Polar Bear Plunge

I've written about my conversion from New Year's Resolution curmudgeon to enthusiastic espouser of setting intentions every January 1st. Every year, I sit down with my family and we make a big "Hopes and Dreams for 20XX" poster. We write them down and, if they let me, I hang it on a wall in our living room. Some of our hopes and dreams this year were:

• Stay away from our devices when we are with each other.
• Do chores.
• Run twice a week.
• Stop eating sugar.

Another New Year's tradition my daughter Lucia and I have every year is to do the Polar Bear Plunge in Lake Washington. In past years, a whole gaggle of friends has rallied to do the plunge, but this year that group energy wasn't there. Lucia and I planned to do it anyway, but on the morning of, when it was 31 degrees, we decided to bag it. "Too cold," we both agreed.

Later that day, Nancy, Lucia and I were taking a walk along the lake. Lucia did not want to take a walk and was cranky. She'd had a sleepover the night before and suffered the expected sleep deprivation hangover. But the day was gorgeous and we prevailed on her to join us. We could see Mount Baker and Mount Rainier. Coots and cormorants were having parties all over the lake and the sun was brightly shining. It was about 3:30pm when Lucia turned to me with a genuine smile and said, "Mom, I think we should do the plunge."

Seizing the moment of Lucia's mood change, I said,"Yes! Let's do it!" and we ran home to get our bathing suits before the sun went down. It happened quickly. We changed into our suits, put our bathrobes, wool hats and flip flops and drove the one block to the lake. Nancy and our four-year-old neighbor waited on shore with our robes and Lucia and I ran in together and dove in. As we ran out, freezing and happy, our excitement, joy and pride was palpable.

More than the frigid water itself, what I will remember from this year's plunge with Lucia is the moments right before and immediately after. That glimmer of time when Lucia felt moved and motivated to plunge and she got me on board with her was so thrilling, so connecting, so satisfying. When when we got out, wrapped up in our robes and hats and ran home to get into warm baths, we shared the thrill of accomplishment, of living one small dream together.

Those spontaneous moments, "Let's do the plunge!" moments come all year round, in big and small ways. I tend not to be open to them, not to look for them or see them, but this year I'm going to try. I can already see the little opportunities. "I feel like chopping off all my hair" was a big one for me this week. "I'm going to make a huge vat of granola" was a smaller one. It comes everyday when I make the choice to do Yoga (or not). There's always a choice, always a moment before, to go one direction or the other. And then there's the moment after, that exciting feeling that comes from listening to the whispers of your hopes and dreams.

Embarrassing and Magical Moments

On Monday night I went to see Patti Smith. I'm not a hugely knowledgable rock music connoisseur. I'm actually a barely knowledgable rock music connoisseur. But my partner Nancy is an avid Patti Smith fan and has seen her multiple times. I usually skip loud, live music but after hearing Nancy's raves after each time she's seen Patti, I was more open. Additionally, having read Patti Smith's book about her coming of age with Robert Mapplethorpe, my voyeuristic tendencies were sparked and I was motivated to go see this amazing character.

We went to the concert after a long day of work post New Year's vacation, so our mood was definitely mellow---- until Patti Smith came on stage. We learned during the coarse of the performance, that Patti Smith turned 69 years old this year. Truly the only indicator that would suggest that she has rocked for over five decades, was her head of stark white long hair.

The way Patti Smith jumped, sang, swore, spit and did spoken word rich with profanities and controversial material, was inspiringly YOUNG. I sat in the audience, mouth agape, thinking, "If I can bend my knees and scream like that in twenty-two years, I will be so happy!" Long story short, Patti Smith inspired the crap out of me. When we left the theater, I immediately googled "Does Patti Smith do Yoga?" I didn't find the answer to that question, but I did read this quote her in an article The Telegraph.

‘We just do it,’ she says. Smith suggests that she will never give a perfect performance anyway. ‘I’m a flawed performer – energetic and emotional and flawed. So my goal is that, if not in the beginning then somewhere through the night, we have an authentic connection. That the people and the band become one organism, going through rough moments, ludicrous moments, embarrassing moments and magical moments. That, to me, is what a concert is all about – and coming out of it feeling alive.’

At one point during her concert, referring to her infamous spitting ritual, Patti Smith said, "I spit out of necessity" suggesting that it's just part of this organic experience she creates. In reading Patti Smith's description of her experience with the band, I found myself (surprise, surprise) imagining my experience in a Yoga class-- "the people [in the room] become one organism, going through rough movements, ludicrous movements, embarrassing moments and magical moments." Sometimes it happens when I'm the teacher sometimes the student, but these embarrassing and magical moments show up at some point during every class.

If I can be half the bad-ass that Patti Smith is when I am 69, it will be because of Yoga. I'm not the personality type to take the risks and live the colorful life that Patti Smith has lived, but in the Yoga room, I can find a smidgen of what Smith describes-- finding an authentic connection, going through rough and ludicrous moments. Through it all, I come out feeling more alive. I'm still not a rock music connossieur but I am definitely a Patti Smith fan.

There's no place like home

Around the holidays I become disjointed. My brain is over-stimulated and emotionally I become unmoored. The combination leaves me in a state of "half-way-in," a life space that is not quite satisfying. I'm getting through-- I'm not depressed or upset or despondent, but I'm not all in. The joy and whimsy of the holidays eludes me when I'm living "half-way-in." I would love to find a way through, and ultimately a permanent way out of this holiday state.

Yoga is a practice of finding a joining, a balance, a quiet conversation between the mental/emotional and the physical. It is in my Yoga practice that I am "all in," all the time. It's been twenty-two years since I started practicing Yoga and my greatest accomplishment in my practice is absolutely not physical flexibility.  My true victory from Yoga is that there is a guaranteed place where I can be "all in." I am eternally grateful to have this space, to understand what this fullness and connection means, how it feels.

Yesterday, on Christmas Day, I taught one class. I was happy to do it, thrilled to be there. Even though I wasn't practicing myself, I would be in that familiar, happy space of being really present as a  teacher with the amazing students. There were about twenty Christmas Yoga Warriors in the class and,  as is often the case on holiday classes, they were a focused, hardworking bunch.

At one point as I was guiding them into Savasana, I said, "tap your heels together and let your feet fall open." As I said it, I had the image of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, tapping her heels together reciting the epic line, "There's no place like home" over and over, until she finally arrived back in Kansas.

For me, and I know for many others, Savasana is indeed like finally getting back home after a long journey.  Getting to this state does not follow a prescribed path. I can't remember the moment, or even the month or year that I actually noticed that I was "all in" during Savasana. I do know that every practice I listened to my teachers. I let them guide me into Savasana: "let it go", "take a deep breath", "relax your mind." And eventually the words became my own, the message a part of me. One big hump of the holidays is over, but there's still the new year to get through. I want to be "all-in" for it. I'm getting ready to go practice Yoga now. I can't wait to be in that moment of clicking my heels together. There's no place like home.......

It's too vulnerable

My daughter Lucia is a gifted musician. She plays piano and guitar and she sings (like an angel!). Like any eleven-year-old, she's partial to musicians like Adele and John Legend, and of course Taylor Swift. The other day Lucia was playing an "All of Me" by John Legend, sounding beautiful, soulful, and adorable. I asked her if she'd ever consider writing her own songs to which she replied, "Nope."
"Why not?," I queried.
"Too vulnerable" she said, very matter-of-factly.

Ever since Lucia made that statement, I've been thinking about my vocation, teaching Yoga. In the fifteen years of doing this work, my teaching has indeed evolved. It's evolved because I have taken different teachers classes, been through burn out and back, and because in the last few years, I've exposed myself to many more styles or Yoga, styles in which I am indeed a beginner, lacking skill and proficiency. It is perhaps the lessons in my journey as student that I have developed my greatest strengths as a teacher.

Part of the job of owning a studio is creating a vision for what I want to offer; for articulating and training to what I think makes a good teacher. To me, a good teacher is generous. They give something of themselves. A good teacher takes risks and tries new things. They are vulnerable in their process of learning how to be the best teacher they can be. Adele's declaration of what makes a good song reinforces this idea that you have to go deep, reach into the heart, to create something beautiful.

It's true that Lucia sounds beautiful singing John Legend and Taylor Swift and Adele. And, I think she'd sound even more amazing singing music that she wrote herself. As I continue to work hard to be a good teacher, a strong studio owner, I am keenly aware of how important it is for me to cultivate and nurture vulnerability in myself and my teachers.

For me, the vulnerability comes in that moment when I decide to step out of my comfort zone and introduce something new in class. Most students probably don't even see it happening. I'm still teaching the same posture, holding it about the same length of time. But I know it's happening. It's scary. It's uncomfortable. I'm vulnerable. I'm learning from each trial, and if I fail, it's okay. It's all  part of the bigger process to create something beautiful.

On the road again.

Last weekend four of my good friends and I went to Portland for the weekend. We left the kids and the spouses behind, took the mini-van on the road, and shacked up in a rented town house overlooking the 405. It was brilliant in a million ways.

We travelled as a pack. We ate together, slept together, shopped together, and on the road home Sunday night in the minivan, we sang together. All weekend, we'd been reveling in the lightness we felt being on our own in Portland. At one point during dinner on Friday night, I became disoriented (the pre-dinner 'brownie' might have played into this) about what era of our lives we were in. I momentarily felt like I was back to my twenties when going out to dinner with a gaggle of girl friends was commonplace.

With a van full of Christmas presents and some personal indulgences for ourselves, we hit the road north back to Seattle on Sunday afternoon. We stopped at an incredible Mexican restaurant in Centralia to mark our halfway point, none of us fully ready to return to "normal." Once we were back on I-5, Jenna, the owner of the minivan, started playing DJ. We heard Sade, Simon & Garfunkel, Tori Amos, and Etta James among others. Eventually we started singing our own tunes-- The Eagles, Bette Middler, John Denver.

From the darkness of our minivan, we belted out songs we all knew. We harmonized. We sang back up. It was the perfect finale to a weekend of debauched bliss. There was so much goodness in the van, so much happy energy.  It is a moment I want to remember always.

The next morning, Monday, I taught class at 930am. I can't say I was thrilled to be back from my weekend escape, but I was happily surprised, as I almost always am, to be back teaching.  It was many usual practitioners, people I know well and love; all hard workers, focused Yogis. During Pranayama breathing, watching the students in the room, I had this wonderful reminiscence of my friends singing harmony in the minivan the night before. All of the different bodies, breathing separately but also together. It made me so happy to be simultaneously experiencing last night's memory and the present moment's reality.

Yoga is a big part of my life. It's my home, my away, my safe and my scary. My everyday practice gives me the grounding I need to move through the world sanely, and sometimes I have a class that is very, very hard, uncomfortable, unmooring.  I still practice though because I know that through my practice I'll find my way home.  Lately I've been expanding my practice-- still Bikram but also Vinyasa and Yin. It's refreshing and disorienting in all the best ways. The new practice energizes my old practice; it breathes new and different energy into it.

My relationship with my friends is similar. With each of them I've had countless moments of complete elation as well as periods of hard times and struggle. The everyday coordination of playdates, carpools, parenting advice is a critical structure in my life, but getting away from all of that is important too. Our trip to Portland, without the parameters that normally define us, gave us each a way to see each other differently, open ourselves up to new experiences, and sing our hearts out.

Let Your Practice Be Light

One of the things I notice around the holidays is that I start to feel a bit heavy. There's the food and drink that makes me feel more physically burdened than usual, but mostly it's the emotional burden of expectations, anticipation, and incessant social planning.

This year we're hosting Thanksgiving. I'm excited and happy to do it, but it's a lot of cooking and cleaning and hosting. Then there's Christmas. There's always the managing of gift giving and receiving. I try to find the perfect balance (impossible!) during Christmas where I indulge my daughter enough so she gets the excitement and thrill of this fun holiday, but not so much that it's gross. I stress about if anyone will invite us to a New Years Eve party and if they don't what kind of ritual will I make up that will sufficiently bring us into 2016.

The other day when I was teaching, I noticed a student looking forlorn and frustrated. It was one of those days when his balance was off and he was low on stamina. It's not uncommon to see people's practice change around the holidays; everyone's managing the stress of the season. As the class progressed, his frustration seemed to deepen. I had this very clear image of baggage. It's like when you go on a trip and pack too much but insist on doing carry-on (me, every single time). It's too much. It takes a lot of energy to carry that baggage onto light rail, through security, to your gate and then squeeze it onto the plane all the while getting snarky looks from normal packers.

Each Yoga class is a journey and we can alter the path by making certain mental choices during our practice. Often when I teach Yoga, I invite students to clear their minds after each posture. I remind them that carrying each posture into the next will create a very heavy practice, ultimately a much harder one. "Don't make yourself carry extra baggage," I tell the class. "Let each posture go mentally when you physically release it. Try not to dwell on it, evaluate it, or judge it." There will be time tomorrow to try Eagle pose again. For today, let it go.

Like everything, this letting go and moving on takes practice. I'm trying to engage in a similar practice this holiday season of getting through one holiday before moving onto the next. Right now I will focus on Thanksgiving. When I find myself thinking about Christmas or New Years, I tell myself to let it go, to just focus on Thanksgiving. The media, my family, old habits all make this practice difficult, but I'm trying. Changing old habits is always hard. The Yoga room is a great place to try it out. This season, let your practice be light.

A daily practice in Bora Bora

At the end of the summer, after a very loosey-goosey few months, I recommitted to doing a daily practice. My practice usually includes a Yoga class in the studio with other students, led by a teacher. I find that I am the most focused, most motivated, most energized in the class enviroment. I get a lot from the community energy. Sometimes I simply cannot fit in a class between my own work schedule and my child care and social obligations and so  I have expanded my notion of  what "daily practice" is.

Committing to a "daily practice" that is more loosely defined has been incredibly liberating.  Sometimes my practice involves 40 minutes on my mat between classes at The SweatBox. Other days it's a 3 mile run with my 11-year-old at her pace. Some really busy days, it is a seated meditation in my living room at 5:30am before the rest of the house is awake.

I'm nearly 47 years old and I know that I am a better human being when I feel nourished, rested, and cared for. The mind-body connection that Yoga, meditation, and other physical exercise brings me is a life saver. Yoga, for me, is a symbol representing the notion that "I am here. I am awake. I am alive." It is a momentary pause in life to remind me to slow down, even full stop and notice the connection that exists with my body and my mind.

Last month, I did the 30-Day Challenge at The SweatBox. I practiced with others in the hot studio, deriving energy and strength from the bodies around me. On days when I couldn't fit in a scheduled class, I practiced on my own. This week,  it is Yoga on my deck in Bora Bora. We are here to celebrate a milestone birthday for Nancy. It is the most beautiful place in the world (that I've visited).  It is paradise. Yesterday we cracked open a coconut from the beach and drank the water. Then we shredded the coconut meat into a plate made out of palm leaves and ate it. It's the kind of place where people drink Pina Coladas at 11am and nap all afternoon.  It's remarkably indulgent and luxurious.

During our time here, I have gratefully pulled out my yoga mat every day and done my practice. I simply do the postures that my body calls me to do and I'm done when my body says I'm done. The classroom structure is not there, but my practice is. It might last fifteen minutes, it might last 30.  It might be a series of spine twisting postures; it might just be practicing head stands on the beach until I cannot endure any more sand in my suit. It's not what I am doing; it is that I am doing. A simple pause, even here in paradise, is a reminder that I am here. Conscious. Alive.