Hey all,
This article was originally posted in elephant journal, which is an amazing online journal about yoga and meditation. You can see the original article here, or read on:
Secrets to the Warrior Power in your Belly: Exploring the Core through the Chakras
by Julie (JC) Peters
Have you ever been in a yoga class where the teacher is making you go through a series of crunches, or core planks, or boat pose, and you start to feel your belly burning, and you just get this image in your head of punching that teacher in her smug little face? Really, really hard?
I have. Core work does that to me sometimes. And I love it. (Though i don’t usually follow through, of course.)
There's something about working the muscles of your core that is different than working other areas of your body. Feeling your thighs burn is just not as psychosis-inducing as a few innocent-looking little crunches.
One of the things asana yoga can do is stimulate centres of energy in your body called Chakras. There are seven of them (depending on who you ask) and for the purposes of this article, we will be focusing on the lower three, all of which reside in the belly: Muladhara, the root chakra, Svadisthana, the sacral chakra, and Manipura, the solar plexus. These lower chakras have to do with ourselves as individuals: our basic needs and instincts, our emotions, our desires, and our egos. All of our crap is located in our lower chakras (and not just theoretically). The belly holds all of our anger, our desires, our shame, our fear, and our unresolved issues. Poses that work the belly, our bodies know on a deep instinctual level, could create some seismic shi(f)ts.
Engaging the core must always start at the beginning: the root. According to yoga philosophy, we have a magical little spot in our bodies called mula bandha. Located at the pelvic diaphragm, the pelvic floor, the perineum, that special area that we contract when we want to keep shit to ourselves, this magical little spot is the key to the door of our inner power. Reema Datta and Leza Lowitz describe it this way:
“‘mula’ means ‘root,’ ‘origin,’ or ‘source.’ [...] Many yoga practitioners consider mula bandha to be the secret to maintaining strong life-force energy. Mula bandha is a grounding, centering force that helps to create heat, protects the overstretching of muscles, and increases the functioning of the parasympathetic nervous system that is responsible for relaxation. Engaging mula bandha thus creates a relaxed state in the midst of deep movement” (Sacred Sanskrit Words).
They make it sound so easeful. It can be. What’s happening from a physical perspective is this: when we engage the pelvic floor, we can set off a chain reaction in the body that becomes the Deep Core Line. This is a series of muscles that run from the inner arches of the feet, through the inner legs, mula bandha, the low belly, middle belly and diaphragm, through the chest and into the palms, and all the way up to the tongue itself. The belly becomes the brain of this physical connection, the control centre. Did you know that the digestive system has as many neurons as the spinal cord? It has its own unique intelligence, and one that most of us spend our time overriding with the crazy reasonings of our overworked brains. Turning on this deep core line can create access to a completely new kind of intelligence that runs through the whole body, and through several other bandhas, or locks, in the upper belly, the throat, the hands and feet, and the tongue. If you could actually see this electric current turning on, it might look like something out of the anime TV show Avatar: the Last Airbender, when the magic of earth, air, fire, and water come together to create a mythical beast of power. Anyway it feels that way when I do it. Like a skinny, gangly yoga teacher turning into Optimus Prime. It's awesome.
Part of the reason turning on your core can feel so supernatural is because when you turn on the Deep Core Line through your lowest chakra, you get each one of those seven wheels spinning, right up to the Crown, where we connect with the universal or the divine. But first, we must plant our roots: Muladhara is the chakra that connects your feet to the earth. It connects us to our most basic selves that need nourishment, shelter, and protection. It's where we hide our fear. Svadisthana Chakra, located on the level of the sacrum, is our centre of pleasure, desire, lovemaking, creativity, romance, and emotion. Our shame is hidden here. Manipura Chakra is located at the solar plexus, around or above the navel itself. Though core engagement begins at Muladhara, the chakra that is often most stimulated is actually Manipura, the solar plexus.
Manipura is our centre of personal power. This is where we feel determination, willpower, the ability to manifest our desires, our ego, and yes, anger. Its Sanskrit name means "lustrous gem" and it is represented by a bright yellow sun. This is the fire that can distill diamonds from coal. It is what can sort through the shit and find the gems. A lot of us, women especially, have issues with the solar plexus chakra: issues of speaking up, standing up for ourselves, and self-protection. Working the physical core can often bring up those feelings of weakness, inadequacy, fear, shame, and then that familiar desire to punch the teacher in the face or yell at the father with his adorable daughter riding in front of me on a bicycle built for two going TOO SLOW YOU ASSHOLES! (I didn’t actually say that. Just so you know.)
I discovered that the more I could access the power in my centre, the less unstable those red hot emotions started to feel. I started to feel powerful. I started to do the things I had been planning on getting to for months. I started to speak up when someone wasn't treating me right. I was able to channel that anger into confidence, finding my own inner power, as a woman, yes, but as me, which is a big part of what Manipura is all about: your sense of yourself.
I also learned that as important engaging the pelvic floor is, releasing it is equally important. If the power you access through core work stays in the solar plexus and can’t move out, the anger and the ego start to burn you up from the inside out. Being on fire is sometimes necessary, but at some point we need to hose that baby off.
The pelvic floor is the key to turning on the core, but also the key to releasing energy that needs to move on. Because our issues of control are stored in the belly region, we tend to walk around with tension there unconsciously, which blocks the flow between the chakras. Consciously activating the core can also teach us how to consciously let it go: this is the secret to the power in your belly. By wading into the mystery waters of our bellies and exploring them on our own terms, we can begin to access the courage of the true warrior. My favourite Persian poet Hafiz describes the warrior this way:
The warrior
Wisely sits in a circle
With other men
Gathering the strength to unmask
Himself,
Then
Sits, giving.
Like a great illumined planet on
The
Earth.
In other words, It takes real bravery to get to know your own shit and find diamonds. It takes even more courage to then let them go.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Yoga: pictures of anxiety
I have been haunted, these past weeks, by terrible dreams, fears of earthquakes, and the coffee-buzz hands-trembling anxiety of these words from the news: "consider the earth shaking to be your warning to evacuate the building." That's your warning, folks, the earth moving under your feet. Get the hell out of the way, we can't help ya now.
In the meantime, spring has sprung, the warm weather is goosing everyone and my students are still coming to the mat to play. My students, coming to the mat, looking up at me with this supermoon, end-of-the-world desire to step up onto their hands and do something really fun and crazy and good, has been helping me more than they will probably ever know.
I have something called Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It makes me think of this time when a friend of mine had this skin problem near her mouth. She went to the doctor, and he diagnosed her with something called Perioral Dermatitis, which translates literally from the latin to "skin problem near the mouth."
All doctors seem to know about Generalized Anxiety Disorder is that you get anxious, just generally, with no specific reason. And there are drugs you can take for that. That they know.
I think a lot of people have this disorder. The buzzing phones, the computer screens, the mutating diseases, the news, the coffee, the tsunamis have us all in a state of semi-shock, and we get all tight in the belly and can't release our collective pelvic floors. I think the inside of my head, some days, looks like a cluttered bedroom floor with dirty clothes and half-eaten sandwiches and past-due applications and all kinds of things all over it culminating in a burgeoning mushroom cloud of stuff. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, if you think it's a mess out there, you should see what it's like in here.
Yoga attracts a lot of people like me. We need it so badly, especially now, because our world is so crazy, and yoga is this place where you can just be present, in a room, on a mat, with yourself or with your community, and really, that's all you need to know. I don't do yoga because it gives me a nice bum or because I can do handstands now. I do yoga because it's alive, because it tames the mushroom clouds, and because it's home.
I've been reading this book recently called Yoga 2.0 by Matthew Remski and Scott Petrie. It's a slim little volume about yoga in the 21st century, what we think it is, and what we think it was. This quotation, I think, explains why so many of us choose to call yoga home:
Asana [yoga postures] practice has the potential to constitute the recovery of the unseen, simply by shifting us away from visual focus. The unseen we seek need not be confused with a metaphysical force, but rather what is most literally felt, tasted, etc. While the whole world looks for atman [soul] in HD, the yogi can enter absorption by feeling the warmth of his own hand, laying upon his own thigh.
We spend so much time in this world looking; often we override what we feel with what we can see. Yoga, for many, is actually defined now by these images of beautiful smiling women tying themselves up in knots on the cover of Yoga Journal. It is something we can do on a playstation, with a virtual teacher who can't actually see us. When we are looking at something to see what we should be doing (including a mirror) we become self conscious, we start scanning for imperfections, for the ways in which we are not what we see. We are in another zone of anxiety, and we lose our sense of ourselves without our senses.
When I sit down on my mat, with a teacher and fellow students encouraging me to focus and breathe, i can actually do it. I remember...something. Something I don't need to put into words here. Something I don't want to intellectualize, but just want to feel. My brain works hard enough in the world, and I'm starting to want my gut to be a lot more involved.
I can not listen to one of my favourite teachers, Shiva Rea, and do what she is asking me to do on a yoga DVD. I can't follow through with it. I have tried five times. I love her teaching because it's brought me something living through her students who have become my teachers, something beautiful and flowing and very much alive, and when she is this recorded image on a screen my body rebels, stops listening to her, and starts going with my own flow, and hearing her voice as an irritating distraction. How can she feed me any nourishment from this yoga if we are not even in the same room?
I'm not saying images of yoga are always bad--when NOT on the mat they can be very useful, especially for teaching purposes. But when I am tired and scared and haunted and I wanna go home, I'd rather just be in a room with my students, those beautiful women and men high on the full moon who want to play, and I'd rather play. And if they are not around, well then I'd rather be alone, eyes closed, blasting John Lee Hooker and BB King and letting the blues teach me what my body can do. I'd rather be alive, animal, human, me, with the photographic evidence in another place, another time.
The world is trying hard enough to kill me with general anxiety. On my mat, I'm gonna close my eyes, and breathe myself alive. I'd rather do this with you.
In the meantime, spring has sprung, the warm weather is goosing everyone and my students are still coming to the mat to play. My students, coming to the mat, looking up at me with this supermoon, end-of-the-world desire to step up onto their hands and do something really fun and crazy and good, has been helping me more than they will probably ever know.
I have something called Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It makes me think of this time when a friend of mine had this skin problem near her mouth. She went to the doctor, and he diagnosed her with something called Perioral Dermatitis, which translates literally from the latin to "skin problem near the mouth."
All doctors seem to know about Generalized Anxiety Disorder is that you get anxious, just generally, with no specific reason. And there are drugs you can take for that. That they know.
I think a lot of people have this disorder. The buzzing phones, the computer screens, the mutating diseases, the news, the coffee, the tsunamis have us all in a state of semi-shock, and we get all tight in the belly and can't release our collective pelvic floors. I think the inside of my head, some days, looks like a cluttered bedroom floor with dirty clothes and half-eaten sandwiches and past-due applications and all kinds of things all over it culminating in a burgeoning mushroom cloud of stuff. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, if you think it's a mess out there, you should see what it's like in here.
Yoga attracts a lot of people like me. We need it so badly, especially now, because our world is so crazy, and yoga is this place where you can just be present, in a room, on a mat, with yourself or with your community, and really, that's all you need to know. I don't do yoga because it gives me a nice bum or because I can do handstands now. I do yoga because it's alive, because it tames the mushroom clouds, and because it's home.
I've been reading this book recently called Yoga 2.0 by Matthew Remski and Scott Petrie. It's a slim little volume about yoga in the 21st century, what we think it is, and what we think it was. This quotation, I think, explains why so many of us choose to call yoga home:
Asana [yoga postures] practice has the potential to constitute the recovery of the unseen, simply by shifting us away from visual focus. The unseen we seek need not be confused with a metaphysical force, but rather what is most literally felt, tasted, etc. While the whole world looks for atman [soul] in HD, the yogi can enter absorption by feeling the warmth of his own hand, laying upon his own thigh.
We spend so much time in this world looking; often we override what we feel with what we can see. Yoga, for many, is actually defined now by these images of beautiful smiling women tying themselves up in knots on the cover of Yoga Journal. It is something we can do on a playstation, with a virtual teacher who can't actually see us. When we are looking at something to see what we should be doing (including a mirror) we become self conscious, we start scanning for imperfections, for the ways in which we are not what we see. We are in another zone of anxiety, and we lose our sense of ourselves without our senses.
When I sit down on my mat, with a teacher and fellow students encouraging me to focus and breathe, i can actually do it. I remember...something. Something I don't need to put into words here. Something I don't want to intellectualize, but just want to feel. My brain works hard enough in the world, and I'm starting to want my gut to be a lot more involved.
I can not listen to one of my favourite teachers, Shiva Rea, and do what she is asking me to do on a yoga DVD. I can't follow through with it. I have tried five times. I love her teaching because it's brought me something living through her students who have become my teachers, something beautiful and flowing and very much alive, and when she is this recorded image on a screen my body rebels, stops listening to her, and starts going with my own flow, and hearing her voice as an irritating distraction. How can she feed me any nourishment from this yoga if we are not even in the same room?
I'm not saying images of yoga are always bad--when NOT on the mat they can be very useful, especially for teaching purposes. But when I am tired and scared and haunted and I wanna go home, I'd rather just be in a room with my students, those beautiful women and men high on the full moon who want to play, and I'd rather play. And if they are not around, well then I'd rather be alone, eyes closed, blasting John Lee Hooker and BB King and letting the blues teach me what my body can do. I'd rather be alive, animal, human, me, with the photographic evidence in another place, another time.
The world is trying hard enough to kill me with general anxiety. On my mat, I'm gonna close my eyes, and breathe myself alive. I'd rather do this with you.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Truth, yoga, jazz, rap
Satya.
This beautiful sankskrit word means "truth," and it's one of the 8 limbs of classical yoga. Like one of the ten commandments: Don't lie! it sits there solemnly, quietly inching its way under my skin.
For some reason, this is the aspect of classical yoga that I keep coming back to again and again. And not because it's easy.
For me, this word means a lot more than just "don't lie." It means be honest with the people around you and with yourself. We are better at lying to ourselves than anyone else has ever been capable. Did you know that there is a specific part of our brains whose entire purpose is to tell us stories about reality when it doesn't make easy sense? It fills in colours and blind spots in our vision that we can't really see. It rationalizes movements of the body that don't correspond with decisions we've made in our minds. It is constantly explaining the world for us, like a caring mother who does not want their sweet baby to see the truth.
This is immensely useful, actually--it's really what you need when you are trying to get from A to B, or survive, which is the general evolutionary purpose of every part of the brain when you ask a neuroscientist about it. But it's not always useful when you are trying to break a pattern or change something in your life or stop lying to yourself.
Over the last little while, I've decided to start taking some of my own advice: Pussy up, be honest, and show people who you really are. (well I don't phrase it like that in my yoga classes.) I'm a spoken word poet: the sort of label that makes me seem like I must smoke cigarettes, own a beret, be fantastically, immaturely angry at the world for what it's done to me, and have no capacity for maintaining healthy human relationships (some of these things are quite true for many spoken word poets). I'm also a yoga teacher, which means I'm supposed to be peaceful all the time and never feel angry or drink beer or have any problems (not a single yoga teacher in the universe, I'm pretty sure, is like that). My versions of these two personalities go quite well together really, like a dish that sounds strange but once you try it you'll never go back: popcorn with olive oil and nutritional yeast. Seriously. Try it.
Some of the interesting ways this has manifested itself:
the Yoga Jazz Rap: It's a long story, but suffice it to say I found myself onstage in the Jazz Cellar a little while ago 'rapping' spoken word with a hip hop artist and a full jazz band. And it was about the best thing that ever happened to me.
East Side Yoga Studio teams up with Vancouver Poetry House : My little yoga studio is partnering up with the organization that puts on the poety slam: we will be donating free yoga classes to every slam, hosting writing and yoga/writing workshops at our studio, and otherwise collaborating to make the world a better place.
And, my personal favourite: The East Side Yoga Studio Art Party! : On Saturday, March 26th, we will be getting poets, musicians, band members, and yoga dancers together to perform and party at Cafe Deux Soleils, the same veune that hosts the poetry slam. Cover will be $5 minimum donation, and it will be the strangest and best show you've ever seen. You can see the facebook event for it here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=174930052552047
So my advice to you for this week: be honest about who you are, put the pieces together. You might end up being the world's first Yoga Jazz Rapper. After me, of course.
This beautiful sankskrit word means "truth," and it's one of the 8 limbs of classical yoga. Like one of the ten commandments: Don't lie! it sits there solemnly, quietly inching its way under my skin.
For some reason, this is the aspect of classical yoga that I keep coming back to again and again. And not because it's easy.
For me, this word means a lot more than just "don't lie." It means be honest with the people around you and with yourself. We are better at lying to ourselves than anyone else has ever been capable. Did you know that there is a specific part of our brains whose entire purpose is to tell us stories about reality when it doesn't make easy sense? It fills in colours and blind spots in our vision that we can't really see. It rationalizes movements of the body that don't correspond with decisions we've made in our minds. It is constantly explaining the world for us, like a caring mother who does not want their sweet baby to see the truth.
This is immensely useful, actually--it's really what you need when you are trying to get from A to B, or survive, which is the general evolutionary purpose of every part of the brain when you ask a neuroscientist about it. But it's not always useful when you are trying to break a pattern or change something in your life or stop lying to yourself.
Over the last little while, I've decided to start taking some of my own advice: Pussy up, be honest, and show people who you really are. (well I don't phrase it like that in my yoga classes.) I'm a spoken word poet: the sort of label that makes me seem like I must smoke cigarettes, own a beret, be fantastically, immaturely angry at the world for what it's done to me, and have no capacity for maintaining healthy human relationships (some of these things are quite true for many spoken word poets). I'm also a yoga teacher, which means I'm supposed to be peaceful all the time and never feel angry or drink beer or have any problems (not a single yoga teacher in the universe, I'm pretty sure, is like that). My versions of these two personalities go quite well together really, like a dish that sounds strange but once you try it you'll never go back: popcorn with olive oil and nutritional yeast. Seriously. Try it.
Some of the interesting ways this has manifested itself:
the Yoga Jazz Rap: It's a long story, but suffice it to say I found myself onstage in the Jazz Cellar a little while ago 'rapping' spoken word with a hip hop artist and a full jazz band. And it was about the best thing that ever happened to me.
East Side Yoga Studio teams up with Vancouver Poetry House : My little yoga studio is partnering up with the organization that puts on the poety slam: we will be donating free yoga classes to every slam, hosting writing and yoga/writing workshops at our studio, and otherwise collaborating to make the world a better place.
And, my personal favourite: The East Side Yoga Studio Art Party! : On Saturday, March 26th, we will be getting poets, musicians, band members, and yoga dancers together to perform and party at Cafe Deux Soleils, the same veune that hosts the poetry slam. Cover will be $5 minimum donation, and it will be the strangest and best show you've ever seen. You can see the facebook event for it here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=174930052552047
So my advice to you for this week: be honest about who you are, put the pieces together. You might end up being the world's first Yoga Jazz Rapper. After me, of course.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
My new year's resolution is to not make any resolutions
It's January 6th. I suppose I should be at a gym somewhere burning off holiday calories or making to do lists for the rest of my life. But I am instead drinking coffee under a fuzzy blanket at 10:45 am on a Thursday. Oh, the life of a yoga teacher.
January is a strange time of year: the holidays are, for most of us, stressful in one sense or another: we see family. We don't see family. We see our partner's family. We eat too much. We drink too much. We rest too much. We work too much. It's a time of pure indulgence for some and struggling to get through it for others. Usually our bodies end up mad at us for some reason or another.
And just because it's the beginning of January doesn't mean it's any warmer or brighter than it was two weeks ago: I'm starting to think the coldest and darkest season of the year is NOT the best time to be making huge life decisions.
Especially since so many of us make these extreme New Year's Resolutions that essentially say: this is the year I give up chocolate/booze/sugar/fun! I will be a whole new person, this is the year to do it! Everything will change....NOW!
I think we should reevaluate this masochistic "holiday" for a moment here. How about we give ourselves a break? Ease back into the new routine slowly, rest a little, eat good food, and take the pressure off? Life is stressful enough, why add more to it unnecessarily? The spring is a much more reasonable time to be taking on big tasks. There's SUN at that time.
My New Year's Resolution is to be easier on myself. Hence coffee and fuzzy blankets at 10:45am. I am proud of that.
And I have a suggestion. What if we stopped all this wheel spinning for a moment, closed our eyes, and asked our bodies what their New Year's resolution would be? Setting aside for a moment shame or guilt or judgment, honestly listen: if your body could talk, what would it say? Would the intentions of your gut, your hips, your lower back or shoulderblades be the same as the one you made in your mind?
The new moon was just the other day--write down this gut intention and do your best to follow it, just until the full moon waxes. Remember: it's okay to make mistakes: if it doesn't work out, you probably learned something, and another cycle is always on its way. A year may be a little too big to peer into; one cycle of the moon sounds a lot more reasonable.
And of course you can do it. Look what you've already done.
January is a strange time of year: the holidays are, for most of us, stressful in one sense or another: we see family. We don't see family. We see our partner's family. We eat too much. We drink too much. We rest too much. We work too much. It's a time of pure indulgence for some and struggling to get through it for others. Usually our bodies end up mad at us for some reason or another.
And just because it's the beginning of January doesn't mean it's any warmer or brighter than it was two weeks ago: I'm starting to think the coldest and darkest season of the year is NOT the best time to be making huge life decisions.
Especially since so many of us make these extreme New Year's Resolutions that essentially say: this is the year I give up chocolate/booze/sugar/fun! I will be a whole new person, this is the year to do it! Everything will change....NOW!
I think we should reevaluate this masochistic "holiday" for a moment here. How about we give ourselves a break? Ease back into the new routine slowly, rest a little, eat good food, and take the pressure off? Life is stressful enough, why add more to it unnecessarily? The spring is a much more reasonable time to be taking on big tasks. There's SUN at that time.
My New Year's Resolution is to be easier on myself. Hence coffee and fuzzy blankets at 10:45am. I am proud of that.
And I have a suggestion. What if we stopped all this wheel spinning for a moment, closed our eyes, and asked our bodies what their New Year's resolution would be? Setting aside for a moment shame or guilt or judgment, honestly listen: if your body could talk, what would it say? Would the intentions of your gut, your hips, your lower back or shoulderblades be the same as the one you made in your mind?
The new moon was just the other day--write down this gut intention and do your best to follow it, just until the full moon waxes. Remember: it's okay to make mistakes: if it doesn't work out, you probably learned something, and another cycle is always on its way. A year may be a little too big to peer into; one cycle of the moon sounds a lot more reasonable.
And of course you can do it. Look what you've already done.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Isn't every day Men's day?
Actually, no. Not anymore, anyway.
The gender story in North America has changed so drastically over a period of barely one generation. The wildly popular show Mad Men is an uncomfortably accurate portrayal of life between the sexes in the early 60s. My mom's response to the show was: "Why would I watch that? I don't want to remember being chased around a desk." My mom is not that old (seriously. You should see her doing yoga).
Shocking, right? And now things are different: women have a lot more power in the workplace and in family situations, women win most lawsuits related to sexual harassment and child custody, and more and more women are becoming primary breadwinners. Women are also shown to be better at handling mental illness because they have close friend groups and a willingness to seek professional help. So what's the problem? Of course women are still dealing with our issues, and though it's (very) tempting, I will not delve into my own challenges as a woman, especially in academia.
But things have certainly changed. The woman's movement was just that: a woman's movement. Women got together, discussed ideas, created organizations, fought for each other, and worked bloody hard to change the role of a woman in society so that now we have (at least officially) the same rights as men do. The birth control pill meant that women could decide if they wanted children, how many, and when. No one needs to depend on anyone else financially. Divorce is about as common as marriage, it seems, and women are far outperforming men in education, if not in the workplace.
So what have men been doing all this time? How exactly have men been negotiating this new world where women as a whole have become something different, and no one's been allowed to ask any questions?
For example, what is the appropriate way to approach a woman at a bar? Do women still want men to pay for dinner and hold doors open? Do women want rich men or educated men? Is it 'manly' to get pedicures and use hair products? Why is it assumed, at least in the judicial system, that women are better at childcare than men? Now that women want men to express their feelings more, how exactly are they supposed to do that?
And a plethora of other questions I can't begin to imagine because, of course, I am a woman. But I have my own questions.
Like why are there so many sexual scenes between women in popular media and so few of men? Why is it playful and sexy when women are doing it and so serious when it's between men? Why don't men talk about their feelings with their friends? Why are so many men dropping out of school? Why is bullying in schools so bad that little boys are actually committing suicide?
And how can I possibly explain to my boyfriend rationally that I want to be understood and a strong, intelligent woman and still want him to tell me I'm pretty? I can't. I can't explain that. We are all very much still in this thing, and it's still broken.
Last weekend, my colleague Charlie and I went to an event called "International Men's Day" to present our Broga: Yoga for Men workshop. We have created a style of yoga that focuses on opening men's common tight spots (shoulders, hips, hamstrings), healing areas of common pain (knees, lower back) and celebrating the poses that are actually a little easier for men to do (arm balances, inversions). Often when I mentioned this event to my students and whoever was around, I would be greeted with shock, surprise, sometimes expecting it to be a joke, and, a lot of the time, the question: "Isn't every day men's day?"
This is a question about which our organizer, David Hatfield, had a lot to say. David heads a weekly workshop called "Manology: 21st Century Masculinity" that is basically a group for men to get together and talk about the above and many other questions to do with men's health, wellbeing, gender roles, and yes, of course, feelings. One of the main issues men have to deal with today is the common assumption that men still feel totally in power and have no questions at all about their sexual identity, especially if they are heterosexual.
The world is still a very different experience for little boys and little girls growing up, and some of that stuff has gotten a lot better, and some of it has gotten more confusing than ever. Little girls are now told they can be whatever they want when they grow up, they can have children or not, they have the right to do anything a boy does and lots of other empowering stuff (though perhaps teen magazines [and extended families] tell a different story), and little boys are still being told that boys don't cry. The role of the 21st century father has become something pretty different than what most of us grew up with, and nobody seems to know exactly what these new roles are supposed to entail.
At some point in our history, women got up the courage to stand up and start questioning their roles in society and how they wanted things to change. It's time for men to start doing the same.
But if women don't support men in making the world a better place for everybody, then we've all failed. Anyone who thinks every day is already men's day needs to open their eyes, and if our kids are going to do any better than us, we are going to have to help each other out. Things will never get better for women or men unless we are on the same side.
To me, that's the meaning of satsanga: a community (sanga) dedicated to truth (sat). Truth is, we've all got work to do.
The gender story in North America has changed so drastically over a period of barely one generation. The wildly popular show Mad Men is an uncomfortably accurate portrayal of life between the sexes in the early 60s. My mom's response to the show was: "Why would I watch that? I don't want to remember being chased around a desk." My mom is not that old (seriously. You should see her doing yoga).
Shocking, right? And now things are different: women have a lot more power in the workplace and in family situations, women win most lawsuits related to sexual harassment and child custody, and more and more women are becoming primary breadwinners. Women are also shown to be better at handling mental illness because they have close friend groups and a willingness to seek professional help. So what's the problem? Of course women are still dealing with our issues, and though it's (very) tempting, I will not delve into my own challenges as a woman, especially in academia.
But things have certainly changed. The woman's movement was just that: a woman's movement. Women got together, discussed ideas, created organizations, fought for each other, and worked bloody hard to change the role of a woman in society so that now we have (at least officially) the same rights as men do. The birth control pill meant that women could decide if they wanted children, how many, and when. No one needs to depend on anyone else financially. Divorce is about as common as marriage, it seems, and women are far outperforming men in education, if not in the workplace.
So what have men been doing all this time? How exactly have men been negotiating this new world where women as a whole have become something different, and no one's been allowed to ask any questions?
For example, what is the appropriate way to approach a woman at a bar? Do women still want men to pay for dinner and hold doors open? Do women want rich men or educated men? Is it 'manly' to get pedicures and use hair products? Why is it assumed, at least in the judicial system, that women are better at childcare than men? Now that women want men to express their feelings more, how exactly are they supposed to do that?
And a plethora of other questions I can't begin to imagine because, of course, I am a woman. But I have my own questions.
Like why are there so many sexual scenes between women in popular media and so few of men? Why is it playful and sexy when women are doing it and so serious when it's between men? Why don't men talk about their feelings with their friends? Why are so many men dropping out of school? Why is bullying in schools so bad that little boys are actually committing suicide?
And how can I possibly explain to my boyfriend rationally that I want to be understood and a strong, intelligent woman and still want him to tell me I'm pretty? I can't. I can't explain that. We are all very much still in this thing, and it's still broken.
Last weekend, my colleague Charlie and I went to an event called "International Men's Day" to present our Broga: Yoga for Men workshop. We have created a style of yoga that focuses on opening men's common tight spots (shoulders, hips, hamstrings), healing areas of common pain (knees, lower back) and celebrating the poses that are actually a little easier for men to do (arm balances, inversions). Often when I mentioned this event to my students and whoever was around, I would be greeted with shock, surprise, sometimes expecting it to be a joke, and, a lot of the time, the question: "Isn't every day men's day?"
This is a question about which our organizer, David Hatfield, had a lot to say. David heads a weekly workshop called "Manology: 21st Century Masculinity" that is basically a group for men to get together and talk about the above and many other questions to do with men's health, wellbeing, gender roles, and yes, of course, feelings. One of the main issues men have to deal with today is the common assumption that men still feel totally in power and have no questions at all about their sexual identity, especially if they are heterosexual.
The world is still a very different experience for little boys and little girls growing up, and some of that stuff has gotten a lot better, and some of it has gotten more confusing than ever. Little girls are now told they can be whatever they want when they grow up, they can have children or not, they have the right to do anything a boy does and lots of other empowering stuff (though perhaps teen magazines [and extended families] tell a different story), and little boys are still being told that boys don't cry. The role of the 21st century father has become something pretty different than what most of us grew up with, and nobody seems to know exactly what these new roles are supposed to entail.
At some point in our history, women got up the courage to stand up and start questioning their roles in society and how they wanted things to change. It's time for men to start doing the same.
But if women don't support men in making the world a better place for everybody, then we've all failed. Anyone who thinks every day is already men's day needs to open their eyes, and if our kids are going to do any better than us, we are going to have to help each other out. Things will never get better for women or men unless we are on the same side.
To me, that's the meaning of satsanga: a community (sanga) dedicated to truth (sat). Truth is, we've all got work to do.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Tada drashtuh svarupe-vasthanam: hanging out in my own true nature
I sometimes teach poetry at schools with this organization called Wordplay, that helps bring a more positive understanding of reading and writing poetry to young kids. One of the ones I did recently was at a private girls school, and we asked them what they were studying right then. "My Last Duchess," they told us, by Robert Browning (c. 1842). My partner, Barbara, asked: "Does anyone know a duchess here? Anyone have a best friend who happens to be a duchess? No?" Of course they laughed, but she was making a really important point: WHY are we studying this? Poetry has always been a sounding board for society, and one of the most interesting things about studying it is that you learn something about the culture that created that poem. There are, of course, lots of reasons to study Browning, but what a lot of people need to understand is that contemporary works of art can teach us more about ourselves.
So when I am in a yoga class, and the teacher starts spouting off something from the traditional texts or something she learned from her 'teacher,' who by virtue of being from India must understand something better or higher than we ever can, it sort of makes me angry. I wonder what that person knows, personally, about what she is saying. Does she actually believe it or is it just someone else's words coming out of her mouth?
I don't have a problem with ancient texts or teachers per se, it's just as it happens i live here, and now. In Canada. In the 21st century. And I want to make my life better. That's why we do yoga, isn't it, most of us? To have a better life right now, not 200 years ago in India. It's just not where we live.
That being said, one of the basic lessons of yoga is that every lesson must be experienced to be understood. The Buddha is another one who said over and over, don't listen to me! Go learn it for yourself. Avidya--non-knowledge--can often come disguised as what someone else has told you.
One of my major teachers is also my business partner and one of my closest friends: Coco Finaldi, and in a course she is teaching right now at our studio, East Side, she writes:
There is a wealth of knowledge available to the yoga practitioner; asana,
pranayama, kriyas, scriptures... It is important to understand that the in-
formation itself doesn’t hold all the answers to self realization or to the
state of Yoga. Yoga is comparable to music in that music needs to be read
and played in order to be heard and experienced. The mystical writings of
Yoga need to be read and played, practiced and experienced.
And as I am indeed learning, she is RIGHT. The Sutras are these ancient (think 300 BC) writings by a guy or possibly a group of guys named Patanjali about the practice of yoga. I never thought I would be finding something from 300 BC make sense in my life right now, but here I am, with Sutra 3:
Tada drashtuh svarupe vastanam: When the thought waves are controlled, the seer is established in his own true nature.
This didn't make any intuitive sense to me until about 11 days ago, when I started a 40 day challenge to meditate, for at least 11 minutes, every day. Here's what usually happens:
I sit down. Assume the position (chin mudra). Sit quietly. My mind begins to yell at me. Thoughts from the day, plans for later, worries about the studio--oh yeah. Focus. Focus on your root chakra. Root chakra, root chakra...am I subbing a class tomorrow? When is that, how will I get there....no, focus. Don't attach to your thoughts. Focus on your third eye. Third eye, third eye....that was a weird dream last night. I wonder what it meant...stop! focus.." and I go on like this for another 9 minutes. I can't tell you how challenging it is to stop the thoughts. I have had 'successful' sits in meditation, where my mind yells at me less, but part of what I want to do here is let my thoughts run. Everything in my life has changed so dramatically over the past year and a bit, and everything has happened so quickly that I haven't had a chance to process it. There are more effective meditations I know are available to me, but I kind of WANT my thoughts to run wild, so they can say their piece and then leave me alone.
Anyway, though the meditations themselves sort of feel like failures, the rest of my day feels totally different. I can tell that some of the garbage (you are not good enough. That was a bad class. Should I be doing more of this pose or that pose in classes? Why don't I write poetry anymore? Why can't I jump back from crow to chatuanga? I wonder what my boyfriend meant when he said...) starts to quietly filter out, and I am left with the real things in my brain that either need work or are actual real life truths for me. I feel like I am sitting in my true nature a lot more of the time (though I wouldn't say I have control over my mind!). I care a little less what other people think of me. I am more sure of where I am going and why I teach the way I do. I am more patient with myself and more compassionate when I can't do everything I want to do. I am letting my relationship be. I am learning that I am good on the inside, somewhere, not just a mess of insecure thoughts (though yes, sometimes it feels that way).
So what did I do to express my newfound freedom and self-trust? I marched down to East Vanity Parlour and got half my hair shaved off. Even though everyone told me not to. And it looks freaking sweet. And I have a feeling Patanjali would approve.
So when I am in a yoga class, and the teacher starts spouting off something from the traditional texts or something she learned from her 'teacher,' who by virtue of being from India must understand something better or higher than we ever can, it sort of makes me angry. I wonder what that person knows, personally, about what she is saying. Does she actually believe it or is it just someone else's words coming out of her mouth?
I don't have a problem with ancient texts or teachers per se, it's just as it happens i live here, and now. In Canada. In the 21st century. And I want to make my life better. That's why we do yoga, isn't it, most of us? To have a better life right now, not 200 years ago in India. It's just not where we live.
That being said, one of the basic lessons of yoga is that every lesson must be experienced to be understood. The Buddha is another one who said over and over, don't listen to me! Go learn it for yourself. Avidya--non-knowledge--can often come disguised as what someone else has told you.
One of my major teachers is also my business partner and one of my closest friends: Coco Finaldi, and in a course she is teaching right now at our studio, East Side, she writes:
There is a wealth of knowledge available to the yoga practitioner; asana,
pranayama, kriyas, scriptures... It is important to understand that the in-
formation itself doesn’t hold all the answers to self realization or to the
state of Yoga. Yoga is comparable to music in that music needs to be read
and played in order to be heard and experienced. The mystical writings of
Yoga need to be read and played, practiced and experienced.
And as I am indeed learning, she is RIGHT. The Sutras are these ancient (think 300 BC) writings by a guy or possibly a group of guys named Patanjali about the practice of yoga. I never thought I would be finding something from 300 BC make sense in my life right now, but here I am, with Sutra 3:
Tada drashtuh svarupe vastanam: When the thought waves are controlled, the seer is established in his own true nature.
This didn't make any intuitive sense to me until about 11 days ago, when I started a 40 day challenge to meditate, for at least 11 minutes, every day. Here's what usually happens:
I sit down. Assume the position (chin mudra). Sit quietly. My mind begins to yell at me. Thoughts from the day, plans for later, worries about the studio--oh yeah. Focus. Focus on your root chakra. Root chakra, root chakra...am I subbing a class tomorrow? When is that, how will I get there....no, focus. Don't attach to your thoughts. Focus on your third eye. Third eye, third eye....that was a weird dream last night. I wonder what it meant...stop! focus.." and I go on like this for another 9 minutes. I can't tell you how challenging it is to stop the thoughts. I have had 'successful' sits in meditation, where my mind yells at me less, but part of what I want to do here is let my thoughts run. Everything in my life has changed so dramatically over the past year and a bit, and everything has happened so quickly that I haven't had a chance to process it. There are more effective meditations I know are available to me, but I kind of WANT my thoughts to run wild, so they can say their piece and then leave me alone.
Anyway, though the meditations themselves sort of feel like failures, the rest of my day feels totally different. I can tell that some of the garbage (you are not good enough. That was a bad class. Should I be doing more of this pose or that pose in classes? Why don't I write poetry anymore? Why can't I jump back from crow to chatuanga? I wonder what my boyfriend meant when he said...) starts to quietly filter out, and I am left with the real things in my brain that either need work or are actual real life truths for me. I feel like I am sitting in my true nature a lot more of the time (though I wouldn't say I have control over my mind!). I care a little less what other people think of me. I am more sure of where I am going and why I teach the way I do. I am more patient with myself and more compassionate when I can't do everything I want to do. I am letting my relationship be. I am learning that I am good on the inside, somewhere, not just a mess of insecure thoughts (though yes, sometimes it feels that way).
So what did I do to express my newfound freedom and self-trust? I marched down to East Vanity Parlour and got half my hair shaved off. Even though everyone told me not to. And it looks freaking sweet. And I have a feeling Patanjali would approve.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
People cry a lot in yoga.
Have you ever noticed this? Moving through a sun salutation, flying through 5 full wheels, or calming down in savasana, have you ever heard a little sob or two from one corner of the room? Ever stopped to notice that it was you?
I have. I'm one of those people. I've always been pretty sensitive, and I've loved those moments in those really powerful classes when something just breaks and this release happens inside of you, and your sort of feel horrible and euphoric all at the same time, and then you leave the class feeling lighter, different, like something bad is gone and something new is possible.
And it hasn't happened to me in a really, really long time.
Part of the reason some people must practice yoga is because of its infamous transformative powers. We break down so we can build up again, and there is this amazing high that comes with it. It happens in the first few months, usually, and then who knows how many times after that. Then maybe we just keep looking, keep searching, like if I can just do that again, if I can just break down that one last barrier then...what? I'll be free? Happy? Never have any problems or traumatic situations again? Achieve samadhi and leave the world as I know it? Get a cheeseburger and move on?
I don't know. But I certainly keep on looking for it, and I have been following the teachers that have taken me there waiting for that moment to reoccur. Waiting for something to be....clear. Someone trying to sell you on yoga will probably not tell you that that just doesn't always happen.
Well, this weekend, I went seeking answers with one of the biggest names in transformation out there right now: "The Queen of Kundalini Yoga": Gurmukh.
Kundalini yoga is basically a practice in which you do something repetitively until you want to kill yourself and have no choice but to tune out and let the thing happen, whatever the thing happens to be (transformation? A cheeseburger?). These Kriyas are purported to change the actual molecular structure of your body and your brain. You know those etheral white folks wearing white turbans and flowy white outfits? Those are the Kundalini-is.
Now I don't want to give the wrong impression: I thoroughly enjoy Kundalini, and I love teaching certain Kriyas in my classes--they can be incredibly powerful, and maybe they do actually change the molecular structure of your body and brain. Kundalini yoga is an example of the many types of yoga that try to change you and sometimes really can: Hot yoga's purifying fire, Baptiste Power that will make you sweat your asana off, Forrest Yoga that will work you until you curl up into a ball and cry like a baby, Chakra based Hatha that will make you a superhero etc etc etc.
But I was sitting in a room FULL of Kundalini-is, many of whom were in the white garb, watching this quite old woman in lots of jewelery and draping white cloth sitting up on a pedestal reading from a book and telling us what to do: pretend you are about to hit yourself in the face, and then turn your palm forward instead. For 11 minutes. Or what felt like an eternity. I start to hear sobs here and there. Gurmukh is saying, "Let it go. Don't analyze it. Whatever is coming up, let it go." I was thinking, "cheeseburger." Just kidding. But I wasn't quite in the same room if you know what I mean. And I am a BELIEVER in this kind of shit.
This was after a talk on how in this Western world, we have too much information in our minds. Too many tv shows, to much internet, too many cellphones. Empty your mind, she was saying, and tune into the innate intelligence of your heart. Absolutely yes. But then an added implication: if you do not do this you will go crazy. "Has anyone seen the movie A Beautiful Mind? Brilliant, brilliant man. Crazy."
hm. If we empty our minds too much and lose our ability to think critically, then we become like lemmings who would run off the edge of a cliff after their leader, or, you know, start dressing like them. In white. With turbans.
Not that this was in any way Gurmukh's intention. She is obviously an amazing teacher who has done important things for many people [and I am no one's authority on why the turbans]. And I am not saying we don't need teachers and leaders--we do, desperately, and they can take us places that will slowly make the world better. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't be a teacher, would I?
But I think when you get a bunch of people together who want transformation, who are unhappy with their lives, who need something outside of themselves, they are vulnerable to anything you say. They look for a leader, someone to tell them, It's not your fault you are unhappy! It's the awful world you live in! Use this secret technique I have and you can be transformed!
And you know what, it works.
Not because, I've realized, you finally went to see the guy who spent 6 years meditating in the Himalayas, or the person who invented a style of yoga that makes you backbend a lot with a smile on your face or because you went to see the woman that teaches Madonna yoga. Or because of the secret technique. Or because of paying many dollars hang out with whoever, whether it is Shiva Rea or David Bowie. It's because you WANT to be transformed. Your teacher is giving you tools and you are choosing to do something with them. The tools themselves may not be the point.
There is only one true teacher, and it's you. The teachers that have made me cry in yoga weren't some special aliens who were smarter or better than me (more experienced is a different story), I was just willing to listen to them. I can't rely on Gurmukh or David Bowie or anyone else to make me something different, I am the only one who can do that. These teachers help you find your path, show you things you never could have dreamed of, help you to be strong and safe in your body and your mind: they open the door. But you are the only one that can walk through.
And then what?
Well shit, I don't know.
So In lieu of an answer, I leave you with this poem from Tukaram:
BIRDS DON'T BRAG ABOUT FLYING
Birds
Don't brag about flying
the way we
do.
They don't write books about it and then give
workshops,
They don't take on disciples and spoil
their own air
time.
Who could dance and achieve
liftoff with a bunch of
whakos tugging
on you?
I have. I'm one of those people. I've always been pretty sensitive, and I've loved those moments in those really powerful classes when something just breaks and this release happens inside of you, and your sort of feel horrible and euphoric all at the same time, and then you leave the class feeling lighter, different, like something bad is gone and something new is possible.
And it hasn't happened to me in a really, really long time.
Part of the reason some people must practice yoga is because of its infamous transformative powers. We break down so we can build up again, and there is this amazing high that comes with it. It happens in the first few months, usually, and then who knows how many times after that. Then maybe we just keep looking, keep searching, like if I can just do that again, if I can just break down that one last barrier then...what? I'll be free? Happy? Never have any problems or traumatic situations again? Achieve samadhi and leave the world as I know it? Get a cheeseburger and move on?
I don't know. But I certainly keep on looking for it, and I have been following the teachers that have taken me there waiting for that moment to reoccur. Waiting for something to be....clear. Someone trying to sell you on yoga will probably not tell you that that just doesn't always happen.
Well, this weekend, I went seeking answers with one of the biggest names in transformation out there right now: "The Queen of Kundalini Yoga": Gurmukh.
Kundalini yoga is basically a practice in which you do something repetitively until you want to kill yourself and have no choice but to tune out and let the thing happen, whatever the thing happens to be (transformation? A cheeseburger?). These Kriyas are purported to change the actual molecular structure of your body and your brain. You know those etheral white folks wearing white turbans and flowy white outfits? Those are the Kundalini-is.
Now I don't want to give the wrong impression: I thoroughly enjoy Kundalini, and I love teaching certain Kriyas in my classes--they can be incredibly powerful, and maybe they do actually change the molecular structure of your body and brain. Kundalini yoga is an example of the many types of yoga that try to change you and sometimes really can: Hot yoga's purifying fire, Baptiste Power that will make you sweat your asana off, Forrest Yoga that will work you until you curl up into a ball and cry like a baby, Chakra based Hatha that will make you a superhero etc etc etc.
But I was sitting in a room FULL of Kundalini-is, many of whom were in the white garb, watching this quite old woman in lots of jewelery and draping white cloth sitting up on a pedestal reading from a book and telling us what to do: pretend you are about to hit yourself in the face, and then turn your palm forward instead. For 11 minutes. Or what felt like an eternity. I start to hear sobs here and there. Gurmukh is saying, "Let it go. Don't analyze it. Whatever is coming up, let it go." I was thinking, "cheeseburger." Just kidding. But I wasn't quite in the same room if you know what I mean. And I am a BELIEVER in this kind of shit.
This was after a talk on how in this Western world, we have too much information in our minds. Too many tv shows, to much internet, too many cellphones. Empty your mind, she was saying, and tune into the innate intelligence of your heart. Absolutely yes. But then an added implication: if you do not do this you will go crazy. "Has anyone seen the movie A Beautiful Mind? Brilliant, brilliant man. Crazy."
hm. If we empty our minds too much and lose our ability to think critically, then we become like lemmings who would run off the edge of a cliff after their leader, or, you know, start dressing like them. In white. With turbans.
Not that this was in any way Gurmukh's intention. She is obviously an amazing teacher who has done important things for many people [and I am no one's authority on why the turbans]. And I am not saying we don't need teachers and leaders--we do, desperately, and they can take us places that will slowly make the world better. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't be a teacher, would I?
But I think when you get a bunch of people together who want transformation, who are unhappy with their lives, who need something outside of themselves, they are vulnerable to anything you say. They look for a leader, someone to tell them, It's not your fault you are unhappy! It's the awful world you live in! Use this secret technique I have and you can be transformed!
And you know what, it works.
Not because, I've realized, you finally went to see the guy who spent 6 years meditating in the Himalayas, or the person who invented a style of yoga that makes you backbend a lot with a smile on your face or because you went to see the woman that teaches Madonna yoga. Or because of the secret technique. Or because of paying many dollars hang out with whoever, whether it is Shiva Rea or David Bowie. It's because you WANT to be transformed. Your teacher is giving you tools and you are choosing to do something with them. The tools themselves may not be the point.
There is only one true teacher, and it's you. The teachers that have made me cry in yoga weren't some special aliens who were smarter or better than me (more experienced is a different story), I was just willing to listen to them. I can't rely on Gurmukh or David Bowie or anyone else to make me something different, I am the only one who can do that. These teachers help you find your path, show you things you never could have dreamed of, help you to be strong and safe in your body and your mind: they open the door. But you are the only one that can walk through.
And then what?
Well shit, I don't know.
So In lieu of an answer, I leave you with this poem from Tukaram:
BIRDS DON'T BRAG ABOUT FLYING
Birds
Don't brag about flying
the way we
do.
They don't write books about it and then give
workshops,
They don't take on disciples and spoil
their own air
time.
Who could dance and achieve
liftoff with a bunch of
whakos tugging
on you?
Monday, October 04, 2010
Sadie Nardini and me on the couch watching NetFlix and sneezing
So everything was going swimmingly--In one weekend, I had my birthday celebration(s) including a beautiful dinner with my parents and Robert at the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens [they make the food WITH the stuff from the garden! Now that's local] and a lovely dinner at Grub on Main Street with some particularly goodlooking friends, 3 different workshops at the Vancouver Yoga Conference and Show [Anodea Judith, Sadie Nardini, and Maria Garre], AND finished a recording of a spoken word track inspired by/including a poem I wrote for a real live yoga CD, and BAM! I got sick. Big surprise, right?
Well, finally it is Monday, and I spent the day in my pajamas doing yoga, drinking a huge pot [literally, a cooking pot] full of cinnamon tea with white tea flowers, watching NetFlix [which is an amazing technology, truly] and working on that thing I've been hearing people talk about: "resting."
Have you ever noticed that yoga teachers tend to teach what they need, not what they already have? Sadie Nardini, a beautiful, magnetic, charming woman who obviously works ridiculously hard [185 youtube videos!] at giving as much of herself to as many people as she possibly can, is a woman with a very specific "core message." Distil down the coal, she says, to the jewel that is inside you. Stop trying to please everyone and just be who you are. Create boundaries. Stick to your message and stick to your voice; the best teacher, lover, friend, parent, etc. that you can be is who you already are. One of the things I love about Sadie is how honest and down to earth she is: and with that it is quite clear that she is a giver, a pleaser, a wanderer, and a freedom fighter against the boxes the world and she herself have created around her. She teaches core integration so beautifully because she has so clearly struggled with it. I think I resonate with her teaching so much for a reason: I, too, often teach "feet on the ground!" because I am often trying to remember to do that.
Lately I have been theming a lot of my classes on change--the fall can be a stressful time, and things tend to shift with the seasons, sometimes in ways that are not so thrilling. My [business] partner's [life] partner's business [I know] was trashed and set fire to recently, and then her SHOES were stolen off her porch. Two different friends had their guitars stolen this month on separate occasions, and a friend and student of mine got stuck in the hospital for almost a MONTH with blood poisoning, unable to do yoga for probably the next six months--and this is someone who practised often more than once a day.
But change, as they say, is good, though not always easy, and here I insert the requisite Wayne's World reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoPiJOubR-4. Sometimes getting sidetracked gives us a chance to think about where we are and what we are doing when it is the LAST thing we really want to do. And when that sidetrack goes right off the rails and something breaks, we have a chance to put it back together in a new way. Hard times make us better people--I love this quote I heard the other day:
Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.
I know, I know, I know I need to rest more, I work too hard, I am too hard on myself, and whenever I do this too much or for too long, I get sick or I twist my ankle or something else goes horribly wrong, as if my inner buddha is whacking me with a big stick. My friend in the hospital said to me: "Some people have a mid life crisis and they buy a new car. I'm having it here in the hospital." What an amazing human to take a month in a horrible little hospital room as an opportunity to meditate and face who he has become and who he wants to be. He has a whole new life to come back to on the other side. I'm not sure I'll get that far this Monday afternoon, but I do understand this illness as a message.
Rest is a beast I struggle to master, and while my students teach me to be smarter, stronger, cooler, and wiser, I try to collect their lessons and my own and watch as they come out of my mouth while I'm teaching. Sadie asked us in this conference: if you could write a message in the sky, and everyone in the world would read it and really think about it, what would the message be? It's a good question, and I think for many of us the answer would be a lesson we had to learn the hard way. My message would be: "Think for yourself." And it takes stopping, sometimes, in the middle of the mad flow of life in this world to do that, and look at what you are doing and judge whether it aligns with who you really are. And when you stop, everytime you stop, you have the chance to start again. Starting again is an adventure everytime, but maybe then so is the stopping.
Well, finally it is Monday, and I spent the day in my pajamas doing yoga, drinking a huge pot [literally, a cooking pot] full of cinnamon tea with white tea flowers, watching NetFlix [which is an amazing technology, truly] and working on that thing I've been hearing people talk about: "resting."
Have you ever noticed that yoga teachers tend to teach what they need, not what they already have? Sadie Nardini, a beautiful, magnetic, charming woman who obviously works ridiculously hard [185 youtube videos!] at giving as much of herself to as many people as she possibly can, is a woman with a very specific "core message." Distil down the coal, she says, to the jewel that is inside you. Stop trying to please everyone and just be who you are. Create boundaries. Stick to your message and stick to your voice; the best teacher, lover, friend, parent, etc. that you can be is who you already are. One of the things I love about Sadie is how honest and down to earth she is: and with that it is quite clear that she is a giver, a pleaser, a wanderer, and a freedom fighter against the boxes the world and she herself have created around her. She teaches core integration so beautifully because she has so clearly struggled with it. I think I resonate with her teaching so much for a reason: I, too, often teach "feet on the ground!" because I am often trying to remember to do that.
Lately I have been theming a lot of my classes on change--the fall can be a stressful time, and things tend to shift with the seasons, sometimes in ways that are not so thrilling. My [business] partner's [life] partner's business [I know] was trashed and set fire to recently, and then her SHOES were stolen off her porch. Two different friends had their guitars stolen this month on separate occasions, and a friend and student of mine got stuck in the hospital for almost a MONTH with blood poisoning, unable to do yoga for probably the next six months--and this is someone who practised often more than once a day.
But change, as they say, is good, though not always easy, and here I insert the requisite Wayne's World reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoPiJOubR-4. Sometimes getting sidetracked gives us a chance to think about where we are and what we are doing when it is the LAST thing we really want to do. And when that sidetrack goes right off the rails and something breaks, we have a chance to put it back together in a new way. Hard times make us better people--I love this quote I heard the other day:
Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.
I know, I know, I know I need to rest more, I work too hard, I am too hard on myself, and whenever I do this too much or for too long, I get sick or I twist my ankle or something else goes horribly wrong, as if my inner buddha is whacking me with a big stick. My friend in the hospital said to me: "Some people have a mid life crisis and they buy a new car. I'm having it here in the hospital." What an amazing human to take a month in a horrible little hospital room as an opportunity to meditate and face who he has become and who he wants to be. He has a whole new life to come back to on the other side. I'm not sure I'll get that far this Monday afternoon, but I do understand this illness as a message.
Rest is a beast I struggle to master, and while my students teach me to be smarter, stronger, cooler, and wiser, I try to collect their lessons and my own and watch as they come out of my mouth while I'm teaching. Sadie asked us in this conference: if you could write a message in the sky, and everyone in the world would read it and really think about it, what would the message be? It's a good question, and I think for many of us the answer would be a lesson we had to learn the hard way. My message would be: "Think for yourself." And it takes stopping, sometimes, in the middle of the mad flow of life in this world to do that, and look at what you are doing and judge whether it aligns with who you really are. And when you stop, everytime you stop, you have the chance to start again. Starting again is an adventure everytime, but maybe then so is the stopping.
Friday, September 17, 2010
I am. I am. I am. A Yam.
My 27th birthday is coming up in a little under 2 weeks. My birthday is sort of like New Year's to me. I end up thinking a lot about where I am and what I'm doing and whether or not it's the right thing. With an outsider's eye, if I look at my life, it's pretty sweet: I have a business, a job I love (yoga teacher! Best job ever) a cute apartment, and a sweet partner that I live with. I would say this is a good list of things I would have wanted to check off by year 27. And yet, I suppose I'm still an angsty teenager inside, because I sure spend enough time doubting myself.
Things have changed so rapidly for me in the past year: at this time last September, I was heartbroken, scrambling for teaching gigs, and wondering what the heck was going to happen to my life. I feel like I became an adult within exactly a 12 month period [I have my own dentist now! And my parents didn't even find her for me! (Penny Thompson: she has a camera at her office so I saw all the gross cracks in my own teeth! She is also awesome. I digress.)]
Sometimes as things change in our lives, we have to make the choice to let some of the dead leaves fall off our metaphorical trees and decide what we want to plant for the next season. My responsibility level is so much higher than it was that there's just no room for me to be an amateur bellydancer or army base bartender or spoken word poet anymore.
um....Bummer?
So what I need to work on now is the quality of discernment--Viveka in yoga philosophy. What stays and what goes? What is real and true and what is just an illusion? Do I set aside time each week to go to a dance class instead of a yoga class? Do i start going back to the poetry slam again at the expense of the one night off my partner and I have together [he is not a fan of the slam]? Do I stay out and celebrate a friend's birthday when I teach a morning class the next day [the answer to that one is a resounding no]? Adult choices are hard! And these are relatively childish adult choices.
We change so much in such relatively short periods of time, it makes a lady wonder who she really is. Just a couple of years ago, I was serving drinks at a cheesy glow-in-the-dark bowling alley and pool bar in heels and miniskirts, and now you're lucky if you see me with anything other than yoga clothes on. [Heels are painful! What was I thinking?] Ironically enough, the savings I made from shaking my little booty while carrying 3 pitchers of beer in each hand paid for my yoga teacher training. [i think the tray carrying was also the beginning of the massive yoga triceps i have now. Trust me. Huge.]
So--Viveka. Which of these thoughts and desires are weeds, and which are the delicate flowers that need to be watered? How much can I express myself as an individual [poet, dancer] and also uphold the trust in the relationships I have with people and the world [partner, teacher, business owner]? Well I guess I sure have a lot of questions. I think for a lot of us it's a bit scary to stare down that abyss of questions, many of which simply don't have answers yet.
So as I peer down the horizon of my 27th year, the best I can do is try to remember why I am doing what I do--the core values that colour my intentions day to day. A big one for me is freedom: the freedom to think for myself, act for myself, and empower my students to make their own choices and gather the tools to make a work of art of their own lives.
But another intention is love. The freedom of the individual self reeling away from responsibility is not an individual filled with love. Love requires work, boundaries, and the support of a consistent community (and sometimes a partner who needs me, too). Love requires relinquishing the selfish illusion of freedom and finding a freedom that instead gives us enough to share with the people we love and make the world around us better in some way.
So, in conclusion, I still don't know who I am at 27, but I am getting a little clearer on how I am: in as few words as possible, eternally: working on it.
Things have changed so rapidly for me in the past year: at this time last September, I was heartbroken, scrambling for teaching gigs, and wondering what the heck was going to happen to my life. I feel like I became an adult within exactly a 12 month period [I have my own dentist now! And my parents didn't even find her for me! (Penny Thompson: she has a camera at her office so I saw all the gross cracks in my own teeth! She is also awesome. I digress.)]
Sometimes as things change in our lives, we have to make the choice to let some of the dead leaves fall off our metaphorical trees and decide what we want to plant for the next season. My responsibility level is so much higher than it was that there's just no room for me to be an amateur bellydancer or army base bartender or spoken word poet anymore.
um....Bummer?
So what I need to work on now is the quality of discernment--Viveka in yoga philosophy. What stays and what goes? What is real and true and what is just an illusion? Do I set aside time each week to go to a dance class instead of a yoga class? Do i start going back to the poetry slam again at the expense of the one night off my partner and I have together [he is not a fan of the slam]? Do I stay out and celebrate a friend's birthday when I teach a morning class the next day [the answer to that one is a resounding no]? Adult choices are hard! And these are relatively childish adult choices.
We change so much in such relatively short periods of time, it makes a lady wonder who she really is. Just a couple of years ago, I was serving drinks at a cheesy glow-in-the-dark bowling alley and pool bar in heels and miniskirts, and now you're lucky if you see me with anything other than yoga clothes on. [Heels are painful! What was I thinking?] Ironically enough, the savings I made from shaking my little booty while carrying 3 pitchers of beer in each hand paid for my yoga teacher training. [i think the tray carrying was also the beginning of the massive yoga triceps i have now. Trust me. Huge.]
So--Viveka. Which of these thoughts and desires are weeds, and which are the delicate flowers that need to be watered? How much can I express myself as an individual [poet, dancer] and also uphold the trust in the relationships I have with people and the world [partner, teacher, business owner]? Well I guess I sure have a lot of questions. I think for a lot of us it's a bit scary to stare down that abyss of questions, many of which simply don't have answers yet.
So as I peer down the horizon of my 27th year, the best I can do is try to remember why I am doing what I do--the core values that colour my intentions day to day. A big one for me is freedom: the freedom to think for myself, act for myself, and empower my students to make their own choices and gather the tools to make a work of art of their own lives.
But another intention is love. The freedom of the individual self reeling away from responsibility is not an individual filled with love. Love requires work, boundaries, and the support of a consistent community (and sometimes a partner who needs me, too). Love requires relinquishing the selfish illusion of freedom and finding a freedom that instead gives us enough to share with the people we love and make the world around us better in some way.
So, in conclusion, I still don't know who I am at 27, but I am getting a little clearer on how I am: in as few words as possible, eternally: working on it.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Yin times
I am one of those people that will tend to plan her day so much that I've forgotten to schedule in lunch. I do this all the time, actually, taking on as many projects as I can in between work, play, friends, and family. Boredom is the thing I fear absolutely the most. When I was a kid, I remember, I was so afraid of being bored that I made a list that I kept in my room of things I could do if i got bored. "Play with Barbies. Call a friend. Easy-Bake something. Smash head against wall." These were quite literally lifelines so that I never had to be still. When I was about 14, I had a summer off, and I was bored, so I made a play. I chose it ["The Ugly Duckling" by A.A. Milne], bought the rights to use it, cast it, directed it, rented a stage and rehearsal space, put it on, and made something like 24 bucks in profit.
It's pretty cool that I made a play when I was 14, but when I think about it, it's such a perfect example of how ridculously type A I am [you wouldn't have wanted to know me before yoga] but also, I think, this is indicative of the kind of world we live in all the time: a very Yang world, very active, fiery, and full of stress. Great fun indeed, but I often come home at the end of the day feeling like the end of a hungry, frayed rope.
Over the past week, I have been participating in a Yin Yoga Teacher Training with Bernie Clark at Semperviva on Granville Island. We wake up at the crack of 5:30 for a 2 hour Yin practice and then long lectures on anatomy, the energy body, meditation, the history of yoga and the religions that shaped it (Hinduism, Tantra, Buddhism, Zen etc). It's been delicious, and feeling absolutely indulgent. I have loved the meditative, passive practice of Yin since I discovered it a couple of years ago, but I have never had the chance to do it every single day for a week.
And man, my hips feel WEIRD. But also, I think, this training has been teaching me a lot about being still and resting. We need stress to live, says Bernie. The problem in the west is not that we have too much stress, but that we never rest.
I've taken the week off from Vinyasa yoga (excpet for teaching) so that I can experience softness and stillness for awhile in my own body. And if you read my last post, you may have noticed that I've been getting particularly frustrated with my practice recently and feeling like my chaturanga doesn't look right, my arms are not strong enough, and getting angry that I can't do certain poses. The whole point of Yin is to go where your body will go naturally, accept that place, and just be with it. We spent many hours talking about the innumerable variations within the human skeleton, and the major thing we learned is that you cannot know what someone is feeling by looking at them. And yoga is not about what you look like, it's what you feel like. Yin is empowering me in my practice again with these principles of stillness and acceptance, so I've been spending time walking more slowly, talking more slowly, eating thick, luxurious 10% yogurt and adding more butter to everything, sitting in meditation, watching Planet Earth with my man. Next week will be the real challenge: can I integrate more stillness and less compulsive filling of time into my daily life when 2 hours of Yin is not planned in?
Anyway I think this post is long enough for now--more later, but until then, I will leave you with this Yin/Yang Prayer:
“Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.” -- St. Francis
It's pretty cool that I made a play when I was 14, but when I think about it, it's such a perfect example of how ridculously type A I am [you wouldn't have wanted to know me before yoga] but also, I think, this is indicative of the kind of world we live in all the time: a very Yang world, very active, fiery, and full of stress. Great fun indeed, but I often come home at the end of the day feeling like the end of a hungry, frayed rope.
Over the past week, I have been participating in a Yin Yoga Teacher Training with Bernie Clark at Semperviva on Granville Island. We wake up at the crack of 5:30 for a 2 hour Yin practice and then long lectures on anatomy, the energy body, meditation, the history of yoga and the religions that shaped it (Hinduism, Tantra, Buddhism, Zen etc). It's been delicious, and feeling absolutely indulgent. I have loved the meditative, passive practice of Yin since I discovered it a couple of years ago, but I have never had the chance to do it every single day for a week.
And man, my hips feel WEIRD. But also, I think, this training has been teaching me a lot about being still and resting. We need stress to live, says Bernie. The problem in the west is not that we have too much stress, but that we never rest.
I've taken the week off from Vinyasa yoga (excpet for teaching) so that I can experience softness and stillness for awhile in my own body. And if you read my last post, you may have noticed that I've been getting particularly frustrated with my practice recently and feeling like my chaturanga doesn't look right, my arms are not strong enough, and getting angry that I can't do certain poses. The whole point of Yin is to go where your body will go naturally, accept that place, and just be with it. We spent many hours talking about the innumerable variations within the human skeleton, and the major thing we learned is that you cannot know what someone is feeling by looking at them. And yoga is not about what you look like, it's what you feel like. Yin is empowering me in my practice again with these principles of stillness and acceptance, so I've been spending time walking more slowly, talking more slowly, eating thick, luxurious 10% yogurt and adding more butter to everything, sitting in meditation, watching Planet Earth with my man. Next week will be the real challenge: can I integrate more stillness and less compulsive filling of time into my daily life when 2 hours of Yin is not planned in?
Anyway I think this post is long enough for now--more later, but until then, I will leave you with this Yin/Yang Prayer:
“Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.” -- St. Francis
Friday, August 20, 2010
Why am I doing this?
This is a question I ask my students a fair amount in my yoga classes. Usually in this context: "If this is feeling good, try putting your foot behind your head. If that hurts, ask yourself why you are doing it!"
But this becomes a bigger question for me sometimes as well: why am I doing this? Why am I teaching yoga? And why do I practice yoga? This thing, this spiritual practice or exercise regime, whatever you want to think of it as, has become my entire life--everything I do is a part of my yoga, and that question comes up all the time, you know, like, a) why do I drink so much wine? Or b) why will I stay home tonight and watch movies instead of go to my friend's party? [answers include a) because I LOVE it and b) because I'd rather teach a good class tomorrow morning)
Well one of the reasons I am doing this is that yoga has helped me to deal with a lifetime of issues with anxiety and many difficult periods in my life. Yoga has made me feel strong when I haven't been, and its showed me that my body was capable of things that I didn't think were possible, so it gave me the hope that everything is possible. It's just yoga, sure, and that's important to remember when we as teachers worry too much about what our students think of us. But at the same time yoga has been a sacred thing to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons.
And I think the direction yoga in Vancouver is going is kind of...interesting. There seems to be a lot of emphasis lately on what I've been calling 'celebrity poses': forearm stand, handstand, scorpion, crow pose and its variations, and all kinds of other arm balances. Now, don't get me wrong, I love those poses, I love inverting, and figuring out how to do them to the degree I have has afforded me a lot of self confidence. But everyone's body is different [and let's be honest, many of these poses are easier for a man's upper body strength and higher centre of gravity] and those aren't the poses that made me fall in love with yoga. I didn't even know what they WERE until about a year ago.
I should also be clear that I am no last bastion for classical yoga in the West--I'm a pretty Western yogi, and I'm all about doing whatever works for you. But I can't help but get the feeling that something is getting lost in some of these classes that have been about 5% core, 80% arm balancing, and 15% sun saluting, especially when I leave the room feeling...weak, small, skinny, powerless, and worse, injured from trying to do a pose my body wasn't ready for. I may be a teacher now, but I still offer myself up to my teachers as a student to create all that magic I've relied on for years now.
And then I realized something....love and compassion are really difficult to feel when you are angry at yourself and frustrated because you can't do something other people can! Love and compassion often are accompanied by a feeling of power, and powerlessness makes it a lot easier to be bitter and hateful.
Well THAT's interesting. And something I'm going to need to work on. And for this work, I will head to those teachers that have that amazing talent of making me feel awesome no matter what I can do. [Hey Ego! Oh, good to know you're still here!] And thank goodness, there are lots of those teachers in this city too. Love and compassion. And biceps. Here I come.
But this becomes a bigger question for me sometimes as well: why am I doing this? Why am I teaching yoga? And why do I practice yoga? This thing, this spiritual practice or exercise regime, whatever you want to think of it as, has become my entire life--everything I do is a part of my yoga, and that question comes up all the time, you know, like, a) why do I drink so much wine? Or b) why will I stay home tonight and watch movies instead of go to my friend's party? [answers include a) because I LOVE it and b) because I'd rather teach a good class tomorrow morning)
Well one of the reasons I am doing this is that yoga has helped me to deal with a lifetime of issues with anxiety and many difficult periods in my life. Yoga has made me feel strong when I haven't been, and its showed me that my body was capable of things that I didn't think were possible, so it gave me the hope that everything is possible. It's just yoga, sure, and that's important to remember when we as teachers worry too much about what our students think of us. But at the same time yoga has been a sacred thing to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons.
And I think the direction yoga in Vancouver is going is kind of...interesting. There seems to be a lot of emphasis lately on what I've been calling 'celebrity poses': forearm stand, handstand, scorpion, crow pose and its variations, and all kinds of other arm balances. Now, don't get me wrong, I love those poses, I love inverting, and figuring out how to do them to the degree I have has afforded me a lot of self confidence. But everyone's body is different [and let's be honest, many of these poses are easier for a man's upper body strength and higher centre of gravity] and those aren't the poses that made me fall in love with yoga. I didn't even know what they WERE until about a year ago.
I should also be clear that I am no last bastion for classical yoga in the West--I'm a pretty Western yogi, and I'm all about doing whatever works for you. But I can't help but get the feeling that something is getting lost in some of these classes that have been about 5% core, 80% arm balancing, and 15% sun saluting, especially when I leave the room feeling...weak, small, skinny, powerless, and worse, injured from trying to do a pose my body wasn't ready for. I may be a teacher now, but I still offer myself up to my teachers as a student to create all that magic I've relied on for years now.
And then I realized something....love and compassion are really difficult to feel when you are angry at yourself and frustrated because you can't do something other people can! Love and compassion often are accompanied by a feeling of power, and powerlessness makes it a lot easier to be bitter and hateful.
Well THAT's interesting. And something I'm going to need to work on. And for this work, I will head to those teachers that have that amazing talent of making me feel awesome no matter what I can do. [Hey Ego! Oh, good to know you're still here!] And thank goodness, there are lots of those teachers in this city too. Love and compassion. And biceps. Here I come.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
how to be an adult
When exactly does one become an adult? I sort of think you are pushed into it on some level when you leave the soft comforting womb of school. When I moved away from Montreal and my Master's degree in English Literature, my plan was to become a bartender and a bellydancer. That was the plan. It failed pretty completely, but landed me somewhere else entirely--I am now a full time yoga teacher and I own half of an awesome yoga studio on Commercial Drive [www.eastsideyogastudio.com].
Last night I had this recurring dream again--that I was in the halls of my old high school. I can never remember my class schedule (this is similar to yoga teaching-thank Gs for google cal), so I wander around looking for the room I am supposed to be in. Each one looks like it could be my classroom--the faces and the material looks familiar, but I'm not entirely sure it's where I've been slotted, not sure it's the one I've chosen.
Now my dreams can be quite intense sometimes, and quite hilariously obvious in their metaphors. I once was going through a breakup, and I dreamt that someone put a steak knife in my heart. So.
This dream, I think, is about figuring out the difference between what you chose and what someone else chose for you. And going in a certain direction that seems right, but you are never really sure if you've made it to the right place.
School gives you this feeling like you have very specific goals to work towards and a very specific timeline on how it's all going to pan out. Life, adult life, I suppose, is not so much like that. When you have a job, even one you are lucky enough to adore, and you are just doing your best day to day, it's weird to think about what you should be doing in your downtime. Like, now that you don't have a math test on Tuesday and an English paper due in two weeks, what are you supposed to be preparing for? School is also a great way of not having to decide exactly what it is you want to do. People are always telling you who to be in that situation. In fact, I think a lot of us probably feel like people are telling us who to be all the time. I guess that decision, that Ultimate Question: who am I and what should i be doing? carries a hell of a lot of responsibility.
Well, luckily, my dream last night gave me a really good answer to these eternal questions. Through all the stress of what was going on in the dream, a cat appeared at a window and stared at me for a long time like it had something to tell me. Suddenly the curtain waved in the wind and the answer came to me...
BATMAN!
Seriously. I told you my dreams were obvious.
Last night I had this recurring dream again--that I was in the halls of my old high school. I can never remember my class schedule (this is similar to yoga teaching-thank Gs for google cal), so I wander around looking for the room I am supposed to be in. Each one looks like it could be my classroom--the faces and the material looks familiar, but I'm not entirely sure it's where I've been slotted, not sure it's the one I've chosen.
Now my dreams can be quite intense sometimes, and quite hilariously obvious in their metaphors. I once was going through a breakup, and I dreamt that someone put a steak knife in my heart. So.
This dream, I think, is about figuring out the difference between what you chose and what someone else chose for you. And going in a certain direction that seems right, but you are never really sure if you've made it to the right place.
School gives you this feeling like you have very specific goals to work towards and a very specific timeline on how it's all going to pan out. Life, adult life, I suppose, is not so much like that. When you have a job, even one you are lucky enough to adore, and you are just doing your best day to day, it's weird to think about what you should be doing in your downtime. Like, now that you don't have a math test on Tuesday and an English paper due in two weeks, what are you supposed to be preparing for? School is also a great way of not having to decide exactly what it is you want to do. People are always telling you who to be in that situation. In fact, I think a lot of us probably feel like people are telling us who to be all the time. I guess that decision, that Ultimate Question: who am I and what should i be doing? carries a hell of a lot of responsibility.
Well, luckily, my dream last night gave me a really good answer to these eternal questions. Through all the stress of what was going on in the dream, a cat appeared at a window and stared at me for a long time like it had something to tell me. Suddenly the curtain waved in the wind and the answer came to me...
BATMAN!
Seriously. I told you my dreams were obvious.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Well, it's been awhile..
And I feel like that has pretty much been the title of my last 5 or so posts. Its been a while indeed, but I think it's time to return to my blog because things have changed a lot since I last wrote in and, well, I sorta miss it. It's just nice to have a place to sort out your thoughts every now and then, and whether or not anyone reads it, well, let's live in a little self-indulgence for once.
So indeed things have changed. Let's start here--I am now a yoga teacher, and have been teaching yoga full time for over a year now. I also own a little studio on Commercial Drive with my lovely and amazing partner Coco [www.eastsideyogastudio.com]. I think about yoga a lot and maybe if I write about it here, my nearest and dearest will get a break from my yammering on. And there is SO MUCH I want to talk about!
I think I'll start, though, with a class I took yesterday with the lovely Sjanie McInnis, an Anusara Inspired yoga teacher at Yaletown YYOGA. She started off the class with this story--this weekend, she said, there were tons of great yoga events happening. And she didn't go to any of them. She went to the beach instead. SJanie went on to theme the class on desire, mature, adult desire, and the need to stop punishing yourself with 'shoulds' that just end up ruining your day. Because being at the beach with your partner is an awesome way to celebrate life, and what else are we here for? To follow some prescription of a life we are supposed to be living rather than the one we want? Well honestly I don't know.
I was lucky to run into Sjanie yesterday because I think I really needed to hear that message. I'm one of those people that likes to be busy all the time, have a million projects on the go, and be in a constant state of accomplishment. It gets stressful and I get tired, but i am actually a little afraid of what happens when I stop.
Sjanie was talking about how our culture is in this new paradigm now where we are richer and freer than we have ever been before, and a lot of us are filled with options in a way that even our parent's generation had no idea about. We are stuck with this anxiety of choice--how do we fill our time? Who do we really want to be? That is a hard question, actually, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I am in many ways exactly where I want to be right now--I am doing what I love and [i think] what I am good at, and I have an awesome little studio in a great neighborhood that is creating a community of people that are excellent. So what do I do with my time off, when I've done what I can for the studio and I've done my teaching for the day?
Um, start up my blog again, I guess.
So indeed things have changed. Let's start here--I am now a yoga teacher, and have been teaching yoga full time for over a year now. I also own a little studio on Commercial Drive with my lovely and amazing partner Coco [www.eastsideyogastudio.com]. I think about yoga a lot and maybe if I write about it here, my nearest and dearest will get a break from my yammering on. And there is SO MUCH I want to talk about!
I think I'll start, though, with a class I took yesterday with the lovely Sjanie McInnis, an Anusara Inspired yoga teacher at Yaletown YYOGA. She started off the class with this story--this weekend, she said, there were tons of great yoga events happening. And she didn't go to any of them. She went to the beach instead. SJanie went on to theme the class on desire, mature, adult desire, and the need to stop punishing yourself with 'shoulds' that just end up ruining your day. Because being at the beach with your partner is an awesome way to celebrate life, and what else are we here for? To follow some prescription of a life we are supposed to be living rather than the one we want? Well honestly I don't know.
I was lucky to run into Sjanie yesterday because I think I really needed to hear that message. I'm one of those people that likes to be busy all the time, have a million projects on the go, and be in a constant state of accomplishment. It gets stressful and I get tired, but i am actually a little afraid of what happens when I stop.
Sjanie was talking about how our culture is in this new paradigm now where we are richer and freer than we have ever been before, and a lot of us are filled with options in a way that even our parent's generation had no idea about. We are stuck with this anxiety of choice--how do we fill our time? Who do we really want to be? That is a hard question, actually, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I am in many ways exactly where I want to be right now--I am doing what I love and [i think] what I am good at, and I have an awesome little studio in a great neighborhood that is creating a community of people that are excellent. So what do I do with my time off, when I've done what I can for the studio and I've done my teaching for the day?
Um, start up my blog again, I guess.
Friday, May 22, 2009
links?
Hello loves,
Well allright, I have been neglecting this blog thing. It's hard for me to pay attention with facebook, twitter, and my new website, jcpeters.ca : please go there to see what I've been up to. I can upload audio tracks of sets around town, youtube videos of my poetry, articles and book reviews I've written, AND links to every single episode of AudioText that happens. Check it out.
In the meantime, I'm starting a new blog in honour of my wine club, Winos United. Check it out here: winosunited.blogspot.com
aight?
peace up
Well allright, I have been neglecting this blog thing. It's hard for me to pay attention with facebook, twitter, and my new website, jcpeters.ca : please go there to see what I've been up to. I can upload audio tracks of sets around town, youtube videos of my poetry, articles and book reviews I've written, AND links to every single episode of AudioText that happens. Check it out.
In the meantime, I'm starting a new blog in honour of my wine club, Winos United. Check it out here: winosunited.blogspot.com
aight?
peace up
Friday, April 10, 2009
News! Poetry! Life!
March 17th! Well that was a long time ago since my last post!
Things have been a little crazy on this end (tell me something new, right?) and I've been a little disorganized.
I'm writing this post from my parent's couch, on the first day off I've had in about 2 weeks. I just moved here from my old place because I wasn't able to find a place to live for April 1st. I did find a sweet one for May 1st, though, right near the Drive, that I'm pretty excited to move into pretty soon. My chaise lounge is already there, and I wonder how she likes it so far.
Anyway, this means it's me and the parents for a month. It's not so bad, we're never here at the same time, and I get to use the car a lot, which I like more than I'd like to admit. Getting to Burnaby is just so much easier in a vehicle, it's just true.
Anyway, I've been doing this thing called the Poem a Day Challenge for April, which is Poetry Month. Every day, Robert Brewer posts a prompt here: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/. You post your poem in the comments section every day, and there's going to be some sort of ebook at the end I don't quite understand yet.
Anyway, it's been amazing for me to be writing this much. It's busted me out of my usual writing box (sex, sex, sex, love, sex--boring!) and I've got a whole bunch of other stuff that's been on my mind out. I feel GREAT! Daily therapy. Love it.
On Tuesday night, I went to this event called Foundationradio.ca....'s open mic I guess. I'm not sure what the name of the night is, but it's every other Tuesday at Nyala on Main and 26th. It's amazing....i've never had such a good response from an audience. I read one of my (edited) poem a day poems on the open mic, and the response was really overwhelming. I recorded everything, of course, and I'm posting a recording of the new poem to my website as we speak. Check out the A/V section at jcpeters.ca to hear it.
I also read a poem a day poem on my radio show yesterday, which you can download and listen to here: http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/20090408-152500-to-20090408-160000.mp3
And if that's not immediate enough for ya, here's yet another one from the same well of creativity:
Outsider
I just wanted to know that you were in there somewhere.
I wanted to be sure that when your personality split
like a reproducing cell
two equally sized and shaped blobs of yourself at first,
then shaking, quavering into something else,
someone else I didn't recognize,
that you were still, somehow, the blob I used to know.
I wanted to know that from across this table, glass of wine in my hand
half full beer in yours
that you were still in there somewhere.
I can't feel anything but sorry.
I dreamt all last night of letting people down
of being late, of getting lost, of forgetting the safe combination
and being unable to speak the language where you are.
For all the words flying like artillery between us,
trying to understand, trying to make sense,
we're just not speaking the same tongue.
I could touch your hand from where I'm sitting,
but I don't.
And it's only April 10th. Stay tuned for more!
Things have been a little crazy on this end (tell me something new, right?) and I've been a little disorganized.
I'm writing this post from my parent's couch, on the first day off I've had in about 2 weeks. I just moved here from my old place because I wasn't able to find a place to live for April 1st. I did find a sweet one for May 1st, though, right near the Drive, that I'm pretty excited to move into pretty soon. My chaise lounge is already there, and I wonder how she likes it so far.
Anyway, this means it's me and the parents for a month. It's not so bad, we're never here at the same time, and I get to use the car a lot, which I like more than I'd like to admit. Getting to Burnaby is just so much easier in a vehicle, it's just true.
Anyway, I've been doing this thing called the Poem a Day Challenge for April, which is Poetry Month. Every day, Robert Brewer posts a prompt here: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/. You post your poem in the comments section every day, and there's going to be some sort of ebook at the end I don't quite understand yet.
Anyway, it's been amazing for me to be writing this much. It's busted me out of my usual writing box (sex, sex, sex, love, sex--boring!) and I've got a whole bunch of other stuff that's been on my mind out. I feel GREAT! Daily therapy. Love it.
On Tuesday night, I went to this event called Foundationradio.ca....'s open mic I guess. I'm not sure what the name of the night is, but it's every other Tuesday at Nyala on Main and 26th. It's amazing....i've never had such a good response from an audience. I read one of my (edited) poem a day poems on the open mic, and the response was really overwhelming. I recorded everything, of course, and I'm posting a recording of the new poem to my website as we speak. Check out the A/V section at jcpeters.ca to hear it.
I also read a poem a day poem on my radio show yesterday, which you can download and listen to here: http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/20090408-152500-to-20090408-160000.mp3
And if that's not immediate enough for ya, here's yet another one from the same well of creativity:
Outsider
I just wanted to know that you were in there somewhere.
I wanted to be sure that when your personality split
like a reproducing cell
two equally sized and shaped blobs of yourself at first,
then shaking, quavering into something else,
someone else I didn't recognize,
that you were still, somehow, the blob I used to know.
I wanted to know that from across this table, glass of wine in my hand
half full beer in yours
that you were still in there somewhere.
I can't feel anything but sorry.
I dreamt all last night of letting people down
of being late, of getting lost, of forgetting the safe combination
and being unable to speak the language where you are.
For all the words flying like artillery between us,
trying to understand, trying to make sense,
we're just not speaking the same tongue.
I could touch your hand from where I'm sitting,
but I don't.
And it's only April 10th. Stay tuned for more!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Marginalia by Billy Collins
I don't know who Billy Collins is, but I just found this poem in an archive of stuff from my old computer, and thought YES! This is amazing! I can't remember who gave it to me, but thanks, person I forget. This poem is awesome.
Marginalia
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have manage to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."
Billy Collins
Marginalia
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have manage to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."
Billy Collins
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Sistahood Slam on YouTube!
For those of you who missed the Sistahood Slam this past Monday, i am really sorry for you. The good news is that Warren Dean Fulton was lovely enough to compile a teaser from the evening similar to the one from the WOWPS playoffs, so you can see what you missed.
Never fear though, more poetry is always to come. I remind you to check out my radio show, AudioText, to get your fix (which you can access through my website, jcpeters.ca) and to keep an eye on Cafe Deux Soleils, Cafe Montmartre, and the Cottage Bistro for events coming up. Tonight, for example, there is a poetry event featuring Afua Cooper down at Raw Canvas in Yaletown. It's one of my favourite places to read poetry, so I'll most likely be there on the open mic, recording everything at the same time. So stay tuned.
here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wte3pbcYquA
Never fear though, more poetry is always to come. I remind you to check out my radio show, AudioText, to get your fix (which you can access through my website, jcpeters.ca) and to keep an eye on Cafe Deux Soleils, Cafe Montmartre, and the Cottage Bistro for events coming up. Tonight, for example, there is a poetry event featuring Afua Cooper down at Raw Canvas in Yaletown. It's one of my favourite places to read poetry, so I'll most likely be there on the open mic, recording everything at the same time. So stay tuned.
here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wte3pbcYquA
News! Yoga! Life!
Hello everyone!
It's been a little while, and I've been slack with keeping up on this here blog. Lots has been going on. Lots.
One thing is that I've been working on my website a fair bit: jcpeters.ca. Check it out if you like and you can read poems, listen to and watch perfomances, even read my academic articles! Crazy I know!
Now, onto the news portion of the evening:
I've been spending a lot of time doing things like meditating and yin yoga, getting massages and trying to get back to my roots and figure all my shit out. Things like, what do I want out of life? What direction should I be going in? As it turns out, you can get this kind of perspective without escaping to a cabin in the woods (though that helps)--the magic is in not dating for a while. Or just getting rid of whatever is cluttering your thinking to give yourself some space. I can't recommend this 40 day revolution thing enough--i'm on day 39 and I feel like my whole life has changed. I think we all know what we need to do to get that kind of perspective, we just have to figure out how to tap into it.
In any case, the obvious solution presented itself to me: teach yoga! Of course! I'm starting an intensive certification course at the end of May, and then I'm gonna be a YOGA TEACHER!
On that note: check out this awesome picture of me and my biceps made out of fighter jets! This was from an excellent Anusara workshop with Chris Chavez, by the way.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
hi!
Hey! Hey bloggers!
Nice to see ya. I never get comments from you, so I forget to check back, but I hear you guys are listening: look: 48% or so of people who saw my stuttering poem on youtube heard it here first, apparently. How awesome! Hey thanks for reading great people! I like you a whole lot.
In any case, I have lots to say, and will do over the next little while, but first I just wanted to say thanks for listening. I remind you all, too, to check out jcpeters.ca for updated a/v like they used to say in high school and news that's happening in the world. And by world I mean around Julie Peters. That's Julie Peters. Got it? Yes you do. I like you.
More soon, I promise!
and thanks, sincerely, as always.
Nice to see ya. I never get comments from you, so I forget to check back, but I hear you guys are listening: look: 48% or so of people who saw my stuttering poem on youtube heard it here first, apparently. How awesome! Hey thanks for reading great people! I like you a whole lot.
In any case, I have lots to say, and will do over the next little while, but first I just wanted to say thanks for listening. I remind you all, too, to check out jcpeters.ca for updated a/v like they used to say in high school and news that's happening in the world. And by world I mean around Julie Peters. That's Julie Peters. Got it? Yes you do. I like you.
More soon, I promise!
and thanks, sincerely, as always.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Apologize: a poem on YouTube
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