Yoga: The Prophylactic for Your Inner Weiner (Part 2)

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continued from yesterday’s Part 1…. Why is it that when we fail our commitments and the very relationships that give our lives shape and substance, we lead with this seeming revelation: “I’ve not been honest with myself”? In an attempt to turn a relational failure into a personal tragedy, we seem to take full and total responsibility. After all, he did say he’d made mistakes, hurt lots of people, he even named classes of them. All the while he abdicated his ownership of those very consequences and his own intentions.  The lead phrase might as well say: “But the real tragedy is my lack of self-knowledge, some deep inner turmoil which allowed me to be non-transparent to even myself!” (cue collective hand to mouth gasp and cluck.)
Welcome to the human race. Seriously, this isn’t any personal tragedy or deep, intimate secret; this is what The Bible called original sin, Freud called the unconscious and the Sutras call the vacillations of the mind. Get real. This is no more revelatory than saying “I screwed up.” So what’s all this got to do with yoga as a prophylactic? I mean, if yoga teachers fall prey to the grand scandals and transient peccadilloes of  the oh so maligned politicians, then isn’t this evidence that yoga doesn’t work to make us purer, better, nicer and truer?
No. See comment regarding The Bible, Freud and Sutras. If you’re going to yoga class expecting to be relieved of the maladies of being human, you’re in for a serious disillusionment: whether it happens when your teacher propositions you, underpays you or simply unloads on you, or maybe you find yourself propositioning your teacher, underpaying and unloading on your staff, you’ll come to a crisis of confidence in yoga, in your practice, in your teacher, in your ability to be purified, cleansed or saved.

But here’s the deal: yoga doesn’t save us from us from our bodies, our desires, our pasts or our possibilities. It makes them all that and more so. It makes the body more of what it was born to be, our desires grow and morph and take different forms, but they still grow from the same needs and truths and until those are acknowledged, those desires aren’t going away with your copious sweat. Our pasts and possibilities will always be inextricably linked and bound by the truths we bury or reveal in them, and no amount of twisting, dandelion cleanses, inverting or sweating is going to change their content. continued tomorrow… in part 3.

Related articles

• The Hermeneutics of Confusion (yogablog.hari-kirtana.com)
• Yoga: The Prophylactic for Your Inner Weiner (Part 1) (yogaguide.wordpress.com)
• Obsessed With Yoga? There’s a Group For That (fitsugar.com)
• Fremont Has No Excuse Not To Practice Yoga Now (fremontuniverse.com)

Yoga: The Prophylactic for Your Inner Weiner (Part 1)

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A week and a half later, the Weinergate jokes run their course and our fascination wanes (if we ever sustained one) … until of course the next installment or revelation. Or the next Weiner. And let’s own up, the next Weiner could be a yogi.

Go ahead and search on “yoga teacher sex scandal,” I’ll wait til you get back. If you didn’t think those words went together, you’ll probably gasp before you giggle at the titles: “Chakra full of scandal,” “Yogis behaving badly” and the titles go on. What allows someone who willingly takes a mantle of leadership to abuse the trust of those they purport to serve?

Politicians may seem a breed apart from famous (or not-so-famous) yoga teachers: so much more glad-handy, duplicitous and mendacious. So much more malleable and less principled, right? But this quote could have come from any of the yoga teachers I’ve ever taken, talked to or practiced alongside (okay, maybe minus “the media” and sub “students” for “constituents”):

“I have not been honest with myself, my family, my constituents, my friends and supporters, and the media.”

Just prior to this he admits to “terrible mistakes” and “hurting” significant people in his life. Just after, he details that what was meant as a “private” direct message was accidentally posted publicly. I want to focus on the lead-in, the part you could almost act as if you hadn’t heard, the part that almost might seem to make the others excusable: “I have not been honest with myself…” 

(continued…. tomorrow….)

Related articles

• Welcome to “WeinerGate” all the news that is fit to puke on…lmfao…Weinergate…or SEXTING with Weiner! (bonjupatten.wordpress.com)
• Jon Stewart Cuts His Hand While Mocking Weiner’s Press Conference (newsfeed.time.com)
• Jimmy Fallon’s Anthony Weiner addresses his staff (popwatch.ew.com)
• President Obama on Weinergate: ‘If it was me, I would resign’ (insidetv.ew.com)
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Online Yoga to Support Your Practice

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“you. YOU are the yoga.

simple fact.”

I love Bindi Fry’s latest post about practice, grasping and surrender (my take, not her words) from which this quote hails. Short story: home practice is where the magic happens. Home practice is where the yoga happens. Want to know what “yoga” is besides “just the asana“? Engage your own home practice. Your habits, your loves, your obsessions, your truth, your hiding , your obstacles and games, your beauty: all there. Seriously, go get it, cause it’s there on the mat when you roll it out every day on your own.

Now, the best of this occurs when you’re in a self-guided practice, meaning you either have a practice that’s been given to you or you follow your body on the mat.

But among the many “dirty little secrets” of yoga teachers that we learn after teacher training aren’t so dirty and aren’t so secret is that sometimes we’re tight on time, and sometimes it’s just luscious to have someone else give the cues, and sometimes we could use some motivational oomph.

When I’m crunched on time, want a “class” and am seeking inspiration, a reminder of Beauty, an invitation to Love and a beckoning of the Truth, I have a couple of websites that are my rock solid go-to’s. One is Harmony’s Well and another for private lessons is Now Lesson. For quick classes from yogalebrities, I go to myyogaonline.com. And today they have this great giveaway! A Camel Cushion from Halfmoon Yoga Props. All you have to do is leave a comment about how you increase chest and back flexibility. Here’s mine:

align2center

My shoulders are my limiting factor, and I use this preparatory move I’ve heard called the ‘Windmill’: Prone, extend hands directly out from shoulders, palm down. Bend right elbow, tenting fingers in near right shoulder, using this only to stabilize your roll. Start rolling your right side up by engaging the core, feeling the stretch across the front of your left chest and shoulder. As you are comfortable and not before, you can reach the right hand back towards the left, bring the right leg behind the left, all to deepen the stretch.

Head over and leave yours and maybe you’ll have a new yoga prop to beckon you to the mat!

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Change and Consequences

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Hard and soft ways to react to our experiences and hold our bodies fascinate me. One of the ways that yoga has unbiddenly shaped me is to open my eyes to all the ways I’ve hardened my own body, mind and heart and so clear a path for their softening.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been listening to some sparklingly generous Yoga Teacher Teleseminars coordinated and hosted by Tal Rachleff. Several of the teachers have been influenced by a method of life coaching associated with The Handel Group. My takeaway from listening to these teachers is that the “Method” includes writing down our mental chatter (love this, and has roots in so many traditions – more on that in another post), stating our dreams in increasingly precise, positive, present sentences and crafting plans for realizing these states of affairs. One of the surprising and innovative strategies is deciding on effective, targeted, meaningful consequences for not executing on these plans. This consequence stuff really did shock me on first hearing, and so I’ve been turning it over in my mind. On first blush it seemed so harsh, and felt like my first Ashtanga teacher who was of the ‘pain is a sign you’re on the right path’ school. On second blush it seemed so elegant and logical. My mental chatter kept bouncing from these walls. Time to get writing.

The idea, again – as I understand it, is that after you’re clear about your desire, dream and goal you break it down into steps and then decide on an action you can take right now, and do it. Very cool structure because it allows infinite fine-tuning, tweaking and considered transformation. But this adds the sentence, “And if I don’t xyz, then I’ll ….”

And then I wondered: “If I don’t xyz, then why on earth would I …???” Right? Maybe I didn’t put it on my schedule and forgot. So then, what’s to remind me of the consequence? Maybe I avoided it because it brings up discomfiting emotions. Does the consequence have to be even more discomfiting? That sucks.

My commitment was to write down my mental chatter during my morning practice. The first morning, when I got up, there was no time left for my practice. As my mind twisted around to figure out how I was going to get my pedi in that day, it dawned on me that it was my chosen consequence to forgo it. Makes sense: no time for practice, no time for pedi. Cool, this is working. I felt grown up and responsible and very, very good. Odd for someone who missed practice this morning.

I totally forgot to write the second morning. I got there on the mat, I did my usual do, and phewt! Even though I’d gotten a special journal and put it next to the mat, I totally didn’t pick up the lovely turquoise pen. Not once. Shows me how much the chatter didn’t want to be written down!

And that’s when I realized the most important component of consequences for me. While I concocted consequences for my lapses of integrity, there was an essential component for them to work, and when it’s in place, the real consequences are natural. Awareness is both the cause and the effect, and because it’s a circular relationship, it is facilitated in the context of a modern, busy life by some kind of an accountability partner. Once awareness is achieved, the presence or absence of a monetary or treat or physical consequence may or not be valuable for other reasons (for instance, if you’re a parent, it can be a great teaching tool to create these agreements for yourself in the family to show the reality of consequences to our actions) the real transformation happens in the “Aha!” moment of realizing what you’ve done and cutting through your own bullshit. The consequence is missing out on the value of what you’d promised to do. The real consequence happens when you come to the end of practice and realize you’ve not written a single word, and yet the chatter was nearly deafening. The light that turns on, really stays on.

Always looking for softer ways of doing what was once hard for me – difficult, effort-full, will-full and imposed – this truly appeals to me. I’m still turning over the value of these concocted consequences, but am more convinced than ever of the value of writing our selves down. The consequences that matter most to me are the ones I don’t manufacture but are imposed by the structure of the activity itself: I really wanted the feeling of having gotten that practice. I’m deeply curious about what would have gotten spilled in my journal that morning had I had the extra ounce of awareness to put pen to paper. And I haven’t missed a practice since. I’m not sure I’ll ever get on a mat without pen and paper nearby again, this has been so fruitful. Now it’s time for my pedicure.

Related articles

• Laurie Gerber: Teach Your Parents Well and Begin a Life-Changing Conversation (huffingtonpost.com)
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• Laurie Gerber: Are You a How-aholic? (huffingtonpost.com)

It All Comes Around

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Here we are again. If you’re new to my blogging, that might not make sense yet. I’m not claiming any sort of karmic or dharmic deja-anything. This was my first blog that’s still up and running, and now they’re all consolidated and unified here in one place, and I’ve come back home.

We started here as a fledgling way to share class plans, back when I was volunteering at the Senior Center – shout out to the North Valley crowd! I migrated to yogaeveryday.wordpress.com when I thought I was getting more ‘expert’ – whatever that meant. And I migrated again to alignmentyoganm.wordpress.com when I got ‘professional.’

Well, I’m bringing it all back home because I’m claiming what I’ve been and what yoga’s been to me all along: Love, Truth and Beauty. We’ll talk more about all that in blogs to come. For now, Welcome. I’d love to hear your take: What does the phrase “Love, Truth, Beauty: Here, Now” mean to you? It’s big, isn’t it? And it’s immediate. And it’s complete. In all its glorious imperfection.

Roam the Hub of All Sacred Places….

“The light which shines above this heaven, above all the worlds, above everything, in the highest worlds not excelled by any other worlds, that’s the same light  which is in you.” ~Chhandogya Upanishad

What if all the thinking, all the words, ideas aren’t our minds? What if they’re the covering over our minds? Don’t get me wrong – they’re great tools. But what’s overseeing the job site? They’re not the tools you’ll need if you’re looking for your true self or for a steady place to stand.

Science tells us our minds are decentralized in the body. Yoga helps us settle into our heart, where wisdom and intelligence reside. Of course when we talk about heart in yoga, we’re not just talking about the juicy pumping muscle to the left of center in our ribcages. There are a lot of bits housed around there – chemoreceptors, baraoreceptors, lungs, thymus, arteries, lymph nodes, spine, circulating blood and air, esophagus, diaphragm. When we bring our attention to this area, when we just feel what comes up, we are contacting the heart of yoga. Our yoga.

Bringing ease to the muscles and joints around this area can be the beginning or development of this process. This is where many of us Western Yogis start, with asana. Maybe a little breathing practice. Then we might start calling that pranayama. Maybe we meditate for stress reduction. Somewhere along the way we realize these pesky emotions are less pesky, the aches are less achey, the mind is less muddled.

“The heart is the resting place of the pranas, the senses and the mind. It’s your true self, which is identified with intelligence and which finds repose in the space within your heart.” ~Nikhilananada’s Intro to The Principal Upanishads

So then we explore pratyahara – sense withdrawal. But then, where do the senses go? Niky above, says to the space within your heart, your true self. Makes some sense – it’s quieter there than the head or stomach. The feelings come up, but maybe we’re in a place where we can uncouple them enough from the words and judgments to just let them be a bit.

Now we’re practicing saucha in our hearts. Saucha – cleanliness, purity. We don’t often think of it in regard to our hearts, but after we’ve gotten glimpses of the Love that lives there, it makes sense not to store our crap on the porch. If we keep the windows clean maybe it will shine more brightly. The Sanskrit word for this place – Anahata – can be translated “unstruck”. “The space within your heart  is omnipresent and unchanging.” (~Chhandogya Upanishad ) Always with us, always available for us to touch and feel is a place that is unstruck by the blows of life, unmoved by the compliments and criticisms, the lost jobs and the awards. It is always what it is. We are always who we are. Sometimes we just cover it up with judgments, which are really old experiences in new clothes. Film on our windows.

Maybe this is the impetus to poke our noses into the pesky ethical side of yoga.  But if you’ve been cleaning your windows all by yourself, and someone gives you a step ladder and an extension for your sponge, you’ll be pretty glad to pay attention. And they’re pretty simple, deceptively so. Love, Truth, Conserve your energy, Be quiet, Be fierce, Stay Open, Be present, Learn you’re not in control, Study your experience, Respect Others’ Boundaries. But Wow! try to practice ‘em all at once! That’ll give any college Ethics Professor a run for her money.

So you keep coming back to the place of quiet stillness to which your mat has become the doorway. “The heart is the hub of all sacred places; go there and roam.” ~Bhagavan Nityananda 

Where are you?!?

Hello, Friends! Lovely, smart, inquisitive yogi friends!

 I’m reading. I have been reading. I have a yoga book to review. There’s a book on the food industry I want to review. I’m reading a friend’s manuscript. I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love, which I know you all have read before me, but if you haven’t, oh please pick it up! It’ll make you want to write, to cry, to eat, to hold, to drink wine and laugh and cry some more. Whatever you do that is you, where the you of you disappears and the activity just glistens in the moment – it’ll make you want to do that.

I’m reading, I’m practicing, I’m being. I’m adjusting to a new schedule (I love it). I’m cogitating. I’m incubating. I’m detoxifying, releasing and opening. It’s January and I’m hibernating.

Where are you? What directions has your practice taken you this new year? Did you resolve (which means to unify, simplify, come to essence)? Are you resolute? Are you doing your own duty, your own dharma, and no one else’s?  Are you doing the one thing that represents the state of affairs of you right now? Are you enacting your truth?

Let’s all get about just that. Right now. This moment.

Stand at the top of your mat….

That’s it. Just stand, but stand with everything you have. Stand intentionally. Stand in your own arwareness.

I’m putting out a challenge to us all: students, teachers, sometimes yogis and gee-I’ve-been-thinking-about-trying-that-at-home folks.

Once a day, roll out your mat (or, if you don’t have one, clear out a space in the living room or on the grass). Stand. In Tadasana (Ta-Da!) (mountain pose).  That’s it.

If you feel like bustin’ out  some moves from that last yoga class or video, knock yourself out. If you feel like putting on a podcast, look up Hillary’s or Elsie’s (they’re on wordpress).

http://hillarysyogapractice.wordpress.com/

http://elsieyogakula.wordpress.com/

Breathe, pay attention to bandhas, hug your muscles to your legs, center your rib cage over your pelvis. Connect to the floor through your feet. Notice and play with the position of your sternum relative to your shoulders. There’s so much to do right here.

I’m doing this to to encourage us all to meet ourselves on the mat regularly. Leave a comment & say how long you want to join the experiment. Leave comments on your experiences.

Unroll your mat, unfurl your heart, unleash your voice. I bow to you. Namaste.

every day?

Well, yes that’s the plan. So there’s this whole thing in the spiritual disciplines about not having expectations in order to let things be as they are and not over interpret them. Of course, the struggle is caused by the fact that in order to be transparent enough to yourself to be relatively expectation free, well, that takes a lot of work. So you have to, um, set expectations.

So, every day? Well, no, I haven’t lived that. I’ve thought about it every day And I just came from the yoga mat & wondered, “Why didn’t I do this the last two days?”

Because, Steve Ross is right & it really is all yoga. You see, my husband & I work crazy opposite schedules and he’s stunningly understanding because some twisted part of me loves weekend nights. But sometimes we both just crave some blissful, no expectation, do what’s in front of you rest, relaxation & whatever time. So, we had two whole days off together and we did nothing of merit.

We watched two movies – Two! in bed! eating chips and drinking soda! We saw Nacho Libre (highly recommend it) and Notes on a Scandal (worth it! great writing, acting & Judi Dench – how can you go wrong!). We went plant shopping together. We slept an obnoxious amount.

And I loved it. Now that’s yoga, don’t you think?

Truth.

Here’s truth, in trust that love & beauty follow where it goes. My personal practice isn’t what I think a yoga teacher’s should be. Here’s some more truth: I’m a yoga teacher with a crappy home practice.

Here’s what I think it should be: every day, vigorous, peaceful, priority, full of poses I’m working on or toward, including meditation, resulting in wisdom, awareness.

Here’s what I want: I want my life to feel like yoga. That’s what I really want. I know all the saws about how it’s all yoga & how some days you have five minutes & others you have more. How breathing is yoga and anytime you are aware and witness to your self you are doing yoga. I’ve read Happy Yoga, by Steve Ross. Loved it.

So why am I holding myself to some ideal standard that’s actually keeping me off my mat??? Why, why why?

Because I’m at a cross roads. Because a major life change is lurking in my shadows and my shadows are on my mat.

I’m a yoga teacher, I’m a paramedic. I’ve loved being a paramedic, I fought for it, I sweat for it and I’ve revelled in it.

For months I’ve had this deep feeling of division between weekend night medic & yoga teacher. I thought I’d look for a union, a balance. Now I’m cheering for one side to win.

Maybe not very yogic. But it’s truth.

I’m off to do Hillary’s latest yoga class podcast… check the blogroll. She’s a no nonsense teacher with a good sense of class flow.

Livin’ on the path, feeling moment by moment, reaching for raw and tender with open arms. Peace and chaos…. out.