This Hamster is FOCUSED...

First of all, Shanti-towners, thank you!  Because, Shanti Town has now hit 100 followers!  Small potatoes in the blog-o-sphere at large, but a big deal for this lady, so thank you, very much!  I'm so happy to have you all here!

Ahem.  On with the show.

The other day, in the midst of my third wedding-related melt-down in as many days, whilst trying to explain my deep state of overwhelm to my very amazing soon-to-be husband, he gently (as is his way) pointed out to me that perhaps part of the problem wasn't the amount of work to be done, but the way in which I was trying to go about doing it.  He reminded me that often it is my habit to try and carry around and accomplish all things at all times, instead of setting out to do just one thing in an allotted amount of time.

The problem, in other words, was focus.

(And just for clarity's sake, let me just say...we are BOTH very involved in the wed-planning.  This is not one of those bride doing all the work until she makes herself crazy, situations.  Just so ya know.  I'm just more prone to, um...crying.)

Okay, so...where was I?

Oh, right.  Focus.

Sooooooo...my wise mister suggests it might be about focus.  And as soon as he says it, I think back to an interview I had been (re)listening to the day before, with these two writers/parents of an autistic child, about autism.  And in the interview at one point the dad talks about how one of the traits common in people with autism is the ability to focus really deeply on something, to the exclusion of all other things.  He talked about how this was also a notable trait in most people we consider masters or geniuses, and I remember thinking, even at the time...argh! I'm doomed!!  

Not because I don't know how to focus, I do...but because I forget, so often, the importance of focus and instead let the guise of obsessive productivity take it's place.

And I thought about what it's like, you know, to really focus on something...the way that the whole world can just drop away and time sort of fans out, like it might just go on forever.  You know that feeling?

So, with all this on my mind and in preparation for classes, I took it to the books...specifically to The Heart of Yoga by Mr. TKV Desikachar (a famous yogi dude), to get a refresher course on the last three limbs of yoga:  Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna, and Samādhi.

Okay, brief primer: Dhāraṇā is the sixth limb of yoga (of the famed eight limbs that make up the backbone of the yoga philosophy) and it is, essentially, concentration.

Dhyāna, is the seventh limb, otherwise known as, meditation, and;

Samādhi, the eighth limb, which is bliss...absorption...the big tamale, the grand prize at the end of it all: enlightenment, yo.

Okay, so, these last three limbs...they're my favorite (philosophically), because of how beautifully they work together and what a smooth final progression they form to lead a body to bliss.  Basically it works like this:

In Dhāraṇā, when you're focused on a singular object (or person or idea, or whatever)...your mind is quiet and moving in just one direction, toward the object of your focus.  You're checking it out, you're learning about it, you're mind is on it, and only on it.  You're focused.

And if you keep doing this for awhile, you get to move up a level, to Dhyāna...meditation.  When you're in Dhyāna, you've still got this movement of your mind and your attention in the direction of your chosen object, but NOW, you've also got stuff coming back at you, from said object.  It's vibing you back.  And so inspirations are arising in you from the object, insights come seemingly out of nowhere...but it's not nowhere, it's just that the lines of communication have been opened (thanks to your dutiful focus) and now energy is moving in two directions, back and forth.  This is Dhyāna.

And last but not least...if you can hang with your meditation, this deepened state of focus, something amazing might just happen...instead of you just sending your attention out to the object or it sending something back at you...now you and the object become one and the same.  There is no more you.  There is no more object of attention.  You are subsumed, consumed, by one another.  And this is Samādhi.  This is bliss.

And isn't it, though?  Isn't that bliss?  To be so deeply involved in what you're doing, in what's right in front of you that the whole world, and you, and it...just disappear?  I think this is just the most perfect description what deep focus is.

But the magic...the amazing part of this whole process, is that you can't just sit down and DO it.  You can't sit down and say, now I'm going to be in Samādhi, or even, now I'm going to focus, because if your mind is wild or distracted or upset, well...good f-ing luck.   These are organic states, that arise organically, so the only thing you can do to practice them, is to cultivate an environment that might just have fertile ground from which they can grow.

And that's why we practice.
And that's why we breathe.

And that's why, when we get overwhelmed, it might behoove us just to go for a walk, or read some lovely something, or just sit on our little porch and drink some tea and let the wind brush against us.

Like I am going to go and do...right. now.

White Girl Yoga

So...one of the places where I teach yoga, is a gym.  A very nice gym.  A sort of fancy-pants gym.  And I am super grateful to be teaching there, it comes with lots of great perks and the students are sweet and very game...but, it took me some time to figure out exactly how to teach there.

Because a gym, in case you weren't aware, is not a yoga studio.  A yoga studio is a place where people go to breathe deep and listen to tinkly chime music...a gym is a place where people go to sweat and not have to talk to people.  Because of this, expectations in a gym yoga class are a little, well...different.

After many months now of teaching there, I feel like I've figured it out pretty well--I give 'em what they want and make them sweat, and I give them what I want and sneak in a bunch of spiritualisms about the breath.  But there is one interesting problem which remains (which, in all fairness, is not specific to gym yoga, but to yoga classes everywhere) and that is the dogged determination, among several students, to push themselves into poses they aren't capable of doing.  Because they want to do it.  Because they want to have accomplished it.  And their body be damned.

Now, honestly, part of the reason I even recognize this behavior to begin with is because that's how I started my own practice.  Read any of my early posts in this blog and you will run across at least one or two references (per post) to my "advanced" practice.  Oooh, yes....aren't you all iiiiiiiimpressed?  And I would be kidding myself if I said that I was completely beyond that.  I'm not.  I just don't do it all in the front row anymore, like a big show-off.  (Now I show off quietly, in the back row.  Everyone knows the back row is where the reeeeeeeally advanced students practice.  That's so we don't make any of you plebeians uncomfortable.  Isn't that gracious of us?)

Ahem.

Anyhow (get to the point, Lia!)...there's this new student in class at the gym, a lovely young man from India, who I like very much, who has obviously done some yoga and is naturally flexible, but WANTS to be a lot further along in his practice than he actually is.  And the other night, over and over again I kept trying to give him assists, and over and over again he wanted to do things his own way.  I tried to pad him up with a blanket in pigeon and he demurred, insisting that his "hips are very open", even though I, looking at his body, could tell that they are, um...not.  He said he knew that his hips were open because he couldn't feel anything at all in "double pigeon" another hip opener.  In response to which I thought, but didn't say aloud, that's probably because you're doing it wrong.  Tee hee.  And then later, during wheel (the big fat back-bend of class) he told me that it went a lot better for him if he just pushed himself right on into it, and didn't pause on the top of his head to adjust his shoulders and arms first.  Right, I said, but that doesn't mean you're doing it safely.  To which he acquiesced, and allowed me to give him some help into the pose.

And this is terrible to admit, but I have to say that afterwards...I felt a little smug.  A little like: I'll show you how to do wheel properly, mister!  Who's the teacher now, huh?  Who's the teacha naaaaaahoooooow? 


But then, ah then...cut to after class...I'm straightening the mats and the towels and my new lovely Indian (did I mention he was Indian?) student comes over to me, to thank me for class, and right away I find out that I'm sort of, um, butchering his lovely Indian name.  "Indian names are hard to pronounce," he says graciously.  (Oh, ouch!)  And then he asks me, did I know that tonight is an Indian holiday?  No, I say (shamefacedly), which one? Guru Purnima, he says.  Oh, I say.  (I have no idea what that is).  Yes, he says, Guru means teacher (I practically have to cover my mouth to keep myself from shouting I know! I know that word!) and Purnima means full moon, so it's the festival of the full-moon dedicated to the great teachers.  Oh! I say (burning with bad-yoga-teacher shame)...awesome.

Oh my god, oh my god...I honestly, people, I had to stop myself from just idiotically naming off all of the Indian holidays that I do know.  I was madly trying to figure out how to work in a reference to Diwali just so he didn't think I was completely clueless.  (Diwali is the festival of lights.  I know about that one.  I've read about it on Wikipedia.)

And after he left, once I got over my weird burn-y shame, I realized...I had been doing EXACTLY what I was (smugly) encouraging him not to do.  I had squandered an opportunity to, I don't know, maybe find out more about this Guru Purnima from the actual real-live Indian man standing in front of me, and instead I had just closed myself off entirely from his knowledge because I didn't want him to know that I didn't know what he was talking about.  Did I really think that he expected me, just because I'm a yoga teacher, to be entirely well-versed in Indian culture?  Maybe as much as he thought that I would expect him, being of Indian descent, to be a perfect yogi....

But the truth is, I have learned yoga, almost exclusively, from young white women...most of whom are American, some from foreign countries, but none of those countries are India.  And while I have learned a lot about Hindu customs and gods and goddesses...my knowledge of all of that, if I'm being honest, is far from robust.  And for my young student's part, people in India, (I do know this), aren't all crazy gung-ho about the asana (the physical practice of yoga) like we are in the west.  I've heard from friends who have gone to India that it's nearly impossible to find a "yoga class" that isn't being led by a foreign teacher on retreat there.  There is much more emphasis put on the other limbs of yoga in India...smartly, I'm sure...so I had no expectations of him being some kind of perfect yogi.

But this is what we do, isn't it?  We paint this picture of where we want to be, what things are supposed to look like, what the finished version of the pose is supposed to be...and then we just jam ourselves into it.  Forgetting that there are steps along the way.  Forgetting that where we are RIGHT NOW, this expression, exactly as it is...is the most important first leg of any journey.  And then, when we get to the end, when we yank ourselves into wheel or just get ourselves out of that uncomfortable conversation...we're less than.  Our back is hurting.  Or our pride.

And I am in this moment in my life right now where there is so much momentum, leading to the culmination of this one particular vision (W-E-D-D-I-N-G) and every day I am trying to remind myself...be here.  Appreciate this, this right now.  This planning part...this pausing on your head to make sure things are properly aligned...you're not going to get this part back.  This is the part that sets the stage for what's to come.

So, enjoy it, Shanti-towners...even if it means you have to admit you don't know as much as you thought you did....

Not Yet Neanderthal Bride...

It's sort of horrifying that if you do a Google Image search for pictures of "stressed bride" you mainly get pictures back of brides LOSING their f-ing MINDS.  The photo above is one of the few I could find that didn't make me feel like I was succumbing to some kind of crazy sexist bridezilla mongering.  This is the cultural signifier for bride-dom I guess, just lots of pictures of women turning into raging you-know-whats...there were even several cartoon images of brides dragging their grooms around by the hair.

Yikes.

Please don't concern yourselves, Shanti-towners...there are very few things in this world that could compel me to drag my groom around by his hair.  One would be if there was some kind of natural disaster, he was passed out, and for some reason the only part of his body that I had access to, in order to rescue him from the burning building or what-have-you, was his hair.  The second would be if he thought that it would be fun.

I can't think of a third right now...

Which is a nice segue into my next point: that, currently, I am having trouble keeping much of my focus on anything that isn't wedding related.  I'm mustering all my non-wedding energy to get my ass to class both to practice and to teach, but that means, unfortunately, that my blogging/podcasting/ruminating has fallen a bit by the wayside.  Temporarily.

I've been feeling particularly guilty about this, as I have lots of new readers...hello out there!  Who I'm very excited to have here.  (Um...whom?  Should that be "whom I'm very excited to have here"?)  And I just want you to know that I'm around, I haven't gone anywhere, I've just been solving last-minute dress and venue issues and generally obsessing about all things wedding, and am determined not to accidentally turn Shanti-town into a wedding blog in the interim!  So, you'll just have to forgive me if my posting regularity dwindles to only once or twice per week over the next couple months.

I love you, Shanti-towners and I am, at this very minute, composing a juicy post about open hips, butchering of Indian names, and why I shouldn't pretend to know more about Indian holidays than I do....Oh, and why Louis C.K. is a goddamn genius.

Stay tuned!!

Working. Less. Hard.

Oh, Shanti-towners...it has been one of those days.  One of those it's too hot in my apartment and I'm too grumpy so I'm just going to go ahead and cry a little curled up in our bedroom because it's the coolest room in the house and I have a million things to do but I don't really want to do any of them and what on earth am I doing and why can't I just be out in the world being productive for gods sakes Stephen Colbert has formed a goddamn SuperPAC at least he's saying something real about the world around him and what on earth is wrong with me ANYHOW days.

You know the kind of day I'm talking about, right?

(oh god, please say yes.)

After a productive (and relatively short) bout of this fetal-ing in our only slightly cooler bedroom, I began to think about what was bothering me (I won't bore you with the details) and what I wanted (again, I'll spare you), and I kept coming back to two of my favorite words...letting go.

Ugh.

If you have ever read a single post I have ever written about anything you can bet that in SOME way somewhere in that post there is some kind of talk of letting go.  It is my Excalibur.  It is my hero's journey.  It is my f-ing nemesis.

Because, here's the problem for us overachiever A-student types...you can not Work Hard to let go.  These two things are actually opposite things.

And as I was sitting on our bed, now all white for summer, having been stripped of its heavy burgundy blankets, I started thinking about how often I TRY to let go.  How often I work and work and work to surrender, sometimes working hard enough that I actually feel, for a short period of time, that I've succeeded.  But how tenuous that hold is, because it's all held up by effort.  How the slightest wind could knock me off-balance and back into the state I have been trying to cover up with all the letting-go talk.  You know the state I'm talking about?  The honest one?  The one that's not so pretty?

And I thought about what real letting go is.  I thought about all the times in my life when I have truly actually let something go--about the feeling of relief that comes from that, the feeling of mourning maybe for what is lost and then the feeling of ensuing possibility, the feeling of solidity, the feeling (like it is with any real change of perspective) that one has arrived at something infinitely more true and more lasting then all the efforting that came before.  And I thought about how you can't fake a state like that.

How if it's going to come, it's going to come from a place of ease, and not from a place of muscle.

One of my favorite alignment instructions, whether I'm teaching a class or taking one, is to soften your fingers.  It's  a very sneaky way of encouraging people to release into a pose, because, for whatever reason, if your fingertips are relaxed, it's much more difficult for the rest of your body to be tense and "trying".  And when you're not over-doing it, when you're not clenching your jaw and reaching like your life depended on it, the pose starts to open in this incredible way.  It sort of reveals itself to you.  And you might find yourself making adjustments the teacher hasn't even touched upon, because in that state of openness, the natural wisdom of your body starts to shine through.  Why?  Because some part of you (usually not your brain) knows that you're sticking your ribs out in a weird way and it just doesn't feel good. And that part of you (usually without much help from your brain) wants you to feel good.  But until you start to relax, that part of you (the I-want-you-to-feel-better part) hasn't got much lee-way.

And if that is true in my practice, then it is for sure going to be true in my life.

So, Shanti-towners, the hypothesis I present to you is:  maybe that problem you're trying to solve, that project you're trying to finish, that magic you're trying to make come true--maybe it could use a little chilling out.  Maybe you could try on some relaxation for size.  But, not the fake kind, Shanti-towners.  Not the kind that comes from the mind as stern little directives to all the rest of all your systems--I mean the kind that comes from deep inside.  The kind that makes you sigh...the kind that gets you up from your mid-day fetal position and back into the world...

In a nutshell, Shanti Towners, just soften your fingers...and see what happens.

Coastal Opposites

Shanti-towners!  I'm here!  I promise!  The big day is fast approaching (zee wedding), and things are getting a little nutso in the Aprile/Willis household, so please forgive my sporadic blog absences.

Last week we were in Brooklyn, taking care of some business and having our respective bachelor and bachelorette parties.  All I have to say about that is that at one point during the evening I was being paraded down the streets of NYC wearing a red feather boa, some body jewelry that made me look like I'd broken out in a cubic zirconia rash, a "Miss Bachelorette" sash, my very man-ish sunglasses, and a crown of plastic penises.

Yes, you read that right.

At one point during this delightfully humiliating journey, a woman entered the elevator we were giggling in, took one look at me and said, very demurely, "do you realize you have falluses on your head?"

Yes, I told her. Yes, I am.

But, this is not my point, Shanti Towners! (though it was a great night, and I'm very thankful to everyone who was there and who made it that way).

Ahem.

There were two things, outside of all the wedding festivities and the sweet time with my mister that I was most excited about for the trip to NY:

1.  A visit to my beloved Laughing Lotus.  For weeks leading up to my trip I was fantasizing about whose classes I would take--salivating over the prospect of moving and breathing and sweating in the way only Laughing Lotus can get me to move and breathe and sweat.  And;

2.  A visit to the new Anusara studio that has opened up in my DUMBO neighborhood.  Anusara is just now starting to make it's way into the yoga forefront in New York, and I was really looking forward to taking a class at this new studio (a block and a half from our apartment, no less!  Where was this place 2 years ago?!).

The class at Abhaya Yoga, the anusara studio in DUMBO, came first.  The studio itself is GORGeous.  It's on the 6th floor of one of the big warehouse-y buildings in the neighborhood, and the windows of the room look out over the east river and the manhattan bridge.  Ah, sigh. Right away upon arriving the teacher introduced herself to me, which bode well, and I set myself up in the back-ish row of the class, prepared for some Anursara, east-coast style.  It was a small group in the class--just five or six people--which I'm familiar with from my own teach-ifiying at newer studios in Los Angeles.  And she seemed sweet, the teacher, and knowledgeable...

I'm hesitating a little here, because this teacher obviously knew her stuff, obviously cared deeply about the practice, and even though I spent the first half of class being annoyed by the way she was cooing at me, and everyone else, like beginners (Moi?! A beginner?! I think noooooot!)--even with all that, she was relentless in her likeability, and I knew that I was just being kind of piggy anyhow, silently demanding to be acknowledged.  (Very yogic, I know.)  So, I didn't dislike her (not by the end, at least), and she did this great splits-up-the-wall thing that I am immediately stealing and adding to my repertoire.  So it was by no means a baaaaaaaaaad class.

But I still walked away disappointed.

The practice, while smart--I could tell she was opening up the body in the right away and building up toward something--was so...herky-jerky.  It was my least favorite kind of sequencing: Do a pose.  Stop.  Do another pose.  Stop.  Do another pose.  Etc., etc., etc.  There was no linking together of movement, whatsoever, no transitioning from one place to another--just: do this...and then that...and then that.

I know that this isn't uncommon, and is a totally valid way of teaching, but for me...for my little over-active brain...I need the fluidity of movement.  I need to feel like I'm traveling through my practice.  I need something to connect me really fully with my breath, and to get me to start actually feeling the movement of energy in my body, and the movement of my body in my space.

There was none of that.  And I missed it.

So, the next day, when it came time for Laughing Lotus-a-rama...I was even more excited for class.  (My excitement was only slightly dulled by the hangover from my bachelorette party the night before.  Thank you late-night tequila shots.)  I was ready to moooooooooove.  To floooooooow.  And, though I was disappointed that my NY schedule was only going to allow me time for one class, and only an hour-long one at that, I managed to time it out so I could take with one of my favorite teachers at the Lotus.  Ali Cramer. Fire-y goddamn goddess that she is.

The class was packed--not uncommon for a late-afternoon Friday Lotus class--there might have been close to 50 people in the room, and we were mat to mat to mat.  Which, I know drives some  people bonkers about popular studios, but I kind of love it...especially when we're moving.  And move we did.  Ali is a genius sequencer (later that night I actually lulled myself to sleep by re-remembering some of the best transitions from the afternoon's class).  I get a lot of deep visceral joy from moving the way we move in a Lotus class and unlike the teacher at the Anusara studio, Ali is someone I feel particularly SEEN by.  Even with that many people in class, I know she knows I'm there, and I know she's reading my joy and she likey.

So, it was great, people, it was a great class.  No surprise there, because Ali is an amazing teacher.

But...

Oh gosh.

I still left a little...disappointed.

I mean, SO MUCH of what I love is contained in those classes...so much creative, soulful, graceful, rockin' expression.  But, I also have this new hunger that I didn't have before...something that's been nurtured since living in LA...and that's the hunger to slow down and to go deep.  To take real time in some of the poses and explore and breathe and tinker.  And when it's not there...I miss it.

So, for the last few days I've been thinking about these two classes--each of them on exact opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what I'm exploring and interested in--thinking only, THIS is the gap I am trying to bridge.  And wondering...is it possible to create a class that is both creatively sequenced, rhythmic and hypnotic AND one which contains slow deep alignment work?

It seems to me that the goal of a Vinyasa class, like the kind taught at the Lotus, is not so much about the body as it is about the spirit.  The breath, the chanting, the ceaseless movement...it's really about liberating a body FROM the body and putting him or her right in contact with prana.  With the flow--with that mysterious movement of that even more mysterious life-force.

And, if the Vinyasa is a telescope, moving one through the practice in order to get a bigger and bigger view of the universe, then Anusara is a microscope, just honing deeper and deeper in on the little machinations of the body.  Sure, yes, the ultimate goal is still freedom, but in the Anusara, it's deeply rooted in the proper alignment of the flesh (in the hopes that alignment will then consequently align the mind and the heart). And it's not so much about the ecstatic devotional joy like the Vinyasa.

I find myself often in my teaching moving in one direction and then the other, trying to find a middle ground...moving and then restraining.  Going slow and deep and then revving back into movement again.  I think it's possible, it must be, to taste both the wide expansive view and the deep subtle interior in a single class.  Because, this isn't an unfamiliar struggle.  Even the planning of our wedding has felt like this at times--a movement between big bold strokes of creativity and the quiet subtle changes that come from deep conversation and silent soul-searching.  It's just a movement between these two things...trying to let one inform the other, in the hopes that, in the end, something will arise which will contain both.  The quiet and the wild.  The still and the rhythmic.

Is it possible, Shanti Towners?  I sure hope so....