Doing "nothing"

Last week I was lying on my daughter Lucia's bed before saying goodnight. It's my favorite time with her these days. At fourteen most of her waking hours are focused on separating from me and I am grateful for a few minutes of being needed and wanted like the old days. Lucia and I were talking about about school, work, her friends and summer plans and it felt like the conversation had reached its natural end. I was getting ready to kiss her goodnight when she started talking again. "Mom, " she said, "the other day I was reading a book about Hamilton which was really boring and I just started staring out into space..... I realized that I never do that. I'm always at school or at soccer or vocal jazz or piano or I'm on my phone or with other people. I'm never just doing nothing."

Inside I felt broken-hearted. The state of existence these days is to be on all the time. I felt for Lucia and her peers who, with the presence of cell phones, are really mired in the culture of always being tuned in. The pressure to be doing something all the time is so intense and there is very little opportunity to tune out. But I didn't tell her that, I just asked, "How did that feel?"

"Great!" she said.

We talked a little bit about finding ways to get to that place in the future, making time to just be instead of always doing, and then we said goodnight. I struggle as a parent to help Lucia find balance and in helping her, I become aware of my own imbalance, my increasing inability to find comfort in the existence of just being.

The next day I practiced yoga. I went to class and from the moment I settled into Savasana at the beginning of class to wait for the Frani to turn on the lights to begin,  I was there. I was just being. I felt a swell of gratitude for this feeling and the presence of this practice in my life. Yoga is a lot of things and it means something different for everyone. For me these days yoga is a respite from the "doing," a haven from technology and chores and to-do-lists. It is a sanctuary of openness and grace. It's a reminder that underneath all of the things I do to be me, I'm still alive and vibrant and filled with energy. It's a gift. I hope you feel it too.

Cranky is temporary

Why was I so flipping cranky? All week long I've felt so happy. I've been joyful even. I've been like a Hawaii vacation commercial with myself. I walk around and randomly pause to smell the flowers. A few days ago when I was taking a walk and it started to rain on me I thought, "Oh goodie! Now the pavement will have that amazing just-rained-on smell that I love so much." I have tried new recipes, cheerily done all the laundry, made my daughter's lunch for her when she ran out of time, all with a twinkle in my eye and not a hint of a grudge.

And then yesterday afternoon it suddenly switched. Crankiness took over like bald tires on black ice and I spent most of the day trying to crawl my way out of this swamp I somehow landed in. I tried a long walk. I saw a group of senior citizens dancing to Polka music in a picnic shelter and even that only boosted my spirits for split second. The gloom came right back. I tried meditating. I tried watching an episode of Broad City. I bought a succulent and some basil to plant. The crank held on like a tick.

I could feel the ooze of negativity seeping out of me. Who had I become? And why? Was there no boundary to this negativity? Would I ever come back to my joy? As I parked my car to sub a night class at the studio I thought, "Laura, you have got to get your shit together or you are going to ruin the Friday evening of every person who walks through The SweatBox doors."

Unable to explain or shop or walk or think away my mood, I had the momentary burst of thought that maybe this could be hormonal. And suddenly I could breathe. Maybe I hadn't turned into a terrible, cranky old lady. Maybe this was a temporary hormonal state. I texted my friend Kate and told her about my hideous mood. She shot back with the offer to drive by my house and have a ten minute swear off. Since I was already at work, I declined, but the camaraderie of the gesture made me feel better.

Isolation is a terrible feeling. It's insidious in that once you're in an isolated state it's very hard to ask for help to get out of it. Kate and many other women in my life are dealing with hormonal shifts that, for lack of a better term, "fuck your shit up" at unpredictable moments. It's not unlike puberty when I hid in my room for no other reason than, if my mother told me it was time for dinner, I would jump out of my second story window. We all need to feel like we can be understood, like we belong somewhere and fit in.

I did end up getting myself together to teach last night. It was a beautiful group of humans and by the end of the class my heart was swollen with love and gratitude for all of them. I'm lucky that I have peers who are going through these hormonal shifts at the same time that I am. And I'm grateful for my yoga community who reminds me that being cranky is temporary.

Yoga as Science

Last week we had Lucia's seventh grade school conference. Lucia is getting an A in every class, including science.  But when I ask Lucia what she's studying or how it's going in science, she tells me that the classroom is totally out of control, that she's not learning anything and she can't describe what aspect of physical science her class is working on. I asked how in the world she's getting an A and she said that she retakes every test and redoes every homework. She does this during her lunch period when she should be farting around with her friends and getting a break.

When I expressed concern to her science teacher in an email, the teacher replied, "It's tough. I have 34 students and I do a lot of classroom management. Lucia is actually one of the really good students."
"But she's not interested in science." I wrote back. "She can't tell me what she's studying in science. and the only reason she's one of the 'good' students is because she spends all of her spare time redoing the works and she still isn't getting it."
The conversation hit a stand still and I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do next.

I'm proud of Lucia for getting straight As. But I could give a rat's ass that she's getting straight As if she's not learning anything. For girls, 7th grade is the time when they are most likely to abandon math and science, to proclaim that they aren't good at it, to eliminate it from their list of future career options. We have a book about women in science, women who changed the world with their discoveries----Marie Curie, Barbara McClintock, Shirley Ann Jackson, Rachel Carson. I'm bummed about Lucia's experience with science this year. Instead of being part of an environment where she is becoming curious, asking questions, uncovering mysteries, she is doing grunt memorization and busy work and dealing with a handful of kids who mess around during science instead of lunch.

We live in a culture that looks at the end product. What are your grades? What does your body look like at the end of your diet or exercise regime? What kind of house did your big job allow you to buy? Because yoga has become so commonplace and many people put it in the category of "working out," there's a risk that we can get caught up in this idea of achieving a final result with our yoga practice.

Yoga is a lifetime process. It is about finding ourselves through exploration. We do this through postures, through breath, through chanting and meditation. Some of us do all of this, others only pieces. It doesn't matter what you choose to be part of your practice. It matters that you practice. You do what works for you. It's easy to get caught up in the end product--- what your triangle posture looks like or how long you can balance in standing bow pose. But that's not the point. The point is to investigate and be curious about the process of your practice. Just like science. What happens if you don't practice in your favorite spot this morning? What would if feel like to take a totally different class than you usually take tomorrow? Would the world collapse if you gave that teacher you didn't like another try? Yoga is like a science project. Stepping onto your mat is stepping into the unknown. It's a time to abandon assumptions and expectations, to become curious about potential discoveries, to uncover information that could change your world.

Find myself. Repeat.

I do yoga five or six days a week. I do it because I love it.  I love the practice. I love the teachers. I love the community. I know that if I didn't do yoga, the slow build of fatigue, emotional despair and inflexibility would take over. I know this because I've had periods of not doing yoga. When I neglect my practice, my body misses it for sure, but mentally I notice it more. I tend to get lost; a little adrift and unclear of where I am headed. I am more who I want to be when I practice. Doing yoga is not so much about fixing myself as finding myself.

When I first started practicing in my twenties, my practice was very isolated. I practiced my yoga and then I left, very quickly. Yoga class was an efficient way of re-centering during the tumbleweed storm of my twenties. There was very little spillover, at least consciously, from the yoga room to other parts of my world. I lived my crazy life, went to yoga a few times a week where I focused on slowing down, watching my breath, relaxing. Then I'd change clothes and head back into the chaos. I didn't really think about how yoga affected the other parts of my life.

Nearly twenty-five years later, I can see how different my practice has become. I'm almost fifty-years-old, so maturity naturally accounts for some of my evolution, but it's also the years of practice.  I notice when I am in a regular practice cycle that I am more calm, more patient, more kind-- to myself and others. Sometimes Lucia, my twelve-year-old, says to me, "Mom, maybe you need yoga." Neither Lucia, nor my partner Nancy has ever once complained about my going to yoga at the studio or doing yoga at home. They are in full support because they know it makes me my best self.

It's not that I learn something new each time I practice, it's that I reconnect with the lessons I've lost. Though I'm a much calmer, more grounded being than I was two decades ago, I am still vulnerable to the forces of stress and distraction that I have always been. When I practice and a teacher reminds me, for example, that "nothing is permanent" or that "breathing normally will calm my nervous system," it's not that I don't know those jewels of wisdom, it's that I need to be reminded of them.

I'm always been a high-intensity person. It's in my DNA. I get satisfaction and self-esteem from being a doer, making shit happen, taking on more than I can chew. I don't know how I got so lucky to make yoga my life's work. I can't imagine where I would be mentally, physically or emotionally without it. I mean, if I had chosen, for example, to become a day-trader (which I think would be super exciting and fun), I might very well be dead by now. As it is, I have several ventures outside of being a yoga teacher that keep me amped up. Being a high-gear personality, I need the daily reset of yoga to quiet me down. I know I'm not alone. Many of us need yoga or something like it to balance the crazy. I'm eternally grateful that going to work everyday is the very thing that keeps me sane. When I think of how lucky I am that this is my life, I simply have no words.

Family Yoga

Last week I spent seven days with my family at a house in Michigan. It was my little family-- Nancy  and Lucia (12),  our 12-year old niece Kaye, my sister Amy, her husband Ben and their seven-year-old Sam, my sister Katherine and her two boys, Joe (15 1/2) and Sean (14), my mom (76) and stepfather (89).

All families are intense and dysfunctional in their own special ways. My family is no different. Depending on the year and the individual states of mind among all of the kids and parents, different combinations of people work well and others not so well on our family trips. There are always good times, lots of laughing, game playing, teasing, cooking and eating on our family trips, but there's also a collective tension that builds. By the end, even though we all love each other, we're ready to say goodbye.

This morning as we were cleaning up our rental house, I was washing the dishes and broke a vase. When I told my mom, she said, "Oh God, that's a fancy one. It's an Aalto!" I had no idea what an Aalto was, but I was quickly schooled. Yes, indeed it was a fancy one. "The Aalto Littala" to be specific, retailing for $175 at MOMA.

So the end of my trip was punctuated by bullshit-- texting the owner about replacing a vase that we used for 4 days for flowers that died. I spent fifteen minutes stewing in my room between attempts to find the Aalto Littala on sale, but eventually there was nothing I could do but let it go. A broken glass vase cannot be pieced back together, no matter how many ways you try.

As we left the vacation rental I was stewing. The broken vase compounded by the build up of tension from lots of family time made me feel manic and a little bit violent. As we started the two-hour drive from Michigan to Midway airport in Chicago, I tried to redirect my energy by thinking about all of the great moments we had together. One of my favorite was an impromptu poolside yoga class with my fourteen year old nephew Sean, his 15 year old brother Joe, Lucia and Kaye (12), Nancy, my mom and my two sisters.

We only had beach towels, no mats, and it was 8pm, the end of a full day of swimming, tennis and a huge dinner. But somehow it happened. Nancy and Lucia are used to family yoga; we do it often. But I was truly surprised that anyone else joined in. My nephew Sean was the biggest shocker. Sean is an extreme athlete. He's a trampolinist, a wild flipping scooterer, the kind of kid who jumps off roofs without batting an eye. A few months ago, while jumping off of a roof onto a trampoline doing a triple flip, Sean broke his neck and had surgery to fuse two of his cervical vertebrae. In addition to his recent injury, Sean is also a quintessential teen, spending most of his time on his phone and in his room.

So when I asked Sean to join he said, "Sure, I'll try," I was floored. I started the class quickly so that nothing would distract him away from doing yoga. The class lasted about 40 minutes and was very low key. Sean did every posture and stayed seemingly present the whole time (no phone, eyes closed, snickering undetectable).  I can still his face in final Savasana-- peaceful, quiet, beautiful. I can picture the faces of everyone in my family that evening. I have these moments often at the studio when I look around the room after a class and see my students recalibrating, integrating all of the information from the class. It's why I love my job. It's a gift to me to see the peace that comes to people when they slow down, take away the bullshit, and breathe new life into their bodies. I'm not sure when my family will get together again, but until we do,  I'll so grateful to have the image of their beautiful post-yoga faces to remember.

Goo Goo Gaa Gaa

I've just finished listening to Esther Perel's new podcast, "Where Should We Begin." It's seven episodes of couples therapy, each episode a different couple. In one episode, Perel has one member of the couple blindfold herself and the other member speak only in French. Perel reminds the couple, and all of us listening to the podcast, that most humans are non-verbal for at least the first 18 months of our lives. Prior to speaking, we communicated through our bodies. Our first language is non-verbal;  body language. When we were pre-verbal, we could tell our parents if we were happy, sad, curious, hungry, in pain, constipated, hot or cold with our bodies.

As a hyper-verbal person, this is an important reminder. I often get caught up in the intellectualization of an experience because I am quick to attach words to it. How would I describe that?, I often find myself thinking in the middle of a feeling.

As a yoga student and teacher, I am in the unique position to reconnect and more deeply connect with my first language, the body. The other day before class, I shared this idea-- try to notice what language you are using to experience your yoga practice. To be able to be in a posture and just feel it instead of attaching words is a gift. The words usually come with judgement or analysis, thoughts that take us off the path to becoming more connected with our true selves. Feeling, through the body, on the other hand, is where true healing and liberation can happen.

When I was twenty I lived in Spain for a year. I flew home from Madrid via Kennedy Airport. I remember, as I waited in the terminal for my connection to O'Hare, how disoriented I felt.  It had been so long since I'd spoken English regularly that I couldn't remember certain words. So when I think about the 20 or 30 or 50 years we live speaking a language other than the one we were born with, it makes sense that rediscovering our body language would be challenging. It might feel at times impossible.

The couple who wore the blindfold and spoke French were trying to reconnect with one another by experiencing each other as different people with the idea that, seeing each other in this new way would enable them to see each other more completely. They were opening the door to that idea that we are never just one way. How we act most of the time is not who we are all of the time.

Yoga opens that door too. I'm shy and guarded and a little bit worried all the time, but that's not all I am.  Yoga gives me the opportunity to take a break from seeing only that, from being only that. The experience of yoga is hard to put into words. Right, because it's in the body.

The Middle Ground

I practice yoga every day because it makes me feel good. Oh, and it keeps me sane. I often struggle when I practice. Sometimes it's really hard physically, other times mentally, oftentimes both. The usual pattern: I start in a resistant, amped state of mind and by the time I land in Savasana, I'm in that glorious end zone of tranquility. But between these polarized places, there is the space in between, the peanut butter and jelly that I live in the majority of the time I'm practicing. The magic of yoga is the union of the physical and the mental, the body and the breath. This energetic tandem play creates a magical state---perfect and beautiful, though temporary and fleeting.

I've been trying to think of a term for this enchanted space. It's a real thing, this space in between the angst and the grace. I visualize it as a something invisible but with form. It pushes and it pulls, it moves around the body, kind of like the slime in Ghostbusters, only very friendly, very loving, and very gentle.  It's the opposite of destructive. It's integration, happening even without me knowing or trying. It comes through me, takes over, becomes the strongest sensation. It's not the amped up starting point, nor is it the blissed out end point. It's the space between the two, created only because the other states exist. Its the Middle Ground.

For my lifestyle-- parenting, running a business, managing a household-- I recognize that I can't stay in the Middle Ground all the time. But I think that because I have had a daily yoga practice for many years, there is resonance when other Middle Ground moments show up throughout my day when I am not doing yoga. It's during morning coffee in bed talking to my sweetheart about nothing and everything, floating in those moments between being asleep and brushing my teeth to start the clock on the beginning of another long, usually harried day. I find it driving my daughter to school, between rushing out the door and saying a hasty goodbye "do you have your lunch?" at the crosswalk. I experience the Middle Ground when I take the time to walk instead of drive the two miles to the community center where I volunteer on Tuesday nights.

It's a relief and a reward. I don't imagine that I would ever stop practicing yoga, but if for some reason I had to, I would know that the magic slime shows up in other ways. And a reward because, hot damn, all those years of in the yoga room have seriously paid off!

Failure is not a dirty word

Last week I took Aimée's Vinyasa class. About halfway through the class, she stopped us and gave a little introduction about the next posture we would do. She said, "a lot of this sequence is built around failure. When we do this next pose, be open to failing."

As we set up and attempted Firefly pose, most of us did fail, even the teacher. After class, I told Aimée how fun the sequence was. She looked relieved and said, "I taught that earlier this week and it was a total bust."

"Why?" I asked her.

"Because I didn't tell the students they could fail," she replied with the clarity only someone who'd seen both sides could offer.

For some reason, failure is a dirty word in our culture. But why?  Failure is the only way to get to where we want to go. How can we learn what we need to learn without failure. I will need way stronger arms and core to do Firefly. If I just popped into it when Aimée offered us the posture, that would be a bore.

As a parent, I often think about what "failure" means to my daughter. I see her, even at age 12, resistant to trying new things for fear that she'll fail. When does this message start and how do we counter it, make failure something to expect instead of something to avoid?

Maybe it is the overt invitation to fail, an explicit offering that unifies us in the experience instead of divides us. Some people are naturally more pliable in certain directions, born with openly rotated hips and short arms and punching biceps. Other people, like me, have hips that naturally rotate more internally and long, Olive-Oilesque arms. I'll fail more times at doing arm balances that require deep, open hips and others will struggle more to do binding poses with their arms and legs like eagle.

It's okay to fail. It's important to fail. I invite you, me, all of us to fail. Next time you come into the yoga room, give yourself a strong, clear invitation to flounder a little bit, to teeter, to fall out, to fail. Let this be the starting point for the rest of your life. What have you wanted to do but avoided because you were afraid to fail? Notice what you've been avoiding and step into those places. Reclaim it, rename it if you want to. Failure is not a dirty word. Thanks Aimée.

Make space for all of it.....

Last week on the way to school, Lucia said, out of the blue, “Mommy, I'm just not spiritual.” I’m prone to parental lecturing, oversharing my opinion, but I’m newly enlightened by a book called Untangled by Lisa Damour. The book breaks out the major stages of female adolescence.  Instead of launching into one of my moralistic lectures, I remembered the author’s wise words about how 11-year-old girls are just dipping their painted toes into independence. They are making overt efforts to establish themselves as wholly separate from their parents. 

I stayed quiet. I just nodded and vocalized an “Mmm hmm” of acknowledgment to her declaration. “I mean, it’s just not my thing,” Lucia continued, “spirituality, I mean. It’s just not for me.”

Okay. I thought to myself. She is different from me. She is letting me know how different. And, I, in a clear moment of parenting lucidity, recognized that we were both doing our jobs--- she was establishing her individuality, differentiating from me, and I was letting her do it! Two points for the mother-daughter team!!!!

As I was teaching Yin Yoga last week, the experience of my conversation with Lucia came into my mind. Yin Yoga is an intensely calm and quiet practice, and as such, there is room for lots of mind-wandering. In Yin practice, there isn’t the endorphin rush or constant movement present in more Yang styles like Bikram or Vinyasa. This absence can create an environment where mental wanderings proliferate. It’s easy for thoughts to enter our minds that we perceive to be “bad” or “wrong” or “inappropriate.”

I told my students the story about Lucia’s declaration of “not being spiritual” and shared my response—to let the pronouncement sit there, to make space for it. Once that happened, we could both move on, and feel good about the experience. Had I glommed onto a resistant response, “Honey, you never know. Someday you might become spiritual….. Do you really know what spirituality is? ……blaaaah, blaaaah, blaaaah.” 

As I looked out into the sea of bodies, everyone had their eyes closed. They looked so peaceful and serene. But as a student, I know that closed eyes doesn’t mean quiet mind.  I encouraged the room of students to make space for the myriad parts of themselves, the different voices, unexpected feelings. Resistance to a posture might come. Let it come. Make space for it. Frustration might interrupt your serenity. It’s part of you. Let it be. Only by making space for the things we don’t necessarily want, can we get to the other side to discover what else is waiting to be seen and heard.

Adolescence is a time of rawness, extreme evolution, individuation, and identity exploration, but that process doesn’t stop when we become adults. When Lucia said to me, “Mom, I’m just not spiritual,” I was able to recognize that she is in a moment in time in her life, a moment that is not permanent; her perspective could last ten years or ten minutes. But it’s hers. It’s part of her right now. 

Whether with your own body in your yoga practice or the car with your kid, make space for the new, the different, and the unexpected. Who knows what you’ll find on the other side.

                                               

Wombmates

I recently listened to a Dharma talk by Sarah Powers; she talked about how interpersonal relationships are such an important part of the yogic path. When we can find a place of equanimity physically and emotionally, and when we can achieve a level of consistent mindfulness, only then, can we start to truly reach new levels interpersonally. 

It makes sense. How can we love another being if we don't love ourselves. As a twin, I have always struggled with getting connected to my whole self, my own true identity. As a result, I struggle to find a satisfying connection with my twin sister Katherine. Since my conception, I've shared space, been in reaction to another being. First we shared a womb (Katherine refers to us as "wombmates") and then, even though we weren't identical, from the time we were born, we were seen in reference to the other.

I was tall, she was short. I was shy, she was funny. I was crabby, she was playful. I did sports, she did theater. And now, even though we are adults and have maneuvered our way into our own "identities", vestiges of this shared identity remain. Hearing Sarah Powers talk about equanimity made me think a lot about my twin identity. Do I have individual emotional equanimity? No. Will I ever have it? I hope so, but I realize that, because I am a twin, living in this consistently co-reflective space (albeit subconscious most of the time), I might have to work a little bit harder, dig a little bit deeper.

One place where I don't share identity space with my twin sister is in my yoga life. Maybe that's why it's such a big part of my life, a important daily touchstone for me. It's only me. It's mine. Katherine has an equally vibrant, deep connection to her own work in her life in the Bay area, and I'm guessing that she feels equally enriched from having something that is solely hers.

I'm in a particularly uncomfortable time with Katherine right now. We are struggling to connect, to celebrate each other. Even though in current time, we are very, very different from each other, we still struggle with this complicated shared identity; we are still reacting to each other. Yoga helps remind me who I am. I always say that yoga is a lifetime process. It's a wave we ride, up, down, over, in, out and through. It's not all good or fun or calm, but it's a path that gets us to where we need to go. And once again, yoga, my greatest teacher reminds me that my relationship with my twin is a process as well. 

Turn it off

On Monday, I went to hear Anne Patchett at Benaroya Hall. I thought she was going to read from her new book, Commonwealth  but she didn't. She stood on stage in front of a very full house and waxed on about her approach to writing, her philosophy about reading, and some wonderful anecdotes about her personal life. She was funny and brilliant and awesome in all kinds of ways.

If you are a fan of Anne Patchett's, you know that her fiction is fiercely imaginative, sometimes far-fetched, and that it clearly takes a ton of research and coordination to pull together each of her novels. At the end of Anne Patchett's talk, the Director of Seattle Arts and Lectures interviewed her.  She asked Anne, who, in addition to writing amazing fiction and non-fiction, owns an independent bookstore in Nashville and seems to have read every book of every genre of all points in history, how she could be both such a prolific reader and writer.

I'm guessing Anne Patchett has been asked that question before because she answered right away. "I have a fifteen-year-old flip phone and I've never texted. I don't own a television and I have never once looked at Facebook," she replied. "I have a lot of extra time."

I'm sure many audience members sank into a bit of despair to hear that. We all know what a time suck innane texting is, what a silly habit Facebook is, and how television can drain hours from an otherwise productive day if we're not careful. As an avid writer and reader myself, I left Benaroya feeling inspired by Anne Patchett, but also a little downtrodden about my own distracted focus and commitment to my writing and reading practices.

But the very next day I went into the studio to practice yoga and had an immediate sense of gratitude and pride for the fact that there are NO screens in the studio. There never have been and there never will be. While I am not reading or writing in my yoga practice, my brain is getting served. Almost every blog topic I've ever written has come to me in the yoga room, either while practicing or teaching. Most of my big life decisions have been made on my mat.

Not everyone can be an Anne Patchett, who knew at a very young age that she wanted to be a writer. Most of us wander through life testing out different waters and landing somewhere for a while before moving on more than a few times. I'm so happy to have been inspired by the brilliant Anne Patchett. I'll continue to read the books she writes and keep my ears open for books she recommends. I'll look to her and other great writers for inspiration. But most importantly, I'll keep coming into the yoga room everyday, the one and only place in my life where there are no screens to suck my time, focus, and energy. I hope you'll join me!

Human Kindness

Last week I had an experience that left me with an unsettled feeling-- a combination of gratitude and elation tinged with seeking and inspiration.  I feel its presence subtly, at different times during the day, but mostly when I'm teaching or practicing yoga. Kelly, a wonderful yoga student of mine and now teacher of me, invited me to help her in a class she teaches called Adaptive Yoga. Adaptive Yoga offers people with mobility restrictions (spinal cord injuries, Cerebral Palsy, Parkinson's Disease) accessible yoga instruction. And, as I experienced last week, it is so much more than that.

There were just two students in the class I attended, a small group for that session. One of the students was quadriplegic and the other paraplegic. Kelly and the other teacher Julie led the small group through seated postures and then moved them to the floor for a series of supine postures.

I hesitate to even try to describe my emotional experience in this class because I don't have the technical writing skills to really explain it. There were so many moments, moments when Kelly or Julie gently laid hands on a body that "couldn't feel." But was that right? Who was I to say what another person could feel. Watching the teachers, I was brought to the brink of tears. Why? I'm not sure. I've been trying to sort it out all week. I suspect that maybe it was the recognition of my own assumptions about people who are paralyzed. Or the beautiful message from the instructor to feel what was happening internally when the physical body was in a posture, regardless of their paralyzed status. The energy in the room, the combination of vulnerability, determination, and human kindness literally overwhelmed me.

What I'm left with in this time before I go back to volunteer again (which I plan to do as often as I can), is the sense of how small the world can become when we define "feeling" in only a handful of ways. I, being an able-bodied, fully "feeling" person, was knocked out of my comfortable state being a part of this class--- in a really good way. That unsettled feeling-- elation and gratitude and seeking and inspiration-- come to me when I practice. Today when Rachael had us do 27 sun salutations, I closed my eyes during a lot of it so that I could feel in a different way, a deeper way. And when I teach, I am so filled with gratitude for being able to teach yoga, a practice that goes beyond just physical postures. I am grateful to be in this newly seeking place, to explore more deeply myself and to be able to invite my students to do the same.  Thank you Kelly.

You can do anything for ten seconds

I recently started watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It's a series about a young woman who is rescued from a cult in Indiana and sets off to create a new life in New York City. I've only seen three episodes, but I'm keen on Kimmy. She's possessed by a combination of extreme naiveté and intense optimism.

One of the things Kimmy learned in her cult captivity was to endure intense boredom and monotony. Though she doesn't share her bizarre past life with her new friends in NYC, she does share jewels of wisdom from her cult-life, like her regularly doled out advice, "You can do anything for 10 seconds." She says this to herself and to other people in her life who seem to be unable to manage whatever situation they are in.

Ten seconds is not very long.  It's the time it takes to turn on the water tap and fill a glass of water. It's writing a quick grocery list in the morning or bringing in the mail. It's about the length of time it takes to inhale in Pranayama deep breathing.

In life, we don't have control over much. Shit happens. The other night I saw a friend who's long-term relationship suddenly ended. She was shocked, bewildered, and heart broken. She had no control over the break up, it just happened and now she was slowly blinking her way out of the wreckage. What I said to her, which is what a kind soul offered me when I was in a similar situation many years ago, was "all feelings pass." It helped me and I hope it helps her. In times of deep sorrow, crazed anger, or intense fear, I told myself, "this is a  temporary feeling. I will not be here forever. It will pass." And the feelings did pass. They came back with great regularity, like the garbage truck every Thursday, but they also didn't stay, and eventually, I got through it, ten seconds at time.

Sometimes the experiences we think we can't endure are short, like when Half-Moon pose feels like it is going to go on for 30 minutes. Break it down. Remind yourself, as Kimmy would, "You can do anything for ten seconds." And once those ten seconds are over, you're onto a new feeling, different sensations. Other times, the struggles are longer, harder-- a break up, the loss of a job, a death. It's the same game plan-- break it down. Take a deep breath and give yourself time and space for things to shift. Even in the worst of times, remind yourself that you can do anything for ten seconds.

It's just a few rocks

I have a tendency to jump ahead. Maybe it's why yoga has been such a pivotal force in my life. I struggle to stay in the present and fully be in the moment. I've had several "companies" that emerged out of hobbies. I had a fleece hat business, a baby t-shirt business, a blackberry jam business, an ebay business, even a fabric brooch business. In my great enjoyment of doing something-- usually a craft-- I made the assumption many times that I should take that enjoyment to another level.

The only business that actually stuck for me was yoga. After several years of practicing, I moved into teaching and running a studio. It's been 15 years and I still love it. When I was with Tony Sanchez a few weeks ago studying a new style of yoga, he said, "When Neil Armstrong went to the moon, all he got was a few rocks." Tony shared this in the context of how we practice yoga.

Since I studied with Tony, I've been thinking about how to take what I learned to the next level. What should I call this new class? How will I market it? Who will like it? Who will teach it? And then I remember what Tony said. Getting the rocks from the moon was easy (relatively). I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming Neil and his guys just grabbed them and put them on the ship. But getting to the moon-- planning, studying, practicing, and failing and failing again---that's where the real experience was.

Practicing yoga, even one single posture, can be looked at through the same lens. It's not about finally getting into toe stand or crow pose. It's about building the strength, the focus, the balance to get there. It's easy to focus on the end point but really practicing yoga teaches us that an end point truly does not exist.

Yoga has taught me to be in a process, on a path. Perhaps the reason I keep practicing, continue trying, is because I have so much learning. I don't regret any of my past cottage industries; they were each short-lived and fun for the stints they existed. I have no intentions of giving up yoga as a practice or as my "business." It's a great life, a challenging, interesting, sometimes scary path and, as far as I can tell, there's no end in sight.

Your body is an extension of your breath

Right now I am in Bristol, England at a workshop with Tony Sanchez learning a series called Ghosh Vinyasa Flow. The series/practice is still new to me and I will continue to study and learn and slowly unveil all that I've learned over the next several months when I am back in my studio in Seattle. The one thread though, the phrase that has passed from Tony's lips through my ears into my brain maybe 100 times already, is "your body is an extension of your breath."

Tony has said to us many, many times this week, "your spirit is your breath" or "your breath is your spirit." If you no longer have breath, your spirit dies. You die. Breath, when I look at it this way, takes on a wholly different meaning. It is not just a physical process; it is all that we are; all that I am.

This six word phrase that Tony has offered again and again, "Your body is an extension of your breath," has been amazingly inspiring for me. I've been practicing yoga since 1994 and my own practice, my own teaching, has evolved in many ways. I know I've written before about other inspirations that have moved me, but this might be the most significant.

Standing in a pose, Balancing Stick, for example, when my shoulders feel heavy and tired and hopeless, my standing leg feels wobbly, my hips uncooperative, I scan my mind for solutions-- "drop your left hip", "relax your shoulders", "bring your weight forward", but this week, hearing Tony say in his calm, melodic voice, "remember, your body is just an extension of your breath" at times when I've felt like I had nowhere else to go in the posture, has brought a new ease to my practice that I am grateful for.

Using my breath is not a new concept for me. I think about it all the time-- to take a deep breath when I feel anxious, to try to slow down my breath when I'm struggling to fall asleep. When I teach, I guide my students to rest using their breath. But now, thinking about my body as an extension of my breath has created an new lightness for me. If my heavy arms, my tight hips, my furrowed brow, are all just extensions of my breath, then I can find ease in these parts by being consciously aware of and engaged with my breath.

I am grateful for all of the teachers in my life-- my parents, my partner, my daughter, my yoga teachers, my friends, the people I meet on the street. All offer me different lessons through the unique experiences I share with them.  I hope that this new enlightenment, that my body is an extension of my breath, will bring me a deeper sense of connection and ease, not just with my yoga practice, but with all of these relationships. Thank you Tony for being a most inspiring teacher.

Mother Shucker

A few weeks ago, Nancy and I went to Lilliwaup, Washington, home of Hama Hama Oysters. Every year they have the Hama Hama Oysterama, a festival that involves harvesting one's own oysters. Between the two of us and the handful of friends we went to the festival with, we collected 32 dozen oysters. We made a plan about what we'd do with them all:

• Raw, in three ways--with Mignonette, cocktail sauce and saltines, and an invented cilantro lime infused invention.
• Two kinds of grilled
• Fried oysters on a Ceasar salad
• Fried oyster poboys

The cooking was a big part of it, but before we could cook them, we had to shuck all 384. Nancy, a native of New Orleans, grew up shucking and worked in an oyster bar in college, so she gave us a basic tutorial. Between the ten of us at the oyster dinner, we had a hearty group of people shucking oysters pretty much all day long. If you've never shucked oysters, you know there's a skill to it. In addition to having a good shucker, you have to know how to hold the oyster, where to insert the blade, and how to cleanly separate the oyster from the shell. We threw out some bloody oysters and used a lot of bandaids in the process of reaching shucking proficiency. 

By about 3pm, after many courses of oysters, someone decided that we should have a shuckathon. Judges were named, criteria were established, and contestants were registered. There were six of us competing. We had five minutes to shuck, separate, flip and present our oysters. Despite my fierce competitive attitude and a few new cuts on my hands, I didn't win. Though I was the second to complete my shucking, and I lined up my oysters artistically,  I neglected to flip any of my oysters to hide the ugly bottom muscle. The winner, receiving the title of "Mother Shucker" until next year, was not the first to finish, but the best on all categories. 

Even though there was only one true Mother Shucker that day,  I was impressed by was how confident we had all become at shucking oysters in the short few hours we'd been practicing. This struck me because it made me think about how infrequent this feeling has become for me. How often do I actually take on a new skill to learn, build, compete in!!? It's rare. And, it's a good feeling. 

Life is busy. It's hard to have time to take on an extra hobby and hone a new skill, but there are micro-ways to get this feeling all the time.  Part of finding ways to experience this feeling is being open-minded and alert to the moments that will get us there. It's kind of like being in a yoga class where the teacher introduces something totally new and different. As adults, often our first response is resistance, maybe a little bit of fear, but once we're done with the new thing, and after we've done it a few times in subsequent classes, we start feeling more confident, even proficient, maybe even like a winner. 

Guest Blogger- Seth Brown- The Magic of Yoga

Buried deep inside a ballroom, converted into one giant hot torture chamber, the class of fall 2014 struggled on through posture after posture as Bikram himself issued his command from atop one giant podium.  There’s no way you could see yourself in the mirror with the 333 trainees sweltering mat to mat, front and back, side to side the room was literally just big enough.  With the heat and humidity in Thailand, there was hardly a moment during the entire nine weeks that we weren’t constantly sweating, in and out of the hot room.  It was the second class of the day and the evening class, by this time we had already practiced that morning and suffered through 4 hours of lecture, most people suffering from sleep deprivation.  It was hard, really really hard; people collapsing, people leaving the room – they were pushing us to the brink.  Then you start to wonder why you can’t maintain a posture as well as you did yesterday, and you become your own worst judge.  Whenever I found myself in this situation however, which was approximately 97 times over two and a half months, I had to remind myself of one very important thing.  And that was how in the hell I even got to this place, with all these people from every corner of the globe, under the cruel tutelage of a master yogi.  So as the class went on and we push our bodies to the limit, my mind would begin to wonder.

A year – exactly one year – before my present situation, I was in another situation, only then I was learning how to walk again.  I had undergone a 3^rd brain surgery in September to remove a cyst which had been growing for quite a while, creating tremendous pressure inside my head and displacing the spinal cord.  It was my 3^rd go around with this sort of operation – the first being in 1998 while still in elementary school, the second in 2003 as a sophomore in high school.  By this time I had developed a pleasant disposition toward this seemingly mortal experience and I kept in good spirits knowing that “if I can do it once, you can do it again”.  But whenever I looked at those scans of my brain and the size of the cyst, my stomach would turn in knots and a hopeless feeling would begin to set in.  So it was that on September 11^th 2013 I went back under the knife and I knew as the anesthetic began to take over this was that last I would know this body. 

I woke up in ICU and realized instantly where, when and who I was; while I knew it was going to be a long road to recovery, and that I might never be the same again, I was so happy because I knew that I would recover.  Then another thought came into mind, an idea that I had been toying with even as I prepped for surgery less than 7 hours ago.  It was pretty clear that things were going to be different from here on out and I was most likely going to have to leave my old occupation as a metal worker.  It was an intense job putting my body through a lot of stress which certainly contributed to my present hospitalization.  The idea was clear in my head that I was going to have to become a Bikram teacher, not only as the method to rehabilitate my body, at this point it was more a matter of shear survival.  I had already been practicing for seven years and given a lot of thoughts to becoming a teacher one day.  I’m a firm believer that the universe has a way of keeping us on a certain path; over the years my practice would ebb and flow, whenever my practice was at its strongest, life would just seem to so much easier.  Nerve damage as a result of my previous surgery had plagued me for years, but it would improve tremendously the more I practiced.  It would take me 3 months and a lot of therapy to get back to work, but the stage was already being set in my mind with a path clearer than the bluest sky’s.

It took one month before I practiced my first class after the operation.  I wasn’t near being able to perform all of the asanas, but I knew that even if I did only the breathing exercises and lay in the heat for the 90 minutes, it would do a world of good.  It did, but it was also the hardest class I had ever taken because my body had been through so many traumas.  I laid there sulking for most of the class while the instructor – a good friend – took the greatest care to accommodate my new condition.  It took time for the nerves to repair so to establish a consistent practice, even though the postures were more challenging than they had ever been, it was working.  Through the pranayama and the postures I could tell each time I went that I was getting stronger physically, however, it also kept me mentally focused and out of depression.  Often times after anyone goes through a life changing operation people have a hard time adjusting to their new circumstances, which is normal, yoga made that adjustment possible as well as bearable.  Three months out from being bed ridden at Swedish and I was practicing 5 times per week and going to the gym in preparation to return to work, discontinuing therapy as well as medications.

I returned to work but I was never sure if I was ever going to be able to attend a teacher training; it really started as a “what if” idea that I fantasized about.  Time went on, and the “what if” slowly but surely turned into “it could”, eventually “it could” turned into “I can”.  Month after month the reality grew and grew until “I can” turned into “I am”, which brings me back to that relentless hot room in Thailand on the far side of the world.  Whether I fell out of postures in that room, or simply couldn’t stand at all didn’t even matter.  I never worried about completing training, or, denied a certificate; none of those even mattered to what I had to go through just to get there.  Certainly, having come this far, the rest would be a walk in the park.  Bikram yoga didn’t just save my life, it became my life and it continues to make me thrive in mind, body and spirit.  Life is a blessing, and from where it came from we may never know, but we do know that how we choose to live that life, whether in joy or misery, is completely within our power.

About Seth: You can find Seth Teaching at The SweatBox. Seth's yoga journey began in 2007 at the suggestion of a friend and teacher, who later became a mentor. At the time Seth was working in the trades as a welder and metal fabricator.He finally tried Bikram and after a few weeks of regular practice he noticed the difference the practice made in not only his balance and coordination, but also in his focus and discipline in all areas of his life. In September 2013 Seth underwent a third brain surgery to remove a cyst near the base of his spinal cord; the cyst a result of a tumor fused with the brain stem. The first thought that came into his mind after waking up from that operation was of course “yoga”! But more than as a student, Seth wanted to become a teacher, and almost a year to the date he began his Bikram training. Since then Seth has been able to travel the world teaching in several other countries and major cities in the United States.