Ch-Ch-Ch-Choices...

to see this photo in all its glory, go here.

I walked two miles the other day to get to a yoga class, as our car is in the shop and we're not getting a rental for a couple days...I wasn't going to do it, but I looked on the schedule and one of my favorite teachers was unexpectedly teaching a long class, so I put on my walkin' shoes and went on my merry way.

Let me just say, having recently experienced a walk across all of Los Angeles and now this mini walk from my house to my yoga studio--LA is NOT built for walkers.  It's just not.  There are crosswalks that span six lane intersections that give you 20 seconds to cross the street, there are big chunks of roadway with sidewalks only on one side of the street, there are pedestrian lights that never change...it's a sucky place to try and be a walker.  I was so annoyed at one point during my walk yesterday that I started writing an angry letter to the city in my head, though luckily I stopped myself halfway through the composition of it with visions of myself old and angry and taking it out on a typewriter in a dark room somewhere, "Letter to the Editor: I hate everything.  Love, Lia."

(The above falls into the coveted category of My. Worst. Nightmares.)

Anyhow, I get to the studio and my aforementioned favorite teacher, for whom I just walked two miles (two and a quarter if you count all the stupid detours I had to make to stay on actual sidewalks) WASN'T THERE!! Argh!! I was tempted, people, though I have railed against it in the past, I was tempted not to go.  But there was no way I was making that walk for nothing!

So, I went.

And let me say this...the sub was really lovely, a newer teacher but great, really passionate and sweet and welcoming, but for whatever reason I was just...not in the mood.

I wanted something familiar, I wanted the teacher I expected, I wanted to be able to sort of disappear into the class instead of, as it can happen with subs, to help hold up the class with them.  And I found that all through class I was sort of fighting myself, going off into these long deep spirals of thought and then swimming my way back to the surface again, coming up just long enough to get some air, to be in the room, and then diving back down.  And every so often I would think to myself...get in the room, Lia, just be in the room.

And for just a moment I would acknowledge the sanity of that--yes, I will probably feel better/be happier/move more deftly if I just decide to be where I am.  But, I just...couldn't.

Or, rather...I WOULDN'T.

Because I DO have a choice.  I know that now in ways I once did not.  I do have a choice.  Even when I feel like I am rotten and everything else is rotten and there's no way I could ever see anything as anything other than rotten...I know that I can.  I know that it's my choice whether I drop it or hold on tight.  It's my choice whether I indulge and dwell or whether I breathe and release.  It's my choice--and it was my choice in that moment--to either place my full attention on my body and my breath and the class in front of me, or to keep it where it was, deep in the muck.

Even to stay stuck is a choice--it's a sucky choice, most likely almost always for sure most definitely the WRONG choice...but it's a choice.  And I think what can be difficult is that, in those moments of choice, in those moment-to-moment how am I going to choose to walk through the world today choices, we are totally alone.  We are the final arbiter.  The big decision maker.  And there is no one or no thing on the outside that is ever going to be able to make that choice for us. And so sometimes it can be scary...to choose freedom, presence, happiness...it can feel irresponsible or vulnerable or somehow untethered.

But I am here to tell you, Shanti Towners, it's not.  And I am officially giving you my utter and full permission to make the right choice, the one that makes you breathe a sigh of relief...the one that sends thrills of peace down your backbone...I promise it will all be okay.

Sub-a-dub-dub

 So, there have been a lot of teacher absences at my studio lately, and due to that, there has been a whole lot of THIS lately:

Student walks in to yoga studio, yoga duds on, mat on shoulder, picks up pen, begins to sign in and then stops, abruptly:

Student: "Oh, (insert name of favorite teacher here) isn't teaching?"

Front Desk Worker: "No she's (insert sick/traveling/some other plausible teacher absence excuse here). (Insert name of substitute teacher here) is teaching instead."

Student. "Oh." Puts down pen. "I didn't know."

And then said student turns around and WALKS OUT of studio.

This, people, happens all the time.

I get it, that we develop relationships with teachers and favorite teachers and that when we're bopping our little way to class we're imagining the familiar and beloved teaching style of aforementioned favorite teacher and it can be a big bummer to show up and find out that someone else is teaching. Especially if you don't know the sub or double-especially if you're in some kind of mood that is desperate for the teaching wizardry of your favorite and familiar teach. But, seriously, come on, you're going to LEAVE?! I mean, you've got your yoga pants on! You drove here! You have the hour and a half free!! You have your yoga pants ON! (I know I already said that, it seemed worth mentioning twice...)

I have also seen the faces of substitute teachers to whom this has happened and it's a tiny bit heartbreaking...class sizes shrink down to nothing all because no one knows who you are. And students can be downright insensitive of this whole transaction, making faces and sizing up said unknown subby-dub-dub with a cold, "do I like this" impersonality.

I witnessed one of these substitute-teacher-ditchers the other day and the girl working the front desk at the studio and I shared a moment after said student exited the studio (yoga pants on)...we both see it all the time and are equally confused by it.

"When I feel that way," she said, "that's when I feel like I really have to use my Yoga."

(I love this! As if yoga is like "the force"!)

But she was right...of course you're going to feel that way, at least on certain days--I don't know this person, I don't want to take from this person, but at some point you have to look at that resistance with some curiousity and say, okay, maybe this is EXACTLY the moment to take from someone new. This is the moment to Use My Yoga. Because honestly, part of what happens when you take from a new teacher is that you have to pay a different kind of attention, you may have to deal with whatever feelings you have about proving yourself or hiding away, and you might have to try some stuff you don't like--all very fertile yogic learning opportunities. And it's possible it will ALL be stuff you don't like. I've had those experiences, where I show up and take from a new person and for whatever reason the teaching just does not jive with me...and even though it's aggravating, those are also the moments in which I learn the most. Because I get grumpy and I disappear from my practice and then my mat becomes a deeper training ground for bringing myself back to myself, even in the midst of the grumps.

The familiar is lovely, it is...especially if it's a well-loved familiar, but the willingness to try something for which we will not know the outcome is so vital. It's so easy to accidentally make our lives small--to build it full of prescriptions and safe, known, choices--that I think sometimes we have to just push ourselves into that uncomfortable moment and say, "okay...let me see how this goes...". Maybe this is reading too much into what might seem like a simple choice, but I think that the great gift of the yoga practice is that all of these choices DO mean something...and if you take it seriously, then that uncomfortable "this isn't what I wanted" moment can be a place of learning, and an opportunity to shift.

So, ladies and gents, next time you show up to class and see a name you don't know on top of the sign-in sheet...go anyways. The sub will thank you...and so will you.


xo,
YogaLia