starting over – HOORAY!

so my new yoga client and i were talking about ways for me to introduce her to what i call “the finer side” of yoga. and we decided to start with the yamas. we’re gonna take one a week and be mindful of practicing it for the week and talk on our friday lesson about what we’ve discovered. i try to be mindful of the yamas and niyamas all the time but actually having weekly discussions and teaching her about them to is like starting over and learning them all over again. and it’s so awesome to freshen up and renew that passion for my non-physical practice. and in re-reading judith lasater’s “living yoga: translating patanjali’s yoga sutras into everyday life” in “the joy of yoga” i got a nice little kick in the ass when i came across this in reading about ahimsa (our focus this week):

“to practice ahimsa is to be constantly vigilant, to observe ourselves in interaction with others, our thoughts about those interactions and the intention behind our words. try practicing ahimsa by observing your thoughts when a smoker sits next to you. your thoughts may be just as damaging to you as his cigarette is to him.”

wow. point taken.

(i am really proud of my bf. he’s been holding strong and using the gum to keep him from smoking. he even made it through an entire night of our friends’ wedding (which by the way was great! the venue was having 2 events that night but it was well arranged and all was well) -plenty of drink and plenty of temptation- without smoking a single cigarette! still walking the line between being supportive and not nagging or judging. but i know we can do this!)

frivolity

on a day when the rest of the world is being reflective and solemn, i find myself in the clouds. consumed with thoughts of yoga-super-stars and plagued with questions about my own future. today seems like one of those days where i can’t quite keep my head on straight – it just keeps spinning… and i don’t mind so much cause being dizzy is kind of fun. i spent the morning imagining being famous in the yoga world and what that really means.
see, i had a student in my class this morning that’s moved here from the malibu area and has crammed herself into those 200 people yoga-super-star classes – mine was full at eight people! while i’ve done quite a few workshops with the “big dogs”, she’s been a part of that hype, that celebrity, and seen what it does to a group of people. how it’s affected the class dynamic. how it may have affected the quality of teaching. the attention. the love. we talked about how they charge up to $150/hour for a private lesson…. and how she says i’m just as good as they are (a compliment i both want to believe and find quite simply IMPOSSIBLE to believe – but say a hearty “thank you!” to at any rate) but yet i don’t have health insurance and do the hustle everyday driving ALL OVER god’s green earth to make my ends meet… and think i’m rollin’ in it because i have enough to go out to eat or to the movies and not stress that i can’t pay the bills – that’s high livin’ i say!
so i daydreamed… and worried. how long can i do this hustle? how could i ever support a family? how can i continue to live my dream AND have the security blanket i so need and long for? it’s hard! and i don’t have the answers…..

and then, on a totally frivolous note: i am deeply considering “blinging out” my cell phone for the hell of it! i’ve always thought it would be hilarious and i KNOW i can do it myself (i pride myself on my DIY craftiness) instead of paying someone $400 to do it – www.nycpeach.com. and i think it would bring me some silly joy to spend hours hand gluing rhinestones to my cell phone… and even more joy each time i pull that shiny, obnoxious thing out of my purse and put it up to my ear – i think i’d smile alot!

and the beat goes on…

it’s been so long since i last posted! to tell the truth, i have been both distracted and disabled. the distraction… life. the disability…. life.
to make a long, long story short:
two weeks ago i pulled my back out and set a vertebra in my spine slightly askew. sounds fun? no. it was painful and dibilitating… but profound.
see, last year i broke both of my ankles in a rock climbing fall and i never really slowed down to heal. my mother kidnapped me for 2 weeks and took me to her house in florida to heal but truth-be-told it didn’t do any good. i should’ve known better – hell, i did know better – but i just kept truckin’ like nothing happened. i drove a car with a cast on my right foot and my left one severely sprained. i hobbled around on my crutches and taught a full schedule (sometimes i even demonstrated postures!). and the whole time i thought i was being “strong”. i was being STUBBORN. and more important, i was putting others ahead of myself. i felt the pressure of my students “missing me” and “needing their yoga” and i felt scared to sit still that long – scared they’d move on somehow.
and so this time, after putting others before my own health and well-being as a general routine and putting a student’s body ahead of my own, the lesson was offered up to me once again.
and so i lay. flat on my back on my hardwood floor. crying and moaning and wishing it would all just go away. and i began to meditate……
in the quiet of my empty house and in the dark of my dining room, i closed my eyes and listened. and after i while i began to figure it all out – the fear and the pain were something more than muscles and something more than spine. i was afraid that if i didn’t live up to everyone’s expectations (as a teacher, as a girlfriend, as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend, as a wiser, smarter, more YOGIC being) then i would let them down. it never occurred to me that my students actually really did miss me – that they really did look up to me and that if i was going to serve them (and everyone else) in the way i seek to serve others always, i had to be better to myself. i had to value my own body and my own time just like i encouraged them to do.
and it’s all so simple and it’s all so damn blatant and obvious and sickeningly EASY – but it’s the hardest thing in the world to practice sometimes!
and then i listened a little more… and i meditated alot more…. and i realized that part of my now valuing myself properly was not speaking up and giving a voice to some of my deepest needs. *** this became gloriously clear when i went to the chiropractor and had x-rays done and the one vertebra that was out was only visible in the x-ray taken with my mouth WIDE OPEN!!! read anatomy of the spirit by caroline myss immediately if you have not already ***
so after many more hours meditating, and many hours of self-induced therapy, i managed to heal myself and am mobile once again. a huge feat considering when my love came home wednesday night i told him that if i couldn’t walk the next day then i’d just have to wait another and was totally prepared to do that – walking wasn’t the goal – healing was/is.
and so i am practicing a whole new yoga. and it is difficult and wonderful.

all day today i’ve had that enlightened, euphoric feeling. the deepest appreciation for this life. and it’s been awesome.
i am reading a great book after the ecstacy, the laundry by jack kornfield – i haven’t read very much just yet but it is so inspiring and reassuring.

i especially love this quote from suzuki roshi:
strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity

be well.

an ah-ha! moment

okay, i wrote the name of the post and now i’ve got “workin’ for the weekend” stuck in my head – way to go!
at any rate, it’s six-thirty in the morning and i am up and typing because A) i was having trouble getting back to sleep after getting up to let the dog out and B) i figured something out.

first of all, let me explain just a bit about my new clients, “the busybodies”. this is the same gentleman i mentioned in an earlier post whom i find very demanding and invasive and his girlfriend who is so vata i do not know where to begin. they both work high-stress jobs, are very wealthy, seem to buy into a very superficial lifestyle, and “feed” off the high of running in circles. please forgive me if i offend anyone here but i am about to reveal my own awful prejudices: i knew i was up to a challenge when i drove up to their cookie-cutter home in the suburbs and found their house by locating the enormous hummer with the bush ‘04 stickers on the bumper – if you’ve seen the show weeds you will have the perfect mental image here and if you haven’t, then you must immediately! he seems much more open to the true lessons of yoga and has the desire to really dive in and discover some things along this path – and note: he is the one who has arranged for and is paying for these lessons – but she doesn’t seem to have a clue or be open to getting one! she is so thin that i fear for her health and she has an enormously hard time stopping the “monkey mind” which then just spills out as incessant chatter – even in balances i cannot seem to shut her up!
the first thing they explained to me when i met them yesterday for their second lesson (after they showed up thirty minutes late and running around like chickens with their heads cut off!) was that i needed to “work [them] harder” because she was a little sore but he wasn’t at all – they just don’t get it yet! it’s going to take a while.
and so….
i’ve been looking for a way to relate to them what we are trying to find in the practice of yoga in a way that might make sense to them. the spiritual path might be a bit much for her to take all at once – she doesn’t seem to have ever taken a step down that path in her life other than perhaps praying to god for things she wants or when she is in a crisis – i should stop being judgemental, i know, but i am trying to paint a picture of the ground zero i am starting from so it will be a glorious story when (hopefully) i one day write a post about how she’s woken up and made such progress.
i suddenly began using the term “habits of tension” while teaching them the first time (i don’t know where these things come to me but they just do like i’m being told what to say from a source outside of myself – which makes me have delusions of being a prophet of sorts which is silly and fun to think about!). i began to point out, gently each of their habits of tension when a posture would reveal them…. his jammed neck and tight jaw…her contorted shoulder…his shoulders creeping up to his earlobes…her chatter…
and then as i was lying in bed this morning it made sense to teach them logically that our yoga will be a giant subtraction problem (although i don’t like the word problem in that phrase). if you are stressed in body and mind, then logically the easiest and most direct way is to seek out the sources of that stress and eliminate them/ease them/subract them. and if you decide that your job or your relationships or factors that you can’t eliminate are the source, then you have to eliminate the harmful manner in which you are storing and/or processing them. but first you must make that important decision not to let your body and mind be a processing plant for stress – you must decide that you no longer want to manufacture dis-ease no matter how beautifully you plan on packaging it and how clever your ad campaign is to sell it to the world around you.
so if body and mind are indeed connected (and getting them to change their minds is definately more abstract while dealing with their bodies is more direct and obviously something they relate to being appearance oriented and all) then working with the body is the route to take to ease their minds!
so i’m going to make a campaign to begin actively identifying their “habits of tension” and begin replacing them with “habits of peace”. i once read a great quote that said something to the effect of: if you’re standing there saying to yourself “something’s gotta change!” then by-god something’s gotta change!
so they (or at least he) has made the first step by hiring me and saying “i need help – this has to change” so let’s see how we can begin do that…. one. little. habit. at. a. time. step. by. step.
down the path we go…..

mantra of the week: “i will not be a doormat!”

well, we’re all taught the lessons we need to learn one way or the other and it seems that mine has sought me out with a vengeance! i have been pursued by a new client whom i can safely classify as “persistant and pushy” – he’s a big businessman who is used to everyone around him saying “yes” and i have a very hard time saying “no” – i actualy like to think i am extremely giving and kind, but in reality i am afraid of confrontation and telling someone no…. so here comes my practice. i am VERY excited to have the business and therefore the income but i am going to have to find a way to hold my peace in the midst of his choas and to set my boundaries pretty firmly.
for instance, he has decided that yoga is his “thing” and wants to schedule as many lessons with me as i have time for in a week (he actually asked me to print out my schedule so he could see when i am free so he can “fill in the gaps”) – sounds amazing huh? well, it is. but i value my time and my sanity more than the money that business will bring me and i am not about to give up my beautiful afternoon park visits with my puppy to make a buck.
so my mom, who gives awesome advice (even if it’s cause she’s gone through it all once and done it all wrong once!), made an amazing suggestion that’s very simple but i wouldn’t have done: actually SCHEDULE those times for yourself. put in a code word or simply make up your own alias and schedule private time when you need it. you don’t have to explain – you just have to say those times are unavailable. afterall, how can i help others find their inner peace if i sell mine for a few extra bucks a month?! brilliant!

strength wanted: apply within

this is the sign currently hanging on my forehead.
my boyfriend (BF) has just walked out the door to go to work for the evening and i have two hours before i must go babysit (just realized exactly how much i sound like a sixteen year old in that sentence and it’s funny cause…well, i am more than a decade older than that – but hey! i am still young and don’t have kids of my own and any extra income is still indeed income! and it helps out one of my yoga students who’s raising two kids alone get a night away)
so….
i know i need to go in the other room and spread out my mat and get a practice in but… oooh, i really really can think of a thousand things to do instead!

running to stand still?

i still don’t get running. yes, i’ve never been one to love running and therefore i am biased and perhaps a little judgemental but really, why would one want to participate in an activity that almost guarantees some sort of surgery is in your future? do you know how many knee surgeries i’ve seen? how many of my clients have daily pain and STILL continue to run? it’s totally bizarre to me!
i did a yoga weekend with brian kest a while back and he talked about how yoga is different from sport because there is no competition in yoga – and when i brought this up to a client who loves running she responded that that’s why she ran – a long run by herself was just for herself – time alone, meditation in motion, etc. but what i wonder is if running isn’t (for some people at least) a competition with oneself. that continual pushing – how far can i push myself, how long can i run? how fast can i run? how “fit” can i be? how great can my body look?
this morning i taught “zany” and her husband a private lesson. she kept talking about how fit he was and he reiterated time and again how athletic he was and yet HE COULD BARELY MOVE!
don’t get me wrong, i think cardio excercise is GREAT! but running seems so harmful and you end up with such tightness. it’s like a prescription for tension – want to add to the tension at the back of your body? does that sound fun? then run!
and i generally have found that those personalities that have a harder time slowing down mentally (vata) are the ones who run. and well it makes sense doesn’t it? if you are an “active” person, you’ll seek out an “active” form of excercise. but then aren’t you really just feeding the problem? if you’re looking for a remedy, a way to slow down your mind and take some time out to become peaceful, then slow down the body. afterall, body and mind are connected – we know this. and i’m not saying it will be easy…. and that’s why it’s called a yoga practice!
but i can’t stress enough that i am not saying never run or that running is unanimously bad. but be mindful of how and why you run. balance that activity with softness. run mindfully and most importantly listen to your body – if it says stop/pause then respect it and yourself by doing so.
the reason we practice yoga is to keep supple and be open. open to the present moment. open to listen to the knowledge within our own hearts. open to the lessons of life. open to the possibility for change (which is inevitable) and supple enough to move with it. if the mighty oak tree didn’t sway in the wind it’d snap in two.
remember: the saying is STOP to smell the roses not run right past them!

sleeping babe

this afternoon i went to teach “posh” – knocked on the door and as usual heard a “come in” that sounded more like an exaperated sigh than words… and i knew it was another one of those days. he’s been so down lately. and i try to make it better somehow in that short hour that we breathe together but most of the time i think he’s still just excercising. i get frustrated – really frustrated – but then the love eventually flows.
as he was lying in savasana and i was rubbing his feet i thought about the magdeline washing jesus’ feet – thought about how it’s a bowing of sorts… and i began to bow in my heart. and by the time i got to rubbing his temples i saw a sweetness wash over his face and he was like a baby sleeping. and i hoped that i was right in thinking that he was a little more peaceful.
even if it was only until i rung the bell and he jumped up off of his mat like it was on fire to check his cell phone for missed calls.