... all is coming

so, i am not terribly fond of change.  i usually react to change with hefty dosing of anxiety.  i was anxious for this training to start, pouring over a minutia of what if's.  and now, six months later, here i am, staring the last two weekends of my 200-hour training in the face and the only notable difference in my reaction is that i am throwing in a dash of denial to mingle with the anxiety.  i only have four more days of the teacher training, well two if you reason that next weekend will primarily be testing and thus be hardly anything like the weekends that preceded it.  

on the one hand, this is exactly what i have been waiting for, i will be a yoga teacher.  i will not be all consumed by this training.  (i can't tell you how many times i have responded to an invite saying "well, maybe when the training is over...")  but on the other, what am i going to do?  beyond the growing attached to the people and the process; having the training be over means - its my turn.  my turn to do the work, and find the door to start to practice all of these things i have learned.  this, terrifies me.  what if i can't do it?  what if no one will want me to teach?  what if...  

... now this is the point that i take a breath and remember one of the sutras that i put in my back pocket for just such an occasion as this: 2.16 - pain that has not yet come is avoidable.  that makes sense right?  why needlessly freak myself out over something that hasn't even happened yet?  the training isn't over yet, so why lament it's loss already?  i haven't even started putting myself out there as a teacher, so why assume that i will fail before i even try?  why did i even go through the motions of freaking out when i have this practice to help me deal with them? 

so here's my take away for now, (and my mantra as i go into this final nine day stretch of the training program) yoga is a practice.  no one is perfect.  doing yoga doesn't suddenly make life easy.  bad things still happen.  but, your yoga practice is always there, waiting patiently for you to come back.  it's waiting, without judgment or expectation, for you to find your breath and move forward.

little by little, all is coming.

xxx

the future yogi.

so today i had a nice conversation with my older sister; who told me that my 5 (almost 6) year old nephew, liam, had seen the yoga pictures that i posted a week or so ago.  he was just amazed, she said.  then about a half an hour after we got off the phone i got an e-mail with some photos attached with a note from my sister saying: "liam was so impressed with your yoga poses.  he really wanted to show you what he was capable of and let me take this pictures to send to you (he even wanted me to use the same lighting as your photos, but I had to draw the line)."

here are the pictures she attached.  i, of course, am beaming with happiness.  another yogi amongst our ranks!

(ps. being an aunt is kind of awesome).  

xxx

the ever changing yoga practice (complete with ego)

i have always been competitive.  not just with others but with myself.  i always want to do more and be better than i was yesterday.  this was particularly difficult when i first started my consistent yoga practice just over a year ago.

at this point i had only experienced yoga as a supplement to my acting training mainly as a warm up.  i barely knew any poses and certainly was not versed in any of the philosophy nor the ideology of practicing yoga.  the first month or so as i started to get more familiar with everything, i noticed myself looking in the mirror around the classroom while in downward facing dog and criticizing myself.  "why can't my heels just reach the floor?"  "ugh.  my arms are already tired."  "when is she going to let us do something else?"  and so forth... this continued for another few months until i started to become more flexible, strong and confident in my practice.  then my ego took hold in a different way, while i was still critical of my alignment, i was starting to become critical of others alignment.  or even worse, i was starting to feel better about myself because i could do a pose that no one else in the class could.  i started to allow how i “performed” in yoga affect how i felt about myself.

this then led to my struggle with attachment.  now that i have cultivated more intelligence of yoga in both my mind and body, i expect to do well in my public yoga classes.  if i am unable to realize the fullest aspect of a pose that i was used to doing, it would give me pause.  i am used to being able to open up my twist in utkatasana during my public class, but one day if I don’t get the same rotation in my spine, i start to judge myself.  "why aren’t I able to do what I was able to do two days ago?"  even knowing that the body is different everyday, it is hard when you are usually able to do something and then all of the sudden, not be able to.  i began to worry if this was a sign that i am not as advanced of a student as i should be, or whether i should even be a teacher if i am not able to do “x” pose or “y” variation.

all that being said, ever since i started the teacher training program i have found it easier to keep my ego under control;  though i am in awe of what some of my fellow students are capable of doing in their asana practice, i don’t get as discouraged just because i am unable to do the same thing right now.  i have also realized that being a teacher of yoga does not mean that you have to be able to do every advanced pose out there.  perhaps it is a much better lesson for your students to teach them to respect their individual body and its needs rather than chasing the outer shape of any given pose.

xxx

practing compassion

in patanjali’s yoga sutras, each sutra is meant to bestow the reader with advice in order to suffer less.  ahimsa which is the practice of non-violence is one of the five yamas (restraints) outlined in sutra 2.35.  this can be interpreted in many ways but the one that I personally find resounds most with me is to maintain compassion towards yourself and others.  one way to assist in the act of ahimsa in a world where sometimes you might not want to be so compassionate, is to practice pratipaksha bhavanam.  pratipaksha bhavanam is when you replace a negative thought with an opposite, positive one.    

in this day and age, it can be very easy to let one thing, like being confronted with rudeness from a fellow commuter on your way into work for example, set off a chain reaction of negativity.   then when you get to work say there’s no milk for your tea, this can build frustration and negativity which then could very easily be transmitted to your co-workers unintentionally by simply feeling grumpy.  perhaps then you are a bit less helpful to a client on the phone and the cycle continues to grow, like a fire it can consume anything and everything in its path.  even the smallest of interactions can leave a bad taste in ones mouth. 

what if instead, as the practice of pratipaksha bhavanam suggests, when presented with something that might cause us to be annoyed or frustrated, we make the conscious effort to think of something positive?  and failing that, to remove ourselves from the negative situation in order to maintain our peace.  in my own experience i know that this helps me to neutralize the situation.  instead of letting anger or frustration take hold of you, by consciously thinking of something positive instead, you are giving yourself evenness of mind.  this evenness will allow you to interact in a more compassionate manner to either the person who may be the one causing the negativity in the first place, or anyone else you might come in contact with.  

xxx

rock your asana.

during one of the very first weekends of the training our teacher, natasha, was talking about her experience of making her dvds.  she said that in the editing room she found herself horrified.  "do i really look like that in that pose?" she then went on to tell us that sometimes taking pictures of yourself in a particular pose is a great way to see what it is you are actually doing with your body.

this last week i got to have that very experience.  now that the training is quickly approaching it's end, i figured it was about time to get some photos to possibly use for a future website for myself.  with the help of my dear friend omar, who also just so happens to be a very gifted photographer (see more of his work here), i was able to see first hand just how illuminating pictures of your asanas can be.  while i did have a moment of shock with a few of the pictures (you mean when i slouch... the camera notices?) more than anything it was an opportunity to learn more about my practice and to be honest, i was happy with what i saw.  while i know it's not very yogic to be proud of attaining a particular asana, i do very much believe that it is important to give yourself an opportunity to recognize the progress you have made.  it's part of what makes you want to continue on your path in yoga. 

i hope you enjoy the photos.  namaste. 

xxx

confessions of a (self-conscious) yogini.

i've never been much of a mover. i was never anything more than mediocre at sports. i'm the girl who trips over her own feet on the sidewalk (to be fair, i live in boston and here it's like the ground is out to get you). in college i was pulled aside by my tap dance teacher and asked, if i was dyslexic - hoping this might explain my utter lack of gracefulness in execution of her choreography. at my brother's wedding, my date simply watched in horror and shook his head slightly at my attempts of dancing (i never had went to a dance with a boy - only a gaggle of girlfriends with whom i formed that dance circle where all you have to do is sway your hips and throw your arms in the air).

needless to say, i have never been very comfortable with or in my body. life would have been so much easier if my calling was one where i could have just continued to ignore my body. but of course my love of acting forced me to pay attention to my body, most of the time in the worst possible way. i lived in los angeles for all of 3 months in my early-twenties, and in my short time there my agent, submitted me (and got me an audition) for a "chubby girl." i was a size 6 at the time. talk about a place that will sap a healthy body image from anybody. but being a good little actress i piled on seven layers of shirts and padded my jeans up, in 90 degree weather mind you. my only vindication was when the casting director saw me she looked me up and down and said "you aren't chubby." why thank you. as you might have guessed, i didn't book the gig.


i wish i could say that yoga has magically cured me of my incessant urge to judge my body and how it moves. what i will say is that is has started to allow me to forget about it more and more each day. with each practice instead of worrying about how my stomach looks or if people are noticing how wide my hips are, once i'm back in my first downward-facing dog i am much more interested in the slight external rotation of inner-upper shoulders and engaging my quadriceps and rejoicing in the lengthening of my spine. yoga has allowed me to experience my body from the inside-out. rather than thinking about myself as a physical object i am able to think of my body as merely a vessel for something much more important and intrinsic to my being. in sanskrit they refer to this intangible thought as parusha, the divine self which inhabits all things. if nothing else, for those few hours of practice, yoga has given me the opportunity to tune out the rest of the world, tune out my my own preconceived notions of what is and what should be. just focus on the breath and simply be.

xxx