How To Get Things Done

1.  Map out some time, really decide, "okay, dangit, I'm going to check these things off my to-do list, starting at ___ AM/PM sharp, and nothing's gonna stop me!"

2.  When the allotted time comes around--well, you should probably get something to eat, shouldn't you?  Before you really sit down and start plugging away? You don't want to try and be productive on an empty stomach...you'll just end up staring off into space.

3.  Postpone allotted time by 45 minutes so you can eat.

4.  Okay, NOW it's time.  Make sure you have a space to work in that's clutter free and pleasing to be in.

5.  Postpone allotted time another 45 minutes/ 1 hour so that you can clean the living room.  You can't work while there are napkins on the coffee table, now can you?

6.  Alright, now the sun is going down, your space is prepared, you are ready to W-O-R-K.  Oh wait, oh shit...you forgot to call your mom!  Argh!  Well, you're not going to do that right now, that will take too long, but you can at least write it down.  Yes, write it down.

7.  Find a pen and paper to write down that you need to call your mom.  While you're at it, you may as well start a to-do list of things you need to do after you finish all the things you are currently to-do-ing.

8.  Check your bank balance.  (You remembered while writing down your additional to-dos that you were supposed to check on that one deposit that was supposed to go through today, and this will only take a second so you may as well get it done now.)

9.  Spend several minutes doing some mad figuring as to how exactly you're going to cover that deposit that was supposed to go through but didn't.  Break out into cold sweat.

10.  Okay.  Phew!  Your space is clear, you feel comforted by your new list of tasks, you've transfered money from your savings to your checking and promised yourself (once again) that you'll be better about that from now on....just stretch out those hands and start getting down to busi--wait.  Eeew, why do your hands smell like that?

11.  Wash hands.  Pee.  Wash hands again.  Wash face.  Think about what it is you're about to sit down and accomplish while checking out forehead bumps in mirror.

12.  This is good, no this is really good...it's good to be clean before you begin any kind of serious work.  What is that called?  Doing your ablutions?   Ugh, it's ___ PM and you're already tired.  Why is it so hard to get things accomplished around here?  It's this apartment...the light is weird.  You know what, yes...

13.  Get up and adjust curtains.  There.  That's better.

14.  Okay, goddamnit, just sit down and stop fiddling around.  Just put the pillow on your lap and your computer on the pillow and Get. To. It.

15.  Realize that you've just wasted an hour and a half doing absolutely nothing.  

16.  Wonder if your procrastination would make a funny blog post.

17.  Realize that "write blog post" is one of the things on your to-do list.

18.  Ta-da!!!  


Ta-done.

Pratipaksha Bhavanam, yo.

I have already shared, in the past, my love of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.  Me and Patanjali...we're tight.  In fact, when I'm feeling like I need a little guru love in my practice (i.e. oh my god, someone who knows more than me...please send help), I often call on ol' Mr. Patanjali for assistance.  Though, because there aren't any real images of Patanjali, I usually picture him as an animated kid's cartoon character, which can be weird, when you're calling across the void for help.

Anyhoo.  I've been thumbing through my copy of The Sutras over the last week or so, and I keep accidentally opening to the same page:

Pratipaksha Bhavanam. Or rather, this sutra, # 2:33, which says:

"Vitarka badhane pratipaksa bhavanam.  When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite [positive] ones should be thought of.  This is Pratipaksha Bhavanam."

That's right folks, Patanjali was a new-age thinker.  This, essentially, is yoga's version of The Secret.  If you're thinking negative thoughts...stop doing that. And choose some positive ones, instead.

Now, I'm going to admit (and if you listened to my interview with the amazing Edward Vilga, you won't be surprised by what I'm about to say), I am sort of obsessed by this idea.  Reason being, I have intimate personal experience of the power of shifting thought.  As I'm sure most of you all do, too, as it seems that this Pratipaksha Bhavanam business is a built-in, in the human system.  Change your thoughts, change your mood, change your mood...change your whole f-ing life.  I mean, how this could ever be considered "a secret" I'm not so sure...someone who's ever had a bad day and then a good day, knows how different the whole world is, dependent on your mood.  Same stuff, same people, same circumstances, bad mood=it's all terrible, good mood=it's all lovely.

Ta-da!

Anyhow, what's tricky about this is...well, everything.  But here are a few of the most tricky of all the tricky-things (at least in my little head-sphere) in regards to this whole thought-choosing conundrum:

1.  You have to believe that you can indeed choose your thoughts.  Might as well just stop right there for a lot of us, right?  I think this gets most confusing when one tries to retroactively choose thoughts.  Meaning, instead of just moving forward from the thoughts that are already present (which requires a bit of surrender, a bit of softness), in order to choose new and better ones, instead of doing that, so many of us try to go back and figure out how the thoughts that are currently there got there in the first place.  And this, my friends, is a road to nowhere.

2.  You have to be willing to give yourself permission to choose positive thoughts, even when there are negative ones present.  Now, this is a particularly sticky-wicket for me...my tendency is to want to clean up all of the negative thoughts/emotions/what have you so that there are ONLY positive thoughts to choose from.  I feel like I need express written permission from a higher power in order to abandon the thoughts that make me cranky or worried...as in, "who am I to just walk away from all this...mess?"  Which tends to leave me, you guessed it, right in the middle of the mess.

3.  You can't expect miracles.  Meaning, if you are in a crappy crappy mood, way down the rabbit-hole, the idea that you can just choose a thought of joy or bliss or love or peace or whatever and feel better immediately, is just going to make you feel WORSE when that doesn't happen.  There is no way to, Star Trek-like, beam ourselves instantly from our worst mood to our best.  We have to walk there.  We have to just take gentle progressive steps away from the magnetic center of our sour selves and towards the equally magnetic center of our best selves.

and 4.  (this is a big one)  You have to be able to understand the difference between a positive and a negative thought.  It's like this: if you've been raised on fast food, you're going to have a hard time enjoying a vegetable.  You're going to have to force-feed yourself those suckers for a while until your internal body nutrition clock gets reset.  Only then will you be able to start truly reaping the benefits of all of those good-for-you foods. The same, I think, goes for thoughts.  If you've just been letting your mind and your emotions run wild, you are going to have a hard time, for a while, telling the difference between what SEEMS good for you, and what IS good for you.

This is where we have to start relying on our own internal yes/no meter.  And this is why we have to start cultivating a relationship with our intuition and our larger (quieter) self, so that we can begin to choose well for ourselves.  So that, no matter who wants to tell you which problems you need to solve, and exactly how you need to go about solving them...you know the truth.  You know that the cheeseburger in front of you, while momentarily satisfying (just like, I don't know...worry, or rage, or jealousy, or all those other sticky negative emotions can be) is just going to make you feel really bad later.  And that carrot, while not nearly as thrilling in the moment, is going to fill you up in ways you could never imagine...

So, Shanti Towners, if you won't take it from me, take it from Mr. Patanjali...and give pratipaksha bhavanam a go.  If nothing else, you might just feel a bit more full.

So Long For Now...

OpRAAH!!!

We'll miss YOOOOOOU!


(And I'm sorry that when I was having margaritas with a friend yesterday I said that sometimes I think you can be kind of bitchy.  I take it all back!)

Cheers to a woman who has done a whole hell of a lot of a good for women, everywhere.

And yes, alright already, I'll live my best life...sheesh!


xoxo
YogaLia

Still Here...

Shanti-Towners, I just want to be the first to tell you...the world has not ended.

I repeat, the world has not ended.

Phew!  Paul's out of town until tonight and spending the end of the world without him was really going to be sucky.  Hopefully when the next end-times arrive (oh, you know people are already out there ramping up for 12/21/12)...we can be happily ensconced together in our living room somewhere.

I don't even know where to begin with all of this doomsday craziness.  There are people who have literally left their jobs, spent all their money and moved out to the middle of nowhere to prepare themselves for the rapture. (Is "The Rapture" supposed to be capitalized?  Or just "Rapture", like "the Rapture"...should I treat it like the name of a band or a title of a movie?) People left children and spouses and entire lives in expectation of today's devastation.  I was listening to NPR this morning and they were talking about some male rapture-ites whose wives, ahem, asked them to leave their homes and children in the last few weeks.  ( I can't imagine why.)  It's heartbreaking.

And maybe even more heartbreaking than all the folks who have just exploded their lives unnecessarily, is that the belief in some kind of Armageddon (again, capitalize? Not capitalize?) is still so pernicious.  As far as I can figure it if there is a "Judgment Day" it means that:

1. Jesus (the ol' Prince of Peace) is, first of all, being weirdly manipulative about his return.  "I'm coming baaaaaaack, but I'm not going to tell you when.  Oooh, scary, huh?  Scaaaaaaaary.  So you just better be prepared for me to return...All. The. Time."

2. When this return happens (the return of God...who is, am I wrong about this...he's love isn't he?  Isn't that what it says in the Bible? God is love?) that when he returns he is going to first suck all the "saved" up into the atmosphere (only 200 million folks in all, according to "prophets" like Harold Camping...that's just 3% of the population) and then basically torture and set fire to EVERYONE else.  Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that most of those 3% are probably, I don't know...white people?

3.  This is a-okay with them and Jesus is still a dude they'd want to hang out with.

I mean, my god...no wonder we can't figure out how to stop killing each other.  THIS is the foundation of western spiritual belief:  Be good (we can't tell you quite exactly what that means), God's coming back (eventually...someday...we're not telling when), and if you're not ready, you're going to die a terrible fiery death.  Most of you will.  And by most of you, we mean 97% of you.

Now, look, I know this is sticky stuff...all of these questions about what is or isn't going to happen, post-life, but all this End of Days talk has got me thinking.  And this is not new, but let's say, for argument's sake, that what Jesus was preaching about was not a literal flying up into the sky to be with God, but that instead he was talking about...the possibility of heaven on earth.  In our lives.  The possibility of the end of suffering.  The possibility that, if we can focus ourselves on love and brotherhood instead of all this other schtuff, that we could actually experience lasting (internal) peace.  The peace that passes all understanding.  Inside the ol' noggin.

And if that's the case, then couldn't the return of Jesus...this thing we're all supposed to be looking for...couldn't it simply mean the return of peace to our minds and hearts?  Couldn't it mean the return of messengers of peace, similar to Jesus (people like MLK, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama...just to name a few)?  And if that's true, then doesn't it mean, that yes indeed the rapture has started?  As more and more people begin to understand how to loosen themselves from the binds of their constricted hearts and minds and are brought straight to the feet of God?  And couldn't, I don't know, couldn't the fire and brimstone that stands in the place of that really just be about the kind of suffering, the hell, that our suffering minds put us through on a daily basis?

If THAT'S the case, then ladies and gents, yes, let's all get prepared.  Because when THAT rapture comes...I want to be a part of it.

Let Jealousy Be Your Guide...

Jealously introduced me to my best friend.

It was college...we were both in the theatre department at our University, and when she arrived on campus (a dewey freshman when I was already a wizened sophomore) I was convinced that she would be the end of me and my University acting career.  She, people, she glowed. Onstage and off. And, try as I might, I couldn't seem to find anything wrong with her that would make me feel better in the face of her awesomeness.  She was, unfailingly, lovely.

(Sigh.)

And, in a rare moment of youthful wisdom, I quickly realized that my problem was not that I disliked this lovely girl...my problem was that I adored her.  (And, yes, wanted to be as leggy and sparkly as she was).  Fast-forward 12 years....she is still my closest friend (and as leggy and sparkly as ever).

Whyyyyyyyyyy am I bringing this up, you ask?  Well, this week has been a week, for me, of hot cranky red-faced envy.  And so I have been trying to remind myself of this story, and of the soft-heartedness that resides behind jealousy and competition and comparison and all that...gunk.

I won't go into the details, the list of things that people around me got that I want.  (Oh, and "people around me" also includes, you know, people in movies. And Emily Blunt, who is taught yoga by someone I know and who is apparently just as graceful and lovely as a person as she seems on the screen, which sort of made me want to die, when I heard it.  I heart you, EB, you goddamn gorgeous millionaire.) But what I will say is that I allowed these things to send me into a big spiral of self-doubt and obsessive "where am I going" examination that sort of screwed up my week.

Anybody out there relate?  Anybody?

So...as the anxiety began to fade (aided by a glass of red wine and the season finale of ANTM...yay, brittany!) I started to think about this whole jealousy thing, and why it is that it's so pernicious and so painful when it arises.  And at first, in my examinings, all I could come up with was what jealousy is not:

I realized that jealousy is NOT, as it disguises itself to be, about someone getting something that is supposed to be yours.  There is not a limited supply of grace and loveliness that the Emily Blunt's of the world have sucked up, and so now there's none left for me.  That's not it.  And it's not, as it disguises itself to be, about some cruel unfair world.  (Though it seems that this is another big tenant of jealousy:  how can I find something about this situation or this person that PROVES that either a) it was totally out of my control, i.e., "she was probably raised with money"..."his parents helped him do that..." or b) that the coveted thing or situation was procured in an underhanded way, "she's probably a crazy party-girl"..."I'm sure he's an ego-maniac..." etc. etc.).  This is also, not usually the case.  It's not the world's fault.  (Guess who that leaves as the responsible party?  Gulp.)

It's not any of those things.  But, here is what I think it IS, this jealousy thing (and it's hopeful, people, I promise):

I think we get jealous because some part of us, way down deep, knows not just that we WANT said thing or situation (which obviously we do) but that we also are CAPABLE of attaining said thing or situation.  And that is the part that hurts.

Situations or circumstances or acquisitions that we feel are totally outside our reach, those things don't tend to make us jealous.  Those things tend to engender the sweeter emotions--awe and respect.  But when we're confronted with something that we feel we COULD have but for whatever reason we are not LETTING ourselves have it...that's when the jealousy monster roars into life.

This is just a hypothesis, mind you.

But if I'm right...if this is true, that another person's individual loveliness only feels like a knife in the heart when we (deep down) know that we ourselves are or could be that confident and gracious and fill-in-the-blank but aren't doing or being that thing...well then, that means there's hope! Doesn't it?!  Doesn't that mean that the fire of envy might actually be the fire of...attainable desire?

Doesn't that mean that all of those things we feel jealous of are actually signals, from deep within, that some part of us knows we are capable of greatness?  And isn't that a good thing? Necessary, even?

My best friend is still as lovely as she was when she was in college.  We have seen each other through some serious ups and downs in our lives, we have spent years apart and now (thankfully) years reunited, and I am more grateful for her with every passing month.  Had I let jealousy guide my actions, I would have missed out on all of that.  I would have closed myself off from her loveliness, instead of, as I have been lucky enough to orchestrate, been surrounded by it.

We do not have to be sufferers in the face of other people's success, we really don't.  What we can be is sensitive enough to our own feelings to hear that prickly call from within that says, Hey, you...grumpy pants.  That thing over there...that thing you want?  That's not just for all the lucky ones.  That's for you, too, lady.  Now go out and get it!

Go out and get it, Shanti-towners!  Your jealousy is calling you!

When Will We Ever Werner?

So...I was in a class the other day, in which a fellow student (how did this even come up?) declared that he was NOT going to be seeing Werner Herzog's new movie, because Werner (crazy genius that he is) had made some rather inflammatory remarks about yoga in a recent GQ interview.

Like that he thinks there should be a holy war against it.

Let me tell you something, people...I love me some Werner Herzog.  (Though I have a really humiliating story about how I went to go see Grizzly Man thinking that it was a mockumentary--long story--and spent the whole movie sniggering quietly at all the people around me who "didn't get it".  Oops!  This, it turns out, would not be the most egregious thing about me in the eyes of Mr. Herzog.  It turns out I've committed a much worse kind of crime in his eyes...but I'll get to that.)  Anyhooo, I love him, I love his movies...love him love him love him.  And I could not WAIT to go out and read the article in which he said terrible things about yoga.

And he did not disappoint.

Let me just give you the greatest hits from the interview (which, of course, was not about yoga, but about his new film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams...which looks amazing...but, here we are):

Werner Herzog: "Oh, I don't want introspection, I don't like to look at myself." 

GQ Magazine: Why? 

WH: "I've always been suspicious. I don't even look into my face. I shaved this morning, and I look at my cheeks so that I don't cut myself, but I don't even want to know the color of my eyes. I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century. A major, major mistake. And it's only one of the mistakes of the twentieth century, which makes me think that the twentieth century in its entirety was a mistake."
... 

WH: "For example, for me, I could never ever be with a woman who is three times a week with a psychiatrist. It's like an iron curtain between us. Like venetian blinds rattling down." 

GQ: I don't know if it's related, but you've previously mentioned an intense antipathy to yoga classes. Could you be with a woman who did yoga? 

WH: "Of course not. Of course not. I think there should be holy war against yoga classes. It detours us from real thinking. It's just this kind of...feeling and floating and meditation and whatever. It's as tourism in religions. People all of a sudden becoming Buddhist here in Los Angeles."

Okay, first of all can I say...I was a little sad that if Werner and I were to meet one another in a bar some late night (assuming of course that we weren't both happily spoken for...love you, baby!) that I would be rejected on the basis of my yoga-ing, alone. I mean, come on, didn't you hear all the smart things I said about the cine-ma?

This, however, is what I have long suspected.  I tried as hard as I could to stay far from my hippy roots, but it's now official.  I, in the eyes of one of this century's greatest filmmakers...am a twit.

BUT, in response to these heretofore referenced "inflammatory remarks"...I have only a few things I'd like to say:

First of all, as much as my heart leapt at the idea of actually being able to give up introspection altogether (this, people, could be the key to enlightenment!) I think that Werner Herzog is actually deeply introspective.  He seems insanely curious about how people work and how the world works and why it is we do what we do...he may not be so interested in the idea of self-betterment, or of figuring out what mommy and daddy did to screw him up...but he's a looker-inner, yes indeedy.

But mostly what I want to say, is that I don't entirely disagree with him on these points.

The number of times I myself have wondered if I'm not just acting as some half-witted "tourist" in another culture's religion--chanting and telling stories about gods and goddesses and namaste-ing my little brains out--it's a lot.  And, my god, there are times when I walk into some studio or other and am bowled over by racks of $90 yoga pants and a bunch of identical women with identical mat bags all shaking their perfectly blow-dried hair around, and I think--oh no.  WHAT am I doing?  What happened to my theatre degree and my poetic cynicism?

So, okay, I get it.  I'm not surprised.  Why would I think that this odd and brilliant and (admit it, dude) macho filmmaker, this auteur, isn't going to take one look at a room full of ladies in their tight yoga pants downdog-ing and prostrating and think that they're wasting their time, at best, and being colonialist idiots, at worst?  I get it, man.  I get it.

But here's the thing, and Werner...this part is for you:

Yes, there is a lot of opportunity for phony-ness and misplaced materialism and wishy-washy-ness in the yoga community.  Yes, there are plenty of people who are using the practice of yoga to make themselves look better in the eyes of other people, or to distract themselves from their lives, or just to look awesome in jeans...yes.   Yes, the western adoption of ONLY the physical practice of yoga, the asana, not the other seven limbs, can feel a little...well, western.  Yes.

But, Werner, the truth is, having taken now about a hundred million yoga classes, I will tell you that without question MOST of the people who are practicing yoga are doing it because they, just like you, have some burning questions about the way people work, about the way the world works, and about why it is we all do what we do.

Having taken now about a hundred million yoga classes, I will tell you that most people just want to fucking breathe.

And, having taken now about a hundred million yoga classes, I will tell you that for some people, for whatever reason, the body and the breath and the use of imagery--when all of those things are put together--that something opens up for them.  And that, that something, is something they require for survival.

Call it inspiration.
Call it the creative impulse.
Call it just plain old human joy.

Do I fault you for thinking that yoga is just one more indication of what's wrong with the 20th century?  No.  Do I love you any less?  No, in fact, I think I might just love you a little more.  Will I tell you what I do for a living if I run into you in a dark bar some late night...

Yes, indeed.  I'm an actress.  Can't say anything BAD about actresses, can you now?  Oh...wait...

Nevermind.

Permit Me...

The first time I ever really began to understand that the way I think about things, and subsequently the way I feel, affects EVERYTHING else in my life...was several years ago.  Many years ago? (What's the dividing line between "several" and "many"?  Five?  It was more than five years ago, so many.  Let's go with many.)

Ahem: it was many years ago.

I was at a good friend's home in upstate New York.  This friend and I had been talking (well, she had been advising, and I had been peppering her with questions) about the importance of choosing our thoughts.  Specifically, the importance of choosing thoughts that support rather then drag down.  And at this particular moment she had gone upstairs or to the bathroom or something, and I was alone, standing in her dining room, looking out into a copse of trees swaying outside the window.

Side note:  this friend's house is a wonder.  Viewed from the outside it looks much like any other new york upstate home--it has rambling stone steps and a drive-in garage and big sleepy-eyed windows, but inside (much like the friend who owns it, actually) it is just a bastion of serenity.   It is inviting the way a set of clean crisps sheets is inviting--it just wraps around you as you walk through it.  And the quiet.  Oh man, the quiet.

(I love this house.)

Anyhow, so there I am, standing at the window, looking at the trees, and I'm consciously--I'm letting the trees in.  I'm choosing the trees.  And I remember, at this moment in my life, I was recovering from the end of an intense (though short-lived) relationship, I was jobless, I was living in an apartment about the size of my thumb, and I was feeling just...lost.  So, I'm letting the trees in, which was not something I had been taking time for, due to this lost-ness feeling.  Because who the hell has time for tree-gazing when there is anxiety to be tended to?  But we'd been having this good talk and I was interested in this idea--this idea that I might be able to CHOOSE my thoughts (which I didn't really quite believe)--and so I was admiring the trees.   And for a moment I felt--just glorious.  It was just me and those trees and that silent house.  I started to settle into my own skin a bit more...

And then BAM!  A very familiar voice piped up: "Yeah, great, this is going to help you get a job...how?" WHAM!  Stomach drops to knees.  POOF!  Beautiful trees?  Disappeared.  And in their place...just a big old bucket of shame and aggravation.  Trees?  What trees? 

Now, I don't know if it was the magic of the house, or the power of an inspiring conversation, or just the plain and simple fact that I had had ENOUGH of feeling lousy, but I did something in that moment that I had never ever done before.

I said no.

In that moment some other voice--some from-the-depths-of-the-well voice rose up and told that first voice, the hall-monitor one, to go fuck herself.  I think the exact words I spoke to myself were, "I am not letting you take this away from me."  And I turned my attention back to the trees.

And in that moment, as the trees reconvened in my consciousness, a kind of bliss washed through my body the likes of which I have rarely felt since.  I was...dumbfounded, that I had this kind of power.  I mean, why didn't anyone tell me this?  Why didn't anyone ever tell me that I get to decide which thoughts I want to entertain?

I have been thinking a lot lately about that moment.

I have been thinking a lot about those trees and that house and that...liberation.   Because sometimes, Shanti-towners, I feel like I have lost the ability to choose.  Sometimes it feels like my thoughts are wild animals.  And they don't want to be hushed or told no.  Sometimes, Shanti-towners, it doesn't feel like there are even any trees outside the window to choose instead.  Sometimes it feels like it's the hall-monitor, or nothing.  And at least she's an old friend...

And I know, or I'm guessing at least, that if I feel that way...then some of you might feel that way, too. Sometimes.  So I want to tell you (and me), I want to remind you, that you DO have a choice.

I want to remind you that you don't need anyone's permission to feel good.  You don't need permission that comes in the form of money, you don't need permission that comes in the form of friends or lovers or parents.  You don't need permission in the form of books or of grades or of beautifully executed handstands.  You don't need the permission of a yoga class or a meditation workshop.  You don't need anyone's say so or any concrete proof of your good-ness in order to make choices that support your well-being.

This is the magical (and challenging) thing about the space inside our own heads.  It's ours.  No one, and I mean no one, can get in there and mess around (for better or worse).  That's your little kingdom up in there and so, Shanti-towners, that voice inside that says you're not allowed to be happy?  That voice can go fuck itself.  Because you know who's in charge?  YOU are.

And, damnit, there is some bafflingly beautiful array of trees out there somewhere, just waiting for you to come and admire it...

What Not To Do at a Hollywood Party

1.  Mentally price the cost of your host's shoes in comparison with your own.

2.  Ditto for the host's home.  Because, I mean, seriously....

3.  In each lull in conversation with the fancy new people you just met at said party, secretly pray that no one asks you what you do for a living, because:

4.  You haven't really decided whether or not you're still an actress, or now just a yoga teacher.  A yoga writer?  Does that sound better?  Just a writer, period.  A blogger?  That makes you sound like you live-blog from the Steve Jobs conferences.  A health and wellness expert?  Oh my god, kill me.

5.  When finally asked the "what do you do?" question, begin with a long pregnant pause.  (A pause so long in fact, that the lovely Austrian woman, the one who just wrote a pilot that all of Hollywood is salivating over, says to you, "it's okay if the answer is nothing!")

6.  After said long-pregnant pause, start out with, "well, I was a theatre actress."

7.  Go all blank faced when--after you've shyly confessed to being a yoga...um...person--one of the couples at the table starts talking about going to some lecture with a "yoga guru" who was just spouting isms and insulting people all evening.

8.  Forget to say, in response to this story, "Yes, exactly! Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm writing about...I hate jerk-y gurus, too!"

9.  Instead stammer through some strange defensive ramble about loving "the practice".

10.  Have nothing to say that can break the long embarrassing silence that follows.

(All I have to say is thank god for the open bar, for my amazing fiance, and that I had enough sense to wear heels instead of cowboy boots.  And that I didn't cry, even though I kind of wanted to.  At least there's that.)

I Love This Woman...and So Should You.

Shanti-towners, meet Suzanne Morrison.

Suzanne, meet...everyone.

Ah sigh, I think I've fallen a litlte bit in love with this woman.  I can't...she's just...dreamy.  She's classy and smart and she writes actual novels and she's super smart (did I mention smart?)--she reads and ponders and writes--she's kind of the woman I want to be when I grow up.  Oh, wait.  What's that voice of reason?  I AM grown up? 

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.  (that was the sound of my heart sinking).

Suzanne and I actually went to college together, but we were only peripheral friends at that point...both of us spent a lot of time smoking on the steps outside the theatre building, so that's something.  I always sort of felt she was oh, just more of a WOMAN than I was...I always imagined her in dark bars, drinking wine and discussing literature with one of her other more sophisticated lady friends. She dated a grad student, for god's sake, how could I compete with that?

Anyhooo.  It wasn't until years later that our paths crossed again, this time in New York.  We ended up at a dinner party thrown by mutual friends, and she was just as smart (did I mention smart?) and funny as I rembered her.  When we saw each other again, she was just getting out of a long relationship (with aformentioned grad student) and I reminded her that my strongest memory of her from our college days was running into her once in a bar after I had broken up with my then-boyfriend.  She took one look at my dinner of cigarettes and a vodka cranberry and nodded sagely, saying only,  "ah, the break-up diet".  

Love her love her.

And now, all of these years later, Suzanne and I are both on the path of sanely-obsessed yogism, and I think it's safe to say...big fans of each other's work.

So, when I ran across this post today while visiting her blog...I just had to share it.  Because it's just a showcase of what a great f-ing writer she is.  I am so crazy excited for her new book to come out, and this post only made me more so.  And, though I'm not nearly a fancy enough writer to be able to give her a real blurb for her book, I can at least blurbblurbblurb it up here.

This one's for you, Suze:

"Suzanne Morrison is a gifted writer, whose creative well runs very deep.  She is doing all our hearts good by writing.  I haven't even read her book yet, but I already know it's good...that's how good she is.  I am so glad that there is at least one Suzanne Morrison out there in the world, trying to think more and be jerky less and hopefully, maybe, getting herself (and us) just a little bit closer to God in the process."

An Expanding Tree...

The mister and I had to take a last-minute trip on Sunday to his home-town in Oregon to attend the funeral of his paternal grandmother, who passed away last week.  She was 90 years old, of sound mind and, right up until the end...of sound body.   She was survived by 4 children, 10 grandchildren, countless great-grandchildren, and a multitude of others.

I, Shanti-towners, have not been to many funerals in my life.

In fact, if you don't count the memorials at my high-school gymnasium that were held for the one or two kids who died during the course of my time there--I haven't actually been to any.

I also (and I think this is partly why I've not been to many funerals) have a rather small family.  It's growing now, with the marriages and children of my brother and sister and myself (no children yet for me, don't get all excited), but when I was growing up, there weren't very many of us.

Paul's family, in comparison, is large and lovely and full of aunts and uncles and cousins and kids and grandparents--it was only his father's side gathered for the funeral, but the night before the service there must have been 30 of us all gathered together to eat and drink and prepare.  I felt, I have to say, like some buried childhood dream was coming true for me: to feel in some small way a part of this big--brood!  We had a whole room of the restaurant reserved just for us!  The other end of the table felt like it was a mile away, and all evening long people just kept...arriving.  During dinner, the kids of all the cousins (the great-grandkids) played trains and darted in-between the chairs of the adults.  At one point, one of the smaller girls sidled up to my chair and asked me, in her adorable squeaky voice, "are you my dad's sister?"

To which I had to reply, "no, sweetheart...I'm your dad's cousin's fiance."

Heh.

As for the adults, we ate steak and drank wine--cousins who hadn't seen each other in a while caught up, aunts and uncles congratulated Paul and I on our engagement, and everyone shared stories.  They shared stories of Paul's grandfather, who had died several years earlier and who was, without question, the head and center of that side of the family.  He was a baseball player and a salesman and a master storyteller himself, and though his passing had been difficult for all of them those four years ago, it seemed even more final now, with the passing of his wife.  They told stories of her, of how much more complicated their relationships were to her than to him, of how much less they felt they knew her, deeply, than him, but yet still how much they loved her.  They told stories of family holidays past, of the swimming pool at the grandparents house that all the grandkids were magnetized to during their teenage-hood, and they marveled at what it would mean now for all of them that these two--the hub of the family--were both departed.

And at first, I have to admit, as I listened to them all telling stories and reminiscing...I felt a little envious.  I want this, I thought.  I want the big family gatherings and the kids underfoot and the summertime boredom stories to share with the cousins.  I want to have so many people in my family that the little ones don't even know how everyone is related.  I want to sit around in the living room the day after someone important has been buried and reminisce about who wrecked the car when we were kids and who got blamed for wrecking said car.

But as the ceremonies progressed, as the meals and the funeral and the reception all came and went, I suddenly realized...wait a minute, I DO have this.  This family is now...my family.

(insert sound of rapturous choir singing here)

And as I thought more about it I realized, my god, not only is my small little family of origin beginning to grow and blossom, with nephews and step-siblings and step-nephews and nieces, but now, wonder of wonders, all of these people, this enviable large family--I'm now a part of it.  Our children, my and Paul's children, on both sides they will get this extravagance of relatives.  They will have this feeling of being rooted somewhere, of being known.  They will (unless all the other kids are grown up by then!) get to chase their cousins around the dinner table and gripe about grandma and grandpa in their later years..

And it seems fitting, as my wedding quickly approaches, to take a moment to acknowledge the size of this particular gift.  Just to get to marry Paul is enough of a boon to last me (my god, I still marvel at just THAT), but to also get to join my life in some way with this big brimming restaurant-room full of Willis'...it's a pretty sweet deal, folks.  

And I am so very, very grateful for it.

A Letter in Absentia...

Oh, teachers, lovely teachers of mine,

I really don't have too many requests.  I really am easily satisfied.  Make the class long, make it short...make it fast, make it slow...make it super inspire-ey or just talk about my shoulder-blades the whole time, it really doesn't matter to me.  I will, without question, be the one (usually in the front row...ugh.  I can't help myself.) who is laughing at your jokes and nodding at your insights.  So, I hope you won't mind if I ask you please just this one simple favor?

Please, please, please, don't make me feel badly about not coming to your class.  Oh my, I know...I knooooooow that sometimes your feelings do get genuinely hurt if I haven't been there for awhile, I know.  I know it would be easy for you to think it's because I don't like you anymore. And I know this because I have run across my own feelings of minor-betrayal and jealousy when a student who has been coming to class suddenly is no longer in class.  Oh, sure you've been on vaaaaacaaaaaaation.  I bet you have.  What did I do?  Was it that one time when I kept almost saying "breasts" instead of "breath"?  That's what sealed it for you, isn't it?!  Argh!! I'm a hack!

But, sweet teachers of mine, it's not, on my part, for lack of love.  It's not even, usually, for lack of practice.  (I suppose if you were the mister miagi to my ralph macchio and you knew that I had been slacking off and that's why you haven't seen me in weeks, okay, maybe then you'd be allowed to give me the stink-eye.)  But, the truth is that I'm busy, and I'm teaching, and I'm trying to figure out what the hell it means to have a home-practice, so making it to your class is a luxury!  A much-desired one. 

Please don't muck it up by giving me the judgy "I'm disappointed in you" face.

Some of you, my wiser teachers, might be out there saying to yourself, well, you know, I can't really MAKE you feel bad.  If you feeeeeel bad, it's probably because YOU feeeeeel bad.  And you would be right.  I know that I have my own "you're going to be mad at me" thing happening which probably doesn't help, but the truth is...there are certain teachers who I know, no matter how much time has passed between classes, will be as welcoming and as excited to see me as if I had been there the day before.

And there are certain teachers...who will not.

And that is who I'm addressing here...those of you out there who just can't help but feel affronted when a student disappears from you.  And who maybe feel that giving said student a bit of the cold-shoulder, a bit less of you, a bit more distance...will make the whole thing easier.  You won't open up so much to me, and so then, when I disappear again, it won't hurt quite as much for you.

Sounds pretty f-ing human.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately...partly for myself as a student (and my own upset at feeling like I've let people down, or hurt them, or fallen out of favor because of my absence), and partly for myself as a teacher, because I never want to make anyone feel this way. 

My larger self is going to take over the keyboard right now and say that, in my deepest depths, what I want for anyone in my class, is for them to find a place that is safe, and where they feel (as one of my mentors would say) that the yoga can be "lit up in them".  And if that's with me, that's great.  And if it's not with me, that's also great.

Of course we want to develop relationships with people in our classes, of course we do, but really (I'm coming to believe this more and more) our role at the front of that room is first and foremost to be keepers of a certain kind of space.  Our role is to cultivate safety and curiousity and equilibrium and all of the other things that the practice of yoga itself creates...in the space of our classrooms. 

And I don't know if we're able to do that AND make the judge-y face.

So, if you're out there, oh anonymous hurt-feelinged teachers...please know that I love you deeply.  And I WANT to be in your class.  I would never come back again, if that weren't the case.  So, please remember that, the next time I come in after some medium or long absence.  Because what I also need to learn from you...maybe more so than anything else...is how to love myself and the people around me, even when they aren't living up to my expectations. 

And I'm hoping that you can show me how to do that.

Lots of love,
YogaLia