A Little Friend Blog Love...

(friend blogger in question...Ericka Kreutz)

Please go here and read this.

If you are married, have been married, are about to be married, love someone, once loved someone, hope to someday love someone...you should read this.

Such a beautiful portrayal of real actual sane worldly love, and what a mind-trip it can be to try and hold your love up to the fun-house mirror of the wedding industry.  Stellar writing, beautiful insights...just, f-ing awesome.

Tina Turner and Sthira Sukha...

"You know, every now and then

I think you might like to hear something from us

Nice and easy but there's just one thing...

You see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy,

We always do it nice...and rough!" 

- Tina Turner

The truth is, that yoga is not one-asana-fits-all.  The truth is, that some of us need things nice...and some of us need things rough...  And, after myriad conversations lately with teachers and friends and students alike, about the benefits of fast versus slow, short versus long (yoga, people, I'm talking yoga), and yin versus yang, I have come to believe that being able to differentiate which of these creatures you are (one who needs it nice, or one who needs it rough), is of vital importance.

There is a sutra (yes, back to the sutras) that reads...Sthira Sukham Asanam.  Ain't that pretty?  Sthira Sukham Asanam--even without the meaning, don't you just want to say it? Sthiiiiiiiiraaaa Sukhaaaaaaam Aaaaaaaaasanaaaaaam.  (Sanskrit Sigh.)

It means that the asanas (the postures) must be both steady and sweet.  Or soft.  The asanas must be both steady and soft.  Both firm and sweet.  Both steadfast and giggly.  All of them.  Every single one.  And so it goes with the entire practice.

And so it goes with life.

And there are so many reasons that this is a beautiful (challenging) instruction, but a big one of them is that it can become a diagnostic tool for each individual student.  Most of us...most of us will know right away which of these things we are, intrinsically, and which one of these things we could use a bit more of in our lives.  We're either the type who is great with structure, great with muscle, great with remaining close to the center and close to the line...we are the focused one, the studious one, the one who can push and sustain and maintain and achieve.  We are Sthira.  We've got sthira covered.  We're all arm balances and twenty chatarunga push-ups and breath of fire and hey, man, this savasana thing isn't really for me.

Or.

We're the type who likes to melt.  We're the type with water-open-hips and soft eyes and we like to siiiiiiiigh a lot when we drip down into a forward bend.  We are the gigglers the deep meditators...we bring the open, we bring the groovy, we bring the patient smile and we aren't afraid, you know, to throw caution to the wind now and then, to take the great risk of loving.  We are Sukham.  We've got sukham covered.  We're all easy splits and curving backs and oh, wait...what were we talking about?

And for each of us there is a medicine.  Sthira Sukham Asanam.  Nice and rough.  Not one. Or the other. But both.

And so perhaps, my dear readers, perhaps if you recognize yourself in one of these...perhaps if your jaw is clenched even now as you read (did you notice?), perhaps instead of muscling your way into yet another (fill-in-the-blank), perhaps you could soften today.  You have been given a gift after all...you have been given the gift of strength, of fortitude, of pushing through and rising up. You know your boundaries.  You feel your feet underneath you.  You've got that steadiness thing down...so perhaps it's time for some sukha, some succor, some sweetness.  A little more sugar in your bowl, perhaps?  A bit of an exhale, eh, lovely?

And for you...you who have drifted off into revelry already during the course of this sentence, you who don't know why you should bother to tense up when there's so much melting to be had (did you notice?), perhaps instead of softening in to one more (fill-in-the-blank) today, perhaps this is your chance to hug in. To fire up right there in the center line of you and to make some firmness where before there was only give.  You have been given a gift, after all...you have been given the gift of sweet surrender, of wide-open-ness.  You've got that softness thing down.  So, perhaps, it's time for some sthira, some muscle, some steadiness to shore you up.  Perhaps it's time to take a big breath in, and hold it, just to feel the power swirling around.

Sthira Sukham Asanam.  Not one. Or the other. But both.

Found Item. Now Shared.

Found this:



Thanks to her.

And this.

Purple and Blue and Yoga All Over...

Took these pics for a promo for one of my new classes.  Please file this under shameless self-promotion.

Time Out For Schoolin'...

I have written before about my love of the Sutras.  Patanjali is my guy.

I have a now slightly beat-up copy of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda (a famous guru dude), that I cherish. There is a picture of Satchidananda on the front of the book, in pink robes, sitting cross-legged on a bulk-head in front of a river.  In the picture he's laughing and looking somewhere just off camera.  He's got a long white beard and curly dark hair and I like to pretend that he IS Patanjali.  He seems so sweet, like if I met him somewhere, he'd hug me instead of shaking my hand.  He'd pull me into those pink robes and he'd just hug the fearful right out of me.  Sometimes I forget, altogether, that it's the smiling Swami on the front of the book and not Patanjali, and I look at that picture and I think, "Patanjali...you're my guy." And then I realize that Patanjali lived THOUSANDS of years ago (well, at least 1400 years ago, depending on who you ask), and they didn't have photos back then.  So, it would be more accurate to say, Satchidananda is my guy.

Neither one is alive, so hopefully there isn't going to be a wrestling match in the cosmic soup for my devotion.  I love you both, okay guys?  I love you both.

Anyhow, this morning has been a sutra visiting morning.  Of all the texts of yoga (many of which I still have yet to read) this one is my hinge-pin.  Maybe it's because the sutras are so like poetry, that they get right into my bloodstream the way poetry does.  Maybe it's their succinctness, their flexibility, the way that they build, one on top of the other, to form a complete picture.  When I was young and first studying acting, I used to love the way a line of Shakespeare could be endlessly dissected.  You could take it apart and take it apart, image by image, even word by word, and every time you dug deeper, the meaning changed, just slightly.  Or got brighter.  Or weightier.  The sutras are like this.  Some of the sutras (or so says the smiling swami) are so deep and multi-layered, they actually contain the whole meaning of yoga, and thus the meaning of all the other sutras, within them.  Meaning, if you can just really GET even one of the sutras...you get them all.

I love that.

The sutra I was re-reading this morning was Sutra 1:2, the second sutra in the first book of the sutras.  (There are four "books" of sutras, each one on a different aspect of the practice of yoga.  Book 1 is "The Portion on Contemplation"...it contains the philosophical foundations for the rest of the books.) Sutra 1:2 reads:

Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah.

Which means, as translated by the Swami, "The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga."

I'm about to nerd out on this...are you ready? Get ready!

It would be easy to read this sutra and think that it said, essentially, "the restraint of the mind-stuff is Yoga".  Which would make some sense...we hear so much about clearing our head, about living from our heart instead of our mind, about choosing our thoughts...it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the practice of yoga is about restraining the activity of the mind.  But, if you look closer, what it actually says is:

The restraint of the MODIFICATIONS of the mind-stuff is Yoga.

Meaning, what we're being asked to stop doing, if we're practicing yoga...is the modifying of what's in our minds.  Meaning, what gets in our way is not the stuff in our heads, intrinsically, what gets in our way is all the attempts to change or control or modify that stuff. And I think, if one were to look really closely at what's happening inside the mind, there would be a whole lot of unnecessary activity that could be characterized as "modifications". 

Isn't that...liberating?

That means, that our nature isn't flawed.  It means that--and this is the little experiment that is constantly being conducted in yoga studios and meditation studios and massage parlors and places of healing all over the world--that if we just leave ourselves alone, then...there we are.  Done.  Enlightened.  At one.  Peaceful. That is the natural way of things. And by leaving ourselves alone, I of course don't mean just zoning out and filling up on food or drink or sex or television or phone-calls or whatever...I mean the radical, courageous, deeply humble act of allowing whatever is there to be there.  No exceptions.  THAT, according to Patanjali (and the smiling hugging swami), is yoga.  

And what that also means, and the deeper implications for all of us engaged in any kind of spiritual practice (whether you know you're engaged in it or not, you artists, dancers, mommies, chefs, gardeners, and all manner of makers of things), is that IF you are using your practice to fix or alter or control the natural movement of your mind...well, then you're not practicing.  

This is the big trick of it...you can sit down and meditate.  You can go to yoga every single day.  But if you're using those practices to modify your sense of your self, to inflate or punish yourself, to prove something, to run away from something, or just to wall yourself in to the space you consider right or safe...those aren't the actual practices.  They might LOOK just like them.  They might SOUND just like them.  But, from a standpoint of spiritual growth, they're like...holograms.  You could reach out and stick your hand right through them.

So, the big challenge--the gauntlet that's been laid down by Mr. Sutra himself is--are you using your life and the practices of it, to open...or to close?  Are you, moment by moment, sloughing away all the impulses to make things right, or are you caught up in the constant cycle of improvement?  One is Yoga.  One is not.  And isn't that a relief, to know that Yoga is not some goal attained through some number of years of practice, or some thousands of sun salutations...it is actually the thing that is there when you stop getting in your own way.  

It is, what already is.

Sunday Share...

I so loved this article on MINDBODYGREEN by Nancy Alder, read it here...I just had to share.

For anyone who is new to yoga, for anyone who finds they have a tendency to push or over-work in class, for anyone who has been injured in the room, or has just felt nervous about the whole putting-my-body-in-the-hands-of-someone-else thing...this article is for you.

Ma'am, please put the self-help book DOWN.

So, the other night in bed, while my husband and I were reading (hot, I know), he happened to glance over at the book I was sighing and "hmm"-ing about (I am one of those readers who can't resist out-loud commentary.  I do this even when I am alone.  I also involuntarily make all the faces that actors in whatever show or movie I am watching, make.  I am a full-body information in-taker. I can't help myself.)  Anyhow, he looks at my book, he looks at me, and then he says:

"Are you sure you don't want to read a novel?"

I immediately get mock-offended, "Yes, I'm sure I don't want to read a novel.  I want to read this book. The one that I'm reading."

"What does that even mean," he asks, peering at the book's cover as I try to curl it closed around itself, "the Art of Manifestation?"

"It's about manifestation." I say, "Now can you please leave me alone?"

In the hubby's defense, he is not anti-books about manifestation.  He, not being steeped in the new-age literature soup that I am thoroughly boiled and braised in, actually thought that the "manifestation" being referenced was a much more esoteric and probably more nuanced thing than was actually being talked about in said book.  I don't think any part of him thought I was reading a book about how to manifest things.  I think he thought I was reading a book about, oh, the spiritual world versus the physical world, or some such lofty stuff.  No, unfortunately not.  I, sadly, just want to learn to manifest stuff.

His encouraging me to read a novel was not born of some distaste for non-fiction, it's just...I read a lot of self-help books.  And most of them, save a select few, just tend to make me anxious.  And, if you were married to me, you too would want to help me avoid excess anxiety, as I am very much that way wired.

I was 21 years old the first time I read a self-help book. I was trying to quit smoking.  I got myself a copy of The Easy Way to Quit Smoking, by Alan Carr, and I covered it in a brown paper bag, the way I'd learned to cover my textbooks in college, so no one could see what I was reading. (And, yes, I quit smoking.  And, yes, I attribute quite a lot of it to this book.)

The next self-help book I ever got was when I was 22 years old, and I was trying to recover from some crazy food issues.  I don't talk about this period of my life much on the blog, but I went through several years, when I was younger, of trying every which way possible not to eat food.  At my lowest point I was surviving on a diet of ephedrine, cigarettes, coffee, and one salad a day.  Anyhow.  No need for all the gory details...this is only to say that I had...some issues, around food.  And then, a sort of awakening, brought on by a real bottom-of-the-barrel moment, when I decided I needed to do something about it.  So...I went to the bookstore and apparently the book gods were smiling on me that day, because without really knowing what I was looking for, I picked up a copy of Geneen Roth's, Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating.

This was the first self-help book that really changed my life.

Geneen Roth had been a yo-yo dieter (to say the least) for most of her life.  She had been anorexic, she had been bulimic, she had been an overeater, an addictive eater, a no-carb girl, an all watermelon girl, a vegetarian, a protein-a-phile...you name it, she had done it.  And I, at this point in my life, really identified.  Because I was obsessed with food.  If you knew me during this period, you may not have known this, since, like any real (and dangerous) obsession, I kept it deeply packed and hidden away, but I, for several years of my life, spent nearly every waking hour thinking about what I could eat, what I had eaten, what I should be eating, how much I weighed, how much I should weigh...etc., etc..

So, when I started reading Ms. Roth's book, and she talked about her own mental and emotional burn-out, when it came to what she should be doing with food, I felt like I had found the right book.

Because she, Geneen--because she had literally tried every single diet and eating plan and eating disorder on the market, and all of them left her in exactly the same predicament, she made a really radical decision.  She decided that she would throw out all the prescriptions and just give her body, for once, exactly what it wanted.  Her hope was, that if she could just start listening to her own body...maybe IT would know what to do.  And because she had gained and lost weight a million times before, she knew that if the experiment failed, she could always go right back to The Zone Diet...or whatever was on her list at the moment.

So, she asked her body what it wanted.  And her body answered: chocolate chip cookies.

And for the next two weeks, Geneen Roth ate nothing but chocolate chip cookies.  She sat down at a table with a plate and fork and knife and ate plate-fuls of chocolate chip cookies.  She ate them for two weeks because for two weeks, every time she asked her body what it wanted, her body said: chocolate chip cookies.

Chocolate chip cookies were, it should come as no surprise, the food she had been denying herself for years. It was the food she loved, and feared, the most.

But, at the end of those two weeks, she asked her body again what it wanted, and her body said: baked potato.  And that was the beginning of her long walk back to herself.

It gets me a little choked up just writing about this, because, you have to understand, I was living in a head and a heart so full of prescriptions at that time, the idea that I could abandon them, AND that something more truthful and more sustainable might arise in their place...was a revelation to me.  And it not only started my journey away from being a food obsessed person, it, I think, started me on a spiritual path.  Though I would not have known that, at the time.

It's amazing to me when I look back, because, well...I rarely think about food in this way anymore.  Actually, I would say, I never think about food in this way anymore.  I never obsess about food or my weight.  Sure, I have days where I feel a little fatter or a little more slim, but for the most part, it's just not a part of my life in that same way.  And that is amazing to me, because at the time, if someone had told me that there was a future in which I never worried about my body in a way that ruined my day...I don't think I would have thought that was possible.

The power of manifestation, yo.

Okay, but I'm way off track.  The point of all of this is, the other night, when I was reading (yet another) book about what I should and should not be doing, spiritually, and Paul asked me if I wanted to read a novel instead, what it felt like he was asking me was:

Are you sure you don't want a chocolate chip cookie?

Yes, I want to read a novel!  Yes!  Yes, I would like to put down this book.  Yes, I would like to put down all of the books and the practices that I use to reinforce the idea that I am broken and I need to be fixed.  Yes, please.  Yes, I would like to just give the big middle-finger to the salads of my internal life and I would like to eat a goddamn chocolate chip cookie, please.  Yes, I would like to, finally, for once, really believe that I already know all of the things I am trying to learn to remember.  Yes, I would like to read a novel.  Yes.

So, I did.

I put down the book on manifesting, and I picked up a another book--this one a story about a doctor in the far east in the early part of the century.  A fiction.  A novel. A big romantic epic of a book.  And, you know what?  It's delicious.

The Yoga of Sophia...

Okay...I'm almost embarrassed to be posting this.  I probably should be a little MORE embarrassed than I am.  Really, I should be embarrassed enough not to post this at all, but...c'est la vie!

So, I was gawking around the internet digging up dirt on the Katy Perry/Russell Brand break-up (she is his teenage dream, no longer), when I came across an interview with Mr. Brand (whom I love and adore and think is possibly a genius and even more possibly, a totally enlightened dude) on the Ellen show, where he talks about this little girl, Sophia Grace, who was also on the Ellen show and whom he looooooooved.  And, because ol' Russ was so enthusiastic about said girl, I had to go check her out, and what I found was the video I've embedded above. (And lots of other videos that I have NOT been wasting my time watching. Heh heh.)

I was so, so taken with this little lady...she is super adorable, yes, and obviously talented, double-yes, but the best all-time ultimate BEST thing about her is how fit to burst she is with ALIVEness.  She is just, like, milking every moment for its super joy juice.

(That's right.  Joy juice.  I told you I should be more embarrassed.)

Anyhow, I know that it's such an old trope to point to the joy of children and say, "See...that! We should all be like THAT!"  It's not fair, right?  Because, what do they know?  They haven't been tested, (most of them), they don't have jobs or relationships or frustrated hopes...and they don't know what the hell they're doing for the most part, so how are we supposed to take an example from that?  I don't really want to jump around in a pink tutu and glitter (well, maybe I do.  Sometimes.)  But, I think the point is, and the reason real-life examples of truly joy-jolted kids can be so great--is that it is a potentiality.  Kids like Sophia, they are just the most extreme example of the expression of the joy of being alive that we're all born with.  And we look to children because, well, because we all started out as kids.  Which means, we all started out this way...and then we have all lost it, or some part of it (or, most of us have).  Somewhere.  Somehow.  And from the moment we lose it, we're all, whether we know it or not, just trying to get it back.

And I used to feel like, well...what a cruel trick.  What, we all get gifted with this total presence when we're born, we're all born into the world as these little enlightened beings and then we ALL lose our grip on it?  That seems...what's the point?  Why not just let us keep it, huh, Mister (or Mrs.) Universe?

Well, I have met, in my life, just a few adults who seem to have figured out how to resurrect this ancient, long-forgotten, va-va-va-voom for life.  And the incredible thing about them is that, they are experiencing life with the wonder of a child, without being an idiot about it.  Because, let's face it, when you're a kid...you're kind of an idiot.  (If you are a child, and you're reading this blog, a. you probably shouldn't be and b. YOU are not an idiot.  YOU are a genius.  Also, if you are reading this blog, and you have children, THEY are not idiots.  They are enlightened geniuses).

But...imagine!  Imagine getting to have that much bouncy-bounce-in-your-chair fun in your life AND to also be a functioning, contributing adult-with-all-your-baggage member of society!  That is like--that is a deadly combination.  Deadly, in the best way.

So, take six minutes, watch little miss Sophia, and enjoy.  Enjoy, a lot.  And then try, if you're of a mind to, to enjoy ONE thing in the rest of your day, as much as she is enjoying every minute of hers.

Pramada, Po-tah-to...

New York has had its way with me this Christmas.

I'm not sure I deserved this kind of glove-less treatment from a city I have spent so much time mentally romancing over the past many months, but that's fine, NYC...I can take it.  So, here follows:

A Short List of Things Which Happened On Our New York Christmas Vacation:

1. On our first night in town, my husband's IPhone got stolen.  He left it on a table in a restaurant in our beloved Brooklyn, discovered it's absence maybe 20 minutes later, ran back to the restaurant...and it was gone.  This was no tragedy, I'll admit, but it was an immediate snag in our settling-in, and required lots of internet time, and a $450 gift to our local ATT store for a replacement phone.

2. My tooth fell out while eating a piece of ginger candy.  (Okay, it wasn't actually my tooth...it was a crown, but still!) We were sitting in our apartment, having just finished a meal from one of our favorite local take-out places, I took a hearty bite of a piece of ginger candy, felt a less-than-delicate pulling in one of my molars and then, like a tiny little canon ball, my crown rocketed across the living room.  "My tooth fell out!" I cried, horrified. "That's your TOOTH?!" Cried Paul, even more horrified.  This was remedied by some phone-calls to dentists, and a trip to a drugstore to buy some temporary cement.

3. Our washing machine exploded.  Apparently someone (me) didn't close the door to the washing machine hard enough (but the little light was on that said it was locked!), and so when I went back to check the progress of the clothes, what I found instead was a bathroom covered in suds.  Covered.  The bright side was, as we were mopping and toweling and bucketing water and foam off the bathroom floor I did think, well, at least now I KNOW the floor is clean.

4. Paul burned his finger badly on a kettle of water, causing some angry little blisters to rise up on his thumb.  I think this may have happened simultaneous to the washing machine exploding.

5. For Christmas...I got pick-pocketed. Eight years I lived in New York, people, and never, not a once, did a single thing get stolen. Ever! And perhaps it's because of that, that I felt okay carrying my BRIGHT yellow wallet in a BIG open bag....  Ah, sigh.  While going to see our traditional Christmas Day movie, someone decided to lighten my load, taking my wallet from my bag, and promptly spending $150 from my credit cards on subway passes.  Again, not a tragedy...just a lot of calling and cancelling and lamenting...but by this point in the trip we were both starting to feel that New York had it out for us this holiday season.

6.  Oh, this one is the worst.  Worse than having an IPhone and a wallet stolen in the same week?  Yes, I'm afraid so. Existentially worse, at least.  While we were wandering around our neighborhood, a couple days after Christmas, looking for some levity, we ran into one of our neighbors, who was walking his very sweet and very old dog.  And while we were talking, right there on the sidewalk, the dog started to have a massive seizure.  The dog's owner knew what to do, as the dog had been having seizures recently...they think he may have a brain tumor...and so he just held him sweetly, trying to soothe the poor little guy as his body rocked and quaked.  Paul and I, not knowing what else to do, just stood there quietly with them until the seizure passed.  It was rough.  More so, of course, for the dog's owner, who has had him for thirteen years and who neither Paul nor I have ever seen without the dog in question.  They are best friends, without question.

Through all of the other minor aggravations and irritations and snags and snafus, we had been holding ourselves steady...just dealing and recovering and moving forward, but there was something about that dog and his seizure and the weight in his owner's eyes that really sent the LIST into sharp focus.  What, we both wondered, is going on here?

I have been pondering it for days.

Paul has suggested that it's all just about the two of us being out of shape for New York--that the city is just trying to remind us that it's not all hotdogs and art galleries--which seems right, but not exactly it.  And for awhile I freaked myself out thinking it has something to do with being LOST or, worse, being STOLEN.  With what being lost or stolen?  Our souls, of course!  Or...our Self.  Or...ugh.  Just fodder for my in-house fear-monster.

But today...today, I think I have happened upon it.  If not the "why" then at least a lesson in how to think about two-weeks full of craziness.

There is a sanskrit word, Pramada, which means, essentially...negligence.  Or, carelessness.

(Need I say more?)

It's talked about in the Yoga Sutras, and it is listed as one of nine distractions that become obstacles on the path to practice.  Now, I really thought when I started investigating this morning, that I was just going to end up reading about elephant-headed Ganesha (remover of obstacles), and that I was just going to have to do some deep-hearted praying to that little dude.  But, when I came upon this word, pramada, I realized that ALL of the things listed above (save the dog, which I'll get to later), came about as a result of negligence or carelessness on our part:  the phone left on the table, the ginger candy eaten (even though my dentist told me to avoid such things), the washer not closed properly, the hot kettle mis-handled, the bag left open...all of these all of these ALL of these...are (gulp) a result of carelessness.

What the Sutras say is that, whether it's negligence or laziness or instability or whatever, these nine distractions are, well...distractions.  To growth.  To practice.  And WORSE, once the mind gets focused on the distraction in question, it quickly gets promoted from distraction to full-blown obstacle.  And when it's an obstacle, you'll know, because that's when you start freaking out or shutting down or doing whatever it is that is your particular "something's wrong and I'm upset about it" reaction pattern.  Example:  I am not paying attention (distraction)...wallet gets stolen...I discover stolen wallet...I freak the f- out (obstacle).

And so...what are we supposed to do?  Because all of these distractions, it also says right there in the Sutras, are common.  They happen to everyone.  So...I'm supposed to, what, keep a manic eye on my purse?  That does not paint a very yogic picture.  And that's not it, of course...the distractions are not symbolic, in and of themselves.  My wallet didn't get stolen in order to teach me to be less trusting in crowds or more fretful about my belongings. The distractions point to something larger.  They point, in this case, to a distracted mind.  Numbers 1-5 listed above, all of these could have been avoided.  Every single one.  And they could have been avoided with the simple act of attention.

Ah yes.  Paying Attention.  That thing.  I've heard of that.

Well, what about the dog, you ask?  How did that little guy's distress have anything to do with your negligence?

Well, as I review my little list of New York foibles, all I keep thinking is that, the moment of standing there on the sidewalk, waiting out that little dog's seizure with his owner...it was, however upsetting, still a moment of deep and singular attention.  It was, I think, a very stark reminder.  Because, I know from experience that the universe will keep bringing you things to get your attention back into the present.  It will start with something small (lost things, exploding appliances, burned fingers), and then make the signals bigger and bigger (and often worse and worse), until finally you have no choice but to focus.

So the generous universe, it has given me a very clear, and very long-winded edict to pay attention.  To pay better attention.  And, in honor of that sweet doggy and my dear husband and my deep wishes for 2012...I am going to do my best to follow it.

Here's wishing you a very joyful, and very present New Year