Community As Such

What is community? I almost hesitate to begin this entry because community is such a commonly used word and everyone one has their own definition. But then again that can be said of many other words as well such as: family, religion, truth and love. So I’m not going to go on about what I think community is but rather share a few instances when I felt community; either as a part of it or as witness to it.

The Village Community

I’ll start with my village; among myself and my siblings we’ve always be partial to the saying “it takes a village to raise a child.” Having grown up with a broad extended family which I lovingly refer to as “the granola heads” our extended family included Catholics, Buddhists, Atheists, Artists, Musicians, Laborers and more. They were a tribe. And they instilled in me (and I think for my brothers and sisters as well) the belief that you draw to the people you need in life too you, those people are your village/community and that community becomes your family. So after I left home I went out into the world looking for my place, I knew I was going to be a gypsy for while because I held on to the belief that when I found the right place the universe would let me know. And 10 years later I did. I settled into a tiny town (so tiny in fact that it is technically a village, no joke) with an amazing community. Here I mean community as the town itself; the shops, the local artist, the farms the people behind the counters at the bank. It’s that kind of “soul” of a place that people allude to when talking about where they live. And I also settled into a nice community which you could call my family of friends. We all pitch in to help each other out be it taking someone’s kid to after school activities or watching someone’s dog or even dropping dinner over when someone has had a busy day. We look out for each other. A community recognizes its own needs within itself and fills them without question or hesitation.

The Collective Community

Recently I discovered another kind of community. I was off on a 2 ½ day yoga conference so excited to meet other yogis and other teachers and most excitedly to simply be a student for a while. I promised myself I would be more outgoing in the hopes of meeting some people I could develop friendships with. And I did connect with a few people I hope to stay in touch with but what I found more interesting was the kind of instant and fleeting friendships that were created. A lovely sort of 15 minute friendship lived out in the time between workshops and speakers. These brief encounters lifted my spirits but they did not symbolize community for me, that happened when I was silent, most often right before a workshop started, sitting and gazing around at rooms packed with yogis all with the purpose of practicing and learning together. In fact a few instructors had us turn to the people around us and say “Namaste” to acknowledge this fact, it did on few instances bring me to tears. I’ve always felt like yoga is a gift and there I was surrounded by nearly 400 people who felt the same way. But not as though it was a gift to me or to them but a gift to give away and share and love and revel in for one weekend together and on out into the world after that. See we were a community of communities, we all came from different places as representatives of our own community; some as students, some as teachers, some just curious. And we came together to grow and strengthen as one and then disperse taking with us new tools and knowledge back to our own communities to grow and strengthen them.

The Unwavering Community

This morning I saw community defined. I’m in Erie visiting my Grandmother who last year moved into an assisted living facility. She’s not doing to bad but over the past few months she’s started a downward spiral that has sent shock waves of worry and grief through the family. The thing that made me draw my breath in with anxiety was when I heard she had stopped going to morning Mass. My Grandmother is a devout Catholic and she’s what I like to call “old school Catholic.” She doesn’t judge, she doesn’t preach she simply embodies love, forgiveness and compassion. To my mind, the way religion is supposed to be. My grandmother’s church is her community. They rallied around her when my Grandfather died with loving arms and prayers for peace. So when her body finally weakened to the point where she could no longer get up and visit her community any along her community got up and came to her. I had no idea they were doing this until this morning when I was visiting her and a woman walked in who was obviously not a nurse. I was unfamiliar to her as well so she assumed I was there for physical therapy she said she’d quickly give my Grandmother communion and leave us be. When I heard that I nearly cried, I explained that I was her visiting granddaughter and she should take her time. As I sat there listening to her read my Grandmother prayers I did in fact cry. Not because I was sad, though that was mixed in there too, but because I was blown away by this act of kindness within a community. The woman told me how much they all love my Grandmother and miss her and how lucky I am to have her genes in me. I thanked her from the bottom of my heart when she left. She had brought kindness and hope not just to my Grandmother this morning but to me as well and when I leave here I know now that not only does my Grandmother have her family here to love and support her but she’s also got one amazing community. Amen!

small change

My friend believes in change, she has big thoughts and aspirations, she writes eloquently about politics and offers up ways to bring opposing sides together to create a greater good, a true peace. I admire her for this it is not something I am wired for. In fact my exact words to her where, “I’d really like to be the kind of person who called their representative and signed petitions but our system it just so broken that it doesn’t do any good.” And the moment after the sentence landed out there in the ether of our discussion I felt a little broken hearted, I had just said out load that I had no faith. Have I given up on humanity, have I become so discouraged by our government that I have given up on positive change happening for people; red, blue or otherwise color coded. I left our brief conversation at the breakfast table and headed off to my studio to dust away cobwebs and mop the floor for a restorative class that evening. As I swept and tidied I pondered my friend’s belief in the system and her unwavering belief that we can change the government and what exactly am I doing to bring about good things and then I went up stairs. Standing in the loft and looking out over the studio I was washed over with a feeling of love and I thought to myself “I hope this feeling never goes away, I hope to always be overwhelmed by this place,” this place that has so much of my spirit in it this place that I created with the hopes of creating a very small change. The kind of change that happens inside of someone, a small shift on a very deep level that can then trickle out into the world. It’s like this:

The other day my friend and I were driving through a shopping center. We stopped to let a couple cross in the cross walk, it was a shortish balding man with a little beer belly pushing a wheelchair with a woman (assumed to be his wife) in it, both carry armfuls of shopping bags and smiling and laughing with their entire beings. We watched and smiled back and I commented on how happy they must be about life right now and my friend said how that made her day and her smile. And all they were doing was shopping and being together but their happiness affected us and brought us happiness, joy you might even say.

That story came back as I pushed the mop around my studio making ready for my student to come that evening and to hopefully leave a little happier, or peaceful or contented. That is the kind of change I have faith in, small change within our community and among the people you encounter everyday. Just imagine what kind of happiness you could inspire if you decided to smile for day, or what if you practiced peace for a day or non-judgment or compassion. All of these are principles I offer up to my student and I haven’t mastered all of them, I’m still on a journey just like they are. But what I sincerely hope is that within this place they can feel all that love I feel and that they can feel supported and safe enough to find their own bliss and maybe share that bliss, even if it comes only in the form of a smile.

a love letter

I was walking through the woods today taking in the sights and smells of autumn so I guess it was the brilliance of change that fall brings that got me to thinking about my yoga students and how far they have come since I began teaching in earnest this year. I went through each student and as though they were walking and talking with me I said in my head to them, “I challenge your self practice to be…” fill in whatever (I felt) an appropriate lesson for that person to focus on. And then I thought “what would I challenge myself to practice?” and the answer came not so softly as “I CHALLENGE YOU TO DO IT BECAUSE YOU LOVE YOURSELF!” I mean really! Really, how often do I do things for people because I love them and they appreciate it and are grateful that’s not the lesson. The lesson is why don’t I do things to help myself because I love ME? There I was sitting down at the bottom of a pit of depression with all the tools I needed to get better and I just couldn’t do it. I know how to meditate I know how to do yoga and what’s more I know how important they are to maintaining sanity and, to be simple, joy. But I couldn’t muster up the love to do it for myself or for my health and wellbeing. I came to the studio everyday and taught lessons to students whom I love greatly but I also felt like a fraud. What right did I have to lead them in yoga for an hour each day when I couldn’t bare to be on the mat for 15 minutes at home? And who did I think I was imploring them to have compassion for themselves and their practice when I was out right disgusted with my state of being. But I did, I kept up the pretense that I was fine because I love my fellow yogis and I did not want to abandon them on their path. So I guess it was only natural that the key to unlocking my own love was born from love of them. I had to put myself in the role of student and teach myself how to love me. The road back to life from depression is long and I am just beginning but everyday I feel a little better, in fact everyday I feel like I’m falling back in love with life. Everyday that I get on my mat and do yoga my body remembers why I started this in the first place. There are days I don’t want to practice but I remind myself that yoga is how I take care of me, it is how I love me, even if it’s only a few sun salutes in the kitchen its an exercise in compassion. So please, please dear yogis know that now when I talk to you about love and compassion and how I understand what struggle it is you can be sure I’m speaking genuinely because I am living those lessons right now. And it is the love that I have for my students that brought me back to loving myself again and for that I thank you.

Hallelujah

Apparently if you want to get people’s attention just quote Leonard Cohen. I have a facebook account, I use it mainly for yoga promotion but I do keep up with friends and play a lot of Scrabble as well but the main thing is the yoga. So a while back I promised myself that I would post nothing negative in my status updates, only uplifting, yoga related or positive one liners to the virtual world. So yesterday was a hard day, in fact it been a hard few days but it was a struggle I need to go through because I learned some pretty amazing lessons. And yesterday I was wading through a sea of emotions after a serious heart to heart I found myself staring at my facebook page. There was so much inside of me that I wanted to express but I could find a way to say that didn’t seem like self pity or a desperate cry for attention and then Hallelujah came on. And after weeping my way through the entire song I thought about the line “love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah…” and that was it, that was exactly what I felt like. I think love is amazing, I think loving someone as a lover or friend or family is a wonderful way to feel love but that’s not the kind of love I had to express yesterday. The kind of love of I had to express was the kind for love you find while searching blindly at the end of a dark tunnel and looking for the light. It’s the kind of love I found way down at the bottom of myself when all the other pieces felt broken. It’s the kind of love you find when you ask for forgiveness and compassion. When the whole world feels like its falling in on you but you can sit among the rubble love that rubble because it is all the pieces of you. The cold and broken Hallelujah to me it the tattered rope that I use to pull myself up with, it is hope. Like a lotus flower growing from the muck it is like reaching out into all that is broken and touching the divine.

momentary bliss

It could have been the closing scene of any romantic comedy where after struggling with hardship and heart ache the heroine finally succeeds and realizes how full her life really is. Yes, it could have been and it happened at Second Star and it actually wasn’t that big of a deal and at the same time it was the biggest deal of all. There was a gallery night at the studio last night, the opening of a new artist showcase. It was all very laid back; a few bottles of wine, a decent turnout, a few passersby drawn in by the open doors. And while during the night I was pleased and enjoyed myself it wasn’t until after everyone left that it hit me. (This is where the movie reference comes in) The last few hugs here exchanged, the artist packed up and left me there with Billie Holiday crooning on the cd player and I put the studio to bed; blowing out candles and unplugging mood lighting and as the studio grew darker I found myself in the middle of the room with just a few stands of lights left on and feeling what i can only imagine as bliss. Suddenly I looked around and saw everything I have worked for right there in front of me, I had opened my heart and people showed up. In fact people appreciated the offering. As I stood there letting the letting the emotion and music seeping into my bones I wept. I wept because I was in one of those moments of pure consciousness that the great yogis talk about and I was not only in it but fully aware and present in it. I felt like my body had dissolved into the floor and the walls and the strip lights and the beautiful paintings on the wall I felt like a part of it all, I was one with everything around me. Being one, that is the concept at the heart of yoga and I never got it until last night. I could rationally assume that the idea of being connected to everything and being one with divinity was a valid one and something obtainable with enough discipline. But I didn’t think I’d ever actually believe in it, which is something I have long struggled with as a yoga teacher and as a person in general. I live so much of my life from my gut letting my reason catch up in time. And my gut usually does pretty well and even though it may take my logical brain some time to get there eventually one day the light switches on and I think “yeah, all that stuff I’ve been saying I get that.” Not just that I feel it but that I get it. But when it comes down to the concept of oneness I was completely turned around. The only explanation I could come up with is that the concept of oneness is so closely related to the ideas of religion which is something I just don’t feel. Now I respect religion but for as much of religion that I could rationalize I just never “felt” it. And yoga is not a religion. Yoga is not a religion. It is however a way of life with the understanding that there is something greater than ourselves and you can put whatever name on that something that you like. And furthermore that that greater something is not outside of you but it is inside of you just like it is inside of everyone else as well and that something in us all binds us together as well. We are all one and we are all one with divinity. Every day I get up in front of a yoga class I try to express a tiny fraction of that concept and now I will come to class with a new understanding and a renewed passion for this way of life I have chosen. Because last night for one moment I felt it, I knew it in my heart and in my gut and I that I want to share.