How You Do Everything

I work all the time.

Like right now. I'm working at 11:49pm on a Friday night, in my bed, with my laptop. If you were here right now, I'd tell you that it isn't my fault. My neurotic parakeets are... responding to the sprinklers outside. I can't tell if they're terrified of them or hoping to mate. Maybe they're describing their terrible living conditions in extraordinary detail (that happens to sound like a car alarm).

But the truth is, I am working because I don't know what else to do. I work all the time.

Last night, when I was working at the yoga studio I took a class with a wonderful Baptiste instructor visiting from Denver, Dave Farmar. Instead of enjoying the class, like any normal, rational being, I thought of the following things:

1. "I should take pictures of this class in progress with my iPad for marketing/archival purposes." 2. "Does Dave have enough water?" 3. "The new guy who accidentally wandered into this 90 minute heated class... is he dead? ... is he a lawyer?" 4. "How many of the instructors are planning to kill me after this class, once they've rehydrated and I've showered, so they can recognize me?" 5. "I'm melting. Like, literally. I'm becoming a liquid, and all of my liquids are coming out. What will be left???" 6. "I should probably go and get towels for everyone because they are maaaaad drippy and we're creating a lake." 7. "When I teach next week, I'm borrowing this sequence." 8. "I think my iPad is floating in a pool of sweat/weakness." 9. "I miss just doing yoga." 10. "I work all the time." This might surprise you, because I'm fairly good with boundaries. When I'm on vacation, I'm on vacation. My problem, is when I'm not on vacation, I'm working.

At the start of class, Dave asked us to explore the opposite of a negative perception in our lives. My negative was (get this): working all the time. The positive? Connection. You see, when I'm working, the relationships are easily defined. I'm working for you, you're working for me, I know why I'm here and what we should be talking about. I have objectives. Outcomes. Billable hours. Rather than connecting, I fall back on these easily defined roles. When I'm working, I'm in charge.

And right in the middle of all of this, Dave said something that really pissed me off, "How you do anything is how you do everything."

CRAP!

There I was, taking a yoga class, not responsible for a darned thing for 90 full minutes and THERE I WAS, trying to be in charge of everything and work through it. Instead of practicing yoga, I was working. Atha yoga, idiot.

And JUST like that, I learned (again) that I work too much. I try to hard. "Stop trying, do yoga, stop trying, do yoga" I willed myself. Just about as effective as, "I am stronger than E. coli I will not throw up... I am stronger than E. coli, I will not throw up."

At the end of the 90 (110) minute class my mantra had shifted to, "keep breathing, do not black out... keep breathing, do not black out." Which turns out to be pretty effective. As we all snuggled into the swampy thickness of the lowest 12 inches of the room, Dave started playing a song that spoke to me (and many others). At the time, I thought surely it was simply the sweet relief of savasana, not any particular beauty of the words or melody. Sort of like when you go for a long hike and then eat a PB&J sandwich and think, "This is the BEST sandwich on EARTH!"

"I've decided to be kinder, I've decided to be glad..."

How you do anything is how you do everything, and you have the ability to put a positive spin on it.

I work all the time. But I do what I love, and I help people. And more often than not, it's fun.

I just needed to change my inflection.

This is Paradise

I've spent the last few days on an island yoga retreat. Not the kind where you try to look crazy sexy sweating between sauna, sand, and asana, and then refreshing with a tropical drink, but the kind that reminds you what yoga is. Who you are. Who I am.

Now, to be fair, I have seen dolphins, rays, manatees, sharks, fishes, flounders, frat boys, naked babies building sandcastles, and old couples walking hand in hand on the beach. Each one a thing of beauty (except perhaps the frat boys), but none remarkable enough to write home about (except to say they're not worth writing about). The night before last, I saw the place where the land ends. The sky ends. The world ends.

I stepped out onto the beach sometime past ten o'clock and dug my toes into the white sand. The ocean was so black that it melted into the sky. I think I could have reached out and touched the blackness and it would have absorbed me like a black hole. Instead I tried to focus on where the white sand faded into the blackness of the sea, but I couldn't find the edge of the ocean. It was simply magnificent and impossible to recreate or even describe.

I traveled here on a whim, with a bunch of people I don't know very well. I had no intention of meeting or befriending them, just being polite and then skulking off on my own to write or ruminate or nap. Instead, I had some great meals and conversations. Great yoga and stargazing. And just today the group told me they thought I was funny. Talented. Unique. I know some of these things, but even now in my liberated days where I don't get too hung up on negative comments or other peoples' baggage, it was refreshing.

Any time someone says the word "retreat" I automatically think of falling away in battle, not escaping the nine to five. I imagine sinking into the blackness or hiding out until the tide returns. When I come home, I hope I will remember this lesson: paradise is more than sinking your toes into the sand. Paradise is being seen for who you are: dissolving the line between who you are and who you pretend to be.

Not a Lemon

If you know me at all in my life beyond the internet, you probably know I'm a bit of a judger. In fact, had I not been in fifth grade when Judge Judy was cast, I'm certain I would have been selected for the role of Most Critical and Outspoken Female Waif in the under 5'4" category. It isn't that I was tall at ten, it's all the legal aspects of actually being a judge. Details, details.

Instead, I've always cast a longish finger in my own direction, usually while peering into a brightly lit magnifying mirror. Case in point: every time I've ever been evaluated for work performance, I've always started by cutting of my evaluator with, "I know exactly what you're going to say..." and then listing my seventeen most prominent faults, like excessive use of toilet paper, or alphabetizing artificial sweetener packets.

Self criticism is nearly impossible to stop. If there were a secret camera into my kitchen, you would see me tell my husband, "I'm leaving these dishes for you to unload..." while I unload them from the dishwasher, dry them, put them away, and refill the dishwasher. When he returns to the kitchen five minutes later and asks me what I meant by "leaving the dishes for me" or God forbid starts unloading the dirty dishes because I just told him that I was leaving the dishes for him to unload, we end up in a cycle of blaming, finger pointing, and usually tears (and I'm just talking about me, myself, and I, because my husband will happily wander away either feeling lucky or perhaps just slightly hard of hearing).

If I had previously thought that it was impossible to amplify my critical tendencies to new heights, I learned quickly that I was wrong once I started to barely consider having a baby. All it took was the sage advice of Dr. Google, or a wonky breast exam, or an ill-timed trip to crank up the self-destruct-o-meter to new and unparalleled heights. Internet research proves that I should be avoiding salt, sugar, dairy, wheat, soy, caffeine, hormone-laden meat and eggs, alcohol, fun, and late night movie marathons to improve my chances of conception. Faithfully avoiding anything remotely close to fun and drinking my weight in kale juice and pea protein powder while getting enough exercise, sunshine, meditation has yielded me nothing but greater frustration.

But it hasn't stopped the inner critic.

Nope. One funky breast exam and I immediately turned on my body.

"It's YOU! You're SABOTAGING ME!" I exclaimed at my right breast, "You're the reason none of this is working out correctly! You're rotten and you're trying to TAKE ME DOWN WITH YOU!"

This, as you may have guessed, is not very yogic.

Nowhere in the Yoga Sutras does it say, "Whip and beat your body into submission. Stop caring for yourself. Consult Google at every strange turn for possible solutions/diagnoses/recommendations." In the Yoga Sutras, it clearly suggests that the yogi must experience her own nature... the difference between herself and false identities.

It is easy to say you should watch for these subtle changes, but the reality is that the subtle changes aren't apparent unless we are really, totally present. This is what Patanjali said. Step one: right now, you should be breathing. Step two, did you turn off the TV? Step three, are you sitting with yourself or some false sense of who you are?

I'm paraphrasing, of course.

I've been stuck on step three for a long time now, I'm afraid. Listening to and believing a life's worth of lies about my body: wrong shape, wrong functionality, too old, too tired, etc. Those lies are not me. And I finally heard someone speak the truth. It finally chiseled through the mind trap.

"Your body is not a lemon." ~Ina May Gaskin

Oh. Right.

1.3 tada drastuh svarupe vasthanam

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.