Tall Tales and Personal Fables

There is a story I sometimes tell myself. It goes like this:

"I was born into a loving family at a time in the world when I could have been anything. I was supposed to be a doctor. For many years I followed the 'right' path and got all the way through the first semester of organic chemistry, when I synthesized green caffeine, decided that I was an abject failure, and gave up on my dreams. Now I teach yoga and am the embarrassment of my family."

Sometimes I tell the story this way:

"I come from a family of healers. I am very fortunate to live and breathe today. Most days I'm lucky enough to make someone laugh. Sometimes I also make them cry. Mostly I help them realize something they had forgotten about themselves. More often they help me remember something I've forgotten about myself."

I think that I might be a good yoga teacher because I've spent a lot of time being really mad at myself. And unnamed political parties and their leaders, various extremists who have strong opinions about my lady-parts, and unknown spam artists who have vulgar suggestions about parts I don't even have. I'm intimately familiar with exactly how imperfect I am. Many voices have shared their explicit commentary about the way that I drive, flirt, sleep, spell 'theatre,' and am crippled by most hours of the morning.

It took me many years to realize that most of these voices were inside my head. My Greek Chorus morosely narrates the most mundane of my daily activities. For a long time I tried to shut them out. I would point the other way "Oh look, cream puffs!" and sneak into my yoga class all put-together and self-righteous. All the shiny stuff without the bitter old baggage.

And those classes sucked.

When bad things happened in my day and I couldn't out-smart the Chorus, I taught a much better class.

After teaching many, many squeaky-clean and polished classes, I realized that students don't come to see the Disney version of me (in fact, they don't come to see me at all). But that they are not served by smiley ceramic mask. They are there because they have their own baggage, strewn haphazardly about their mats, dripping down their chins and ankles. I think they feel safer knowing my demons dance around me in every class.

Sometimes when we dance in the presence of our demons, one slips out the back door.

The melody of the old story fades away and we can hear the faintest notion of a new song. Closer to the truth. Close enough that the lead can say it out loud instead of waiting for the chorus to explain.

Perhaps because their mouths are full of cream puffs.

The power of pure consciousness settles in its own pure nature. ~ The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 4.34

The Box

About a year ago I made a commitment to myself that I would no longer expect myself to be in two places at once. Perhaps your calendar looks as mine once did, with three simultaneous items listed in the same time slot. I used to have lofty goals of concurrent dental appointments, phone conferences, and yoga classes, and it will not surprise you to learn that I never managed to juggle those particular tasks at once.

Last week, my husband spent four days Communing In the Woods and left me in the big ol' house with my big ol' self. This is the first time in my (new) life that he has been gone and I have not had a fully jam packed schedule.

To be fair, I did try to fill my schedule. I scheduled roughly six hours of work each of the first three days, and four hours of work on the fourth day. I made some rather flailing attempts at filling my social calendar, but was luckily unable to schedule each blessed minute. And the strangest thing happened.

In a day filled with emptiness, I managed to stay away from the computer and the TV. I didn't even crack a book. Instead, I pulled up my boots and started digging.

For the last few years, I've let some things pile up. Like clothes. Paid utility bills. Free song downloads from Starbucks and a truly unreasonable amount of return address labels. In the fray that was my former life, I became well versed at shoving. Do you shove things? I think about the old infomercials about kitchen appliances that you "press one button and walk away" and return to a full turkey dinner, or smoothies and salsa, or whatever. These appliances never worked as they were supposed to (because you had to actually buy a turkey, or freeze fruit, or otherwise obtain odd ingredients and figure out how to set the machine). Turns out when you shove clothes and bills (and possibly an answering machine, music stand, ones mortgage closing documents, assorted cords and a box of oatmeal) into a box, they don't magically turn into a turkey dinner, nor do they vanish or magically become something useful. Each year I have addressed one particular box (some of the contents may be listed above) by simply placing the Christmas ornament box in front of/beside it.

I'm not writing to tell you that the box is empty. It is not. It still has the items listed above, plus a heaping helping of guilt (four years worth, to be precise). The reason I'm writing to you, is to tell you that I intend not to open it. This past weekend, I learned that I'm quite effective at cleaning around it. And so in this way it has become my cleaning altar. A shrine to the imperfection in myself and in my life. And a monument to the progress that is happening around it.

Tomorrow reminds me of this box. For four years we have waited for an extra day, and now we have it. Don't worry about squeezing the most out of every extra precious minute. Instead, consider this day a shrine. A monument to the life around it.

Little Voices

There is a little girl who lives in the back of my mind. She's quiet, but firm. Confident. Her voice is pervasive.

Before you alert the authorities, I'm not crazy. She's not telling me to crochet tea cozies out of human hair, or to sell everything and move to Paraguay, or even to howl at the moon. She is not, however, rational. And for that, I'm grateful.

Tonight I was supposed to head home (a two hour drive) during rather good weather, already well rested and overcaffinated. And yet, she does not want me to go. After spending the better part of a day arguing with her, rationalizing away her pesky fears, her voice only intensified until the reflection looking back at me was just one shade shy of terror.

I am not nervous.

I am not worried.

I am afraid to listen to her.

I am afraid not to.

Is there a voice in your head who you would prefer to ignore? Does some backseat driver ever spring from the depths and grope for the wheel? Do you listen? What does she say?

Maybe for you this is the voice of God. Perhaps you call this intuition. More often, I fear, you quiet this voice with rational explanations, obligations, or helpings of guilt. I spent most of my day telling this voice to go eat a cookie and take a nap, and not to come back until she had something nice to say. It is possible that I also threatened to call her mother (who also happens to be my mother) and let her sort this squishy nonsense out over the phone.

In the end, I know I believe wholeheartedly in heeding this inner voice, and I do so because she is not afraid. She is calm. Firm. Confident. Right.

Isvara Pranidhana. Heyam duhkham anagatam. Surrender. The pain that has not yet come is avoidable.

San(toe)sha

If you've ever hung around the front desk while yoga students register for their first class, you've probably heard them explain why they wish to practice yoga with the following expression:

"I'm so inflexible, I can't even reach my toes! I'm here so you can fix that."

There are many other reasons people come to the class, to be sure. A few of my favorites:

- To observe attractive people in tight pants attempt awkward positions

- To show other people how attractive they look in hot pants

- To change the way their bodies look/feel

- Because everything else is falling apart

I haven't been anywhere else where people so openly share the stories that have been cooking in their heads. Even if the story isn't verbalized, you can see the grudge match on the mat: me vs. myself. Me vs. tight pants. Me vs. mirror. Whatever the matchup is for this week, people arrive when they need to do battle with part of themselves, or part of their experience.

Please understand that I am not excluded from this melee. I have wrestled many classes against one particularly insidious pair of pants, the untimely death of a friendship, or my newest adversary: The Thirties. Whatever our battle or inspiration, we come to the mat and ask the teacher to help us solve this puzzle.

There are two ways to fix the student who longs to touch their toes/fit into their pants/rewind ten years:

The novice teacher bends, pulls, stretches, and sometimes breaks the body to get the fingers to the toes.

The experienced teacher helps the student release the want.

photo credit: Love Roots Photography

Dungeons and Dragons

When my husband and I go for walks around our neighborhood, we frequently see rabbits doing rock impressions. They hold very still, flatten their floppy ears onto their backs and hold their breath. Because we are far from normal, we always compliment them as we walk by:

"What a great rock impression."

or

"Look at that rock in the middle of that yard."

If we see them about on a sunny day with updrafts and skydancers, we warn them.

"Get into the shade, or the skydancers will see you!"

This describes, in terrifying detail, how I have been living my life for the past four years. Not the walking and talking to rabbits part, but the hiding, freezing, and breath-holding. In this past year, The Year of the Iron Rabbit, (according to the lunar calendar) I have been hunkering down and waiting for the storm to pass.

Yesterday on our walk through the native space behind our house, my husband and I noticed... a pelt. He recoiled and said "what does that to a rabbit?"

"A predator. And time," I answered.

The thing about predators is they have nothing but time. They wait, gliding on updrafts, resting on warm air.

-----

As I think forwards to this New Year, the Year of the Dragon, I'm still inside my stone-rabbit cell. I've never seen a dragon, have you?

It is the only mythical creature on the 12 year cycle in the Chinese system. Dragons are fierce and powerful. They breathe fire. They fly. Dragons only exist within the context of the human imagination. In the West, we slay dragons. In the East, we become them.

I read this as an invitation to tap into the deepest sense of power and reinvent ourselves. This is a year beyond resolutions and goals, outside of weight loss and closet organization. This is a year to cast off shackles and fly.

After a year of turning inwards, focusing on the nature of ourselves, we launch into liberation.

From dharana to dhyana to samadhi.

Are you ready?

To Seethe or Not To Seethe

Today was not one of my better days, yogicly speaking. I was invited to an upscale event in the fancy part of town and experienced a fair degree of social awkwardness. As an anthropologist, you would think I would relish these fleeting opportunities to observe another social class in their natural environment. I could scribble small notes about unique greeting patterns involving partial hugs, or describe the ceremonial scarves and belts brought to you by specific and highly regarded individuals (such as Marc Jacobs or someone named Coach). Perhaps I would include a diagram of the various areas of the room populated by persons of each respective social class, to the best of my ability, as an outsider.

Instead, I triumphantly marched in carrying my fair-trade bag, my unpolished nails balled into my unadorned hands, and spent the good part of an afternoon making myself feel like crap.

I have spent a goodly amount of time exploring my own psyche/seeking my own North star/communicating with my inner wildebeest, and yet it took me fewer than three seconds to realize that:

a) I spend far less time on personal grooming than these new friends might find acceptable

b) A significant quantity of the 'things' that I own have either been owned previously, were extracted from the garbage, or were created by a person in a far away country who is working for a fair wage and making things out of garbage

c) I had never ranked snorkeling in gobs of money among my top ten life values

and

d) that I was not six years old.

What is it about these situations that makes us feel so small? Why are my hard-earned values so easy to discard? And how does anyone get floors and windows that clean???

As you may have guessed, I cozied up with the irrational side of myself and had my own little two part conversation.

Alpaca-Kari: "Why didn't I become an investment banker/doctor/mob boss?"

Yogini-Kari: "Because you don't realistically know what any of those people actually do for a living, but you're pretty sure none of them get to teach yoga or play with puppies on a regular basis."

Alpaca-Kari: "Ok, so why didn't I marry someone who was one of those things?"

Yogini-Kari: "Because you didn't want your identity to be wrapped up in the occupation of someone else... you wanted to live freely and guided by your own actions, with a partner who didn't rely on you to host cocktail parties or bury people in cement."

Alpaca-Kari: "So then why did I think I had any business coming to this part of town? I'm obviously not like these people at all."

Yogini-Kari: "You came because you are a good friend and clearly had no idea that you would stick out like an elephant."

Alpaca-Kari: "Ok, fine. But why didn't I at least go buy a brand new outfit for this shindig, wherever these people buy their clothes?"

Yogini-Kari: "Because on some level you wanted them to know that you are comfortable in your own skin. You know that teaching yoga means more than telling people when and how to balance on their elbows, and that non-grasping is a good thing. Also you have no idea where these people shop and would probably have to sell your car to buy a scarf."

Alpaca-Kari: "Wow, Yogini-Kari, you seem to have all of the answers. Now will you please unlock the bathroom door and get out here with me?"

I would like to tell you that I've transcended these petty feelings, or that I'm immune to grasping for status. I would like to say that after practicing yoga for 26 years that I have these yamas down and I'm just working on experiencing a samadhi-like state of bliss 80 or more percent of the time. The reality is that Yogini-Kari often locks herself into the bathroom when she feels uncomfortable and leaves the anxiety-prone and skittish Kari out on her own. Alpaca-Kari forgets that she could simply pretend to be an anthropologist and observe this unusual behavior and instead begins to sound various social alarms by dropping food onto people, accidentally discussing socially inappropriate topics, like human reproduction, and possibly gnawing through the rim of her paper cup.

The best advice I have for all of us is to become aware of the grasping the alpaca side does and allow the yogi(ni) side to peel the fingers back from the object of our infatuation.

Perhaps the lesson isn't to avoid grasping, but to learn how to ungrasp.

Tabula Rasa

I realized this week that I'm terribly fond of one particular grudge. Like a story from glory days, I'll happily chat you up about how much one person really chaps my hide, supported with many examples of just how ridiculous this person is so that hopefully you will share in the holiday joy that comes with lambasting someone you've never met.

Think for a moment of the stories that you cling to. Perhaps your neighbors' penchant for nude hot tubbing midday which has lead you to the conclusion that they must be unemployed perverts who show off their lady parts just to spite you? Or your coworker's extended afternoon appointments which you've spun into a wildly illicit affair, supplemented by a complete disregard for the important work of designing holiday cards (or whatever it is that you do). Maybe your husband's singlehanded plot to cover every surface in your home with a combination of toothpaste, discarded socks, and coffee rings?

I happen to know not only that you tell yourself these kinds of stories, but that you lack the awareness that you do so. The good news about this? You could always pick up a second job writing for a situation comedy, because they thrive on the absurdity that is daily life. The bad news? You're living in a sitcom, minus the laugh track, perfect hair, and commercial underwriting.

In the 90's, all we could hope for was a little sitcom life. We idealized Friends, Frasier, and in my case, Dharma and Greg, and wanted nothing but fun bits where everyone spent time together in coffee shops bemoaning the curse of adulthood. The time has come to move on. The menu of TV options should be a clue that times have changed, what with the horrific choices of shows that romanticize homicide. Rather than plugging into the despair, or writing your own sitcom, consider your favorite YouTube videos, those viral little bits of joy that pop up on occasion. This is the time of Otters Holding Hands, Baby Panda Sneezing, Emerson: Mommy Blows Her Nose.

The next time you open your mouth to share some vile sludge about your neighbors, family, or coworkers, instead pick up your nearest iDevice and watch a little baby monkey riding backwards on a pig. Enjoy the unrivaled bliss of laughing until you cry.

As we step forwards into a year the Mayans couldn't even conceive of, how will you greet the dawn?

As this year dies, what will you allow to die with it?