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April 10, 2011

Ugh. Why Do I Do This?

So, I've just returned to town after a week long retreat where I got to be the student and simply listen and absorb the wisdom of the path based on someone else's experience. What a relief! What a pleasure! What a joy! Being guided through the process of self-examination, instead of guiding myself through provides a depth of clarity and observation unachievable by my lonesome.

One of the many observations I made while on retreat was the fact that I'm feeling tired of, as in done, or I-need-a-break from, the Yoga Sutra exploration that has been my focus for the last 3 years. This isn't new for me. I knew it was there, just below the surface, but I didn't want to deal with it. First off, it's listed on my weekly class schedule. Secondly, my students have come to expect it from me and, thirdly, it deeply informs the subject of all of my workshops and retreats this year. To make matters even more difficult, I had just announced in my latest newsletter that I had begun blogging about the Sutras and you could join me for an online exploration.

The only question worth asking at this point is why, oh why, did I up the ante on myself (publicly) right when I was feeling most uncertain about what I was doing? Aside from the fact that it might have something to do with a Chinese fortune cookie I received in a Japanese restaurant telling me to take a risk, I suspect it was my way of flushing out a little something that I had been doing my best to hide from, which is this: It is really hard to write about those damn Sutras without sounding like I'm preaching the moral high road, which I can't stand and I'm not quite certain how to get around, but which feels really good to finally say!

What feels infinitely better is what came after I admitted what I truly felt: My job and my teachings have never been about having the answers. What is much more vital and relevant to me is creating the appropriate space for exploring and investigating whatever comes up. This is what I teach, this is what I'm interested in and this is what the verses in the Yoga Sutras guide me back to time and time again.

So here is the deal, I'm not giving in, I'm not giving up, but as I take a step back to find a way of writing that feels honest, earnest and congruent with my worldview I will be slowing down. I will continue to blog about the Sutras, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be more about my process of navigating the Sutras rather then the actual Sutras themselves. For the truth about my spirit and the teachings rendered through it is that they both move organically and much more deeply when left to their own accord.

So, it comes to this: If you are interested in learning more about the path of Yoga laid out by the ancients, come to class. If you are interested in how one modern woman moves through the multitude of "stuff" that get stirred up by the Sutras, tune in here! Either way I hope to see you soon!

March 30, 2011

Yoga & Mindfulness Workshop

If you are at all curious how you can target or develop your home practice to balance your energy and remain steady through the whirl of life experiences and emotions, check out my Yoga & Mindfulness Workshop at Capitol Hill on Saturday morning, April 9th. We’ll be examining the 5 root causing of suffering according the Yoga Sutras, developing the Buddhist technique of Mindful Awareness to view our sufferings with neutrality and compassion and looking at the system of Ayurveda to assess which asana, pranayama and meditation techniques help us keep our cool when things get heated, which ones help us spark the fires of inspiration and energy when feeling low and how to prevent bouncing back and forth between the two.

More info at www.8limbsyoga.com

YOGA & MINDFULNESS FOR EMOTIONAL BALANCE
Capitol Hill
Saturday, April 9, 2011
10:00 – 12:30pm
$35/$45

March 21, 2011

Transformation

Sutra II.43

“ The perfection of the body and sense organs is due to tapas, the intensity of spiritual practice which eliminates impurities and leads to transformation.”

The yogic path is one of maintaining a clear and true connection to one’s spirit and inner potential. This process begins by perfecting both body and sense organs, which serve as the temple and gateways for the spirit to exist and interact in this world. The body is first and foremost a demarcation between internal and external environments. When it is weak, compromised or clouded with impurities it is unable to protect itself from mild, moderate or extreme threats. When it is clear and strong it becomes a firm boundary, or refuge, that strives to cultivate the potential within.

The sense organs: eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin are the gateways that link the inner and outer worlds together. When they are impure or clogged with memories of the past or expectations of the future we end up with a distorted perception of reality. This distortion alters how we envision the future, behave in the moment and contribute to the re-creation of the world. When the sense organs are purified, we can see, hear, speak, touch and smell clearly. Rather then getting caught in our opinion of these experiences, we give ourselves pure experience.

Tapas is the heat, the fire, the intensity of spiritual practice that we apply to our body and sense organs to spark the process of purification, healing and transformation. Tapas occurs by concentrating our attention within the experience of each moment and delaying our reactive impulses long enough to experience reality rather then experiencing our concept of reality. One way we can practice this is by labeling each of our experiences according to it's most elemental nature. For example, rather then yelling at the guy who just cut us off in the car, we simply recognize the experience of "anger" or "fear" and let the impulse to react in a flurry of words pass on by. Likewise, rather then letting ourselves get irritated at a loud, inappropriate conversation happening near us, we simply recognize it as "sound" and move on. This doesn't mean that we stop taking action and become passive participants in our life, it simply means that we give ourselves the space to experience discomfort without becoming that discomfort. Then we can take action from a stable place based in the reality of the moment.

This is the crux of transformation. This is where we begin to choose the quality of our existence, regardless of the quality of our conditions. This is how we purify our body and sense organs, transform ourselves out of habitual patterns and past behaviors and realize a true and deep expression of our inner most self.

March 12, 2011

Santosha

Sutra II.42

"Owing to the development of contentment there comes an unexcelled attainment of happiness."

This particular sutra is part of a string of verses that explain the niyamas or the personal disciplines, which we undertake to maintain a clear, true connection to our spirit. This verse itself is pretty straightforward: where there is contentment, there is unexcelled happiness, which is fairly obvious since the definition of contentment is 'a state of happiness'. It does, however, raise a question of how we can create/discover/make space for santosha when it doesn't already exist within us.

If we have a pattern of dissatisfaction in some area of our life we cannot change that pattern by pretending to be satisfied, but we can begin to change the pattern in the way that we regard our experience of dissatisfaction. A very simple approach is to

1) First recognize that dissatisfaction, like everything else, is impermanent. Knowing that it is momentary and will not last forever allows us to

2) Give it room to exist. When we allow ourselves to experience life as it is, we stop fighting, suppressing and denying reality. This cuts out a large part of our struggle and lessens a significant portion of our dissatisfaction.

Over time, these two actions give us permission to relax, to allow ourselves to have an uncomfortable experience (which is a large part of life!) and to learn to trust that everything is and will be ok. We are ok - even when things aren't how we wish they were. If we practice this enough, we even start to feel contentment with discontentment and that, I believe, is the attainment of unexcelled happiness!

March 10, 2011

Coming Soon...

As many of you know, I have spent my last 3 years as a Yoga Instructor who incorporates the ancient philosophy of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali into our opening meditation and asana practices. The idea originally started as a way for me to keep up with my own exploration of the Sutras at a time when I could no longer make it to my teacher's class for weekly study. At the start of this endeavor, I felt a little bit under-qualified and totally uncertain about where it would go and how it would manage to get there, but after 3 years of simply showing up each week and trying to make another esoteric verse relevant and palatable to our modern, urban lives, I feel like I've found a rhythm of clarity, healthy and well-being that carries over from week to week.

I know that many of you have discovered a greater depth through this exploration and that the meaning of your practice has also changed as we've progressed along this path together. I also know that as the weather gets nicer and nicer, it becomes more and more difficult to make it to class each week. So I've decided to start blogging about the weekly Sutra Lesson so that you can stay in touch and in tune even when you can't get to class.

I will pick things up right where there are with a discussion on Santosha, or contentment, beginning with Sutra II.42 and then move forward from there. I encourage you to post your thoughts, questions or responses to these blogs, so that we can start an open dialogue and further expand our practices. Even if you don't consider yourself a yogi, I know you all have an opinion, so please share it with the rest of us!

February 15, 2011

Yoga for the People - All People

Check out this YouTube documentary about Yoga Behind Bars, a local non-profit I work for that brings yoga and meditation to incarcerated youth and adults in Washington State.



February 10, 2011

Yin & Yoga Sutras

The next installment of the Yin & Yoga Sutras Series is this Saturday in Capitol Hill. Please join me!

During the first half of class, we'll ground ourselves in the physical body with a unique sequence of deeply held, seated postures that focus on the 5 elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether). While pausing passively in each seat we'll explore the qualities of these elements: stability, fluidity, transformation, movement and space to experience what it means to be fully alive.

In the second half of class we'll focus our attention on the philosophy of the Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and learn how regular meditation practice can change the structure of the mind and leads toward transformation.

Expand your practice this Saturday!

February 12, 2011
8 Limbs Yoga Centers
Capitol Hill
10:00 - 12:00
$25

www.8limbsyoga.com

February 9, 2011

The Path of Failure

Ok. So the truth is that I have written at least 5 blogs since I've been back and haven't been able to post a single one of them.

It's not that it's difficult being here, it's actually quite delightful and it's not that nothing is happening, because lots of stuff is going on, it's just that nothing seems so interesting nor quite profound enough to go on and wax poetic. But just as I find myself thinking I have nothing to say, I also feel myself unable to believe that this could possibly be true. So I make a decision to turn myself around. Belief or doubt? I choose belief. Success in this endeavor is just like anything else. It takes practice, and lots of it.

So I set myself a schedule and committed to exploring the few random ideas I had in my head, hoping they would gel together into something much more fabulous - for you and for me. The wheels churned slowly. Sometimes I gained momentum, sometimes I slipped rapidly down the hill in the opposite direction and ended up wandering in a far different and much uglier field. Other times pure beauty and intelligence slipped right through my fingers and onto the screen, but the recognition of such scared away whatever insight lay down just the line. Sigh.

Since this is a practice I reminded myself not to give up and resolved to try a different approach instead. So I found myself talking to people about the pitfalls of attempting a travelogue even though I was clearly standing stock still in one place and, much to my dismay, not going anywhere at all. Each new person I chatted with, however briefly, brought out a different aspect of my struggle. I did my best not to dwell on this (it's challenging enough as it is) but took it all in as information and eventually the truth dawned on me: I was afraid of failure.

The last thing that I want to do is put out some half-assed piece of garbage just so I can say I put something out there and pretend I've succeeded in continuing my exploration. I do not want you, my students, my peers, my friends or my family to consider me incompetent nor do I want you to end up tuning me out because I am less interesting, less profound or humorless. But that is exactly what happens. You put our 3 or more bad...things... and people start thinking you're a hack. And it doesn't stop there. Once you've discredited yourself in one area, people will begin to automatically discredit you in other areas, too. Of course I am afraid to fail and to have you see me fail. Shudder. Strangely enough this very notion caught me on fire and twisted me round in an entirely new direction.

I do not want to be liked or appreciated because I am perfect - I am certainly not and I rather like that quality about me. I also do not want to hold myself to some imaginary standard that I believe someone else has of me - they don't, thank god. But even more to the point, failure does not indicated our demise, rather it is the earliest signal we have of growth & transformation. It is a hallmark of our attempts at something new. It is what allows us to demarcate the boundaries of our capabilities and chart unknown territory. It shows us where we are malnourished and in desperate need of nutrients. It provides us with a sense of direction and indicates just how big of a step we are to take next.

If we wish to grow, we have no choice but to fail with our eyes wide open and our minds silently & humbly tucked into our hearts. What does that mean exactly? It means that we leave our personal garbage behind at each moment so that we can see clearly and act in accordance with who we want to be rather then who we've been in the past.

So I encourage you, no, I implore you, if you do nothing else today at least go out there and fail gloriously at something you love...and please forgive me when I do, too, for I am on this path right along side of you.

January 22, 2011

Break on Through

As many do, I arrived back home wondering just how I could possibly maintain the slightest degree of happy-go-lucky curiosity that accompanied me across the world. How could I integrate freedom and openness into my very definitive, everyday world? There was but one answer. Keep living like a traveler in a foreign land. Stop thinking. Resolve not to define anything. Let the heart lead the way.

Easier said than done.

Just about everyone I run into wants to know about my trip. "How was it?" they ask. "Is it over?" I wonder? How can I possibly answer these questions without thinking, without defining and without ending my journey? Is that possible? The truth is, it's not. My journey isn't over. I have only just arrived and in a moment I will soon be departing again. To answer these questions means getting off at this station and watching my train pull away so that I can see what it was and where it went and where it is going. I'm not willing to that. So instead, I find myself answering these inquiries with somewhat hollow exclamations like "Amazing!" "Life Changing!" "Transformative!" "Eye Opening" "Clarifying" which might all be true but hardly capture the experience of being fully absorbed in the moment.

Pressures from outside influences are not the only challenges I face in carrying on. I am also greeted with a multitude of personal concerns upon arrival back in Seattle... mainly those of life purpose, love, career, money, self-worth and something else I can't quite put my finger on right now. It would be REALLY easy for me slip into a state of worried anxiety and try to think and plan my way out of the fright, the fear and the massive uncertainty that just so happens to be the carriage of the moment. But for now, I choose not to.

Somehow or another I choose attending to my spirit over attending to my ego. I choose to care for my needs before I care for the needs of others, I choose not knowing over knowing, I choose trust over fear and each time my head begins to spin thought uncontrollably I choose to feel the restless immediacy in my chest instead. It is raw, it is vivid and it is undeniably true. Something tender is breaking through.

It starts out with me unexpectedly announcing my desire to end a work relationship which significantly lowers my already low level of income, it opens the door of change on my romantic life which is directly tied into my living situation and turns into a long overdue letter of apology asking for forgiveness for something I don't expect to be forgiven for. But the most interesting thing is that I don't think about doing any of these things at all, they just happen. In fact, if I had thought about any of them, I probably wouldn't have followed through on a single one of them.

All of these reckless shifts spilling out of me, all of these old patterns breaking up, which I always imagined would be so terrifying to experience and would leave me in pieces, these shifts aren't my whole world falling apart, these shifts are my whole world coming together.

January 15, 2011

The Long Journey

I am in transit. I mean this physically, but there is no escaping the metaphor of such an idea for me. While I departed Melbourne for Singapore this morning and head off to Toyko and Seattle tomorrow, the transition really began early this morning with the realization that I can be a total and complete brat, but let's give that a little context, shall we?

I started out on this journey for many reasons, in search of a bigger world, to explore the international yoga scene, to seek out work, to develop more love for myself and to cultivate more trust for the world around me. There were many unknowns at the start of this trip and a lot of fears I had to face along the way.

I've never been to any of these countries before. I honestly don't know a single person who lives in these places and barely know anyone who has been to them. I was highly uncertain about the status of my romantic life and a bit uncertain about my ability to cope with it all, but I had to do it and I knew I'd be the better for it. Or, it would kill me.

Before I left I had a conversation with a dear friend and told her that I really looked forward to the transformative process, of stepping off the plane and knowing with every inch of myself that whatever was about to happen was beyond my control and irreversible. Owing to this I reasoned that I would be forced into shedding some outdated notion of myself that had been hanging on for far too long. Thank god.

The thing was that I didn't really know what this notion was. I only knew that it had been slowly falling away for a while and needed that one little last push to be complete. I looked forward to it's arrival, whatever it was. My dear friend lamented that those kinds of breakthroughs seemed to occur less and less with age. I felt disappointed by this, but relieved all the same and proceeded to go about my trip in my own, singular way. I explored the places I arrived in with great curiousity, I struck up conversation with just about anyone I met and everything seemed pretty hum-dee-dum until I arrived in Australia - as you may recognize from my last post.

All of a sudden everything was different - I wasn't alone in my own perfect bubble, I wasn't in charge of what happened when, I was in relationship, intimately, with another person and I resisted it, tooth and nail. If you've ever been in a relationship that was going south you know how easily it is to expect things to be a certain way. Well, two ways actually. From one side you hope that things will be as good as they once were and from the other side you fear that they'll be as bad as you last left them, which doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot of options. If it isn't one, it's got to be the other. We repeat our own history.

I've been doing it for years, especially in the context of my romantic relationships. It mostly involves feelings of being under valued, dissatisfied and angry. This isn't news for me. I already knew this and I already had pinpointed very distinct reasons why I felt this way, which involved my (you know) family, childhood and upbringing. I don't blame my family, I wholeheartedly believe they did the best they could, I just had yet to figure out how to do the best I could.

So I had a pretty awful time in Australia. I fought with my boyfriend, who is probably the most easy going guy in the world, everyday. I repeatedly told myself that we did not work, that he wasn't interested in even the simplest of things that interested in me, that we have nothing in common, that we have no connection and that we have no business being together. I went in wanting to prove that he couldn't love me the way I want to be loved and I ended up not letting him love me in any of the ways that he does. But the thing is that he hasn't stopped loving me and I only find myself loving him more. In the moments when I actually stop resisting what and who and how we are, I feel really, really solid about us.

So for my last evening in town we went out to the pub with a friend of his. It was awkward, I felt uncomfortable and I didn't want to feel that way any longer, so I left. I walked around for an hour in frustration and eventually ended up at another pub where I had a really engaging conversation with a blues guitarist I may never meet again. I went home. My guy was concerned and disappointed. I was indignant. We fought.

Then, somewhere between the closing of my eyes, the dawning of the morning light and him telling me things about myself I didn't want to hear for the 1,000th time, I awoke to the fact that he is actually spot on. I can be insufferable. I am childish and cruel and unreasonable and with him, I am all of these things. The ugliest part is that for so long I blamed him for all of this. I believed that he brought out the worst in me, when actually he just brings out the truth in me. If I wasn't an insufferable brat, he wouldn't be able to draw that out. Ever. But I am and he does - again and again and again.

What strikes me most about this revelation is that in the process of setting out to expand my world and love myself more I ended up face to face with some of the gnarliest bits of myself. And while at first glance it may appear that I arrived at the exact opposite end of the spectrum I was aiming for, I don't feel that way at all.

I know that sometimes the only way to reach the other side is to walk on up to those horrid demons, trust that they are merely ghosts and step right on through.

January 7, 2011

A is Australia (and arguments, too)

Ah, Australia. After 4 weeks in SE Asia, being back in a Westernized country feels like a really good thing for several reasons.

1) Fresh air. My respiratory system totally had it with motorbike exhaust, burning coconut husks and smoldering incense, so much so that I arrived in the land of Oz with a sore throat and a stuffy nose.

2) Clean water. Not only can I drink from the tap again and brush my teeth without bottled water, but I can actually open my mouth in the shower. It is the little things that make a big difference.

3) Pizza! Actually, any version of real Western food. After rice and noodles and noodles and rice and rice and rice and rice and noodles, I was ready for something else. As it turns out, my first meal in Australia was Laksa Noodle Soup. Go figure.

At the same time, there are several reasons why I'm not so certain about being here.

1) It's not a quite as foreign as the rest of the places I have traversed on this journey. When you combine that with the fact that this is the last leg of my trip and that we have now turned a New Year, well, it just feels a little different to be here.

2) My boyfriend, who is living and working in Australia and the reason that this country was tacked onto my trip. He is not only a workaholic, but he is content doing the same things over and over and over again. My exploratory side feels like it just came to a grinding halt in a sharp contrast to the previous weeks. At this point it is hard for me to tell the difference between suddenly acquiring a new and very different travel buddy after weeks of going solo and what very well may be...

3) an ill-fitted and failing relationship. While, I have yet to acquire the ability to tell the difference of such, I have no doubt that time will sort it out for me. Until then I'm learning how to be ok with all the arguing we are doing even when it is about the stupidest thing in the world.

Case in point: Celsius to Fahrenheit conversions.

Now before I get started, I should probably preface this section with a very simple portrait of myself and my man, so here goes: Me, Woman; Him, Man. Hopefully, that clears up any confusion.

Last night we went out to dinner with friends. One a born and bred Aussie, the other a long time American friend who had just arrived from NY. This dynamic inevitably led to the old Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion conversation as we discussed weather patterns and the mean temperature of the ocean (i.e., would it be comfortable to swim in the ocean?). Now, for those of you who have not had to make these conversions since high school or college, there are 2 main ways to go about it.

1) There is a rather clunky-in-the-field equation that goes like this: F = 32 + 9/5C. Basically, it involves a fraction and a rather ugly, although not difficult, fraction. The reason that fraction isn't so difficult is because 9 divided by 5 is 1.8, which is essentially 2 and 2 is a nice, round, whole number. Very easy to use whether you have a pen and paper handy and whether you like math or not. It also leads us to our second method.

2) Double the degrees Celsius and add 30.

Now before I ask which one you would use, let me just prove how similar these 2 equations are. Say it is 25C and you want to know what that translates to in degrees Fahrenheit.

Equation one tells us F = 32 + 9/5(25C) = 77F
Equation two tell us F = 2(25C) + 30 = 80F

Or, suppose it is 15C and, again, you want degrees F.

Equation one: F = 32 + 9/5(15C) = 59F
Equation two: F = 2(15C) + 30 = 60F

As you can clearly see, the answers are more or less the same - only being off by a couple of degrees. Now, if you were a chemist, or an engineer, or a computer programmer who was programming sensitive data, engineering something to spec or alchemizing a potent formula, I would recommend you use the first equation, but when you are trying to figure out if the ocean is swimmable in the middle of a dinner conversation and you want a quick and reliable method, use the second.

This is where he and I differ. Or, maybe this is where we are the same, I'm not sure, but let's tackle first things first, shall we? We differ because to me there really is no noticeable difference between 77F and 80F. I mean there just isn't any difference other then the look of the numbers. In reality, my body feels about 3 temperatures ranges, which we can call Hot, Comfortable and Cold. When you tell me it is 80F, it really only gives me a general idea that the weather is in the upper range of comfortable, but it actually depends on the conditions. It could be 80F with driving wind and rain or it could be 80F without a breeze in sight at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on asphalt that is reflecting back all the sun it has absorbed the entire day long. Regardless of the fact that the weather man says the temperature is 80F, those two things feel really, really different. For all intents and purposes, this is because temperature is an average, or an aggregate of it's surrounds. It is not exact and therefore I need not be exact, either.

Try telling that to a man who loves only numbers. Actually, I believe it is not so much numbers that he loves, but the number-ness that truly does him in. Numbers actually only represent other things, they aren't the things themselves, but what they represent is unchanging. 1 is always 1, every single time. 1 orange is the same amount as 1 pony and the same as 1 microbe, even though they are vastly different things, with different weights, proportions, uses and associations. One can represent many, many things, but it is only ever a single, solitary thing. Thus the reason, that my guy believes that 25C can only accurately amount to 77F, not my estimate of 80F.

As for where we are the same: Well, we each hold a very stubborn belief in our ideas and constantly seek people who attune to a similar fancy. Less and less that seems to be each other.

He says I try too hard. I say he doesn't try hard enough. He says relax, I say grow up. He says pedal harder, I say I'm pedaling as fast as I can. He says sex in the morning, I say sex as night. He's all elbows, I'm all knees and lately we've been asking each other why it is that we are together. We seamlessly connect on the answer: We have no idea but we're not ready to stop trying...and so it goes, two stubborn people trying to live their lives together on opposite side of the world and arguing almost every step along the way.