Swim, Fishy...Swim!

What is the difference between effort and surrender?

This week I heard it described like this:

Imagine a fish swimming in a river. When the fish is in the current, she is surrendered.  She is letting the flow of water carry her.  And if and when she ever loses that current, then (and only then) she uses her effort, to find her way back.

Her effort, her will, is what she calls upon when she's fallen out of the stream.  When life starts to get hard, get rocky, when it feels like nothing is moving and certainly nothing is moving her...that is when effort is required.

And then, lucky fish, once she's reunited with the river's current, then she is carried.

And on and on it goes.

I love this description so much (lifted from an interview with Mark Nepo) because we hear so much about surrender.  Surrender is the thing we're all told we're looking for--or at least that's what our yoga teachers tell us and our books tell us and our wise friends tell us (they tell us other things, too)--and often they're right.  Often letting go is what's needed.  Often it's needed because we live in a world where nearly every other influence in our lives is urging us toward the opposite.  Towards more, towards faster, towards harder, towards sweat, towards effort.  Towards multi-tasking our effort.  And so, the encouragement towards, sheesh, softening some of that, is good.

But, what about the times when surrender is not the answer?  Are we really just meant to go from splashing wildly, or worse, swimming in panicked circles, certain the current is there somewhere...to just being lazy fishies, letting the water take us where it will?

That doesn't seem right.

That would imply that the human system is flawed.  If surrender were the only solution, if the only thing which existed other than surrender was a kind of aggravated repetitive belly flop...that would imply that there is nothing to be done.  We either give up, or we suffer.  And I just think that the human mind and heart are too complex and too gorgeous (sorry), to write them off simply as the agents of our own destruction.

But if you think of a wise fish...of a little guy who finds himself suddenly out of the flow of water...what is he going to do?  I don't think he's going to freak out.  I don't think he's going to start slamming his fish body against the rocks along the bottom of the river because he's just so upset that this has happened to him, yet again, and all his other little fishy friends seem to be doing just fine thank you very much and why the heck can't he ever catch a break?!  No, he's going to quiet his little fishy mind (remember, he's a wise fish), he's going to stick his little fish nose and little fish ears (do fish have ears?) into the water, and he's going to use his will to start his little tail and fins a flippin', and he's going to swim himself back to that current.

And when he's there, he'll know he's there, whether or not his eyes are open (whether or not he even HAS eyes), because things will suddenly get...easier.

Ahhh.  Exhale. 

He'll know he's in the current, because he'll be able to fold his little fins against his fat little rainbow-scale sides, and coast.  He'll know he's there because he'll be moving with the river.  He'll know he's there because he'll suddenly be able just to enjoy the ride.

And if ever the time comes when he falls, one more time, out of the grace of the river, he'll know he has his effort, his will, and his good sense...to guide him back.

Please Can I Have My Ruler Back?

Image by Locopelli

I have avoided, so far, commenting on the scandal-fire raging its way through the Anusara community these days.  I have avoided commenting because, a. I’m not a card-carrying member of the Anusara community, besides being a student of the style (as well as other styles), and a usurper of the alignment principles learned therein and b. because it involves real lives and real people and real vulnerable hearts.  

Some of my own teachers, who are themselves Anusara certified and have devoted their lives to the practice, have been left a bit broken by the whole thing.  And understandably.  When someone sets himself up as teacher, and beyond that, as leader of a spiritual community, it’s hard not to feel betrayed when you find out that said person has been…you know.  Diddling around.  In many senses of the word. And so, I want to be careful, because real people feel genuinely betrayed, and there is nothing simple or blog-digestable about betrayal.

This past Sunday I interviewed the inimitable SuzanneMorrison for the podcast (episode 7 is on its way!), she was in Los Angeles to do a reading from Yoga Bitch, and we spent a good deal of time while she was here, talking about the student/teacher relationship.

A major theme in YB is Suzanne’s hot-then-cold entanglement with her own then-teacher.  A woman she had set up as a paragon of wholeness, of yogic fix-ed-ness, who eventually (spoiler alert!) revealed herself to be…merely human.  And flawed and f’d up and messy, in the way that all humans are.  And it was a blow to 25 year old Suzanne.  Because f’d up and messy is what she thought SHE was supposed to be…not her beloved teacher.

And we talked about this—about how easy, how natural it is to project on to our teacher (or boss or partner or cooler-than-thou friend) whatever it is we want for ourselves.  How we need, sometimes, to have a person in our life who seems stain-free, so that from that person we can receive and imbibe unfettered guidance.  We need it because it is a great simplifier.  Find perfect person, do what perfect person says.  But, as soon as that person, that paragon—as soon as it’s revealed that maybe he or she is not making the best choices in his or her own life, that guidance…that treasured trail-marker, is going to get…sullied.

And we are left adrift.

It’s like what happens with parents.  As a child it seems like their advice, mom and dad’s advice, must be THE advice.  It must be THE way to go, because, come on…have you seen what they can do?  EVERYTHING, that’s what.  They are the whole big world—and the arbiter of its rules.  And then…as you get older…veils start to fall away.  You see one or the other of them act badly or choke in a big moment, or just reveal their own scared-ness, and it’s—it’s devastating.  Your measuring stick, the one you’ve been carrying around, the one given to you by them—you’ve just come to discover that the inches on it aren’t really inches at all.  They’re off.  The whole system, all the measurements you’ve been making—it’s all deeply, intrinsically, flawed.

And it’s a terrible moment, because for a while there you feel…stranded.  The ground has been taken out from underneath you and here you are, no way to figure how far you are from your destination.  But also, and we all know this now, because we’re all adults with lives and many of you with children of your own—also it’s the best moment of your life.  Because, it’s the beginning.  It’s the beginning of the process of developing a new and hopefully truer—north.  It’s the place from where we start that very first walk towards ourselves.  Because the mystery rises up.  Where do I go now?  What do I believe in?  What do I want for myself?  How will I get there?

At the reading Suzanne talked about how she no longer expects people not to be human.  That she no longer requires of her yoga teachers perfectly stain-free personal lives.  She has wised up.  Now, she says, she goes to class to be with herself.  It is less, she says, about the bright-eyed guru at the front of the room, and much more about the bright eyed guru that lives right there in her own chest.

None of the people involved in the Anusara controversy are children, and John Friend wasn’t anyone’s father.  Most of them will probably, if they feel unmoored at all, be only temporarily so.  But, for those who are struggling, who feel like they’ve been let down and let down hard, I would say, just remember…that this is the place where a new path opens up.  This is the moment where you get to throw down the ruler-markings of the old system, and find something new.  And those new measurements, you can be sure, are going to be truer and hold steadier, than any that came before.

So much love for my own teachers...and their teachers...and the teachers of those teachers.  May we all get better, breathe more, and forgive. 

Speaking Sanely...

So, I have to admit, I listened to this interview with Mormon author Joanna Brooks because I wanted the dirt!  I wanted the juicy insider-info about the Mormon church!  I wanted the gossip-monger satisfaction of secrets revealed!  I wanted to dish about weird underwear and weirder customs!

But that is not what I got...

Joanna Brooks is, according to her website, an "award winning writer and scholar of religion and spirituality"...and also, a Mormon.  She is a Mormon who grew up in a conservative Mormon household, but as an adult sort of accidentally turned into a feminist.  And then not-so-accidentally married a Jewish man.  Whoops!  She is a Mormon who struggled and volleyed with her faith, but who ended up making a decision that so many people, on so many spiritual paths, have made before her--which is to not abandon the religion to which she was born, even though at moments, it might have felt like she should.  And, because of this, she is a Mormon who has found a way to expand enough to hold all the nuances and contradictions within a faith that she obviously loves very deeply.  And I will tell you, Joanna Brooks may be a Mormon, but as far as I'm concerned...this chick is a yogi.

I loved her so much, I wrote her a fan letter (email) immediately upon the conclusion of the interview.  She and Ira Glass are now the only two people I have written fan letters to.  (As an adult.)

(And for those of you who know my deep love for/borderline obsession with Ira Glass...that is saying something.)

 Joanna Brooks wrote me back.  Ira Glass did not.  Point, Joanna.

Okay, so full disclosure--I don't know a lot about Mormonism.  I had a good friend when I was growing up who was Mormon, but we were young, and all I knew was that her family had a big store room full of food and supplies (the encouraged "years worth of food"), and that she, my friend, was constantly in pre-teen agony about the boy she loved not being a Mormon.  When I was graduating from high school, years after she and I had grown apart, I got an announcement for her wedding.  Not, of course, to the not-Mormon boy she was in love with.  To some other boy, someone I'd never met.  At only 16 myself, and just beginning to discover the world, I remember feeling so...disappointed.  How could she get married?  She wasn't much older than me, maybe two years at most, and at the time I thought, well, that's it for her.  She's done.  She would get married and then there would be babies and babies and more babies, and that would be it.

So this, until today, was my basic understanding of Mormonism--it was strict, you couldn't marry who you wanted, and if you were a woman, your job--your life--was going to be about having babies and being a wife.

And then there's the, ahem, politics of the Mormon Church, which are unquestionably ultra-conservative slash deeply disturbing.   And though it's not really integral to this post, I do feel like it's important to mention that I do not agree with the stance of the Mormon Church on gay rights or women's rights--or on social issues in general, it's probably safe to say--and no interview, no matter how lovely, is going to change that.  Though of course, the same could be said for the Catholic Church, and the Evangelical Church, and for countless others.  I just want that on the record.

But, it's not the Mormon Church that I found so moving, it's not the history and ritual of the Mormon faith--though it was beautifully rendered by Ms. Brooks in her interview--which inspired me to first write to her, and now to write this.  It was, instead, the power of her flexible, and sane way of speaking about her faith, that moved me.

I have realized, since writing this blog these last few years, that if I have any goal in mind...if there's anything that I really WANT from all this writing and interviewing and talking and teaching and practicing, it is to seek out and nurture spiritual sanity.  To figure out how it is that those of us who are on fire with God in some form or another (whether your God is one God or many Gods or whether your God is Art or Breath or Movement or just the sacred stuff of your Life)--how is it that we can bring this God into our lives in a way that is real, and meaningful and leaves room for the very necessary doubt and constant change that is so much a part of our world.  Is there a way to be a person of faith and have a dialogue about it that doesn't include dogma but DOES include divinity?  And love.  And compassion.

And people like Joanna Brooks make me feel like that goal is accomplishable.

Because, without question, she and I are very different.  We have very different backgrounds, and very different conceptions, maybe, of the practicals of God--what that looks like, how it came to be, and how to call it by name--but I would imagine, though I can't speak for her, that our ideas about the essence, the heart, of God...are probably very much the same.  The easy road, of course, is to retreat to opposite corners, to claim lack of understanding and to grudgingly go on our ways.  The difficult thing, and the thing that Joanna Brooks is trying to do, that all of the teachers and speakers I respect most are trying to do, is to stretch the walls of her understanding of God so that it becomes more inclusive.

I was reading something the other day by Thomas Traherne, a "metaphysical poet" (thank you, Wikipedia) from the 17th Century, and he was talking about how we all, as children, are born with a divine knowledge of presence--the world is new to us, and everything is one unfolding mystery.  But, he writes, the real work, the real trick of divinity, is not to somehow go back to before we knew anything, it is, instead, this process of "unlearning" everything that has darkened our view thus far.  This is the more miraculous thing, he says: to travel from corruption back to innocence.

And I couldn't help but think of Joanna Brooks, and how devoted she is to this work, not of abandoning her faith, but of instead, stripping away the layers of corruption, to get back to the sweet center.

Check out the interview, if you have a chance, or Joanna Brooks' blog: Ask Mormon Girl.  And then let me know what you think of her and the work she's doing...yay or nay?

Rachelle Wintzen Will Beat You in a Staring Contest...

Scene:  Lia's Los Angeles apartment, 10 AM.  Lia has just returned home from an overnight wedding expedition in Big Bear, and is still in yesterday's jeans when the phone rings.  It's the gorgeous and glamorous Rachelle Wintzen, calling from Belize (where she is currently preparing for an upcoming retreat).  Lia hopes Rachelle can't tell that for the first several minutes of their phone conversation she is scrambling around trying to plug dying phone into computer, dying computer into wall and tangled headphones into phone.

LA:  Rachelle!  You're in Belize!

RW:  Yeah, I've been making trips here since October, back and forth from New York, doing yoga retreats and things.  It's so great.

That's--I think that officially makes you the coolest person I know.

Thank you.

So, Rachelle, I didn't even know until we got back in contact that you had a life outside of acting...when did this all start?

Well, I'd been in New York for eight years, I was working at night clubs, going to classes, going to auditions, and I was just getting completely burnt out.  And I started to get really, really sick.  I kept going to all of these doctors and no one could tell me what was wrong with me.  They all wanted to prescribe me a bunch of medications, which made me nervous, and a few doctors even suggested that I was just really depressed and wanted to get me on anti-depressants...and I just didn't want to do that.  I didn't want to start taking a bunch of pills, that didn't seem right.  So I started seeking out alternative medicines.  And when I started seeing people in the alternative world they were just like, "you're totally exhausted and you're system is overwhelmed with toxins...you're toxic."  I was living fast and hard at that point in my life and it was just getting the best of me.

So I started to cleanse, and eat better, and boost my body with herbal supplements, and I noticed such a radical change right away that I just knew...there was no turning back.  I started to learn more about the whole world of healthy living and alternative medicine and I and got more and more interested.  And that's when I got certified as a yoga teacher and then as a nutritionist specializing in fasting and cleansing and then finally as an iridologist...

What's an iridologist?

Iridology is a form of alternative medicine that uses the eye, the iris of the eye, to diagnose what's going on in the body.  We use maps of the eye, like an eye chart--you know how in reflexology they have those foot charts?  We have the same thing, but it's a chart of the eye.

(full disclosure, I really wanted to ask Rachelle if doing an iridology consultation felt like having a staring-contest...but, um, I thought that might make me sound like an idiot.)

So, when you're doing a consultation as an iridologist--and forgive me if this is a stupid question--are you taking a full read of what's going on for that person, like the way an acupuncturist will ask you all kinds of questions about your general health and your diet and your tongue-fuzz before they start working on you--are you doing all that and then...you're...looking at their eyes?

Yeah, I'll ask a whole series of medical history questions, and then I'll do an eye reading.

I've heard that before, that you can tell a lot about what's happening in the body by looking at someone's eyes--seeing if the whites of their eyes are really white or not, stuff like that--but I had no idea it was an actual field of alternative medicine?

You can tell so much from the eye, it's incredibly informative.  And I'm using a light and a magnifying glass* to look, so there are all of these details in the iris that are revealed that can't be seen by the naked eye, it's pretty amazing. 

(*this sufficiently answered my staring-contest question)

I had no idea.

It's just now starting to become something that's being practiced and paid attention to--I mean, something like acupuncture, it took so long for that to be recognized as a viable form of alternative medicine in the west.

Right.  People are scared of the alternative practices.

Totally!  I did some of this work for people at the New York Stock Exchange and they were so nervous, so wary at first...some people actually asked me if I made it up.  And I had to tell them, no, you know, it's been around since the 1890's.  It's an old practice.  It's a real practice.

It's so interesting, because if the body is an integrated system, then it only makes sense that you should be able to tell by examining one part of the body, what's happening in the other parts of the body.  But the western medical model seems to think of everything in this compartmentalized way...

That's right, the way the western model works, all the pill-prescribing and specializing, without looking at the whole body, it's really just a masking system--

A masking system!  I love that!  That's totally what it is.

You're not addressing the problem, you're just masking the symptoms so you can move on with your life.

Oh my god, it's like those horrible antiacid commercials, where they will literally show a photo of chili-cheese fries or something and say "you can still eat all the stuff you want to eat, just take one of these pills afterwards!"  I find that so horrifying...it just does not seem like a reasonable way to think about health!

Right, and I mean so many people, you know they've been doing this stuff to their bodies for 30 or 40 years, and it's why we all start to get sick in our 50s and 60s...our body just can't take it anymore.

That's pretty amazing though, isn't it, that our body will take punishment for that long before it finally starts to give out?

The body is incredibly resilient.  It can really take a beating--but eventually it's going to give out.

So, okay, so you were living in New York, living the crazy New York life and you started to get sick and then you found this new way of living that made you feel better...but what was the impetus to go from someone who was just living in a healthy way, to someone who is teaching and doing nutritional counseling and all of that?

Well, I just started to feel so much better, and became so passionate about what I was experiencing, it really started to feel like a calling.  I just knew that there was no way I could go back to living the way I had been living before.  And, for whatever reason, I just started to think less selfishly...I felt like I needed to spread the word, I needed to let people know that there was another way they could be living that could make them feel so much better.  It felt like a necessity.

So, you're a vegan I guess, right?

Well, when I'm at home in New York I am 500% vegan, totally strict.  But when I'm here, visiting Belize, I occasionally eat fish.   I feel that I can shift with my environment...it is an island, after all.  But I would never eat fish in New York.

I just...I've had a serious yoga practice for a long time now, and I have to say, the diet thing is something I struggle with.  I mean, according to yoga philosophy, I should at least be a vegetarian.  Probably I should be a vegan...but it's really challenging!

It is challenging! Really, it's the knowledge that's so important.  Because there's a way to be a vegetarian or be a vegan and do it well, and do it right, and there's a way to do it that will just make you sick.

I'm sure that's true for me.  I was a vegetarian when I was young, for a long time, but I had no idea what I was doing.  And then I went vegan and really I just tried to live on peanut butter and bagels, and that just did not work.

Totally.

I find that the hardest part, when I think about making those changes, is about--how do I continue to share food and eat food with the people in my life and still make healthy choices?

That is the hardest part, for sure.  I still struggle with that.  You go out with people and you feel like you're all alone on this isolated island, you watch them just eat whatever they want and...it's hard.

So how do you do it, then?  Is it just sheer will-power?

Well, you know, it's hard.  Sometimes I cheat.  It depends.  If it's evening and it's dinner, I'll let myself stray a little bit.  I have my ways.  So, if I'm going to cheat, I'll eat a green salad first--alkalinize the body--I always tell people if you're going to cheat, start with a green salad.  It's like a natural antacid...it coats the digestive system, and I always recommend that you cheat at dinner.  That way, the body has the whole night to deal with processing what you've put in it, and you're not going to be adding more food on top of it throughout the day.

And don't make yourself feel bad about it! That's the worst!  I tell my clients, if you're going to have a cheeseburger...worship the cheeseburger!  Enjoy every bite!  There's no sense in adding a bunch of guilt on top of the cheeseburger!

Worship the cheeseburger!!  Um...what about alcohol?*

(*Why at this point in the interview I've just decided to forget about interviewing Rachelle and instead start plying her for food and beverage affirmation, I'm not sure...)

Well, alcohol's an interesting thing for me.  When I was working in night clubs, I was dealing with a lot of substance abuse because of it.  So when I started this lifestyle change I got totally sober.  I was completely sober for a period of time.  But then, you know, being here, for example...it's an island!  You want to sit on the beach in the evening and have a pina colada, or a glass of wine...so, here, I let myself.  I'm moderate and I'm careful, but I let myself.

What I tell people is, if you're going to drink alcohol, again, always drink at night, either with dinner or after dinner, and try and drink something that's a little easier for the body to handle...like wine or sake.  Sake is great, it's really easy on the body, actually.

You can be a vegan and still drink red wine?  Hooray!

Yes, I mean...in moderation.  Don't drink a bottle a night or anything.

(Sheepish)  Right.  Of course.  And so,  now you're working with clients one on one, but you're also going to be doing retreats, is that right?

Right.  I'm doing my next retreat in Belize, July 9th-16th, at the Ak'Bol Yoga Retreat Center--the center that first brought me here last year.  And during that time I'll be giving a lot of personalized treatments--setting up a nutritional program catered to the participants needs and doing iridology sessions, and also giving regular yoga classes--all personalized for the retreat-goers.

All the food will also be taken care of, so that I can help people transition to a vegan or vegetarian diet for the time that they're there.  So that they can understand and feel what it means to eat clean, and to live clean.  And if people want to continue with all those changes after they leave, that's amazing, but if they just want to come for the week and have the week of clean-living, that's great too.  Basically I'm giving people an opportunity to live for a period of time in this way that I've found so helpful, to see what's it like and if it might be right for them, too.

I want to come on retreat!  I want to go to Beliiiiiiiiiiiize!

Do it!

* * *

for more detailed retreat info, contact
Rachelle Wintzen @

501.635.4661 - Belize

917.843.0212 - USA

rachelle@chijunky.com

Claire Dederer Isn't Perfect...(and neither am I)

Ladies and Gentlemen of Shanti Town…you are in for a treat.

It was my great honor and privilege last week to sit down (well, I sat down in Los Angeles, she sat down on Bainbridge Island) with Claire Dederer, author of the book Poser; My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, and all around amazing woman (and yogi). We talked about her book, her practice, and the irresistible quest for perfection. Check it out my friends, and see if you don't just fall in freaking love with her (as I have).

P.S.  I've already had a podcast listener point out to me that my interviews aren't so much interviews as "dialogues" (since I can't resist talking endlessly about myself) and I'm going to say that, unfortunately, this is no exception.

* * *

Lia: When you first started talking to me about how the book began, you said that you felt that you experienced your practice emotionally and physically through the poses?

Claire Dederer: I think that the relationship that I had to the poses was so emotional and so visceral, it had to do with—you know I can only really describe it in emotional terms. The arguments that I would get in with handstands, the big crush that I would get on various poses, like splits. Or, “monkey”. I’ll call it monkey. As we’re talking yoga-ish-ly.

Ha!

I realized that my relationships with these poses were really heated. I mean who hasn’t been heated in reverse triangle? Every pose seemed to have its own personality and its own test for me. I realized that, the more I read of this yoga philosophy through the books I was reviewing [for Yoga Journal], the more I realized that my own relationship with yoga was really deeply physically grounded in these poses. And I became fascinated with this idea—where did these come from? Poses themselves are a kind of intellectual property that comes from somewhere, that means something, that was made up, that’s a story.

Right. Well, I love so much the structure of the book—chaptering the book pose by pose—often you start each chapter sort of literally, with the pose or your relationship to the pose, and then we travel really far afield, and after awhile the resonance of the pose comes back again in this very, maybe not even in an overt or stated way at all—the fierceness or the courageousness of Warrior II, suddenly you feel the resonance of that in the story you’re telling about some moment of your life that doesn’t have anything to do with being in a yoga class. I love that so much.

Well, that was one of the really cool things about the book, finding different ways of approaching the problem of how you weave these poses in. They’re all dealt with differently—there’s not one way that I do it. Some of them are just puns. Some of them don’t really have any deeper meaning except that they’re just…silly connections. And some of them are intuitive. And there’s things like, you know, Lion—I just realized that there was all this stuff about lions in the book. I didn’t think I was going to write about Lion Pose. It was an experience of becoming alive to what was actually in the book, and how that could overlap with the poses. There was a really fun puzzle-solving element to it that I really liked.

And it feels like the practice. It feels like a class in that way. Here’s this—here’s where we’re putting our attention, we’re framing it with this pose or this part of the body or whatever. And then, maybe we travel really far out and then we come back again and it…changes. When you come back. Good yoga teachers do that with their classes.

I know exactly what you’re talking about. And you’ll have a class like that and you’ll be begging the teacher to do that class again and she’ll say, “I can’t do that class again.”

Right, yes—because it just comes…who knows where that comes from?

Huh. Yeah, I hadn’t even thought about the structure of the book as relating to a yoga class, but that’s a real compliment.

There’s this transformation that takes place for you, at least it felt to me, during the course of the book. You sort of get more okay with a bunch of things in your life. When you sat down to write the book were you already at that place, already transformed, or did the writing of the book begin the transformation?

Well, I had started writing the book before I realized what the yoga story was. This idea that I went to yoga for one thing and I ended up with something else. I went for more of that goodness and perfection that you and I were talking about, and I ended up with yoga telling me, you’re never going to be perfect, you might not even ever be very good at this. And I remember figuring that out.

The end of the book happened as I started to write the beginning of the book. So, I was exploring—where is the end? And there was that really interesting thing from a writing perspective of, how do you order events in your life when you write a memoir? And how do you make event into story? And as a teacher, I work with students, and that has become really interesting to me.

How do you make order out of things?

Right, and do you have to be chronological? One thing people really deal with when they’re trying to tell their story is—they say, well, this is what happened. And it’s like, well, that’s fine, but it’s not a story. It’s not interesting to a reader. So what I’ve been really thinking about a lot in terms of how memoir works is this idea that you have one character, an earlier you at the beginning, and then a transformed character at the end. And what are the elements of the story—what are the events that support that story? Story is not the same as what happened.

So I try to think of memoir as these pillars of events that hold up the story of personal transformation. And those pillars may not even be about you, they might be something larger—it doesn’t have to be totally self-involved, it could be looking at the larger culture. But how do you support that story? Of course this isn’t the only story of what happened to me during those ten years. There were many other things that my life was about during that time.

I can see that, especially as a young person or as a person just starting to try to figure out how to write a story about themselves and their own lives, that there would be this allegiance to the facts. Where you’d feel like, well, doesn’t my reader have to know this and this and this in order for them to understand this event?

Yes. Sometimes when my students say that to me I’ll just look at them and I’ll say—and they hate this—well, what’s in it for me? As a reader? I’m your reader, you’re telling me about this event, what’s in it for me? Why do I care about that?

Why should I have to slog through all these details in order to get to the interesting stuff?

What’s in it for me is a good question to remember. So that part of it was just hair-tearing-ly difficult for me.

Trying to figure out what the actual story is?

Yeah, and plus, it’s such an ordinary life. My life is so—it’s just an ordinary life, there’s not a lot of real events in it. So then you look at it and you go well what…what are the scenes and the events that are sort of emblematic of my experience at that time? And how can I take that idea of, “oh, Bruce is getting sadder”…how can I take that out of an idea, and turn it into a scene? So, in my book, it’s not even events that occur, it’s more like scenes that dramatize a continuing state of being.

That’s my experience of reading it too, that it’s an emotional journey. It’s a very deep, quiet, but incredibly engaging, emotional journey.

The other thing that I’ve been dying to talk to you about is—well, when I first started practicing yoga, I was having this mid-twenties anxiety meltdown, and I just needed—

Your quarter-life crises?

Yeah! Why don’t they warn you about that?

I don’t know—I was just talking to someone about this. Terrible.

It was really rough for me, in a way that I had never experienced before, and when I was going through it, all these people who were older than me were all like, “Oh yeah…how old are you? Oh, yeah, I’ve had that.”

Right, but it’s one of those things, like so many things in life, that you sort of forget about as an older person. You go, oh my twenties were so fun, and you sort of forget the, oh my god I didn’t know who the hell I was and it was awful and super stressful…

Yeah, so my then-boyfriend, now-fiancé was like, just go to a yoga studio—at that point I was doing yoga like once a week with a tape—so he said just go every day. Just do something physical everyday.

Wow, what an excellent then-boyfriend, now-fiancé.

Yeah, he’s very good. So, I found this studio in New York, which was a Vinyasa studio, and it was very—wild, great music, creative movement. Very devotional and lovely. At that time in my life it was exactly what I needed. I just needed to be moving ceaselessly for an hour and a half. But now several years later, I’m in a completely different place—my practice has really slowed down. And there is that section in the book where you talk about finding Vinyasa and you were like, “Yeah! I’m just gonna move and do lots of crazy shit and I'm gonna be so good!”

Yeah, I’m gonna be SO good. God.

I would just love to hear about—where is your practice now, in terms of that, and how has it evolved?

Well—I moved to this godforsaken island, and there was a lot less yoga on it. I mean, I was coming from Boulder, where—the wheat has truly been separated from the chaff. There’s so many truly great teachers there. And I got to Bainbridge, and it wasn’t just that there were no great teachers, there were no teachers. So I was like okay, I guess I’ll go to the gym. I couldn’t find any yoga. And I ended up doing some kind of yoga with the old folks from the senior center—I couldn’t find a class. Which was fine, but I was also trying to write the book so there was this weird thing happening where I wasn’t doing any yoga while I was writing the book and that was super depressing.

But then I found Jen, who I mentioned at the end of the book, who was a woman that I went to high school with who teaches a hot yoga Vinyasa style class here on the island, and it’s very physical. And there’s a lot of sort of—alpha mom types who take her class, and that’s not at all her fault. She doesn’t teach it in that way, it just happens that there’s a lot of Type A personalities on this island and she teaches a very difficult class, so they all go and try to kick each other’s ass.

So I started taking from her, just because she’s a brilliant teacher and she was the only one—that’s what there was. There was Jen’s class. So it was a really interesting experience to try to go to this class that was very difficult, it’s hot yoga, it’s Vinyasa, it’s super difficult—and how do I keep from getting back into that trap, while I’m at this class? And I was noticing that she would—if the ladies were starting to get competitive with each other, I would notice that she would start just making us jump up and down in the air, like: I will break you. I will make you be humbled before this practice, and not try to show off for each other. She’s a really special teacher. So I feel like I had this really cool gift of getting to do that kind of practice, but without the, "RAWRR! Go for it!" attitude.

But, a month and a half ago, I was exhausted from being on book tour—which was so great, even to get to go on book tour, let alone be exhausted from it—and I fell down my basement stairs.

Oh no!

And dislocated my shoulder. Brutally. Like really, really, really bad. So I’m not doing yoga at all right now. And I think in a way it’s been really nice for me, because my yoga has become just a little bit professionalized through the experience of doing this book—it’s sort of nice to get a little space from it.

That’s an interesting thing, with things that you love—

Right, you do everything you can to make them your job and then they’re—you’ve killed them.

Right! You’re like “oh, I want this to be a bigger and bigger part of my life!” and then it gets to be a certain size in your life and you’re like, oh god—this again!?

It’s so true.

My yoga has become more and more professionalized in the last year or so, too—now that I’m teaching and writing a lot more and that’s great, but I’ve really had to give myself a break about, what is my practice? Is it just the physical practice, or—what else composes my practice right now? That can be a challenge, though, all by itself—going back to that “perfectionist” thing. It can be a challenge to say, okay, I need a break from this for a day or a week or whatever it is.

Right, and then the fear of—am I still going to be good at it? How is that going to work out?

I read this thing recently—I hope I didn’t read it in your book! I don’t think so. But I wouldn’t put it past me to quote you your own book! But I read this thing—someone said—Krishnamacharya or some old yogi said, that the poses are designed to be more and more humbling, the more advanced your practice gets.

That’s interesting. I was just talking to a teacher about that yesterday.

About it getting harder as you get more advanced?

And that weird thing where—in our culture the idea that physical and spiritual advancement would go hand-in-hand is a really weird idea. That’s something that is very mysterious about yoga. But in fact, it’s the case. Right? You become more spiritually advanced because you’re spending more time doing it. And I think also there is something in the physical practice that is spiritual.

I think so too. I’m stealing this idea from someone else, but I think that part of what it is, is that your body is always present. The physical form of your body is not able to, via the laws of physics, exist in either the past or the future. So I think just the simple act of getting your attention in your body, grounds you in the present moment. And that is, I think, an undeniably spiritual experience.

It’s not something that I think people necessarily—I don’t think that you have to accept that idea in order to benefit from it.

No! No, you don’t. That’s the magic thing about it. People go for all kinds of wacky reasons, and then they end up, if they keep at it—they end up—something changes. It just does.

Yes, something changes. That’s the phrase that keeps coming up: something’s changing, something’s changed in me.

There's a section in the book where you talk about your teacher who encouraged you to “husband your gaze”—I love that so much! Who uses the word “husband” in that way?

It’s so great!

I was talking to a friend about this today—we were just talking about career angst—but this idea of, how do you train yourself to keep your eyes with you. How do you train yourself to keep your focus on where you’re at. On your path.

Oh god, I’m so struggling with this right now.

You are?

It has to do with writing. I’ve been doing so much support for the book, and there’s a lot of feedback that’s coming back, and—you can’t write like that. You can’t write when you’re so externally focused. The only way to write is to allow things to be really small and focused. And, I’m thrilled to have all that interest, but in my case I’m trying to remind myself—okay, but don’t mistake that for work. That’s not the same thing as the work.

I think that struggle is present in so many fields. I mean, when I was acting a lot more, I would mistake all the time the publicity/marketing part of my job for actually doing my work. But you’re right…that’s not the work.

It’s part of it, you need to learn how to do all that stuff. But it’s not the work. I think everybody has their reasons that it’s difficult to do creative work. Also, when you’re starting a project, you’re not—you start small, right? You’re just rooting around in the ground, trying to find what’s interesting. And you can’t do that if you’ve got a bunch of booming crap in your head.

Oh my god, well—I’ll occasionally publish outside my blog, and I wrote an article that got a lot of attention and I found myself, instead of doing anything creative or productive, I was just obsessively refreshing, you know, to see if anybody had left comments on it.

It's the evil of the Amazon reviews! You can not read those! And it’s the same thing—commenting—no! It’s okay to interact with readers, but the anonymity of the comment board is not a reader dialogue.

No. And it’s just fanning the flames of the worst parts of anyone’s personality.

Totally. Like the crummiest egotism, but it’s not a good kind of egotism, it’s just ego-ness. That’s the pits.

The other thing I relate to in the book is this idea of perfection. What else can I do to make myself perfect? And, I was thinking about it this morning and I thought, oh yeah right, the secret is you don’t have to be perfect. And then the very next thought was: yeah, if I can just figure out how not to be perfect…then I will be perfect.

I literally was exactly having that same thought about an hour and a half ago myself. I have got to lay off myself and stop being such a nut and such a perfectionist, it’s driving me around the bend, if I could only do that—right. Again…then I would be so perfect.

And it’s so easy to feel like, okay, now I’ve found this thing. Now I’ve found this thing that makes me a better person, that whatever—if I can just master this thing or even this pose, then I will be just a little closer to this ideal thing.

A little bit closer to that spot.


***

Claire Dederer's bestselling memoir, Poser; My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, is out now.

Claire is a longtime contributor to The New York Times.  Her articles have appeared in Vogue, Real Simple, The Nation, New York, Yoga Jornal, on Slate and Salon, and in newspapers across the country.  Her writing has encompassed criticism, reporting, and the personal essay.

Claire's essays have appeared in the anthologies Money Changes Everything (edited by Elissa Schappell and Jenny Offill) and Heavy Rotation (edited by Peter Terzian).

Before becoming a freelance journalist, she was the chief film critic at Seattle Weekly.

With her husband, Bruce Barcott, Claire has co-taught writing at the University of Washington.  She currently works with private students.

A proud fourth-generation Seattle native, Claire lives on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound with her family.

Russell Brand, Unlikely Spiritualist...

Okay, I'm not one to throw podcast links willy-nilly on to my blog, but this interview with Russell Brand had me just tremblin' in me little socks, it did!

I think he says some pretty incredible (and hilarious) stuff in this interview, so listen if you have a spare 28 minutes...

Listen to this!!

This is why I love Seane Corn.

Seriously, you will not regret it. I've listened to this interview 3 times, and I can not get enough of it. You have two options on the page, the edited (1 hour) and the unedited (1.5 hour) interview. I really dig Krista Tippett, the host, and for anyone who is artistically and/or spiritually minded, the archives of this show are a totally invaluable resource.