Paris

Someone asked me this morning what I would write about Paris.

I have no idea. I didn't realize Paris was on my to-do list today.

I have a surprising number of things to say about Michael Jackson and pumpkins (not together), about loneliness and the uncanny resemblance I bear to Eeyore this morning. But apparently, that's not what you want to read from me.

As someone who only started traveling internationally in my 32nd year on Earth, Europe hasn't made it onto my passport yet. I know precious few things about France in general, despite my mother's insistence on pronunciation and my early infatuation with Bizet's Carmen.

(I think it was the strong female thing. Or the sex work thing. Another essay, I'm sure.)

What I know today that is different from what I knew yesterday, is that none of this is about France, and that if I all of a sudden start binging on trivia, I'll do no one any justice. Even though I'm really quite good at memorization, no amount of study will reanimate anyone who shuffled yesterday. No matter how deeply I dive into the media frenzy or the social media melancholy and group shaming, it won't make a lick of difference.

All I can do is change me. 

This is one of the things that happens when we try to change the world by changing other people - it never ends well. It doesn't change them, it rarely changes us, and everyone gets rather huffy. Sometimes people act out, and when those who want to act out have access to high-impact technology, like weaponry or the internet, we have big waves to surf while we wait for the tide to settle in again.

Oh, bother.

One thing I've realized in the last couple of years, is that I'm actually capable of anything. And I don't necessarily mean that in a good way. I used to say things after "I'll never..." and I thought that I meant them, but in fact, I did not. "I'll never be a doula, I'll never own a yoga studio, I'll never get a divorce... " Three strikes, and those are just examples I feel cozy publishing on the internet.

I was recently at a retreat where someone told me they visited a place where it is incredibly rude to say "no." If you want to indicate a negative response, the best you can do is say, "not yet."

Are you a doula? Not yet.

Are you divorced? Not yet.

Are you a terrorist? Not yet.

This is powerful. Because when you think, "I would never commit acts of such violence," you're being rather presumptuous about yourself. I am guilty of incredible violence, most of which I have directed at myself. But I am not my behaviors, neither the ones I'm punishing myself for nor the punishment. I'm made of stardust and so are you, which is excellent news. I can choose to stop hurting any time, choose to turn off the TV any time, choose to stop shaming myself for thinking the hundreds of negative things I think before breakfast. And then, once I'm off the couch I can walk outside and be present with the next person for a minute.

I do this every day, with every extra ounce of pixie dust I have, which most days is just a speck. I do it one hundred thousand times a day, because that's where I am. You might be surprised to learn that I spend a lot more time cowering on the bathroom floor than one might expect, or cemented in between the layers of blankets on the couch. One half of my personality is always nudging the other half to move or to hold still. To love or to fear.

This is why I practice yoga. For one hour a day, whether I'm moving or holding still, wailing or flailing, I'm practicing remembering that thing I seem so apt to forget: 

I am already perfect.
I am responsible for myself, which includes my own suffering and my own happiness.
I must put on my own life preserver before helping others.
My commentary about other people is a waste of everyone's time.
My love is contagious.
So is my fear.
I am already perfect.

(so are you).

The Business of Yoga

I'm sitting down to refresh my lecture on The Business of Yoga.

It has changed in recent years.

Sure, there are things to know when migrating into this industry, like reasonable expectations for payment, various credentials and opportunities for continuing education. I'm sure these things are helpful to know, and they make up the vast majority of my "lecture."

However.

The longer I'm in this "industry" the more I realize - recognize - reveal that the Business of Yoga is the same as the business of anything else. The people "at the top" are just people, with bright spots and shadows. Sometimes they're there because they worked hard, or because they knew the right person, or because they slept with the right person. Their credentials or time in service tell you very little about who they are as a teacher. As my ex-husband used to hear in nursing school, "C's make nurses."

We do not buy credentials, we earn them. 

I'm saddened by the number of us who were raised with star charts. Not maps of the sky, but lines of boxes where we got to add a star for brushing our teeth, for turning in our homework, for having reasonable behavior. Incentives for good behavior make us expect a reward for good behavior, and I'm afraid that many of us still think, incorrectly, that having more stars makes us better.

My parents are both PhDs. They have two bachelor's degrees and two master's degrees a piece. BUT they earned these degrees because they were legitimately interested in chemistry and physics, not because they wanted more stars on their charts. I have a master's degree because I felt like it was an expectation - like I wouldn't be worthy of love (or employable, which is virtually the same thing) without it.

If you believe that I am a yoga teacher, then I want you to know that I want you to care more about my private life than the initials after my name. I want you to know that I ate a bag of chips for dinner last night and that - so far - I've resisted the urge to have a cup of coffee today. I lay down halfway through my asana practice yesterday, and I meditated through tears rather than sending a vile email earlier this morning. Yoga is a practice for me, not a badge. And my life isn't unicorns and rainbows - it's a daily struggle with depression and anxiety. It is a delicate dance with addiction. 

It is one day at a time.

My credentials cannot tell you that - but paired with the training I've received comes the practice I have implemented. The synthesis of the material. I've never stopped learning, but the lessons I've learned recently don't come with a certificate to hang on my wall.

Neither, my darling, have yours.

If you seek to be in The Business of Yoga, you have an important choice. To business-ify yoga, or yogify business.

I believe everyone should take a yoga teacher training, because through this process you learn more about yourself. I don't believe everyone should then teach asana classes. Instead, I believe the world would be better if we all took that practice into daily life. If we set the masks of credentials to the side, dropped the curtains on the real story and met one another as we are - a collection of stardust, entangled by stories of this life and the last.

You are made of more stars than you could ever imagine, could ever line up, could ever earn.

Act like it.

That. That is the business of yoga.

Stardust

Adele is killing me.

You might not know this about me, but everything I write has a soundtrack. I know visual artists who do this, and I supposed I used to do it when I was drawing and painting. When I'm working on a piece, there is usually a song on repeat either in my mind or in my ears.

My medium has shifted, and so has the soundtrack.

The sentiment is the same.

Tonight, Adele is killing me.

Does it hurt you, too? Do other people feel this way? I wonder.

I see people in this coming-and-going orbit, people who seem happy to be where they are in relationship to the sun, who are blissfully unaware of their contrails of space dust. And others who are dragged along in the mess of debris, too bound up by love or addiction to break free from the gravity.

Sometimes I feel like that comet - bright, fast moving. Dragging lots of tiny, swirling memories. Outrunning the emotions that are moving a million miles an hour, chasing me down.

And sometimes, I'm the dust.

Pulled in a direction I'd rather not go, retracing a path that isn't mine. Too timid or fearful to break from the pack and fall out of orbit.

Tonight, I can't tell who is in control. Who is piloting this alien ship.

But I know who is singing.

Tonight, Adele is killing me.

Cake

Last night I had an "episode." Not like the West Wing landed on my couch, but more like I had a convulsive writhing, thing somewhere between my head and my heart.

I spend so much time overwhelmed. There is a lot to do. I have bills to pay and mysterious water leaks to resolve, people to pray for and a Squash Situation in my refrigerator. My 1,000 brilliant ideas for inventions and books will eventually need to escape from my brain, and oh - there's Christmas shopping to be done.

You know that I am writing a book right now. It's actually a pretty awful and gruesome process - not entirely unlike giving birth. Sure it's pretty in the end, if you take a few well-placed, well-timed black and white stills, but in the youtube video you can hear some disquieting animal sounds.

I have written a lot. Some of the better pieces have strong titles, like Million Dollar Baby, while others are in documents cleverly titled "Untitled2" or "writing bits" or "disorganized ideas." In my file "unpublished" I have 50 of these beauties, while the file titled "Name of my Book" has one big ol' file in it that meanders from story to story.

This is overwhelming. As is my intense desire to eat anything covered in cream cheese icing, including my computer.

(this is why people make microwave cakes in mugs)

Women do amazing things when someone is in labor. They boil water. They light candles. They deflect inlaws and wrangle wayward cats. They prepare food.

They hold space.

I put out a plea on the FB, because I believe whole-heartedly that Facebook is really a forum for modern prayer, and lots of my women friends answered: how can I help? What can I do?

These are wise women.

I spoke about holding space yesterday - an idea that is mostly lost on us as we lop memes at one another. Quotes which may (or may not) have been spoken or written by the proposed author superimposed on peaceful scenes of running water or sunsets or someone calmly appearing to meditate near running water or sunsets.

This is not holding space. This is memeing, which, for the purposes of this post, is here-to-for a word. Memeing is the cousin of should-ing and the step-sister of shaming. It requires assumptions. And I'm so grateful that the women who are my friends do not thoughtlessly attempt to solve my myriad problems with a 400x400 pixel prayer-bit re-hashed and re-written and (wrongfully) attributed to Buddha or Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Acknowledge. Ask a question. Let me come to my own answer.

(or bring me cake).

The Desert (again)

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our own discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled.

I wrote this awhile ago... years ago, when I first started working on The Desert curriculum. I stumbled on it again tonight, while re-reading theflotsam in my dropbox.

(Maybe it's time to start again)?

"Desert sand is unlike beach sand. On the beach, if you dig a few inches below the surface, your toes hit cool sand, sheltered from the sun. Smooth sea glass floats to the surface, and signs of life and death surround each step. In the desert, the sand is baked into hot slabs. Dry grasses poke towards the sky and cactus defend the little moisture they have found. Cracks crumble. Nothing moves. Where the ocean breathes rhythmically, the desert holds her breath.

Everyone spends time in the desert. You find yourself there, one day, awake and lost. Each day in the desert unwanted burdens and extra weight fall off. As it is said, “In learning, every day a new thing is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day, something is removed.” Films of people lost in the desert show them removing items that no longer serve as they’re no longer headed where they had planned. Eventually, everything falls away and they emerge a new person, or die trying.

Life has a desert, and we try desperately to stay away from it. We board the "education train" as children, and soon learn that if we get off of the mainline train, that we might step right into the heart of the desert. So we remain in the safety of the train car, unnumbered, with an unending line of cars both ahead and behind. 

We go to college, we go to graduate or medical school, and we get married and buy a house in the suburbs. When we wake one day, unexpectedly in the desert, we panic, we resist, and we try to go back to sleep. But once our eyes are opened, it is impossible to follow the monotonous, thoughtless steps that have kept us on the train for so long..."

LoveRoots Photography

Are you with me?

The Best

I have had the great honor and privilege of teaching at Cambio Yoga since the very beginning, way back in 2009. It felt like an honor to be invited to teach at a locally-owned studio, especially after I had been expressly un-invited to teach at a large corporate studio. Sure, I'd been teaching for years, but this was my first time teaching at a Real Studio. Before that, all I had done was teach in the fake places, like homes and elder care facilities, schools and parks. Even though I thought a donation-based studio would probably fold in three months, I felt like THIS was IT. The BIG TIME. When THE REAL TEACHING would begin.

No one came.

(To my first six classes)

And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

The first week, I just did my own practice. I taught myself the class I was planning to teach the mysterious students who had apparently not received the Invitation from the Universe to come take My First Real Class.

The second week I felt a little worse, but still did the practice I had planned. I had made up an entirely new sequence, just in case the first sequence that I hadn't actually taught to anyone was bad juju.

The third week I cried.

I had thought that this opportunity would be the beginning of something grand, that people would love me and that I would instantly become famous and people would publish my book and I would have a baby and....

(trust me, it only gets more ridiculous).

The fourth week I didn't even go into the studio. I sat in my car and waited to see if anyone would pull up. And then I cried again.

The fifth week I thought about throwing in the towel. I was driving like a madwoman across town to wait for a big ol' goose egg. It was humiliating. Didn't people know that I had been teaching for awhile? That I'd been practicing for a really long while? That my EGO was on FIRE?

I walked into the studio and sat on the floor in the middle of the empty room. It smelled like fresh paint and hope a day or two past its expiration date. I sat. I stared. The mirror stared back. I dedicated that hour to my practice, to what I needed. Not a preconceived, pre-set notion of who would be there, but who was actually there.

I showed up for the student in the room.

(It just happened to be me).

I said the things I needed to hear, which is all any of us teach anyway. I moved a little, I meditated a little. I had a great practice.

And you know what? The next week, I had more students. And I never had an empty Wednesday night class again.

This year, cambio. turned six. Six years of Wednesdays, give or take a few. Six years of showing up for whoever was in the room, teaching whatever it was I needed to learn.

(How's that for ego?)

cambio. was voted "The Best" again this year... it's been many years that this has happened, and part of me has a big ol' sense of pride and part of me has a big ol' sense of WTF. I don't believe that one studio is the best, or that one teacher is the best, or that anything is really "the best." We just happened to be judged by a group of people who think that the Earth is flat, and that only one studio can be at the front of the pack.

We forgot, we forget, that yoga is a circle. The Earth is round, people, we're all in the front, and we're all tied for best.

Teach to the people in the room, wherever the room is. In studios, prisons, churches, schools, the park, or the privacy of your very own potting shed. Be the best, because - well - you are.

Guru

An instructor gives you what you ask for, what you want. A teacher gives you what you need, whether you want it or not.

A guru shoves your shadow into the spotlight, illuminates what you've tried to conceal beneath layers of makeup and social constructs. 

And they may not even know they've done it.

I question anyone who calls themself a guru, truly. We choose our teachers, they do not choose us. We stalk them by soaking up their words, their classes, their very essence and then - if we're lucky and we've done a bit of work, maybe with their help - we graduate. We transcend that relationship and move along.

Sometimes kicking and screaming, and sometimes, without a thought.

When I teach teachers, I'm often asked how people can teach things they can't do - and I like to answer out of both sides of my mouth. 

On the right: If you are instructing asana, you can easily instruct someone through the contortions of the body without asking your body to do that very thing. And earnestly, I believe that performing an asana for someone to replicate is often mistaken for "teaching" by both the teacher and the student. We believe that those whose poses look sexy or perfect or accomplished on Instagram to be great teachers, simply because they can lick their elbows or dangle precariously over the edge of a cliff wearing incredibly tight pants.

(It helps to have a tight a$s).

This is not teaching. It may be art - either performance or photography - and it has some merit in that sense. But it is not teaching, and it is not yoga.

Sorry.

On the left: You cannot ask a student to meditate if you do not. You cannot teach lessons you have not learned. You cannot remove darkness when you remain in shadows. Teaching involves having been there - as in, the place where the ego roams, or the sadness stews, or the desperation runs free.

This is not a double standard. Let me tell you why.

You can be skilled at teaching and know only a small number of things. This can make you a great teacher.

You can be terrible at teaching and know ALL of the things. This will never make you a great teacher.

I have learned this lately, as I realize that what I teach has evolved from the basic asana, the rudimentary anatomy into the synthesis of material and integration of everything I've experienced so far.

A guru is a person who shoves you into the spotlight - often by accident - and never, ever, because it will make you bow down to them and call them a guru.

My guru is a 13 year old boy who has never spoken a word or taken a step. My guru was a ridiculously amicable divorce. My guru was a 6cm polyp named Polly.

What is yours?