CLASS-IFIED

I'm in SNOWY (heavenly) New York for the weekend, taking care of business and, as luck would have it, yesterday I got to teach my second community class at my beloved Laughing Lotus.  This month's theme at the Lotus:  the Bhagavad Gita.

Confession:  I LIKE the Bhagavad Gita.  I do not loooooooooove the Bhagavad Gita.  I find it a little masculine and head-y and I always feel like I'm slogging through it, which is not the quality I'm looking for in my spiritual texts...I'm more of a gliding-through-the-sky girl when it comes to writing I love.  So, okay, so I slogged through it once again and marked a lot of passages that stood out to me, confident that if I just kept plugging away a theme would emerge.

Cut to, the morning of class.  I have left my beloved in our warm bed so that I can spend some quiet AM time meditating, practicing, and writing about the BG (in hopes of coaxing out a coherent theme).  I've settled on "I am not the doer"...a subject that is littered all throughout the book, and something I've been touching on in some of my classes this week anyhow. Good, I think, that's good enough.  And I put away my notebook and climb back into my still-warm bed.

On the way to class I'm feeling nervous, but the nerves have an underpinning of confidence.  I know what it means now to teach a class, and more and more I am learning what kind of teacher I am...what I need and what excites me and most of all, how to look for and respond to what it is my students need...how to be in the room with them and feel okay throwing away plans and coming up with new ones on the spot in order to best support them.  So, that feels good.  And I'm sort of rehearsing what I want to say about all this I am not the doer stuff, but I'm sort of leaving it alone...I don't want to overplan.  I'm good, I'm gonna be good.

So, here is what my there was SUPPOSED to sound like:

[Introduce BG, say there is a lot of this "I am not the doer" stuff in there], then say:

"A few months ago I got an email from a teacher in response to an update from me on all my goings-on which read, 'remember, you are not the doer'.  And I was sort of like "oh okay, right, so yogic, blah blah blah I am TOO the doer!  Didn't you read all that stuff I am DOOOO-ing?!" But it's been sitting with me for the past many weeks and I finally realized what she was talking about. Which is,  I better hope that I am not the doer, because the "I" in that scenario, is my overly-controlling, competitive, approval-seeking small self.  If "I" am the doer, whatever I just "did" is probably going to be pretty crappy.  Let's hope that "I" am not the doer, because if "I" am not, then it means that something else is working through me.  Something larger.  Something inspired.  Something so much greater and more skilled than "I" could ever be.  Etc., etc., etc."

But here is what it ACTUALLY sounded like:

[Introduced BG...with way too much detail.  Like someone recounting the plot of a movie to people who have already seen it, and including all the minor interludes and jump-cuts.  I think more than one person started staring off into the middle distance.  Oh my god, this is only an hour and fifteen minute class, Lia, let's get to the point.]  And, then say:

(I can't even begin to replicate what I actually did say on this blog, because I'm going to fall into a coma just trying to type it...but I definitely said something along the lines of, "because the I who is the doer, is not the I...it's the little I instead of the big I...in all spiritual traditions there is this contrast between the big I and the small I...and the I in the "I am not the doer" is the...ramble, ramble, ramble)

Argh!  Thank god the actual CLASS went really great. As soon as I shut my big mouth I immediately stepped into the class, for reals, as teacher (talk about not being the doer, sheesh).  I felt confident and light-hearted and we all had a lot of FUN, I believe, which felt good.   I even managed to reapproach the theme with a lot more ease throughout the course of the class and get to the heart of what was originally a totally convoluted point.

So, redemption was had, but still I've been thinking a lot since then about what happened with the ol theme-a-rating, and I've realized that two major things went wrong:

1.  I didn't get specific enough with MYSELF before class started.  The themes are usually effortless for me because, in one way or another, I have tapped into something--some question or idea--that I'm very passionate about, and so I don't have to think of things to say (I am not the doer)...I just sort of touch that little tender spot where the question exists in me, and the words flow (I am not the doer).  But, obviously, if that's not readily accessible to my conscious mind, it means I need to dig a little deeper.  (Or find another freaking theme).

2.  And this is the big one.  I. Wasn't. Being. Honest.  I'm NOT moved by the Bhagavad Gita, I DON'T love or even completely jive with everything it has to say, and THAT'S where I needed to start with my theme.  Instead I think I was subtly trying to sound a certain way...like a "yoga" instructor, maybe.

Note to self:  next time...less doing.

What To Do In Case of Miracle

I was having a discussion the other day with some ladies, one of whom had just finished an intensive disaster preparedness seminar, in which she learned all kinds of things about what to do in case of earthquake, snake-bite, poison ingestion, choking, seizure...you name it, and she regaled us for several minutes with all the horrors of "what could happen".

And as she was talking I was feeling some distaste, not for her (she's lovely), but for the whole world of "disaster preparedness".  So often I feel like seminars about disasters are contributing to a kind of generalized fear...about disasters.  There's so many "what if's" and "get ready"s being thrown around, I don't know...something about it doesn't sit right with me.  And then I immediately thought about how silly it was for me to have any kind of issue with being prepared.  Because, isn't it important to be prepared?  Shouldn't we know how to un-choke someone who is choking?  Haven't 100's, 1000's of lives been saved by exactly this kind of pre-disaster know-how?

And then I thought of two things...I thought of a story I'd heard in which a man in some seminar had fallen to the ground in distress, and another man, unrelated to the first, had jumped up and tried to help, and for reasons unbeknownst to him, this second man had felt the urge (and followed it) to bite down hard on the compromised man's index finger.  It turned out that the man who had fallen to the ground had been having a heart attack, and the other man (the biter) had bitten down at exactly the place where some artery or meridian ends and his bite had acted as a kind of defibrilator. And the first man lived. Again, the biter had no idea why he'd felt the urge to do this...he just did.  Where's THAT covered in the emergency preparation course? 

And the second thing that came to mind is how we have all of these talks and drills and practice runs of the worst stuff that could possibly happen in our lives, so we all know exactly what to expect, how it's going to go, exactly what our chances of survival are and aren't...but we have nothing comparable when it comes to the awesome stuff.  What about a Miracle Prepardness Course?  A Best Day of Your Life Preparation checklist?  The What to Have Handy in Case You Meet the Love of Your Life Kit? Where are these things?

Is it just because we think we don't have to be "prepared" for the good stuff...because the good stuff we can navigate via our intuition? And if that's the case, why wouldn't the same apply to the emergencies (see example number 1 above, about bitey and the bitten)...why is it that we have to run the worst case scenarios over and over in our head, meanwhile giving no attention to all the possible awesome outcomes in our lives?  Is it simply because we BELIEVE more in the inevitability of bad stuff than of good stuff?

We all know that we're going to die, and that we are going to lose people in our lives whom we love.  We all know that's inevitable.  (And I'm not arguing it, obviously.)  But, how many of us feel that same sense of inevitability about experiencing, even just once in our lives, deep and miraculous magic?  Or a total stunning transformation of our minds and our hearts and our souls?  And if we DO believe in it...why aren't we "planning" for it.

Which leads me to the question, what would YOU do in case of awesomeness?  I want to hear your best What To Do in Case of a Miracle checklists, Shanti-towners...leave a comment here and tell me what I should have handy...

Just in case.

Me and Ghandi and a Wall of Mirrors...

Paul lately has been quoting this thing that he heard someone say (I'm sure he knows who said it, but I've forgotten) about comparison.  "Comparison," this person said, "is the worst form of violence...toward yourself."

I love this quote. He only had to get to the "violence" part when he first recounted it, and I knew how it was going to end.  (Because it is, isn't it, it's a little act of violence, to compare oneself to others?)  It's just a little tiny knife that we can drive into ourselves, sometimes (oh god, I hope this isn't just me) many, many times a day.

(I, seriously, I think I have a problem with this.)

I compare myself to the people in my life--to Paul (am I as a good a [fill in the blank] as he is?), to my family (am I as connected, as good a daughter/sister/aunt, etc.), to my friends (you name the topic), to other actors, to other yoga teachers, to other teachers in any discipline, to other women, to other women specifically my age, to other men my age, to other "wives", to other yoga students, to other people who live on my block, to old people, to BABIES for gods sakes (they're so wide open and present...why can't I be that present), to Mother Theresa, to Ghandi, to President Obama, to anyone who is on the news for doing anything truly inspired, to Oprah and to this one girl in my yoga studio who I think might be enlightened.

I'm sorry...did you just say you compare yourself TO GHANDI?

Yes, voice of reason, I did. Oh, what, I'm just supposed to resign myself to not being like Ghandi?!  I could be like Ghandi.  If I could just stop worrying about stupid shit, I could totally be Ghandi.

And here, of course, is where the problem lies, because (and this may come as a bit of a shock) no, I can not be Ghandi.  Or Oprah.  Or that girl at my yoga studio.  Because those identities have already been taken.  Also, most of those people, the ones who seem to just get it, the ones who are on zee path...probably they don't spend a lot of time comparing themselves to other people.  As it's hard to move very fast down any path when you are stopping frequently to stab yourself with small comparison knives.

Because the problem with comparison, with growth by means of comparison, is that...it never ENDS.  Never ever ever, if you are basing your good-ness or not good-ness on what you are doing in comparison to what other people are doing...will you ever find any lasting sense of peace.  Beeeeeecause (and I know this from experience) as soon as you've worked through one kink...as soon as you've befriended that girl or decoded the life of Ghandi enough that you don't feel quite so small in comparison...some new shiny person is going to come along who has it all figured out IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT WAY and off you'll be thrown, once again.

It's like this, people...

A few of the studios I'm teaching in have mirrored walls, or just one mirrored wall, and it drives me CRAZY, because there is always one student (or two or three) who spends all of class checking themselves out in the mirror.  Now, some might say this could be a helpful practice because you can see what your body is or is not doing, and where you may or may not be out of line, and that's true, you can...but as soon as you take that mirror away, what are you left with?  You're left with a mental image of how your body looks doing a pose, and all your effort will go into recreating what you think the pose is supposed to look like.   Practice without a mirror, however, means that you have to get deep...you might have to close your eyes...you might have to rest your mind on subtleties of movement you didn't even know you HAD...the turn of your femur in your hip socket, the clench and release of your toes...and suddenly you are guiding yourself from this deep place of knowing.  Because when you're in that deep, and the alignment clicks into place, you don't SEE it (comparsion), you FEEL it.  You feel it's rightness.  You feel that steady ground of the right path beneath your feet.

And so, if comparison is an act of violence, then to get sweeter with ourselves, we have to pull our eyes away from the reflection...we have to start measuring our worth, our success, our goodness, by that "A-ha" click of bone stacking on top of bone, of muscle releasing, and of the deep sense in our own bodies that we are, indeed, just fine as we are.

About this, I think that Ghandi would approve...

One of the Greatest Yogis of them All...

RIP, Dr. King, and thank god for you...

Serious Practice

 There are days when I wake up in the morning and my first thought is, "Oh my God, I wanna be with you."  And without fail, those are the mornings that end with me throwing up my hands in defeat...

Okay, alright, I surrender!

Is this because God is cruel?  (And let me just interject, for those of you who find yourself recoiling at the G-o-d word, that I'm not talking about a man-in-the-sky kind of God...I'm not really talking about a man (or woman) at all...what I'm talking about is the Divine, and that whisper of bliss that comes when you find the grace to sit in her lap, even for a moment.) Is it some awful jack-ass style joke that the more I want the more I NEED the affection of that whatever-you-want-to-name-it connection, the more separate I feel?

No, Shanti-towners, the Divine is not cruel.  But, as it turns out, the Divine (just like us mortals) isn't so easily wooed by desperation.

Isn't it the case that the most beautiful works of art, the greatest performances, the most charismatic people, and the most breath-taking of sights...aren't they so, in part, because of their effortlessness?  Isn't it their ease that draws you to them?  The uncomplicated beauty, their raw-ness, their total lack of need for your approval?  Isn't that the thing that makes you want to just melt into them, to hang on their every word, to spend hours drinking them in?

Well, it's how the Divine feels about you, too.  It's not your struggle.  It's not your effort.  It's not your need, your necessary wounds, or your muscular attempt to Get Things Right that brings the Divine nearer.  Because, do you know what happens when you start to want something a little too much?  Your MIND jumps in.  The little siren in the firehouse of your brain goes off, and a hundred men in hazard suits go sliding down a pole to the rescue.

Move aside!  We'll handle this!

And suddenly the Divine (that inexpressible, irreduceable, unbelievably beautiful force) gets reduced to a series of ideas about who you are, who you have been, who you will one day be and in what way your connection to that which is greater than you might help you (finally) get there.

And the Divine, it turns out, isn't really interested in your ideas of what he-she-it is.

The Divine, she is sweet, and soft, and made of things like velvet and honey and things that shimmer.  She's drawn to that which is also sweet and soft and honey-ey and velvet and shimmer-ed.  She is lulled by your grace. When a muscle relaxes, she rushes in to fill the space that was once taken by tension.  When you take a morning to do nothing but drink tea and stare into the tops of trees, she orchestrates only the best birds to alight there for you.  And, when you are silly and you laugh and you say f*$% it, I don't care anymore how this looks or where this gets me or who says what about it, she puts on her dancing shoes and comes to join you at the party.

So, Shanti-towners, if you feel in the grip of a mind that has a serious need to connect, that has a lot of serious solid ideas about what that connection means, and that is quick to call frivolous the only things that make you soften, just think about your serious self as an old grizzled man nestled up to a bar, waiting for someone to come and cheer him up.  And think of the Divine as a silk-clad red-lipsticked goddess who has just wafted through the door, and ask yourself if there might not be another version of you she might be drawn to more than this old man self.  Say that cowboy with the look of mischief in his eye, or the bearded poet all choked up with beauty...even, say, that little petticoat-clad child, darting between the dangling legs of every patron, searching for some trinket.

Remember who you are, and then remember who she is, and remember, especially, that you don't need to take any of it all that seriously.


Wishing you a day of play, and wonder, and deep companionship with that sexy dame, Divinity.

Yantra-fied

Hey, Lia, what did you this weekend?

Well, cyber-self, I'm so glad you asked.

My pleasure.

This weekend, I made a yantra.

A yantra?  What's that?!

Another excellent question.

Thank you.

No, no, thank you.

No, you.

No, thank yoooooooooooooou. Okay, a yantra is a...um.  It's a.  Um.  It's a very pretty painted, uh, yoga picture.

Hmm. That doesn't seem right.

No, no it's not.

(and...scene.)


Okay, so I DID actually make a yantra this weekend (pictured above), and no, it's not a pretty painted yoga picture.  Well, it sort of is, I guess, but in order to give you a more accurate description, let's take it to the experts, or expert, really...Mrs. Sarah (gorgeous goddess) Tomlinson. She defines a yantra on her yantra website like this:

Yantras are sacred geometric designs containing the energy of a particular deity or planet. Each design enhances a specific quality within such as love, forgiveness and strength. The Yantras are ancient forms handed down to use for healing by the Tantrics of Ancient India to uplift the energy both in your internal and external environment.

 Helpful? Yes?  Yes.

I know Sarah from New York and Laughing Lotus.  I hadn't met her prior to my teacher training, but I'd heard her name quite a lot, and if you ever pick up an issue of Yoga Journal or LA Yoga, you can often find a yantra in the back made by Sarah, as she's a renowned one in the field of yantras and yantra-making.  But beyond that she is also AWESOME.  Like super crazy awesome.  She was, by far, one of my favorite guest teachers to come in and work with us during my teacher training (she taught the Ayurveda portion of the training) and I forced her to become my friend by demanding personalized mantras from her.  Mwah ha ha.

(there wasn't actually any force involved, that part's not true, but she did give me my mantra(s), that part is true.)

Anyhoooo, this weekend she was in Los Angeles teaching a yantra painting workshop and I jumped at the chance to get to spend some quality time with her AND to get to make something awesome to boot.

Let me just say, I think I might be in love with yantra-ing.  The process of making one involves all kinds of tools...compass and ruler and pencil and eraser and square paper and paints and PHEW!  It takes a couple of hours just to get the intial yantra pattern drawn in pencil, and then several more hours to get the thing painted.  All the detail work just makes me gooey with bliss, as something about measuring out perfectly plotted circles and dividing lines creates a cool hush in the mind, and I immediately understood why the making of the yantra is a meditation in and of itself.

But one of the best parts of the whole process is the CHOOSING of the yantra to begin with.  Sarah laid laminated images of several yantras on the floor for each of us to look at, and we were to pick the one(s) we were most drawn to, and that was to be our yantra that we would paint.  This kind of "let your intuition choose" game can be a little hard for me, as I immediately start guessing and second-guessing myself.

Which one am I drawn to?  I think I might be drawn to that one?  Or, wait...is that my brain or my intuitiion talking?  Okay, wait let me just take another look...okay, that one.  Or, hold on...shouldn't I go with my very FIRST instinct?  In that case it would have to be that other one.  Wait, okay, let me just quiet my mind.  Alright, no, this one. Definitely, okay, this one.  I'm sure.  I'm pretty sure.  Yes, okay, I'm doing it.

And so on.

Until, after much hemming and hawing and deciding and then re-deciding, I finally ended up with a yantra that seemed very, um, appropriate:

Cinnamasta Yantra, the yantra of INTUITION.

Well, yes.  It seems I could use some help in that arena....  And it doesn't hurt that I find this yantra so stupidly beautiful. 

I finally finished it on Monday morning...the completed yantra is pictured above.  Ain't it lovely? 

If you want to make your own you should definitely check out Sarah's website on the subject where you can peruse beautiful yantras and even order her awesome yantra-making book!

Follow up to 1/8/2011

Came across this piece today in the Huffington Post, which says what I was trying to say, but so much more beautifully...

Thank you, Rev. Anne Howard, for being brave enough to preach love instead of retribution. 

More of that, please.

1/8/2011

After the news today on the tragedy in Arizona, and a pretty chill-inducing visit to the Sarah Palin facebook page (there was some gossiping on the internet about a map, now removed, on her twitter page with cross-hairs over the districts supporting the health-care bill, Gabrielle Giffords' district being one of them, and a proclamation from the Alaskan belle herself: "Don't retreat...reload!"), the chill being raised not even so much by Palin (who is sort of too ridiculous to be chilling...like some kind of right-wing paperdoll) but by her commenters, most of whom, left and right, were hurling around taunts of "liberal" and "conservative"...as if perspective itself were the enemy--after all of that, all I can say is:

Argh!!  And then...

We gotta do better!  And then...

I've gotta do better! And then...

Oh my god, I've got to do better.

If I am the micro of this macro, as all the spiritual disciplines would have us believe...if I am both a reflection of and the reflector of the world around me, then this insanity which is OUT THERE, is also the insanity which is IN HERE.  The insanity which manifests itself not as gunmen and wars and hate-spewing politicos, but as self-loathing and complaint and anxiety and all of the other little nasties that love to have their way when there's room...and if that's the case, then how is there anything more important in the world than cleaning up that particular mess (the one on the inside...the only one I have control over)? 

All of the excuses I make, we all make, about why we can't, why it's too hard, why it's too frightening, why it just seems too impossible to love ourselves (and thus the whole little universe over which our minds preside)...all of the ways that we tell ourselves we are not deserving of a mind and a heart and a body that are PEACEFUL and thus emanating PEACE, and thus capable of PEACE-making...

Are all just a lot of bullshit.  (pardon the el language-o).

Because it is just of so much more importance than simply our own sense of wholeness and well-being (a welcome by-product, but hardly the primary reason).  Loving more, finding more silence, more sweetness, more compassion...it is the antidote for insanity of all stripes, and it has got to be important enough that one (me) is willing to pay the price of losing one's (my) small sufferings for the sake of it.

Hasn't it?!

So, in honor of all those wounded or slain this afternoon in Arizona, I want to tell you, all you Shanti-towners out there...that I love you.  Big time.  And I want to remind you (in case you've forgotten) that you are capable of such wisdom and such insight and such love and such grace and such equanimity...you could scew the whole out-of-sorts world back onto the path of sanity.  I swear it's true.  I know it in my bones that it's true.  You are needed.  You and your clear mind are desperately needed.

Sending as much love as I am able due East to AZ...

Catching (on to) the Breath

 I've given myself a bit of a challenge this year, to read all of the books on my bookshelves in LA.  It's not even a fraction of my total library, but still I have been feeling humiliated by all the many half-read and un-read books just languishing away in my little cabinet in the dining room.  I am not allowed to buy another new book (um, except the awesome books I got for Christmas...thanks, family!) until I read every single book I already own.  2 down so far, about 40 to go.

What this means of course is that even those books that I would normally be tempted to put down halfway through, either from boredom or because of that sneaking suspicion that there's something better out there I could or ought to be reading, I now have to plod through until the end.  It also means that I can't play that weird little game with myself where I just stand in front of my bookshelf hemming and hawing about which new tome I ought to start, creating more and more indecisiveness about which direction to go in until finally, fed up with the whole question, I end up abandoning the books altogether and picking up that latest issue of Vanity Fair that just arrived in the mail.

Yes, you can go ahead and draw a larger conclusion about my general disposition from this tendency, and yes, I know it's not very flattering.

Anyhoooo, so I'm reading this book right now...one of the aforementioned "I would normally have given up on this a while ago" books, and because I am committed to the completion of it, I've had to learn to overlook all of the things about the tone and dryness of the language (again, not something I would normally do), in service of the larger message of the book. 

It's written by a former chess wunderkind turned martial artist, and it's all about the learning process and the idea of "peak performance"...i.e., how to get "in the zone".  Much of it, honestly, is written in a kind of male super-athlete speak that I find a tiny bit aggravatting, but UNDERNEATH all of that, there is a lot of insight about how it is in that we learn, and in particular how learning turns to mastery and then to greatness.

There are a lot of things I could talk about in relation to this and to yoga...how it is that the magical process breaks down that goes, "I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it...I can almost do it...I did it!  Oh wait, that was an accident...I can't do it, I can't do it...I can almost do it...okay, I can almost do it...I did it, I did it, I did it...I can do it!"  (Which is a process that I LOVE, and which has been one of the greatest gifts of yoga, as there is nothing so wildly clear as the change in one's body from NOT capable to capable.)

But, what I actually want to talk about is a point that was made near the end of the book, when the author is talking about having gone as a young man to some kind of peak performance training facility, where a bunch of scientists had gathered a bunch of athletes to study them in the midst of training in order to figure out what is really going on with a gifted athlete when he's in that magic super-human place.  And the big lesson that the author learned from being there, is that without fail, the athletes who were able to REST and really slow their heart-rate down between bursts of activity, had far more stamina and competed overall at a much higher level than those who were not able to do this.  AND, that those athletes who had mastered this art of rest, were able to slow down their heart-rate and recover in shorter and shorter periods of time as they progressed.  Meaning, that just 1 or 2 minutes of rest could do for some athletes what a less in-shape person might need 10 or 15 minutes to accomplish.

And what I loved, loved, loved about this, is that I have been thinking so much lately about the breath as a teaching tool...about looking to the pattern and rhythm and quality of the breath, not just as an indicator of what might be going on in a particular person, but also as a sort of instruction book for the human machine: This is how we run best:  Inhale, exhale, pause.

Inhale, meaning action, inspiration, activity; Exhale, meaning release, surrender, letting gooo, and finally this Pause (I know, I'm hooked on the pause)--in which this two things seem to be integrated in rest.  And then we begin again.  This is the ideal operating system for the human body (and mind and spirit) and it is laid out in perfect never-ending example by the very thing that keeps us alive!  But it's so easy to forget, because we live in a world that encourages a kind of productivity hyper-ventilation:  Inhale! Inhale! Inhale! More! More! More!  And the idea of a surrender and a silence are left only to the folks who subscribe to the OWN Network.

But if this performance model is true (which OF COURSE it is), then not only are we just stressing out our systems by not taking regular intervals of rest (and by rest, I don't mean watching television or drinking wine...though that's okay, too) we are also reducing our productivity and our ability to perform at our highest levels.  One of the examples that the author gives is of the best tennis players, and how if you watch the true masters between sets, instead of arguing for a call or pumping their fist over a victory, you can watch them just picking placidly at the strings on their rackets.  Resting.  Breathing.

You can do and do and do and do and think and plan and fix and negotiate and action action action until you're blue in the face, but how is any of that ever going to take deep root if you don't every once in awhile, between sets, just...rest? 

So, Shanti-Towners, today, if you're feeling stressed out at all...just take a moment, step back, and pick at the strings of your metaphorical racket until you're ready to get back in the fray.  And then just notice if you feel better, more capable, stronger than you did before...

I Themed a Theme....

Whilst on holiday (no, I'm not British) in Seattle, I had the opportunity to finally visit one of that city's most esteemed yoga studios, about which I was super excited, having heard lots and lots of rave reviews about said studio, in particular, reviews about what a sweet ecstatic spirit it has (which are two of my favorite ways for a yoga studio to be).  So, I was prepared for a greeeeeeat class. 

But a great class I did not get.

I'm not going to go in to ALL of the reasons why this class was not great, a lot of that is just personal preference (and maybe a little snarky).  I'm only going to go into ONE reason why the class was not great:

(Well, two, actually):

1.  At the beginning of the class the teacher told us all that he was trying to learn names and would we please all go around and say our names and whether or not we had any requests? Alright, yes, okay, I'm all for teachers wanting to learn names.  I'm not all for having to say stuff out loud at the beginning of class, as it's embarrassing in that "when is it going to be my turn and I hope I don't say my name in a dorky way" kind of way.  But all of that, I can forgive.  What I CANNOT forgive, however, is that after aaaaaaaall that...

He. Didn't. Use. Anyone's. Name.  EVER! 

Not once, during the whole class did he refer to ANYONE by name!  Not once did he refer to anyone, period.  I mean...why?!  Why, Mr. Teacher Man, why would you make us doooo that, prefacing it all with your desire to learn names, and then not try to use any names?!  I mean, there has got to be one person in there whose name you just KNOW...can't you just take a sec to say, "Jimmy, that looks great"?!

Phew.  Okay, I'm done with that. That was really just venting. But I feel better, so thank you.

2.  After we were done with our (pointless) name game, he then moved on to his dharma talk, setting up the theme for class.  This, for those of you who haven't been to a formal yoga class, is the way most classes begin.  The teacher sets up a theme for the class, maybe it's a physical theme (our ribcage!) or a philosophical theme (the yamas and niyamas!) or a more woo-woo new-agey type theme, my personal favorite (surrender! connection! awesomeness!)...and then hopefully this theme is reflected in or woven through the rest of the class, either verbally or non-verbally (some of the best teachers can make a theme resonate all through class without ever having to reference out loud it again.  Suddenly you get to the end of class and you've had some deep EXPERIENCE of the theme, without your mind having to be involved at all.  That's the best.)

But, some teachers have not really mastered the art of theme-weaving.  Some teachers (I'll let you do the math) SOME teachers...okay, this guy...set up a theme, and it might even be a cool theme, they might even have something cool to say about the theme, but then the dharma talk ends, class begins, and the theme is never heard from again.  (Sort of like, I don't know...peoples naaaaaaaaames?)  No reference is made to any aspect of said theme, either with words or with representative poses or even via the general spirit of the class, and this, for me...is irksome. 

No, actually...I hate this.

It bothers me so much, that I have been in a bit of a nit about this class ever since, and so over the last week or two I have been doing a lot of thinking about this whole IDEA of a theme.

Why do we start classes this way?  What is the theme really for?  Why shouldn't it just appear once and then never come back again?  What's the dilly, yo?

And what I've come to is this:  The theme is not just about the teacher giving a kind of mini keynote on some yoga trope.  It's not just a preamble to the class...or at least, this is how I feel about it.  The theme is, for me, the backbone, the hinge-pin of the class.  It is the ground that the rest of the class is built upon.
Because...the beauty, the MAGIC, of the yoga practice is that it facilitates connectivity amongst the whole human system.  It links breath to body and body to mind and mind to heart and heart to breath and so on, and yes, okay, it's entirely possible to come at the practice with a sort of generic intention to yoke these things together, and to relax and surrender and all of the rest of it, but for most beginning practitioners (which I still consider myself, even after nearly 6 years), that vagueness is not enough.  To approach a class with just the clutter of mind and no unifying goal to cut through it all...I think it's asking for trouble. Or at the very least that becomes the makings of a "workout" and not a yoga class.

So, in comes a theme.  And maybe it's not even a very lofty theme.  Maybe it's going to be a class about your shins, but the mind, so hungry for direction, it can hang on to that.  The shins!!  There is so much to know about the shins!  (Suddenly).  Can I send breath to my shins?  What are my shins doing in this pose?  And this one?  Do I favor one shin above the other?  Can I even FEEL my shins or do they just seems like dead weight and if they dooooooo, then what is that about?

Do you see what I'm getting at here?

Just imagine, then, if the class is about softening the heart or expressing grace or non-grasping or any of the other gorgeous sparkly gems of themes that some of my teachers have blessed me with over the years...the right teacher can just open up the whole universe of even the most mudane of subjects (the pinky toe, aw yeeeeeeeah, a revelatory toe!)  And beyond all of that...even bigger and brighter still...a well-wrought theme can actually begin to open one's mind to the possibility of the expression of ALL THINGS via the body.  It only takes one time in class where all of your cells seem to ring with the deeper implications of your stuck shins (for example) to really begin to understand how deep the practice can go...

Welcome 2011!

 Happy New Year, all my lovelies!

I am so happy to be back in La-La-Land but was so exhausted from our trip that Paul actually had to wake me up to say a midnight happy new year...

(That's right, I'm officially no longer in my twenties.)

And I've only got a few minutes...I'm sneaking in a blog post while my better half showers, but I wanted to take this time to wish you not just a happy new year (which I do), and not just so much success and fulfillment in 2011 (which I do), but also to remind you, on this day when so many of us are consumed with thoughts of how we can do it better...THIS year, finally, I will achieve perfection!! (that kind of thing)...to remind you that you ALREADY are perfect, and that your job in this brand-spanking-new year (new DECADE) is not to get it right.  It really isn't. 

So, perhaps instead of thinking about all of the things you could or ought to do, how this year will finally be the year, maybe instead you could use today as an opportunity to breathe a little deeper...

to relax your jaw and your eyeballs in their sockets...

to be sweet to yourself...

and to just give yourself total permission to CHILL.  I mean it.  TOTAL and absolute permission.

and maybe that chilled-out-ness might soften your heart a bit more, and set the tone for a year full of sweetness, full of gentleness, and full of total with-yourself-ness.

THAT is what I wish for you...


Happy 2011!!