Morning Quickie: I Forgot How To Teach

Right now my son is on the floor, cooing contentedly, exploring his toes and his ultra plush blanket; baby neurons exploding with joy. And I’m at the table in extreme pain and searching google for some magical technique I’ve never tried to unclog milk ducts. The guilt I feel for not being down there with him is almost as painful as my swollen breast, I can feel the tears starting to build up behind my eyes.

There is so much to motherhood that is painful. So much. And so very much we pile up on ourselves. This guilt that is turning over in my gut it entirely self imposed. My son is happy, believe me he’d let me know if he wasn’t.  Yeah, I could get down there with him and get him giggling by “playing” with him and his blanket. But would that be better, would I be “teaching” him more by stroking the blanket over him so he can start feeling his body. Or will he gain more by observing and experimenting on his own.

The answer is both. Both are the correct choice. And I need to remember that. I am home with my son all day, we play together, giggle, and learn and then sometimes I put him in his bouncy chair and let him be entertained by his floor mobile, or a spatula or even (cue tragic music) a video. And my son is fine, he’s thriving in fact! He’s hitting all of his developmental markers, he’s a generally happy baby even though we do have some colic battles.

How did I forget this. As I teacher I know this. You can not always be teaching, student shave lessons they need to learn on their own. But as a teacher your job, your hope, is that on the mat you have given them the tools to facilitate their own learning when they are not on their mat. So shouldn't i be doing the same with a baby?

I write in metaphors a lot, it  helps me sort things out and relay what I’m trying to say. So for me I often think yoga, the practice of asana that is, as the biggest metaphor for life. That while I’m practicing and while I’m teaching that yoga is mimicking life. The challenges, the boring bits, the moments of elation are all the same emotions as in real life. I used to know this more deeply, I used to live it and I’m going to start doing that again. I'm going to do use it on the mat and as a mother. Right after I go giggle on the floor with my son.

Wild Yoga Love

The kettle whispers on the stove, I don’t put the whistle down because I like to keep the water hot for pouring over my stovetop espresso to make Americanos in the morning. It’s the easiest way to keep hot water around when one does not have a standard drip coffee maker. That whisper makes me think of yoga, the gentle seeping of yoga into my life, subtly reminding me to head to the mat before my days begins, Except that right now, I do not need gentle reminder, I need a sharp piercing whistle to send me running from the shower or closet to snatch the screaming kettle off the stove and hurl me onto my mat. I need a steamy, reckless love affair with yoga. I need to be swept off on a weeklong rendezvous with a sweaty pulsing vinyasa get away. 

I spent the last year in an amazing Teacher Train course at Tejas Yoga in Chicago’s bustling South Loop. It was an amazing year; steeped in the teachings of Hatha yoga under two of the most inspiring teachers I have meet, James Tennant and Jim Bennitt. Trust me, if you find yourself in Chicago take the time to go visit their studio! The thing I love most about my teachers is how subtly they integrate yoga into your life. You never once feel like you are being told how to do or feel about yoga; “My intention is not to make you feel the way I do about yoga. My intention is to be a support system for you to discover what yoga means to you” James Tennant says.  But his enthusiasms is infectious and even without meaning to simple things like making coffee and washing your face in the morning seem to take on a yogic style. So the past year has been just that for me, feeling, accepting, and noticing yoga in everything I do. Marveling at the subtleties and smiling as I engage mulabandha while push my lawn mower up an incline. It’s a gift you can’t really describe and I am grateful for the experience but now I need something different.

I need a Shiva Rea, a yogi who practically burst with joy and love when she teaches vinyasa flow. Like Shiva Rea I need to sway my hips over the mat, let my arms dance wide expanding my heart, I need to feel my heart beat along with beats dropped my MC Yogi and DJ Drez. I need to dance in my yoga out on the grass under the summer sun and sweat out all linger winter introspection. In my head I hear the words of poets like Rumi and Rilke who dove so deep into the love of God and Nature that words tumble out of them soaked in awe. I need to whirl like a dervish inside and let my limbs move through asanas like wind just before a summer storm. And the best part of this longing for wild love type yoga? It’s out there! Yoga is there to fit into any size need you have. It’s out here to envelope you in whatever kind of shape you are in. and it is out there to shimmy up beside you and dance like no one is watching!

Quicky Blog

I do yoga, I just do it, sort of like Nike. Even when my home practice is waning and I’m beating myself up for that, I go to mow my yard and I am doing yoga. Fighting with the ancient mower up slight inclines and bumpy terrain I consciously engage my bhandas. I rotate my arms in like I was doing charuranga and I practice…my yoga.

Anyone who wants to be dedicated to yoga struggles. Anyone who’s life gets overrun and it seems like there is never 5 minutes for consciousness, if you practice yoga, than you find your yoga. Today mine was the yoga of mowing grass, the other day it was the yoga of designing sacred figures into adobe illustrator and some days it is simply the yoga of getting through the day. But there is not a decision I make good or bad that I don’t think about yoga. Sometimes I cower away from my yoga and say "I can’t I’m just not string enough today,” so what I do? I practice compassion. I give myself the day or the hour it takes to explore the self pity or the lethargy and then I move one. 

Yoga isn’t about always being ‘good’ or being ‘right’ it is about every decision you make. You fight when you can, you surrender when you need to and you accept without submitting. Yoga is a hard thing to do, it is not just getting on a mat and moving or stretching. It is every moment and we cannot hold ourselves up to being perfect every moment of every. We can only hold our selves up to the moment we are in and make the best choice for that moment and prepare for what ever that moment brings to the next moment in our lives.

Know this yogi friends, there is no end to your yoga because when you are a yogi, when you are practicing, yoga is every decision you will ever make. Good or bad, we are our yoga, yoga is not where we end up.

15 minute writing exercise blog….GO!

I just set the timer for 15 minutes. It’s a writing exercise where you just start writing whatever comes out, no editing, no going back and reading what you wrote. I’m doing this because I have not been blogging, hell I haven’t even been writing and I used to LOVE to write. I used to love seeing the world and making my observations and keeping journals full of thought meanderings and doodles and lyrics and all kinds of stuff. Writing is a practice just like yoga. And when you fall off the wagon, when you get out of your routine it’s hard to get back on. Sometimes, if it’s a minor blip, I can just chill out and rest and wait for the inspiration to come back, but not this time. I’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting….oh yeah and napping. But nothing’s coming back. I sit and stare at the little blinking cursor, I even have ideas about what I want to write about but nothing, just blinking pixels mocking my existence, my (what I once thought of as) talent. I used to think I was a good writer, sure my spelling and grammer are atrocious but I have spell just for that and grammar well I can write that off as my southern charm right? But lately it’s just a wash of………nothing. So I’m trying this little writing experience to see if I can get my juices flowing. I’m starting here with one public stream of conscious rant for all the cyber world to enjoy or not. And then I’ll take a little more disciplined path of writing. I’ll work at it. I’ll actually view this blog as an occupation, sort of occupation, no, not occupation. Practice. Like I said earlier, a practice. I will just sit and write of 15minutes a day about whatever comes into my little yoga brain. And I will reset my neuropathways, I will be a writer.

But why, why does this blog seem important to me? I don’t expect to get well known, I’ll never be a David Sedaris or….well insert the name of a blogger turned author here. But it does feel important to me. Maybe it’s because I’ve never found a blog about yoga that I like, because maybe I feel like yoga is just taken to damn seriously way too often. Sure it’s serious but it doesn’t have to read like a technical manual or a new age book promising the ultimate embrace by the Lord or Goddess or Universe or whatever! Sometimes yoga is just there, it’s just a part of us. Like the two by fours holding up our houses, it’s just the frame from which I choose to se my word. “Pause, build the foundation of your asana” I say that a lot. I guess I mean it. I guess I don’t think I need to be hit over the head with my yoga, or even told that my yoga has lofty potential. No. I just want to be reminded that yoga is there, always, every breath I take, every decision I make, ever stupid joke or pun I say and all the sacred giggles or eye rolls that follow. 

Yeah, I guess I blog because I need it. I need to remind myself about how I see yoga and I choose to make it public because that’s how I am. I share everything with my Community and even the tiny things I share sometimes find the right ears. It’s not why I blog but its part of it. Just me meandering around my brain and sharing it with a broader Community.

Ok 15 minutes up. Time to spell check!

Yoga Nugget

Sunday Funnies

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Advanced Practice Demo

Hello Yogis. I am in the middle cramming for my midterms so unfortunately I haven't been writing much. But to give you a taste of what I've been doing with my weekends since April here is an instructional video with one of my teachers Jim Bennitt at Tejas Yoga in Chicago, where I've been studying. Enjoy!

From Running to Radiohead

Is it a cliché to write about how awesome Radiohead is? Probably, but I’m going to do it anyway. 

Sometimes I run, well jog, I do it because it’s good for me and because after a run I do a 30 minute yoga practice. “Could you,” you ask, “just do a 30 minute yoga practice without running?” and yes, but there are a few things about after a run make me really love doing yoga. First my body is warm, you might even say hot and I do love to sweat. I even do hot yoga sometimes because I really enjoy creating a deep internal heat and feeling how deeply and differently asanas feel in that state. Also if I don’t push myself too hard but also not be to gentle my mind is in a very pliable state after I run. I don’t want to sit down a do a crossword puzzle but the rhythm of running can get me to a place where I can really concentrate. So I do a very slow yoga practice, getting into only a handful of postures and staying there for around 30 slow and controlled breathes. Running increases and expands respiration so it’s nice to harness that breath into a concentrated effort. Also the heat in my muscles allows me to really “get into” the asanas. 

“Wait, I thought she was going to talk about Radiohead?” I am, and I will, I’m just creating a little scene for you.

Also after a run, at least when Wisconsin isn’t covered in snow I always do post run yoga outside. I love yoga outside, listening to nature, enjoying the occasional cloud burst and even basking in the sun and keeping a little of that heat with me. So yesterday after my run, I plopped down on the deck out back with my dog and started my slow, breath centered practice. Pigeon on each side with a little sun salute between the sides, pyramid for the back of the legs and a few variations of wide legged forward folds. Pretty standard but usually I do a few more to round it off but to I got distracted, by Radiohead.

I normally don’t run with music (mostly because my ears are tiny and reject all forms of ear buds) but yesterday I ran with a playlist made by a good friend who has a much broader (better) taste in music than me. Happily there are quite a few Radiohead songs on there and though it was on shuffle I got 2 in a row! Through the ear buds the music penetrated my concentration or rather took it to a different place. I didn’t want to be doing asana anymore, I wanted to be sitting in the sun and, well, that’s it, just sitting in the sun, while the music pushed all other thoughts away and I could fall into its rhythm. Some may not call that a “proper” meditation but it sure felt like it to me, the music sounded different in my head because it sounded like it was in my head, not being piped in over background noise. 

As the second song ended I had a moment of panic that whatever song played next would pull me from this beautiful contentment I was swimming in but it didn’t. It was another Radiohead song, you know the one, we all love it, let’s say it together now, “Fake Plastic Trees” I know total cliché. But the thing is it wasn’t. Normally I hear this song and want to weep, I identify with the weary vocals and sullen melody but today I heard it differently, when the famous line “it wears her out…” came through I didn’t feel worn out, I didn’t feel drug through the mire, I felt at peace, I felt like, in a way, I had worn my ego out and it surrendered its grip on all that fake plastic stuff it clings to, the stuff that keeps me from being who I want to be, all the time, all the time… (you know the song, right, I don’t have to make that reference, right). 

So Radiohead, pretty amazing band and pretty amazing meditation technique too, who would have thought.

Yoga of Heartbreak

It said that yoga begins the moment you want to leave the posture that is also true of relationships. If you love someone but there is struggle and even pain it’s just like being in a difficult yoga pose, you have 2 choices: you can get out of there, back to the safety and comfort of child’s pose, or a friends couch or a bottle of wine. Or you can stay and work, you can listen to your body and learn how to adjust your self so that the strain eases some but you also keep going deeper into the asana or deeper into the love between you and your partner.

I’ve been doing yoga for a few years now and there are still many asana I haven’t mastered, in fact full pigeon I think is something I will only experience in my dreams (yes I dream about yoga poses). But I still work towards opening my body because I know that it’s not getting into that picture perfect magazine cover expression of the pose, it’s about all the work that I do on the way there. It’s accepting my practice each day for what it is. And each day brings its own challenges. Just like a relationship. To love someone so fully that you accept exactly where you are each day for what it is, celebrating the moments that where so precious and looking forward to the moments not yet created. So there you are on your mat all warmed up and energized as you begin to move into that asana when you hit the edge, you are questioning whether or not to go further. Should you draw back and do a few more preparatory poses, did you exert all your effort already and can’t push any more or do you push too far and fall out of the practice all together. The metaphor should be self explanatory. This is where your yoga begins, the working it out part, the stick to, the good faith effort because you know deep down that this yoga stuff is good for you just like you know this relationship is good for you. But then sometimes it’s not.

What if a relationship or an asana just isn’t for you? What if you’ve been working for something but it remains unavailable to you. This is also where yoga begins. Yoga is also acceptance. Sometimes there are things our bodies just can’t obtain, so this time yoga isn’t moving deeper it’s being where you are, learning your lesson and moving on. Sometimes in class I tell my students when they come to a difficult asana to ‘wrap it up in love’ and try it again. And that’s what I’ve been doing in my yoga off the mat, when the difficulties arose I would wrap my whole relationship up in love and try again. I wanted to love my relationship into working just like I want to love my thoracic spine into a beautiful back bend.  But it’s not time for back bending and it’s not time for pushing anymore. There will always be love around my former relationship, there will always be quite a lot of love in fact but it’s time to step away and accept that this practice is now the practice of letting go. This yoga of heartbreak is about observing and healing and eventually growing. Maybe one day pigeon will be less elusive and maybe one day my thoracic spine will open enough so that this heart of mine can find some more love. But for now it’s me, my dog, and the mat; Om Y’all.

and so it begins

1.1 ATHA YOGANUSASANAM
Now the exposition of yoga begins.

I thought this seemed an appropriate way to "re-launch" Sutra Monday. And yes Monday is almost over (at least the working day part) but I’m working on that whole blogger timing thing.

When I prepare for a sutra blog I don’t just read Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, I read several different version and explanations. Some of them written as late as 1951, so there are more modern versions out there which tend to have language easier to get your head wrapped around. But for this sutra it was the last line of Patanjali’s sutras, as translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda that gave me the inspiration for this blog, it reads: Without practice, nothing can be achieved.

I like to write, I like getting into a rhythm, feeling the creative juices flowing, finding the right words to line up in a sentence that relates not only a meaning, but imagery and emotions to. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t usually I just let it happen when it’s happening and don’t push it when it’s not. But that can often lead to a rather empty blog, so I tried to instill a little discipline to my writing via Sutra Friday. Well I didn’t account for how busy my life is right now so I moved it to Monday which didn’t make my life any less busy so I’m not sure why I thought I’d be more prepared to blog a few days later. But not doing something just because time is short isn’t the way to have discipline, so here I am blogging about yoga, how yoga begins. This is me beginning my yoga.

This is my practice. I am transforming my writing from a habit to a practice just like I did with my asana practice. I took my physical yoga from being something I did every now and again to something I did daily (when in yoga school at least) and not only did I start to love my asana (yeah, go ahead and read that pun into it) I began to love all of it, all the yoga, the Sanskrit, the history, the stories. A whole new world opened up to me when I simply had little discipline, a little practice. Now do think writing every week is going to crack open a new world of enlightenment, no. Well, maybe. Maybe this practice of reading sacred text and relaying what I glean from them will help their bigger meanings sink in better for me. Maybe I’ll start reading things I never thought I would and finding new paths along the road to enlightenment. Maybe I’ll start to love writing so much that I start writing letters to my family and friends far away, making their day better and then they call me and make my days better and we all find a little more happiness. So yeah, maybe writing will be a powerful tool for change in my life but I have to do it because just like the Swami says: “Without practice, nothing can be achieved.”