Keeping It Alive...

First of all, I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings! Mine was pretty awesome--my brother and sister-in-law and my two (ferociously fast-growing) nephews came for a visit, which made me feel like the coolest aunt in town.  The picture above is of the two of them, and has nothing to do with this post, but has everything to do with how ADORABLE they both are.

Okay, that's my proud aunt plug. On now to other matters...

So, I'm teaching...have I mentioned that I'm teaching? And I'm teaching more and more...everytime I get a phone-call to teach a class I feel like I've been sprinkled with confetti (p.s. if you're in the LA area and you want to come to class, I've put a little schedule widget on the ol' blog-o-saurus, just look down and to your right.)  Anyhow, it's pretty awesome, taking that seat at the front of the class and just trying to blast off in the hopes that I actually have something useful to offer.

And one of the unexpected side-effects is the way in which my focus has shifted, as this practice that has for so long been purely for pleasure becomes attached to more things...to money and to schedule and to some question about larger purpose...I have quickly become faced with questions about how it is that we keep things interesting for ourselves?  In particular, how do we keep things interesting for ourselves when that demon RESPONSIBILITY newly becomes attached to what we are doing?

Now, let me just preface this by saying that I am not at the moment having any trouble with lack of interest...everything is too new and too much like living in a brand new house for that to be a problem.  HOWEVER, what I have noticed, even in these first few months of teaching, is that my newfound sense of accountability in a world where once there was none, can impact the JOY of my practice, if I'm not careful.

What I mean by that is, I find myself forgetting and then remembering that I am ONLY doing this because I love it.  And if the "love it" quotient gets overrun by results-driven thinking (hello, acting career)...well, excuse my language but it just wouldn't be f-ing worth it.  For whatever reason in this field of doing yoga and writing about yoga and now teaching yoga, I am unwilling to give up the joy of the practice.  Just...totally unwilling.  I have never been that wise as an actor...joy has been often the first thing sacrificed on the altar of "I. Want. This." So, BECAUSE I feel a bit wiser about all this (I did just turn 30, you know), and because more and more work seems to be showing up, and probably also because there is a deeply personal component to my practice, this idea--this question of how it is we keep things fresh and alive is one that's been on my mind lately.

And in all my thinking, the thing I've realized, and the thing which has been reflected back to me over and over again is this:  (It's so simple.  Why is it always so simple?!)

1. In order for anything to have any lasting impact in my life, it has to have consistency.

2. In order for there to be consistency, there has to be (gulp) discipline.

3. If I don't like doing something, I'm going to quit doing it eventually.  Therefore:

4. My JOY will, without effort, equal discipline. (I.e., if I like it, I won't quit.)

This has been the case with my yoga practice, with my eating habits, with my relationships...with my burgeoning meditation practice.  I mean, seriously, I have been trying to start a meditation practice for YEARS, and always I've quit.  Over and over and over again I've quit.  Do you know whyyyyyyy? Because I've been trying to do it right, and I've found it totally and utterly SUCKY because of that.  Finally, finally, finally I have what I can call a meditation practice--at least the beginnings of one--and do you know whyyyyyyy? Because I finally decided that if I wasn't enjoying the actual act of sitting on my cushion for those 15 minutes in the morning, as it occurred, then what in the world was the point? So I found a way in that actually made me FEEL GOOD while I was doing it. 

And, voila!  Not only do I have a practice, but I miss it when I don't do it.  I find myself actually looking forward to it on a daily basis.  Which is...new.

This is one of those secrets, it seems, that some people just know intuitively (you know who you are) and others of us have to learn by repeatedly making ourselves miserable with trying and not making any headway until finally we just toss our hands in the air and say "I give up! I just want a little happy mojo in my life!" and Blammo! Forward movement.

Because, in the joy of doing there is openness...there is curiousity...there is relaxation.  There are all of the things that we label as attributes of successful work and living.  But most of all, there is just a deep steady sense of being alive.  Of having purpose.  And THAT is the thing we're hoping all the hours of sitting or moving or loving or chowing down are going to get us anyway, isn't it?
There is just this fundamental practicality which is: enjoyment (true, deep, skin-tingling enjoyment) is the best recipe for not quitting.  I think it must be the food that will power feeds on.

That's a t-shirt saying if I ever heard one: "Joy.  It's the food that Will Power feeds on."

Oh my god, I will give a million dollars to anyone who makes that a t-shirt and sends it to me.*



* not really.

ContentWHAT?!

 No, this is not going to be a Thanksgiving post...(not yet! I'm saving all the give-thanks-love-your-family goodness for later in the week...)! Though I suppose what I want to talk about here is not completely unrelated to gratitude...or perhaps it's at least a stepping stone...

What I want to talk about is contentment.


Contentment.

It's not the most GLAMOROUS of all the states of being.  In the same world where Katy Perry's chest explodes in fireworks in music videos...it's difficult to make contentment sound appealing.  It's hard to make it sound like anything less than a snooze-fest, actually.  And if you check out the dictionary, it is full of definitions like:

1.	mentally or emotionally satisfied with things as they are
2.	assenting to or willing to accept circumstances, a proposed course of action, etc

Blech! Booo! Satisfied with the way things are?! Um, I'm sorry, I am a child of the 21st Century, I do not ACCEPT things as they are, I MAKE things happen!  And if I don't, well, that means that I'm a looooooooooooosah.  And I'll just keep that to myself whilst bemoaning all the not-the-way-I-want them things that surround me and furiously making vision boards and lists of affirmations.

Right!?

But, the dictionary definition of contentment is not the contentment I'm talking about.

The contentment I'm talking about is santosha.  Yes, it's a yoga word.  (You knew it was coming.)  It's actually one of the edicts of one of the 8 limbs of yoga.  It's like...one of the yoga commandments.  Thou shalt be content.

Now, I have never been a girl who really trucked in contentment (see above for examples), but I don't know...maybe it's that I've finally started meditating, maybe it's because I'm about to become an old married lady, maybe it's just because most of my life goals other than "find more joy" seem to have fallen by the wayside, but lately I've been thinking a lot more about this contentment, this santosha.

So, this morning I cracked open my old friend Patanjali (he wrote the Yoga Sutras which are, in my opinion, just a bunch of books full of jewels) to see what he had to say about contentment, and of course, in much fewer words and with much more stinging accuracy than I, he is able to identify the who-what-where of santosha.  He says this:

"As a result of contentment, one gains supreme joy."

Hmm...still sounds a little boooooooring.  But, okay, go on...

"Here we should understand the difference between contentment and satisfaction."

Alright.  I'm listening.

"Contentment means just to be as we are without going to outside things for our happiness.  If something comes, we let it come.  If not, it doesn't matter.  Contentment means neither to like or dislike."

Wait, I'm sorry...repeat that first part?

"Contentment means just to be as we are without going to outside things for happiness."

Alright, thank you P-jolls, let me see if I've got this.  Contentment means just to BE as we are without going to OUTSIDE THINGS for happiness.  Not, "contentment means just give up" or "contentment means just resign yourself to the fact that you'll never get what you want."  He's including happiness as part of this definition, right?  And if he's saying that it's not on the OUTSIDE than it must be...that's right...on the INSIDE.

So, if I may take the liberty, Mr. Patanjali...?

Contentment means just BE happy.

Not because the stuff you want is on its way.  Not because you've rejected stuff entirely and feel that you are now a purist.  Not because you think if you play content all the stuff you want will be given to you.  Not because you're just an unlucky one and you better get used to it, but because it IS possible to be content.

It IS possible to be happy, JOYFUL even, regardless of circumstance.

Because, and I think this is the whole lesson-plan of yoga, of meditation, of any spiritual practice...there is this little seed-self, hanging out inside you, who is blissed out, all the time.  No matter what.  She's in there.  She's quiet and she's crinkle-eyed smiling and she's like that ALL THE TIME and is just waiting for you to get quiet enough yourself to feel that.  To be able to touch that joy that is regard-less. And that's the whole enchilada.  All these practices are just inventive routes into that center place of...smiling santosha.

And, I love this week of the year because I think that Thanksgiving is a very santosh-ic holiday.  You're with your family, and even if they get on your nerves or push your buttons, there is (can be) a sweetness being with them, touching those roots that you have grown from.  And there is all this "what are you thankful for" influence everywhere, which is of course about contentment--how can I look at my life and see what there is in it to be grateful for? Where is the happiness that exists without anything external changing?  And the eating, of course.  The eating.  Talk about happiness from the inside out!

The whole holiday is built around turning inward, settling in, and appreciating what and who is around us.

So this year, yes, can we be grateful but ALSO can we be...content?  Can it all just be exactly enough--the right place, the right people, the right food, the right weather--can we sit with that crinkle-eyed version of ourselves in the center and just eat it all up? (Um...so I guess I lied about this not being a Thanksgiving post...)

Gobble, gobble, Shanti-towners!!

A Little Late Night Rumi...

Gamble everything for love,
if you're a true human being.

If not,
leave this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn't fetch
into majesty.  You set out
to find God, but then you keep

Stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.

- Rumi

(Get away from the mean-spirited roadhouses, sweet shanti-towners...it's just a lot of mean drinking and name-calling happening there.  Find yourself a love-shack and bunk down there for the night instead.  I will if you will.)

That Window Ain't Open, Fool!

I got interrupted by a bee during my meditation this morning.

If you know me at all you know that, while not usually the type to get squeamish, if a bee comes into my personal space while I'm doing ANYTHING I get a little...idiotic.

Usually I just sort of squeal and run away...

Which is exactly what happened during my meditation...I heard his foul buzzing and, without even taking a moment to think about it, I leapt off of my cushion and ran across the room.  Once safely the requisite 10 feet away, heart pounding, I watched the little bugger banging into the window and thought about how probably at some point I should actually just, um, try to sit through the bee in my space if it happens again during meditation.  Seeing as how, I don't know, that's the POINT of meditation.

And then I thought about how often I react to uncomfortable thoughts or feelings in this same way..."Eeek! Get it away from me!" (scramble, scramble, scramble).

And with bees I have this great excuse...about how my brother and I were attacked by a nest of hornets or wasps or something when we were kids and we both got stung many many times and it was very traumatic, blah blah blah...but don't I have those same stories for upsetting emotions?  And thoughts?  Don't I have my traumatic childhood story that justifies WHY I don't want to deal?  Why I can't just sit while it buzzes around me?  What do I think is going to happen? Worst case scenario, right, I get stung (be it bee or thought).

Ouch.

Yes, ouch...for like 15 seconds, ouch.  And maybe a sore spot.  And then?  Done.  Over.  And the poor bee...the poor bee is DEAD.  I'm definitely the winner in that situation.

So, I'm thinking about all this, and I'm watching the bee, and I'm watching him do the thing that a lot of bees do in our apartment, which is:  they fly in an open window, they land on a closed window, and they repeatedly buzz-bump into the window pane of the closed window, over and over and over again.  And the whole time I'm watching and I'm thinking, dude...the open window is right over there.  You just flew through it.  Can't you feel the breeze?  Can't you hear the noises from outside coming in from over there?

The smarter bees only get stuck like this for 30 seconds or so, but some of the younger and/or stupider ones can do that for a really long time.  I've seen some of them DIE doing it.  (I don't actually see them die, but I see their little carcasses on the ground next to the window later in the day).  And, I don't know if it was because I'd already sort of made this bee into a symbol for my inner-workings, but I watched him doing this little window-dance and I thought, oh my god, that is just so perfect.

How many times does the mind make a decision based on faulty information, that we then just blindly follow?  Because the mind is like, nooooo, no no, this leads outside.  It has to lead outside, because I can SEE outside.  So, yes, I know there's some sort of invisible barrier preventing us from getting there, but I'm certain this is the right way, so if you'll just bear with me a little longer, let's just keep ramming our heads into this glass until we finally get free.  And all the while this other voice (our intuition, our other senses, our body) is like DUDE...can't you feel the breeze? 

Because what we're supposed to be looking for is the FEELING of the BREEZE.  The feeling of freedom.  The feeling of sunshine on our skin.  That's the input we're supposed to be using as our little guidance system.  No matter what looks like it might lead the way...if it feels like repeatedly ramming into an invisible wall, probably it's not the best plan of action.

So, for all the bad things I've said about bees, I'm issuing an official apology here and now, because it seems like they might actually have a thing or two to teach me...

Ribs, Anyone?

No...not the barbeque kind....(heh heh)

Alright, y'all, so this line of inquiry started for me several months ago when, after many moons of wondering how on earth I am supposed to "open my heart" without "sticking out my ribs" a teacher FINALLY gave me an image that rocked my little rib-cage world.  "Imagine," she said, as we stood in tadasana with our arms raised (um, that's the one where you're just standing up, for those who left their Sanskrit dictionary in their other pants), "that your rib-cage is heavy and descending downward."  And maybe she said something about thinking of the rib-cage as one solid unit, or maybe that's just how it occurred to me as I tried it, but something about that image just clicked for me, and suddenly I felt how my ribs could...how do I put this...RELAX?

Yes, that's it. 

I imagined my rib-cage dropping straight down...as if it were some kind of bony sweater-vest being hung to dry from the clothesline of my collar-bones, and everything my teachers are constantly telling me to do ("pull in your bottom ribs", "expand your back ribs", "tuck your ribs in") it all just happened...effortlessly.  And I felt this immense and I mean IMMENSE relief.

And I realized that my heart is inside this cage of my ribs...and that if the whole structure descends and then the heart lifts...well there's more room for it to peak its little heart-head over the top of the cage, like a prisoner checking to make sure the coast is clear before she escapes.

I mean, I'm positive that physiologically that's not what's happening...but still.

So, it's this image I've been working with in my own practice for months now, and the more I work with it the more I realize that my ribs have been trying to do waaaaaaaaaaay more work than they need to do.  My ribs are showy little buggers--"Here I AM!"--they seem to be always shouting, all jazz-hands and protruding chins.  Well, no more, you scene-stealers! No more!

It's just one more way, I'm coming to see, that my body is trying (sneakily) to escape from itself.  Because when I hush those ribs, when I quiet them down and in, when I let them descend, when I give them the day off...I become...with myself.  The ribs literally become integrated back into the center of my body and likewise I become more centered.  My breath drops to my belly.  My shoulders relax.  And as things begin to loosen up down there in that protective armor of my torso, I realize...my god, I have spent so much time walking around HOLDING on.  My ribs have been like some puffed up bodygaurd.  (I'm mixing metaphors like crazy, here...my heart is a jailbird, and my ribs are apparently both like an attention-starved choreographer AND a juiced bouncer at a club.  What can I say, but that it's 3AM and I'm blogging...). 

What I mean to say is...my ribs used to be like some puffed up bodygaurd and NOW they are not.

Isn't it interesting, how we hold on to ourselves in all these ways...thinking that it will make things easier, or safer, or more perfect, and isn't it interesting how that is just never the way? When when when when when will we learn (and by "we" I mean "me) that the safety and the ease and the beauty comes from fluidity...from letting go...NOT from always gripping so damn hard?

Here they are!!

Alright, Shanti-towners...the moment you've been waiting for!

The conference is over and I've got posts up the wazoo for you to peruse at your leisure.  I'm going to link to them here, individually...feel free to pick and choose to your hearts content. 

(The conference, by the way, was a great success.  It was an HONOR to get to be a member of the press there and I'm very excited to see where Leaders Causing Leaders goes next...)


Wanna read what I thinks about Byron Katie?  Go here.


Do you know who Niurka is?  You should.


I knoooooow you've heard me mention John Friend before.  Thass right, saw him live, breakin' it down.


What's the Free the Slaves Award? 


What do you get when you cross a yogi with an internet guru?  Find out here.


Wish you could meet a Mad Scientist?  Try Nassim Haramein on for size.


Is Ishmael Beah really this amazing?


James O'Dea thinks you're an energy-transforming maaaaaaaachine.


Jasmuheen is made of Prana! (Or "Praner" if you say it with her yummy Australian accent!)


And last, but not least...Lance Secretan ain't just a ski bunny!

The Posts are Rolling In!

The posts are up...! Check out the Leaders Causing Leaders blog to hear about my day there yesterday, and stay tuned today for more, including a 2 hour session with the amazing Byron Katie! Look for my name as author, as I wasn't the only blogger on the conference beat!

http://leaderscausingleaders.wordpress.com/

Am I Allowed to Say This...?

This week I taught a--well, not a bad class, but definitely a mediocre class.  I taught a mediocre class and it was all my fault.

There was someone who was going to be in class who I wanted to impress AND I was using it as sort of a rehearsal for a class I'm teaching later on in the week at a studio I really want to work for.

Sound familiar, anyone?

And so I came to class with a PLAN.  A detailed, moment-to-moment, plaaaaaaaaaaan.  Which meant, that instead of being in my class, with my students, I was deeply involved in a relationship with my plan.  It was my plan vs. the class, a fight to the death.  Are they liking the plan?  Are they following the plan?  What comes next in the plan?  How is my plan working? 

And all of my natural attentiveness and joy went scrambling out the door in order to make room for MY. PLAN.

How many auditions have I screwed up using this exact same logic?  How many times have I walked into a room and instead of noticing who was there, what the temperature of the room was, and how I was feeling in that moment, was only thinking about how I had planned to do what I was about to do?

Many.  Many, many, times.

And if any of you have heard me talk about teaching yoga you know that I am determined not to make the same mistakes as a teacher that I find myself making as an actor.  Which is why (I assume) that halfway through the class some other voice kicked in, and the voice said:

"Throw your f-ing plan out the f-ing window."

And because I was having a miserable time up until that point, and because it seemed like everyone else might be too...I did.  I threw my f-ing plan out the f-ing window, and I arrived in class.  Yes, it was at least 45 minutes in at that point, and yes, I had some ground to make up for, but the energy in the room, the energy in my heart, the tightness in my chest immediately changed.  And POOF! There I was.  There I was with all of my knowledge and all of my desire to teach and all of my playfullness now fully (thank god) present.

And after the class was over, feeling mostly redeemed, I thought about how important it is to trust--to trust that we know enough, that we're smart enough and spontaneous enough to think on our feet.  To trust that we have everything we need--so much so that we can really just walk into a room, be there fully, and let what is going to happen unfold.  Without any additional help or worry or gripping from us.

The plan doesn't make me safe, I'm realizing.  The only thing that makes me feel safe is my full and unrestrained participation with myself.

So, Shanti-towners, if I could offer you one piece of advice today it would be:

"Throw your f-ing plan out the f-ing window."


xo
YogaLia