really a huge bluegrass fan. And I guess these guys are considered to be that but there is something far to dark about them that eludes that classification. The voice of the singer is that dark corner in a bar after too many drinks sort and the music is full of longing and ache. It slays me every time and I listen to it a lot.

Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More: Just really good stuff. Odd and great all at once.

Dawes, Nothing is Wrong: I found these guys because someone said they were reminiscent of the Eagles. This dates me and perhaps says things about me I would prefer not to be known but some of my favorite songs are from that band "Lying Eyes" being at the top of the list. This band has hints of that kind of music but with a modern, darker edge. They are kinda old school sounding with a wistfulness to their music that reminds of a food I can't describe.

The Rolling Stones: Everything they ever recorded always. I have Keith and Mick constantly in rotation and it never gets old. Those boys make me very happy.

Check any of these out - would love to hear what you think!

Time for a Cool Change

2011-12-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

We do things one way for a long time. This is easily understood in our yoga practice. We press back into dog pose and there is a sameness about it. Thighs back, arms straight, blah blah. Manouso messes with us a lot in this regard showing us a zillion ways to do a pose. And also intentionally throwing in a prop or two that will throw the whole thing off balance. So now what are you going to do to find balance with a prop putting you into an uncomfortable place?

Asana practice is a play ground for teaching us how to handle discomfort, impermanence/change. We have a large array of poses at our disposal but our pose repertoire has a lot of 'sameness' to it. Trikoasana, Adho Mukha Svanasana, Sirsasana, Urdvha Mukha Svanasana - poses done A LOT in a regular practice. The body is never the same so the pose is never the same. We bring beginner's mind to the mat each time we come into a pose. What will be here today? Can I let go of my expectations about how this pose should be based on what it was yesterday? Can I let go and just be with what is here? The tight hamstring. The injured shoulder. The sore hips. The cluttered mind.

This is how life is. Things get uncomfortable. We can handle the discomfort the same way as we always do with what Tara Brach would call a "false refuge." Oh, I am scared so I will shut down. Oh I am hurt so I will get defensive. Oh I am tired I am going to bail on my practice. And on it goes - different for all us but really the same.

Conscious change requires a fortitude to look ourselves in the eye. Those behavior grooves have been our friends for a long time and were put in place as a means of protection. At a certain point, however we realize there is a different way to be. A choiceless choice if we are seeking an authentic life.

I just experienced some difficulty of the medical kind. I had to have a procedure that pushed a lot of my samskara buttons. And I watched the reactions happen. Fear, anxiety, and great aversion. A big pushing away and desire for things to be different. I didn't succeed clearly in NOT having those reactions. And believe me I experienced many an hour of being an anxious freaky girl about this whole thing. But, I did manage, with a lot of discomfort, to sit with all of it and get past the thing I needed to do.

Part of what I realized in this process is acceptance and presence are not a pushing away - the tight hamstring or the mind that is feeling aversion - but it is to actually toward towards them and be in them. So yesterday while waiting for this thing to take place I breathed and felt and expressed the aversion but at the same time I was a witness to "this is aversion," This is Stefanie not being in the present moment where everything is ok," "this is Stefanie freaking out." And while that stuff kinda stunk - I managed to get through the day without lopping my own head off about how much I suck and managed a certain amount of presence through a difficult few hours.

baby steps on a big path. All I can ask for is a little light in the sky that keeps drawing me closer to awareness and presence. It has always been there. I guess I finally took off the sunglasses.

Who are we really?

2011-12-19T15:36:00.000-08:00

Other peoples' words are better than what I can muster today. Lots of internal work going on right now.

The poem below speaks to the process of shaking off that which no longer serves. As Rilke says: "What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be gray and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid and is easily shattered."

For The Time Of Necessary Decision

The mind of time is hard to read.
We can never predict what it will bring,
Nor even from all that is already gone
Can we say what form it finally takes;
For time gathers its moments secretly.
Often we only know it’s time to change
When a force has built inside the heart
That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul
Or the love where we once belonged
Calls nothing alive in us anymore.
We drift through this gray, increasing
nowhere
Until we stand before a threshold we know
We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step
Into the unknown that beckons us;
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died;
Feel the deeper knowing in us sure
Of all that is about to be born beyond
The pale frames where we stayed confined,
Not realizing how such vacant endurance
Was bleaching our soul’s desire.

- John O’Donohue

The letting go

2011-12-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

Manouso taught a killer crazy shit ass joyously fun class last night in honor of Guruji's birthday today.

An important practice in Buddhism is that of letting go. Letting go of expectations, gripping, hardening, our stories of distraction, and all the behavior patterns that bind us and keep us in a place of disconnection from self and others. Last night's practice gave me a taste of this.

We dropped back into Dwi Pada Viparita Dandasana from Sirsasana (head balance). As I came up into headstand and started to reach my feet back and towards the floor, a surrender of the chest forward starts to happen and there is this moment where you let the legs go and they eventually hit/touch the floor. In between letting go and in the arriving on the floor, my little gripped self felt the possibility of freedom. We did it a few more times and each time as that moment of letting go arrived I felt joy. The kind of joy that spreads and you can literally feel in your heart.

I love this practice. And I love the safe space that Manouso creates for us on our mats to experience ourselves wherever we are that day.

Tara Says

2011-12-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

In the past months stuff - challenging emotional stuff has arisen. Some of it being circumstantial - the loss of a dear creature, old patterns still alive and well in my life, and the feeling of being stuck. Walking in place but not really enjoying the scenery.

I have so many things in my life to support the challenging times. A yoga practice, pranayama, a kick my ass therapist, dear ones, and on the list goes. All of this reminding me that you don't have to do this alone that's it is ok to ask for help.

Sometimes help comes from unexpected places and in strange forms. I consider myself closely aligned with Buddhism - its philosophy and its practices. In the last year or so I have strayed off my meditation cushion. Busy with lots of yoga and cultivating my pranayama practice. My breathing practices brings great things to my life but it is not my sitting practice. So as things go in our lives...I was rambling around a book store looking for something else and saw this book on the shelf "Radical Acceptance" by Tara Brach. I had read about her book many times and had often come across in other readings I had done and noted it as something I should check out. On this particular day, I bought the book.

Tara is a Buddhist psychologist running an insight meditation center in Maryland. She trained with Jack out here at Spirit Rock. I have a yoga teacher. I was in search of a spiritual teacher.I didn't expect to find a dharma teacher in this way. I read the book. And all the fear, holding, defenses, self-loathing, gripping, closed down, blind and numb parts of myself exhaled. She has a practical, clear and loving way of talking about the human condition and how we can work with our minds in tangible ways in our life. I am interested both in my yoga and buddhist explorations in taking what I do in my 'practice' into my life. Otherwise I fear it becomes a form of spiritual materialism. Like a teacher of mine says: "If you are an asshole off your mat, then you are not really doing yoga."

Here are some things that Tara says or my interpretation of them that I have been actively using in my daily life:

Pause. The power of stopping and taking a breath or two to be with presence before you rush headlong into any aspect of your day. I can't tell you how many times this has come in handy especially at the office. Stop. Take a breath. Come home to your body.

Compassionate seeing. We judge ourselves so very harshly and we do the same to many we meet. She talks about a way of seeing ourselves and others where when presented with a difficult person (including our own self) - we say 'what does this person want/need' - in other words what is the wound/hurt that is behind the behavior? I have tried it at work. And can see many times that the person in front of me is insecure and looking for assurance...the person is fearful and needs to control etc. When you start to see people that way, the walls between us start to go away. The same thing applies to ourselves. When I find myself in a triggered place, the question is 'what is behind this currently feeling of defensiveness?" and the answer is always some root wound.

False refuge. We do what we need to in order to survive. We learn coping skills at a young age based on our particular histories. These behaviors, instead of judging and deriding ourselves for them, we can thank them for saving our lives. Over time, however, these behaviors are 'false refuges' - we run and hide in them but we are walling ourselves off from our own loving hearts in the process. We all have lists of these refuges: Anger, over-eating, sadness, depression, compulsive shopping, fear, constant anxiety. Tara talks about coming home to the power of our true refuge which is awareness itself.

None of the practices and things she talks about are 'easy.' Like with my yoga, the only thing that is required here is practice. Over and over again coming back to the present moment. So, I thank Tara for getting me to see myself and my world in a whole new way and getting my butt back onto my meditation cushion.

If you want to find out what Tara says all of her Dharma talks from the past 5 years are so are on her web site: http://www.tarabrach.com/ or you can go to iTunes and type in her name and go down to her pod casts. Her talks are there as well. All of it is free.

Or read her book "Radical Acceptance" and let me know what you think.

A Little Bit of Everything

2011-12-09T13:06:00.001-08:00

“I want a little bit of everything,
The biscuits and the beans,
Whatever helps me to forget about
The things that brought me to my knees,
So pile on those mashed potatoes,
And an extra chicken wing,
I’m having a little bit of everything.”

I am a music junkie. I read about it, buy, and listen. My Ipod contents should embarrass me but they don’t anymore. Miles Davis – lots and lots of Miles. Dolly Parton, George Jones, Merle and Willie, and lots and lots of the Rolling Stones, Etta James, and bands and singers completely and utterly not famous that I adore. Currently, I am obsessed with a band called Dawes.

One of my favorite songs: “It’s a Little Bit of Everything”:

With his back against the San Francisco traffic,
On the bridges side that faces towards the jail,
Setting out to join a demographic,
He hoists his first leg up over the rail.
And a phone call is made,
Police cars show up quickly.
The sergeant slams his passenger door.
He says, “Hey son why don’t you talk through this with me,
Just tell me what you’re doing it for.”

“Oh, it’s a little bit of everything,
It’s the mountains,
It’s the fog,
It’s the news at six o’clock,
It’s the death of my first dog,
It’s the angels up above me,
It’s the song that they don’t sing,
It’s a little bit of everything.”

And this post well it is that – a little bit of everything. I have been long absent from my blog writing. A lot of stuff going on – mostly deep personal work and in doing the work it seems I didn’t have words to spare. Today, along with wearing a dress, I felt the impulse to write. To let the wild voice long ignored and too long devoted to linear narrative out of the corner. Today is well a ‘little bit of everything.’

Dealing with your own patterns is fucking hard work and requires an unflinching look at yourself. On some days, I would prefer not to. All moments of breath are a gift and each one an opportunity to soften, be present and mostly to love. Ain’t saying its easy but what are the choices. Small things matter. How you place your feet in Trikoasana and the smile extended to the street person…holding the door for the man with all the packages…dog paws and baby feet. Garlic and Philz coffee. And breath and our beating hearts. When my head gets too stuck up my own ass, I see the sun rising over the bay and I remember to exhale. Oh yes I am part of something much bigger than my small ego concerns. What a freaking relief not to be so important….

These words are with me right now as I examine places in myself that have gathered dust.

May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places/ Where your life is domesticated and safe/Take you to the territories of true otherness/Where all that is awkward in you

Can fall into its own rhythm. - John O'Donahue

Where has my wildness gone? The girl who did ballet leaps down the hall with abandon. The 20-something who picked up and drove to California from Massachusetts with no job and about $700 in her pocket. Sometimes I was foolish but I want to reintroduce myself to less safety. Responsibility is good this is more about giving my soul space to roam. The holes in my soul have ruled the roost for too long. They don’t need to have the headline on the marquee so much anymore. Let’s see where this leads.

I am not going to edit this post and make anything neat. Part of me was about to ask for forgiveness but for right now I will stand boldly behind my little post. Understanding that I can’t please everyone but I can share my truth.

Home Practice: Neck and Shoulder Freedom

2011-10-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday and had difficulty turning my head and had pain in the upper shoulders and neck. No explainable reason - My last few asana practices were relatively quiet and there was nothing in there to cause this kind of lock up. A lot of emotional stuff going on right now so it could be my body's way of dealing with it.

This morning's practice was all about finding some space and relief. By the end of this practice - I could turn my head and some of the restriction in the shoulders had dissipated. Even if you are not in pain, it is a helpful sequence to keep the upper body feeling loose and open and thereby hopefully creating a clear mind.

Virasana - Blanket between the calves - behind the knees. Take the arms into Parvatasana. Descend the shoulders - lengthen the armpits.

AMS (Adho Mukha Svasana) Be on hands and knees with toes tucked under and arms in front of shoulders - Look forward and keep looking forward as you lift the hips and push the front of the thighs back to the full pose - 2X

Ardha Uttasana - Look down and press thighs back and side chest forward. Then suck back ribs in and take head way up.

Arm Work
Urdhva Hastasana - Arm straight up - make armpits long and descend shoulders
Urdhva Hastasana - Take arms out to the side - suck triceps to the bone turn the upper arm - take arms away from each other to take them up to full pose - 2x
Urdhva Baddhanguliyasana - make palms level and stretch side waist and arms pits long and descend the shoulders

Tadasana with strap under the Metarsals - Bend the knees and walk the hands down the strap to straighten the legs allow the arms to become part of the strap and let the pull of the feet against the straight to take the muscles at the base of the neck away from the ears - 3X

Trikoasana - Come into the pose - top arm arm - look straight down at front leg and release shoulders away from ears and lengthen the back of the neck. Keep the arms moving apart and turn the head to look up keeping the back neck long

Trikoasana - This time the top arms rests along side the waist and stretches towards the back foot to help take the shoulders away from the ears and free the neck. Look down at the front foot as previously and then keeping the shoulders moving away from the ears take the top arm up and turn the head

Tadasana w/strap under the occiput - Place strap below ears at the occiput. Stretch the back of the neck long, lift the chest and look up. Keep the elbows apart.

Virabhadrasana II - Clasp the hands behind the back and drag wrists down to the floor. Look up and lift the chest and descend the shoulders. Keep the shoulders down and float the arms out to the side and let the back of the skull lift towards the ceiling. Keeping the back of the neck long, shoulders soft - turn the head and look over the front arm.

Headstand Preparation
A. Pincha Arms - Dog legs with the feet together Press the forearms down and lift the inner shoulders strongly towards the buttock. The head hangs.
B. Sirsasana Clasp of the hands - Same legs as above Press the forearms down and lift the inner shoulders like crazy. The head hangs like ripe fruit but does not touch the floor

Sirsasana - With brick - Muscular - lifting inner shoulders and letting back skull descend.

Virasana - Place hands on the knees and grab and lift the chest strong and descend the chin towards the chest and allow the back neck to stretch and release as the shoulders move away from the ears - 2X

Dandasana - Reach arms down and take the shoulders down with the arms and let the back skull rise

Paryankasana - High bricks - one between the shoulder blades and one under the head
Place hands at the occiput and lengthen back skull and place it back on the brick.
Take arms over head, descend the thighs open the chest and keep the back of the neck long. If there is space, drop the brick away and let the head drop back.

Supported Bent Leg Setubandha - Bend the elbows and turn the upper arms out press the outer shoulders down and life the 7th cervical up and into the body.

Clasp hands in front of the brick
Arms with palms facing each other reaching for the feet.

Supported Halasana on a Chair Let the back neck stretch

Chair twists - but this is optional I didn’t feel it was necessary

Savasana

Inhabiting One's Own Skin

2011-10-23T20:01:00.001-07:00

The body and my relationship to it has changed thanks to yoga. This poem is an expression of where I came from:

My heft is squalid, you said,
Offensive as the dirty bathroom
The quantity of me overflowed.
Navigation systems derailed
You turned away.

The difference, you said,
between size ten and six
like moving to a better neighborhood
the junked up ghetto- fat darkness
was never your home.

Discard what weakens, you said.
I learned it well.
I am a land mass in retreat
eroded and wind-bared
a carcass left to rest fleshless

Newly-thinned, I said.
The fat girl doesn’t live here anymore
I am the dress poised on the hanger.
Admiring eyes follow my sleekness
an architecture revealed.

Except, I say
my belly is stretched
tight as a sheet
and I am skinned and thin
standing here alone.

Home Practice: Lighten the Heart

2011-10-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

This was my sequence last night in my own practice. I was in a fully equipped studio when I did this practice but most of it is doable at home on the mat. I recommend this for a time when there are a lot of emotions, you are under emotional stress or you feel worn out. It is not easy but I felt lighter when I finished. The entire focus through all of these poses was something given to my by Manouso last week which was to get the chest open and the thoracic spine IN. So, I won't be giving a lot of detailed instructions in the sequence below because that aforementioned focus from Manouso was what I did through nearly every pose.

1. Tadasana - Urdhva Hastasana Arms: First arms out to the side with a focus on spreading the arms apart and then keeping the action as you lift the arms overhead - Repeated 3x

2. Surya Namaskar - Full Sun Salute - I went pretty slowly and I held Adho Mukha Svanasana a pretty long time. While I was in dog pose, I would occasionally bend the elbows out to the side and then turn the triceps towards each other and straighten the arms to wake up the middle back band. 3 - 4X

4. Adho Mukha Svanasana with index finger and thumb at the baseboard. Focus on moving the inner wrist to the inner shoulder. Inner shoulder away from the head. Thighs back to make space in the spine.

6. Full Arm Balance (Handstand) - I did this about 8 times. I alternated legs going up and I tried to balance about 4 out of the 8 times. I also changed hand positions - I started with the hands turned out 90 - then the regular way - then back to hands turned out 90.

7. Pincha - I have started working without a block when I practice on my own - Before I went up - I rolled the triceps in and lifted the inner shoulders away from the floor - I went up trying not to touch the wall at all with my legs - I alternated the legs going up. 6X

8. Sirsasana - 7 Minutes - Straight headstand - focus was inner shoulders up, lower ribs towards the spine, forearms down. I took my legs into a Virasana a few times and lifted the tailbone up and buttocks up and then restraightened the legs

9. Trikoasana - Full Pose - 2X

10. Utthita Parsvakonasana - Full Pose - 2X - Focused strongly on back thigh back front buttock forward and kept re-lifting the inner back thigh angularly away from the floor and pressed the outer back heel to make more and more space for the spine to stretch

11. Vira I - Full Pose - hands in Urdhva Namaskarasana - Lift the arms by lifting the sternum UP - make the kidneys and back ribs even. Tailbone into the body - torso UP

12. Parivrrta Trikoasana - Worked on cutting the back rib into the body as the torso twisted and using the legs - especially the back leg thigh moving back to make space in the spine - 1X each side

Rope Work 1

13. Thoracic Spine Massage with Chair - Have chair at the wall with the seat facing the wall. Stand in front of the chair and hook the bottom tips of the scapula on the chair back - keeping the knees bent lift the tailbone into the body and go up and down and let the chair back open the dorsal spine. - 8-10 X

14. Ustrasana in Stages
- Hands on buttocks dragging them down, lifting the sternum up (not taking the hands to the feet)
- Repeated the first but then moved the hands lower to the upper back thighs and spread them away from the each other while I kept lifting the sternum
- Hands to the heels - After you are in the full pose - lift the head up and take the middle spine into the body to touch the sternum - creates a BIG lift of the chest - then release the head back down. Shins hit down strongly
- Repeated and took the whole palm of the hand to the foot

15. Urdhva Dhanurasana
- At the baseboard, with the hands up on the lip of the baseboard - Stayed high on my toes and lifted the tailbone WAY up to hit the pubic bone and moved the middle spine into the body to hit the sternum 3X
- Wrists at the baseboard - came to my head and rolled the triceps and sucked the back ribs in until my face was resting on the floor then lifted straight up. Kept the arms where they were and tried to bring the chest to the wall by taking the middle spine into the body until it hits the sternum - 3X

- Full Pose away from the wall - Walked the feet in and turned the head WAY under by taking the middle back in. Tailbone lifts and outer femurs roll up - 2x

17. Repeated Ustrasana - Full Pose

18. Baby dropbacks at the wall - walking further and further way. Bending the knees, taking the buttocks down and lifting the sternum from the middle back - 15x

19. Repeated Full Urdhva Dhanurasana

20. Kapotasana work in the Chair - Chair away from the wall. Strap around the front feet of the chair. Placed a mat piece along the back bar. Sit through the chair like you would at the wall. Hook the feet behind the back bar and let the knees descend towards the floor. Went back and grabbed the strapped and turned the triceps and sucked the middle back in until the hands touched the front legs of the chair. The head turns under from the movement of the middle spine.

21. From Ustrasana - Dropped back to Kapotasana - tried to walked the hands back to the feet - 2X

22. Dwi Pada Viparita Dandasana - I set my mat up at the baseboard and I had two bricks on the low height the long way at the baseboard. I came to the top of my head and placed the elbows in front of the two bricks with the arms like they would be for headstand. Sucked the back ribs WAY in - lifted the head and turned. Walked the legs out as best I could. 2X

23. Malasana using the ropes to lengthen the back

24. Adho Mukha Svanasana - Lengthen the back

25. Supta Virasana - 25 pounds on the thighs

26. Sarvangasana - Full pose and then Halasana with the hands interlaced reaching towards the front of the mat. I then went back up into the full pose keeping my hands interlaced, reaching away and pressing down. Tried to keep the lift of the spine and quickly moved my hands to my back. Then, I did Eka Padas and Parsvaikapada. Then Back to Halasana - Held that for awhile moving the buttocks to the heels and lifting the spine.

27. Chair Bharadvajasana - 2 x each side
28. Savasana (10 Minutes) - thighs on chair seat, spreading and releasing the sacrum.

Dropped Delicately

2011-10-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

Idge #2

Her tongue is a passport
On her quest for chunks of life
She consumes with abandon.
Everything equally beloved.

A velvet explorer pushing her crumbs like crown jewels.
She is a mistress of enjoyment with
Small fineries hung from her eyes.
Grace is the bounty of her wagging travels.

She unstoops me and I rattle awake.

She was delivered by stars
Dropped delicately
Under cover of night on running paws
And a wagging heart
She is light breaking, constant morning arriving
The dewy tip of her nose nudging me to love, love, love.

She was delivered by stars
Dropped delicately
Under cover of night on running paws
And a wagging heart
She is light breaking, constant morning arriving
The dewy tip of her nose nudging me to love, love, love
She catches the ball with a satisfied thump, an arc of joy
Mending my sharded heart.

She whirls and whizzes, a helicopter
Taking off and landing over, and over and over
She chose her own time and place
Slipped through a crack in the sky on God's exhale
Throwing me open like a heavy door

Ice does not form here anymore.
She is a holy thing
Love and forgiveness amongst the blades of grass
She noses aside to show me the one true thing.

Idgie

Nature is our teacher. She contains everything we need to know if we pay attention.

Nature is relentless. The cycles of birth, life, death are not marked by Hallmark sentiments or floral arrangements. It is brutal when looked at with our human eyes. Our ego and sense of the capital letter “I” which clings to this incarnation and fears the inevitable end we all share.

Our oceans teach us most poetically. The waves wash in, stay for their allotted time, leave a brief mark in the sand and then retract to be replaced by the next and the next. On and on. Our seasons teach us the same thing. The plants that bloom and burst in spring that are dead and dry by the fall. We trim our plants to promote their growth: the cutting away is necessary for further growth.

Why is that so hard for me?

I am reluctant to write about the loss of Idge. Her preciousness to me is so personal and her passing has left a hole in the middle of my being. I am still learning to get comfortable with that absence and am not entirely sure I will ever be ‘used’ to it. Idge was pure grace. She was with me for 18 years of tail-wagging, begging, running, fetching, swimming, pig-dancing, pets, purrs, laughter and tears. The thump of her tail was her greeting and in her younger years the whole wiggle-wag of her body welcomed me home. Day after day without fail that spirit was there.

And like everything she was not going to be a permanent inhabitant of that adorable body despite some deeply delusional part of myself that thought perhaps she would be the first immortal dog. The body with its silky black perfectness, little deer feet and the softest ears was merely the temporary container for her Idge-ness. Her absence stings like a knife cut.

Watching the bay this morning with the sun striking through the clouds to hit the water in some glorious music-conjuring way, I remembered the connectedness of all things. The separation from the physical form of my beloved dog is painful but if I breathe and remember that Idge is now everywhere as is my beloved grandfather and dance teacher Dorothy - my heart eases. My clinging to the thing that makes me feel better – the warm bodies of the beloveds – is ok and deeply human. The healing comes from the passage of time and the ongoing ebb and flow of all things. Once again, I am reminded to pay attention.

Post-Assessed

2011-09-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

The dust is beginning to settle a bit from the weekend. Most of the dust was emotional. The roller coaster began on Thursday as our plane made its way to Seattle and we arrived at our hotel late that evening. I was lucky enough to be sharing this experience with two friends. It made it less scary and it was nice to have someone else to freak out with or talk poses with as we went through this.

Honestly, the experience of Friday and Saturday is mostly a blur. My least favorite part of it was doing pranayama while three assessors walked around and watched. They told us the breathing didn't count towards our score but I guess they want to make sure you know something about the practice since it is an integral part of what the Iyengars teach. But HELL we were all jacked up with nerves and there is a senior teacher standing VERY nearby staring at me doing as I did Ujjayi II. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears and my breath was about deep as a puddle in the Mojave.

The demonstrated practice was kind of amusing. The poses from our syllabus by now feel like old friends. I might not do them all beautifully but I am certainly deeply familiar with them and how my body behaves in them. Someone calls out all the poses and the assessors walk around and watch and note things on their clipboards. Who knows what they hell they saw or wrote down. I tried to just do my poses.

The beautiful thing was being in a room full of people dedicated to yoga. The other people going up for assessment were nice and the atmosphere in the room didn't feel competitive or oppressive. It was clear from what I could see in my little corner of the room that everyone in that room was serious about this thing we were doing. Yes, different levels of flexibility and some needed straps/blocks for certain things. But I felt part of something larger as the sanskrit name of the pose was called out and the whole room moved into that asana...all different personal manifestations of it. I was working hard and sweating but smiling inside. One of my favorite things is seeing all the different feet in the air during inversion work. You can't turn your head in Sarvangasana but I could see a few pairs of feet moving towards the heaves in my peripheral vision. It always feels like coming home.

I have no idea what happened in my teaching assessment. The adrenaline was pumping something fierce and you kind of leave your conscious body. I don't really recall seeing the assessors in the room. They were walking around but something kicks in and you just do it. I am sure I spoke too fast from nerves and said some dumb shit but I gave it my best.

And yes the outcome mattered to me no matter how much I prepared the inner self for both possible outcomes - passing / not passing. Clearly I would have survived the failure of the test. Tears and feeling sorry for myself and the usual rigamorale of what happens when the outcome is not as you desired. Passing this little test means not much and everything all at the same time. It is like a corner being turned - my choices are fully my own to make but the options are now different.

For now, I am going to enjoy the feeling of walking around without every book written by the Iyengars in my backpack. I will go back to those books soon enough as they are part of the fabric of my practice but a little break will do this girl good.

And in the midst of the anxiety yesterday waiting to hear....I stepped onto my mat to practice. And yes I kept waiting for my phone to buzz with the email of the results but mostly I breathed, moved, quieted, and settled. And yes, I remembered - this is really what this is about - a little peace and quiet.