This is Where I Belong

This is Where I Belong

I love my new shirt by @holdfastprintworks. It reminds me that wherever I go in my day, that's where I belong.  This motto reminds me of my goal to be at home in all places by being truly present from one moment to the next.  It's an especially challenging goal after my recent move.  I have realized that when I long to be somewhere else, my energy becomes scattered. 

It took me a long time to convince myself that I belonged at the front of a yoga class, as a teacher. There have been so many doubts and questions about whether I practice enough, whether I am wise enough, etc.  

Now I know the trick to being a good teacher is simply to be present and stay focused on my students-- learn to look beyond my own self doubts.  When I manage this, I feel completely at home.  

Biofeedback: Exploring the Mind/Body Connection

What's Your Style?

If you are new to yoga, all the different "styles" of yoga can be overwhelming.  Where should you begin?  And is all yoga the same?  The truth is that no, not all yoga is the same.  But all the different styles are very necessary, because all of us have different needs.  Just like how we all need different diets based on our genetic make-up, lifestyles, and taste preferences.  

Remember that there is no one simple prescription for health....or enlightenment! 

Here is a little quiz to help you figure out which yoga is best for you.  The quiz is by Alison Hicks (http://alisonhinksyoga.wordpress.com/)

This link to the quiz allows you to zoom in, which I can't figure out how to do on my blog (eesh):
http://dailycupofyoga.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/yoga-style-quiz1.jpg

I was really surprised that the quiz led me right to the style that I choose to practice most often.  Does the quiz work for you too?

And here is a really helpful link from Yoga Journal about the different styles:

http://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/2984

Morning Stretches

Equinox Parody

Here is the recent Equinox video featuring Briohny Smith practicing in her underwear in her bedroom (uh ohhhh) that has raised such a stink in the yoga blogosphere lately.  Inspiration or near-pornography?  This is a great example of projection.  How do you respond to this video?

And here is the humorist Michael A. Stusser's parody of the above video.   Just as inspiring as Briohny!

On Iyengar Yoga...

Why Iyengar?

Breath Beard, Dristi Eyebrows

More yoga art by Boonchu Tanti on his Flickr Stream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boonchutanti/

BirthMarkings

Learning to love and accept out bodies.  This is the opening to a project by Margaret Lazarus exploring the changes in our bodies and the shift in our self image after giving birth.

Details of the complete project can be found at:

http://www.imow.org/economica/projects/story?key=6572

Thanks to Chelsea Kouns, a local passionate Asheville doula and friend, for passing this on.  Chelsea (among many other titles) is the program director for Start From Seed, "A comprehensive, community based program rooted in the intention of increasing the quality of care women receive before, during and after pregnancy."

 http://www.startfromseed.org/#! 

Irrelephant

I Feel So Wonderful...

I played this during savasana in today's AYC class.

Elvis and Yoga

Wtf??  http://downwardfacingdoug.tumblr.com/page/6  Thanks to Downward Facing Doug

I hear Lady Gaga looooooves yoga

Lady Gaga 

I know I can't pull off that skin tight lace catsuit, but I definitely need to find a black mat and  gold chain mat carrier. 

A Snapshot of Yoga History

http://www.yogadork.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/yoga-history-flowchart-0411.jpg

Here is a link to the flowchart that you can zoom in on.

Given that this is a very brief and abbreviated "history" of yoga...you can see that it's history is very complex.   The next time someone asks me where yoga comes from, I plan to send them the link to this chart. It's just too complicated of an answer for me sometimes.  

A Soft Loss

Your hair stays pressed against your head as we lift you away from the pillows.
You are so pillowy.
You are so pilled. 
The doctors have peeled you away from me with every prescription.
Aging made lighter, these last few years made feathery.
I miss your crackling laughter, I miss your love stronger than steel.
In my sleep, as you sleep, it all seems real--
I feel it and I know it: 
I am losing you.
But this soft, easing away
is harder than I could have ever imagined.

Reflection of You

The thought of your death
returns me to infancy.
Suddenly I am crawling beneath the covers
sucking my thumb in the dark.

All the tears you once soothed away
now rise heavy.
Racked with sobs
that have been waiting, pushing up against
the smooth curtain you pulled across
my window into fear.

You created in me the belief
of a steadfast truth--
a constant love.

Because I never felt your love waver--
from that first moment
I fit in the palm of one hand, at 4lbs, 6 ounces.

By now I have felt many a love falter.
So it is a reflection of your love I look for
in those around me.
It is a reflection of your love
I aim to be for others.

The Calm Beneath the Surface

"Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind"

My thoughts and my emotions: powerful waves crashing.  I have spent so many years being pulled and tossed about in these waves.  Fighting to get to shore.  Unable even to figure out the direction of the shore, flailing madly in so many delusions.
I can feel these delusions, these samskaras, rise up on me still.  Like a storm brewing at sea. Suddenly I feel so down on myself, so alone and unsure.
But I am learning not to try to fight my way to shore.  Dive deeper, beneath the waves.  Search for the calm beneath the surface.  It's always there.
I'm always there. Deep inside.

Avian

You were so appropriately named, Robin.
Your bones so delicate and frail.
Avian.

How you quivered
beneath the hands that tried to still you.

You were so afraid to fly.
We thought your wings were broken.

You spent your nights flailing against the bars of your cage,
a flimsy cage of a failing marriage,
of daughters who were never your own.

A cage you constructed yourself--
a mild attempt to keep yourself sane.

All along, the door of your cage was wide open.
You knew it--that is what made you most afraid.

I sat in your cage with you--
night after night.

Your hands I remember more than your face.
Watching the lit cigarette between those long graceful fingers--
one after the other,
each a tiny measure of time.

I wish I could have closed the cage door.

Beauty is a Gift

All that I understand of my beauty you gave to me.
It was you who saw it first.
It was you who showed it to me every day
until I could see it for myself.

You were sitting at the table,
a plastic tablecloth and cheap placemats
all matching and lined up evenly on the table.
You reached for me as I ran past you.
I was flushed, sweaty from playing kickball in the yard
with all my neighborhood friends.
I laughed and tried to wiggle away--
but you pulled me closer,
backwards over your lap.

"You are so beautiful--
your face, your features, your hair,
you are so beautiful."
I stopped laughing.
How serious you would get sometimes.
You would insist on these moments--
on stopping everything
to tell me something as clearly as you could,
as best you understood.

You were my biggest fan for so many years-
and I was yours.
You were crazy and we knew it,
but you were the only one, besides Jenn,
to listen to my fears without laughing.

I remember your naked body.
Your small breasts and large dark areolas.
Your long torso and narrow hips.
How I would look down at my own and compare.

Sometimes when I look at my naked self
in the mirror today
I still compare my shape to yours.
And I still hear your words,
"You are so beautiful."

We Are All Kids At Play

"Your mother believed in playing" my grandmother said on my visit home last weekend. It brought tears to my eyes-- the faint memory of my mother's smile, the time she made snow angels with my sister and me in the backyard, a couple months before her death. I wonder if she somehow sensed how short her life would be? She died at the age I am now, 28.

I want to be remembered this way also. I'm taking a few days off work to try to get a grip on what really matters. I'm trying to slow down. I know I can do more by doing less. Everything is meaningless without focus and intention behind it and lately so much of what I do feels meaningless. So the next few days of meditation and intention are dedicated to you, Mom. Teach me how to play again.

This Body is Fleeting

"So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off troubles of the body, for youth and vigor are meaningless" Ecclesiastes 11:10

I am focusing on teaching therapeutic yoga. Particularly, a group with multiple sclerosis. I have so much to learn. I need to learn not only how to rearrange the yoga poses and make them more accessible, but also how to relate to and empathize with my students. What a challenge for someone whose body has always been mostly healthy. A few weeks ago, I was surprised by my fear when I merely had a stomach virus, which carries none of the gravity of a diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. My fear wasn't so much based around my immortality, but in my identity as a healthy, young woman.

I have a friend with MS who is already teaching me more than she realizes. She comes to the therapeutic yoga class I have begun to assist at Lighten Up. She's my age. She is kind, beautiful, and courageous.

We had a discussion a couple weeks ago about whether it is appropriate to call someone with disabilities "courageous". Is it courageous to simply deal with the circumstances that you had no part in choosing? I think so because what she has chosen is how to approach her disabilities. She encourages me by the way that she embraces her life, including her diagnosis. It seems that it would be so easy to mentally run from her diagnosis, live in a level of denial.

Instead, I watch her embrace her diagnosis and reach out to others. My friend is a leader of the WNC chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. At their last meeting, she showed me T-shirts they were having printed that say"I'm not drunk, I have Multiple Sclerosis". She is so quick to smile and laugh, so easy to embrace. Not to say that she is never visibly frustrated or discouraged, but rather that she posesses a self-awareness and acceptance that I imagine must set her far ahead on the ladder to enlightenment.

In our discussions of MS, my friend's explanation of those first few months before diagnosis reminded me of my recent experience with panic attacks. They started last summer...suddenly being pulled strongly into my body, of my body leading the way instead of my mind...the pulling tightness in my chest and in my palms. The body forcing me to pay attention, to listen to what it had to say: Sit down, slow down, stop this whirlwind of existence...

My panic attacks forced an awareness on me, a presence of mind. I imagine my friend's experiences are similar in that she is often more present and aware because her body forces her to pay attention.

One thing I have learned is that every person with MS has a different story to tell, and every person with MS's experience's can change dramatically from day to day. This is so difficult for them in so many ways. But one thing their experiences can bring to them is these qualities that my friend so embodies- self-awareness and a presence of mind.

The intention in my meditations and practice these past few days has been about seeing myself beyond my flesh. Just as a person is still a person seperate from their disabilities, I am still me if I am not healthy, or young. This body is fleeting.