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.