THIS happened...

(her name is Roma Bloom, and she is the best baby that ever was)...

So, because of that, there's not a lot of THIS happening...

But, I will be back, and when I am, there will be some of THIS happening...

Which will mean, probably a little less THIS...

And a little more THIS...

With maybe a bit of THIS...

And definitely some more of THIS...

So, stay tuned!...

Expanding in All Directions...

(This is the universe.  It is also expanding.)

Let me just say this...my man is out of town, I'm on the couch drinking wine and eating crackers, and on in the background is a reality show about someone named Aubrey. Who is this Aubrey? I have no idea. But something about the ting-y reality television sound is making me feel less lonely. Oh, and you. You, too, are making me feel less lonely...

Save me, Shanti-towners!

Okay, so there's this interesting thing that's happened--this becoming a teacher thing--which has, for me, taken my attention off of my OWN practice (which used to be the obsessive subject of all of my talking and writing and exploring) and put it more firmly onto the practices of my students and the people around me.  And as my relationships with my students grow, as people return to class over and over--and actually even among those students I'm meeting for the first time--I am starting to notice distinct patterns in their practices.  This type of student pushes too hard, this one has trouble focusing, this one is just naturally graceful and has no idea, and so on and so on.  All of these archetypes of people and practices keep making themselves known.

And there is one student in particular who I've been thinking a lot about lately.  She comes religiously to my classes at the gym where I teach, and she's sweet and attentive and always in the front row, and well...I like her.  And I have watched her, over the last many weeks, take some definite steps forward in her practice.

But...she could be taking LEAPS.

Because, every time I go over to her during class, she's "in" the pose, and I think that she thinks she's fully in the pose, but if I even begin to encourage her to open more or extend more...it's like she has just MILES of room in her body that she's not even near filling.  I start to roll her shoulder back, and instead of the half-inch most people have to play with, she's got feet of openness to expand into!  This is not the case with all students.  Many people, even beginners, know how to play at their edge.  They know how to expand.  In fact, many of them (don't look at me) have the opposite problem--they OVER expand and OVER reach and need to learn to sort of shhhhhhhhhhh, soften.

But we're not talking about me--um, them.  We're talking about my lovely half-extended student to whom I find myself saying, over and over, "you have so much more space than you're giving yourself."

And each time I tell her this she smiles, her lovely shy little smile, and opens up into all this possibility she didn't know was there before (and then immediately goes back to kind of...uh...half-assing it.)

But this is the thing!  I don't think she IS half-assing it...she's obviously interested and invested and curious...she asks questions and comes to class without fail...so it's not that she's not invested, she just doesn't know what it feels like to expand.

And as I watch her and encourage her and sort of bite my fingernails secretly about how much further I feel she could go, I can't help but think about how often in my own life I do a version of this same thing--how I can just sort of stop, right at the point of comfort, and assume it's good enough.  Okay, yeah, I'm here.  Or, well, I'm here-ish.  I'm here-looking.  I seem like I'm here.  That will suffice, right? 


No, imaginary self, no it will not suffice!  I mean if I'm not expanding...if I'm not filling up my life with my FULL self, with all of my extremities and my open-heart and open-throat and closed eyes and energetic toes...then what?  Then I just stay. Exactly. Where. I. Am.

And that, honestly, is what I think is going on--maybe not with this particular student, but certainly with the pattern she is caught inside of in her practice, and that is: we assume we are still where we once were.  We assume that who we were in the past, how open or strong or revolved our body may have been in the past is STILL how open and strong and revolved it is today.  And we forget to expand.  We forget that maybe we already HAVE expanded--that maybe our boundaries, which are constantly growing and shifting, have moved a bit further out then we remember them to be--and that it is our job to continue to fill all of that delicious space.

In my own life, in this time when so many things are changing and expanding, when in certain moments I really just want the ride to slooooow down--in this crazy time, it gives me some small comfort to remember that expansion is natural.  To remember that not only is it natural, it's imperative.  Because if we're not keeping up with our own growing pulsating boundaries, then we're only half-way making the shape of the pose, the shape of our life...but not really living inside of it.

So, Shanti-towners, what I want to say to you is, as I make ready to re-fill my wine glass and hunt for something less horrifying to watch...you have so much more space then you're giving yourself.

(And I think you ought to go and fill it.)

Trying On Some New Shoes...

Alright, Shanti-towners, bidnezz first.  Yogala, the coolest new studio in Los Angeles (that's right, I said it), is off to an AMAZING start.  If you're in the LA area and you haven't checked it out...dooooo it.  Besides myself, there are a ton of great teachers there, lots of class options, a beautiful light-filled studio, and just such a lovely vibe all around.  That beautiful bhav (mood) is due to the intrinsic loveliness of Yogala's founder, Samantha Jones.  (No, not the Sex and the City character, a different Samantha Jones.)  It's impossible for a place not to end up being a reflection of it's maker, and Yogala is definitely that--just like Sam it is full of sweetness and ease and hip-young-mom awesomeness.  Can you tell I like this place?  I like this place.  Come and visit!!

Okay, onwards.

I'm back in the saddle this week, and plowing my way through more of the Erich Schiffmann book I've been reading/half-reading since Christmas.  I love this book (and many thanks to my soon to be sister-in-law for getting it for me), but it's dense, and I can't seem to do more than a few pages at a time before I have to take a break to madly scribble down the best bits.

So, this week's best bits (which I robbed for a theme for a few of my classes) were about growth, and about how uncomfortable growth can sometimes be.  He used the metaphor of a child growing out of a pair of shoes that have become too small...

"It's not reasonable for them to continue wearing their favorite shoes when they no longer fit.  You get rid of the old ones and buy a new pair. The reason you need new ones is that their feet have grown.  Growth has occurred.   Their feet grew, the shoe became too small, their foot hurt.  Pain is not an inherent part of being a foot.  Nor is it an inherent part of growth."

I can't even tell you the number of times that I have found myself repeating an old way of being or thinking, even though I know that I've grown beyond it's hold, just because it's familiar and because I can't imagine myself really no longer needing that old pair of shoes.   We have to constrict in so many ways in order to stay where we are, in order to stay static.  And it's painful. The world around us is in constant motion.  Everything is changing, all the time.

I woke up this morning, and the sky smelled different, and I knew that it was finally Spring.  Change.  And even though I wake up, and I walk into the same living room in the same apartment every morning, nothing is really the same as it was when I went to sleep.  My cells have changed, the makeup of my body and heart and mind have changed.  The air has changed.  My breath, from moment to moment, is constantly ceaselessly changing.  And yet I have--all of us have--built so many structures and patterns that we use to approximate stability.  We build routines and relationships and patterns of thought about who we are and what we're doing, so that we don't have to feel like we're just living in a cosmic soup.

And also, I think, we're all just terrified that change means pain.  That growth means loss.  I've found for myself, that even the loss of negative patterns, things I'm so grateful to be free of, still feels like loss.  My heart still pangs a little bit with every shedding. Will I be the same once this is gone?

And I watch this in classes--both with myself and with my students--because as you get to know yoga, get to know the poses and your body in them, you start to make decisions about what you can and can't do.  How far you can and can't go.  And oftentimes, even when our body has changed and strengthened and opened enough to take us farther in some pose or another, we still stick with the version of the pose that we know. 

I've had moments in a class where, for whatever reason I decided to, say, roll my top shoulder open a little more, and I realize that I have SO MUCH more space than I used to have to complete that action.  And I don't know when that change took place, but in the moment of exploration I realize how often I am just stepping into the pattern I've already established, and no further.  This is what this pose looks like for me, it's pretty good, I'm happy here.  Done.  Which is fine...for a while. But eventually that pose is going to start to get...uncomfortable.

Which is amazing, because it means that even the places in our lives where we are trying to consciously open...if we're not being sensitive to the continual changes taking place...that thing that felt at first so free, can start to feel constricted.  And not because IT changed, but because YOU changed and you forgot to go with yourself.

So maybe, just maybe, if you're feeling constricted in some way--in your body or your heart or your mind--maybe it's not about something being wrong with you or your life.  Maybe it's just that you've changed, you've grown, and you've got this new version of yourself sort of...waiting.  Just waiting for you to step into yourself.  And maybe that stepping in, that stepping forward, maybe it's not a painful process at all.  Maybe it's the simplest thing in the world, and once you do it, once you slip into that new appropriately-sized pair of shoes, you'll realize that all the discomfort has been left behind.

Maybe...