Samskara

Samskaras have been likened to grooves we carve and recarve based on our experiences. It's like a rut or pattern we seem to just fall into. Eventually I end up asking, or rather lamenting, why something happens to me. But the truth is somehow I am actively inviting that energy in---whether it's dating a certain type of person, or thinking I'm not good enough, or falling into the trap of creating a system of weights and measures---that I have to earn my privledges or joys by practicing certain behaviors to earn them (for example, working out so I can eat a cookie). I remember one of the most heart breaking aspects of teaching to survivors of trauma was hearing a statement like this: The first time I was raped, I was 9. And seeing how this singular experience evolved into a string of rapes, assaults, damaging relationships.

One of the things yoga teaches is that trauma finds its hold in the body. Attending Ray Crist's class today, he said that this trauma becomes like a beacon, calling energy towards it, making the knots tighter and the practice is for us to unwind them and let them go so that we don't create a chain of samskara in the body. That the practice is about coming more into the heart meridian and the prefrontal cortex, home of compassion and wisdom and out of the adrenals and the fight and flight response.

The intention I created today was not to do anything out of fear from, but rather excitement and curiousity and joy.

Riding the Waves More Quietly

Something that I have noticed is that even when life offers big waves, emotionally I'm more even keel. I don't follow the crazy doomsday voice in my head---actually doomsday has been replaced by more logic and optimism. For example when the computer shuts down in the middle of watching a Netflix, I think, wow, I should plug it in and then see if it shut down b/c I was out of battery instead of thining, how could I be such a silly head and loose all my poems and documents.

One of the best pieces of advice I received was to make the first 30 minutes of my day for spiritual practice. For me that looks like whirlpool, sauna and abhyanga (sometimes metta and just being still in somewhat of a meditation practice.) In cultivating quiet, I find there is more quiet space I am creating so that when life turns up the volume, I don't immediately get louder.

What We Can't Explain

Lately I've been thinking in a whole new mindset---the one of I don't know instead of I know. I used to really want explanations. If I do this, I get that or figuring out the reason why. The conclusion I've come to is we will never know why. We may think we do, but we don't. Recently I entered a writing contest. I just found out I didn't win, but before that I had sent the essay to my mentor who had unbeknownst to me, sent it to the Marketing/Editorial Dept. here. And they want to publish it! If not for the contest, I would have not written the piece. So this leads me to believe that our life is made up of a string of circumstances, cities on a map and each decision or moment is connected to the next, but perhaps not in the obvious or linear way the mind works. Instead, the more I open to the random-ness, the easier it is to not attach...

Gratitude

Everyday I wake up and someone has made me breakfast, I have a hot tub and sauna and unlimited yoga and gorgeous grounds to walk on. It's true, I don't make very much money for what I do, but if water, kale, and nature are compensation, I am definitely richer than I have been since ever actually.

However what makes this experience even richer is the personal connections. One of my students from the last ytt just sent me her grandmother's aprons because she knows how much I love wearing them over my yoga pants :) It is such a gift to feel the offering of someone's personal family history. The generosity and connection that I feel just by being here is so magnified each time I step onto my mat or into my role as teacher. And realizing that this moment exists as now---what if I looked at every minute as a chance to step up on this mat of life and choose to open my heart and connect?

So this is my plan---to find a moment of each day to make a new connection or to rekindle and reconnect to dear friends and family not physically here with me and to replant the seeds of what it means to be present. And what if we all did that, took more time to express love and gratitude? Outside the weather is unseasonably warm and so I'm letting that be my reminder to be warmer (or hotter) inside....

The Vinyasa of Life

Last Saturday I was guiding my students out of shavasana when the fire alarm went off. Calmly I invited them to press up, grab their shoes and a blanket and exit through the side door and used the moment as a teaching one---how to stay in the vinyasa and move with what life offers. We om-ed outside---one student said om-ing made her warmer and so we did it again and I asked her to lead the next one as she's a YTT student. The next part of the experience was to find yoga, union, connection by meeting a new person and using this as a moment to cultivate welcome and friendliness in any situation.

I'm feeling so honored and grateful for this teaching moment, to look at everything as part of the flow---to not use the tools of planning, but simply the tools of being :)

The Power of Intention and Visioning

I used to think these things were corny---I had a hard time "seeing" things the way I wanted them to be---or I wasn't sure and was unclear about what I wanted my life to look like. It was a just take what arrives and make the best of it way of living. But being here in which I practice being centered and grounded before I begin any task (idealistically). But in January I really started putting out intentions that were specific and empowering. I also started practicing self-trust, self-compassion and joy. And by creating that internal space, the external space shifted. What I breathe out, I breathe in or vice versa. I feel lighter and more confident than I have ever felt. And what I put out, I draw in towards me. An interesting fact about dating is that one attracts what one is, not what one is looking for....

Thai Yoga Massage

I used to be the yoga teacher who was sacred to touch people b/c I didn't want to hurt them or get in the way of their practice. Before moving here, I had taught trauma sensitive yoga classes and so it took me a while before I felt it was safe to enter into my students' physical space. Now in thinking about that, I think that came from how I felt about people and teachers entering my space. For a long while I've felt simultaneously guarded yet free. It's a contradiction that I'm inquiring about and exploring and I do feel that the guard has come down quite a bit. I'm sure there's more to unlock but much progress has been made: I've lessened the hair dye, the make-up, the primping and prepping of my life. If my look could now be described by Cosmo, I'd say natural and radiant.

But getting back to touch, I think this is the year for it---it started with advances techniques for assisting asana and now this. Instead of worrying about the body and how and where to touch, I'm learning to trust that clear intention of love and healing will be the intuitive guide. It's like intimacy with clothes on---something I feel grateful for being able to explore and thankful to have the opportunity to see touch in a way that is sensual but not sexual.

it will and it will not be pretty

these lines came to me this morning before teaching. this is usually how it is when i write---i get a felt sense of something, something not yet named being called forth. what i didn't know at the time was that a close high school friend had passed--heart attack at age 33. this i found out tonight around dinner time. i had spent so much time hanging out with him and our group of friends and then life happened and many of us moved away and lost touch. occasionally we'd write or visit, but those times got fewer and farther between.

my last trip home i was in the mall where he worked but i never went into sears...i had a fleeting thought to stop in, but i didn't. my phone is full of unreturned texts that say let's go pens or how bout them steelers from him. i laughed when i got them thinking how meaningless and wasn't sure what to respond to. Now I wish I had texted GOAL or something like that. Anything that would have made him smile back.

He used to drive me around and we'd watch movies on his water bed and week after week I turned down his advances to make out. But week after week he'd still try and not be a total jackass after I refused yet again. He took me to plays and high school dances. His car was aqua and he wore too much cologne. He had pictures of naked women in his room and would put on the lava lamp when I came over. He always made me laugh. At his high school graduation, I drank pink wine from a box with the girls from his school who I thought were snobby. The wine made them less so or me a little less judgmental. It was summer and I want to remember it like that. Laughing on the back deck watching badminton or volleyball. And thinking anything was possible, that the girls I didn't like, I could like, that in the sunlight with a buzz, I thought maybe then I would kiss him.

tonight I cried for the community I had, the one I have, what I want to hold on to and what I have let go of and what has been returned. I cried for love in all her forms, all the ways in which the heart opens closes and opens.

The Power of the Body

Just the other day I had the stomach flu. Warning, if you are squeemish---but what I am amazed at is the sheer power of the body to expel what it doesn't need and with such force. Like my body saying hey, you get out of here. As if my stomach was a bouncer and the virus the guy who started a bar fight. What a miracle the body. Something else that resonated while being sick was how much I didn't fight it. Being sick used to make me feel depressed and guilty that I wasn't doing anything and my being sick was holding up other people who needed me to do something for them. This time, no bad self talk and no pity party. Only puke and sleep and within 24 hours I was back to being much more myself.

the epic

I remember going to a maha sadhana with dharma mittra in june in which he said, what if you did everything as if it were devotion to g-d. how easy it is to both forget and remember divinity, within myself and within the world. for me, that comes with waking before the sunrise, or getting to sleep in until 7 and make coffee and to have pumpkin bread for breakfast. or even 30 minutes of the whirlpool and/or sauna---and what grace when i am the only one using them.

But right now in this ytt, the question for me is how can each moment be a teaching, a place for wisdom, insight, and love. as i am reading the mahabarta, to see my colleagues as characters in the epic of my life, of all of our lives and to see everything as nourishment. even the experiences in which i think i could have done it differently, perhaps better, but to trust that each thing that happens is a chance for me to be part of this experience, each moment, to both deepen and let go. to show up, again and again, to meet myself as only myself.

Knitting

One of the deepest teachings from my 500 hour module came from a fellow student who took some time to teach me to knit. When I had tried before in the past to crochet, i kept getting all knotted up but something stuck this time and the motion feels so natural---my friend was actually impressed. what i love about the knitting is the quiet meditative sense of order and also to really watch something grow...

A New Lens for Wounds

Last night during the opening of my 500-hour teacher training Grace said to make our wounds our wonder. And today while letting this land, I thought back to one of my favorite Kafka short stories, “A Country Doctor,” in which the doctor gets called in the middle of the night to treat a woman with a wound---her name means rose and he describes the wound with flower-like imagery. So I started thinking what if a wound is really a reflection of deep beauty but we don’t look at its potential. Priti shared a story about a woman who refused to even see her wound and chose instead to ignore it. It persisted for 8 months until a shaman told her to look at it and acknowledge and accept it. After a month of this practice, the wound disappeared. And so I think about how many of us carry our wounds, both seen and unseen, and when we do heal, how do we bring this healing to all of our subtle bodies---all koshes so that we can be more unified and integrated. The practice I really liked was to notice a feeling and say it is present, rather than to say I am that feeling. For example, doubt is present, rather than I doubt myself….in this way, even the languaging is about acknowledgement and acceptance instead of identification with a fleeting state of emotion---the chitta vrittis in yoga language, but instead find ease and breath in the compassionate observations of living.

acceptance

over the weekend in jillian pransky's program at kripalu, i picked an angel card that said acceptance. the idea was to have a question and so mine was, how can i cultivate more love, creativity and community in my life for 2012. pretty spot on how these things work. jillian always frames each class with the question, what do i need to know and so in this way the universe becomes one big angel card.

an answered question of the week--why does my hair stay in my head now that i am eating meat. answer, vegetable protein is more challenging for the body to absorb.

rock-star moment of the week---sadie nardini took my class. i'm still processing that. and so grateful for all of these moments here that bring me closer to teachers and teachings.

the more i read about swami kripalu, the more i really wish i had gotten to experience his presence, though i do feel it even through reading books about his teaching.

enough

for a long time i was dating people who were unavailable or lacking stability. i wondered why i did this. it was because there was some part of me who deemed herself unworthy. or not enough.

that is no longer the case.

i learned a kundalini practice today---the basis is this, you say: I AM SOMEBODY

we are all SOMEBODY and not just any body. For me, any body will no longer do...

2012 inspiration

2012---wow, so much has happened in me already being at Kripalu and this marks month 8. My birth month (next month) will be a new emerging for me, which is something I think of with this blog and in my life. how can i make something new? how can i discover? but also what can i re-discover. something that i know for sure is that my book of yoga poems will come out this year---working on figuring out the title and the details but have had great feedback in reading poems in classes lately and love teaching large classes here, but also the gentle and fundamentals. some feedback i have been given is how precise i am and that makes me feel solid and grounding.

i also vow to do more with my writing this year and i've noticed in that vow, i have felt more solid and confident. i've also noticed much more syncronicity in my life and more trust that i am getting what i need. so many things have indicated that, including missed plane connections and my practice of samyama meditation. i feel as if i am getting more of what i am intending and less of what i am not intending and feel better about how i manage energy.

and inspiring one person leads to another inspiring me or you---this woman was in my yoga class and i had no idea who she was or she who i was, but this writing is a fabric that threads us together.