I Have So Much to Lose Here

You can easily determine my age by my Sarah Mclachlan reference, can't you? My earworm tonight is FEAR by Ms. M. I have to admit, I'm a little scared about tomorrow. I'm scared about the next day, and the next, and what might happen after that, too.

I remember last year, on a plane to NYC following a biopsy and ready for the s*it to hit the fan. It crossed my mind that I could legitimately get hit by a bus (and I was much more likely to be in NYC than in Colorado Springs). I was less afraid than I've ever been to get hit by a bus, because I thought that if I got hit by the bus, I'd never have to get that scary phone call.


It's stupid, I know.

I'm no stranger to fear. Anxiety is my de facto way of life. My spirit animal is an alpaca, the only animal that will up and die of a heart attack just because it saw a shadow.

These are my people.

I learned a lot last time. I wasn't afraid to cheat traffic like a local, or offend someone by taking two free samples of SO delicious ice cream bars, or say what I meant. I had confidence and gusto and wandered the streets wearing a giant derby-style sun hat with NO SHAME. I was an alpaca in wolf's clothing (or more accurately: derby gear).

Fear is thinking you have something, because once you think you have it, then you know you can lose it. The yogis remind us that we have nothing, that we're had by nothing. And therefore, we cannot be lost to others or to ourselves. We have nothing to fear, because we have nothing.

I wonder what I will learn tomorrow.

Will You Still Call Me Superman?

There's a lot of crazy loose in the world today. It's easy to get pulled under, into the tiny crevices of our homes where the chocolate lives and the news can't reach. It is equally easy to plug in to the master grid of intravenous information as we long to connect and offer our time and bandwidth to the fray.

When did this start? Is this the other side of the internet coin, that we're so easily swayed by the tide of tragedy that sweeps across the world and the nation? Perhaps it is simply the instinct hiding out in our reptilian brain, or the part of us that remembers being a fish and schooling left and right, moving the herd away from the shark and into protective waters.

From my home, several thousand miles but only bytes away from today's senseless tragedy, it is hard to feel anything but helpless. Useless. Like Clark Kent was on assignment somewhere on the other side of the world. But that doesn't excuse non-action.

Whenever something bad happens, it reminds me that I have the capacity to do good, now. Even if it is just this moment, for just one other being.

You can, too. Breathe. Meditate. Make a casserole. Hug a friend (or a tree). Recycle something. Cultivate good soil within yourself.

Great Expectations

As luck would have it, the year of the water snake is not the year of the meteorologist. In the past several months, national and local forecasters have been either on vacation or stuck in a time warp. They say blizzard, we see nothing. Again, and again, and again.

Elan Photographie

There is a rousing discontent for these poor folks all about the interwebs. From harmless memes on FB to my own disappointment about the fabled snow, there is a lot of bad juju headed towards these unlucky fellows.

Which doesn't seem fair, does it? Remember in the 80's (and all the times before) when we looked out the window, took a sweater, dressed in layers, and relished the wild, unpredictable gift of snow or rain or balmy days in December? One of my favorite things about the weather in Colorado is that it has personality. It is adolescent: rash, extreme, and impulsive.

Remember when we lived in the moment rather than wasting our time trying to predict the future?

This is the lesson I'm learning this year: plan for the worst, hope for the best, and appreciate whatever happens.
(and keep galoshes in the car)

Well, 31, It's Been Swell

I know, you've had it to the gills with New Year's Crap. Me too. The blessing and curse of Capricorn is the intimate ownership you have over the calendar. Your year is wrapped up in The year (or perhaps vice versa).

My year ends tonight.

I started this year, this 31, in the most unusual place. I made a rash decision in November that if I was going to be a yoga teacher then I must start with professional development and start tacking things onto my resume. So I enrolled in a little prenatal teacher training, thinking that surely I would never actually teach prenatal yoga, I would just learn about it. Who would ever want to study prenatal yoga with me?! I have no babies (unless you count the birds, which I do not).

The wise instructor (pun intended, for those of you on the inside) started the training by saying, "You've all been a mother in another lifetime."

I think it stopped my heart.

Mama and baby gorilla

Now, I'm pretty impervious to the fru fru yoga speak, because I'm a very Type A linear thinker. I can organize you into (and out of) a brown paper bag. Probably one-handed, in the dark, while listing all of the helping verbs. No yoga teacher teacher is going to mush me up and let me think for one second about my past lives.

Except that I totally bought it. It was an epiphany in the most resounding way. If I were writing a religious text now instead of a blog, I would say that God appeared in the middle of a field, and then all of the tall grass parted and showed a clearly outlined seven-lane freeway with signs "THIS WAY, IDIOT."

(I'll stick with blogs, I get it).

I tapped into my incredible birth-knowledge-trust-fund that I'd set aside in college and started dealing out prenatal yoga and birth-bits like it was the newest fad. Which, when you're 31, it actually is.

All the while, as I was building my little business and following my North Star and all that, I sort of let it slip that I wanted to be a mother. It wasn't the pheromones of my dear clientele, but the same arcane sense that the teacher spoke of in her welcoming speech. 

You've all been a mother in another lifetime.

YES, my body said. THAT's it.

My body whispered to my mind, which made a very clear and efficient list:
- no soul-crushing job
- husband gainfully employed
- husband bringing in benefits
- extensive knowledge of all birth things
- afternoon naps - home ownership
- pet ownership
- lady parts

These seem like logical prerequisites, don't they? Well according to all of the romcoms I've ever seen, (and my mother) this is The List.

Just. One. Problem.

Lists, as it turns out, don't make babies.

So far, my exhaustive research into the scientific literature coupled with the fertility patterns of my friends and frenemies on Facebook do not point to a specific cause except to say that my list was waaaaay off (aside from the lady parts... that does appear to be a requirement).

So tonight, at the fringe of 31 I come back to the words of my instructor: you have all been a mother in another lifetime.

When I'm 32, I'll try to remember what it was like.

The Christmas Train: What to Get Your Yoga Teacher for Christmas

This is not a shameless ask for Christmas gifts, so it's ok to keep reading.

I've been asked by a couple of students, "What can I get you for Christmas?"

It got me thinking about what I have given to my yoga teachers in the past, because I've never considered that I should get anything from my students for the holidays. As someone who has practiced yoga for dozens of years (literally, that's a weird thing to say) I've had dozens of teachers. Two stories immediately come to mind.

Story 1:
Several years ago I made a regular habit of joining my mother for her yoga classes when I was visiting. I would go to the class with her, and then stay for the "advanced" yoga class, because at the time I liked to consider myself "advanced." The instructor was truly amazing. He was a semi-retired engineer who had found yoga later in life and then been trained by some of the most well-known instructors in the now booming industry. His English was good, but his accent so strong I had a lot of difficulty understanding him. My visits were sporadic, as my visits to my parents' town were sporadic.

In one year I visited at Thanksgiving and then again at Christmas, and was surprised when I was greeted with, "Oh! Karen! I've made something special for you. I've made you soup/soap." I was thrilled and a little scared. Had he made me soup? Soap? And why me?!

Luck was with me as after class he presented me with two bars of soap he had recently made. He was in a soap-making class and really honing his skills by making all sorts of delicious scents.

He did not give soap to the other students, nor did he give them soup.

I do not know what the lesson was that I was supposed to learn from this experience, so those two bars of soap have sat in my bathroom, wrapped carefully in the brown paper they came in, waiting for the lesson to bubble up.

Story 2:
A few years ago I was working in a job that I'm so grateful to have outgrown and we were barely making ends meet financially as my husband was in school full time. Our only spending money was used to pay for a Netflix subscription and two meals at the local college cafeteria a week ($3 per person per meal).

As I was leaving work and heading to my yoga class one of my coworkers gave me two amazing-looking homemade and gift wrapped cookies to sample, in case I would want to order some for the holidays for my family. I thanked her and told her I wouldn't have the extra money to pay for them, so perhaps she should give them to someone else. She said I was crazy and I should take the cookies and enjoy them, and then maybe tell someone else how delicious they were.

Truly, I looked forward to eating both of these cookies. They looked amazing (I wish she had a little website so you could see them/order them for yourself!). As I pulled into the fitness center parking lot I was struck by the idea that I was supposed to give one of these cookies to my yoga teacher.

I was not happy with this idea. I had a really hard time with it, particularly because I was enjoying my pity party.

I took both cookies into the gym in my purse and went through the entire class. At the end, I felt like an absolute imbecile, I approached the instructor with one of the cookies and said, "I have this overwhelming sense that I'm supposed to give this to you." To her credit, she looked at me like I might be slightly nuts. But she thanked me for the cookie.

I went home with one cookie that I planned to share with my husband, and I felt pretty good about whatever this mysterious urge had been. I checked the mail and found three unsolicited, unexpected checks waiting for me. They totaled more than a thousand dollars and came from people to whom I had lent money in the past or overpaid and forgotten about.

I nearly fell over with my keys still in the mailbox door.

SO: what are you to make of this? Give your yoga teacher cookies and The Universe will send you some fat checks? No. I don't think so. I mean, it couldn't hurt to try it, but I make no guarantees.

In fact, I believe the point I'm desperately trying to make, is that gift giving should well up in you. Rather than an obligation precipitated by a particular day on the calendar, you should consider getting quiet and letting someone else be in charge, like the You who is on the inside. The quiet You. The one who returns to yoga not because your butt looks so sweet in those pants, but because the outer you cracks a little bit more each time, revealing the inner you.

If you are not compelled by an inner force to provide a particular gift, then the best gifts you can give any teacher are participation and feedback. If someone has made an impact on you, tell them. Continue to support them so they can support you.

And if all else fails, give them mystery soup/soap and cookies.

Perfect Failure

I've been planning this retreat for months now, and it isn't quite shaping up in the way that I had thought it would. A series of truly unfortunate events have befallen some of my guests in the weeks leading up to this culmination of my hard work and lunacy, and so our mighty group has shrunken, a tad.

I have braced for failure. In fact, I've meandered all the way through the entire retreat, visualizing the perfect failure at each step. Failure one: terrible weather. Failure two: hungover retreatants. Failure three: verbal diarrhea (this is what my mother calls my inability to hold my tongue).

It was a sweet ol' pity party I had with myself, complete with sulking and a steady amount of dark chocolate (as it turns out, I'm a great hostess).

Now you know this isn't my first rodeo... I've failed in some extraordinarily creative ways in the past. So I started doing the "enlightened yoga teacher dance/grumble" which went something like this: "Where is the lesson?" "What is the lesson" "Can I please fast-track through the lesson I'm supposed to learn from this so that I don't royally suck tomorrow?"

(this does not work, in case you're keeping score at home).

So I went about packing as though I were Cassandra boarding the Titanic when the lesson hit me in the back of the head (at the same time as the cupboard door, in fact).

Seven months ago, in April, I was in conversation with the retreat center about booking the venues for this retreat. We were going back and forth, and right in the middle of a forth, I got some pretty scary news from my doctor. All of a sudden putting down a deposit on something months in the future felt impossible, because I stood on unsteady ground and couldn't see beyond my toe tips. At the time I remember thinking, "what if I'm stuck at home, undergoing chemo or recovering from surgery in six months? What if the future ends before November?"

And so, kittens, my revelation is simple: I have stepped beyond the edge of what I thought was possible, through dark waters, and tomorrow I head into a day that I am grateful to have. Whether or not the retreat looks as I expected it to or not, the fact that it exists at all is a sign. A gift. And if it is a failure, then it will be a perfect failure.

And I will hope for the opportunity to do it again.

O Whole-y Night

I'm scared for Tuesday.

Last election I was too busy to focus on the mud-flinging, and too detached from Facebook to be hit in the face with every third post. Also, I think the world was slightly less crazy four years ago. Or maybe the crazy is just relative... I was closer to totally nuts, making the world seem sane. Sane-er.

It seems that even in my media-deprived state, I have become the monkey in the middle between opposing forces who throw my sanity (and theirs, too) over my head. Back, and forth. Back. And. Forth.

In Texas last week I visited a small town diner where the "community table" forbade "commie socialist Obama loving expletives." The community table. My parents (who had both already voted, as had I) had a rousing debate about economics and reproductive rights while I sat wide-eyed and horrified at the other end of the table. My parents never argued while I was growing up, and rarely debated. Part of my terror came from my realization that they both wanted the same things, but had somehow landed on opposite sides of the fence.

Has this happened to you? Have you forgotten the goals we share? The COMMON good? You don't have to be a socialist or even believe that everyone has the inborn rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness to know that if you and your neighbor both want the same thing, it makes sense to work together for that thing. (or you can kill them and TAKE IT, in which case I strongly recommend season four of Dexter).

I believe that there is a disturbance in the force. A short in our circular logic that fools us into believing that there will never be enough, that there is only one right way, and that the right way happens to be my way. We take on the superhero mentality and assume that the other guys are therefore the bad guys.

Yoga can offer some perspective here. First, aparigraha. Non-grasping. Think you have all of the answers? If you're holding onto them tightly with your teeth and two hands, then there is no room for any more answers, even if they are better. Second, satya: telling the whole truth about what you know. Do you know how many jobs have/have not been created by this or that person? Is what you are saying YOUR truth, or the truth of some other person or entity. Have you thought critically about why you are speaking the truth that you are, or whether or not you believe it fully? Third, saucha: cleanliness in body, mind and thought (which I'll also interpret as clearing out the mental garbage of grudges, real or imagined).

As my friend and teacher Jessica Patterson says, "You are already whole and perfect." And so is everyone else, regardless of their political affiliation, voting history, fundamental beliefs and $#it flinging.

It isn't easy to be the Yogi in the Middle, and it isn't easy to watch two people who love each other yell across an arbitrary fence about something they agree on. But it is our role as yogi(ni)s, as yoga teachers, to hold up a mirror first for ourselves and then for our friends and flingers. We must speak our truth and we must hear the truths of others. Never would I suggest that we compromise our values or allow others to decide how we must live, but I will suggest (and am suggesting, I suppose) that we always do so in a dialogue. Which involves as much listening as speaking.

Be cautious, dear friends, as you sit down to watch the country turn red and blue. Be aware of your tendencies and aggressions. Remember that on this night above all nights that all people are whole. And perfect.

(and apparently you have to have a completely unusual name to run for president)

Do what you can. Do what you must. Keep one ear open. Isvara pranidhana.