This could be me...

Early this week, after missing all viable morning classes at Still, I went with a dear friend (and neighbor) of mine, to a studio in our neighborhood...a studio that I had never been to, but which she (the dear friend and neighbor) had been to many times, and had more than once tried to get me to go to with her. On this particular morning it was a spur of the moment "Are you going?" "I'll go too!" "Class starts in 15 minutes!" kind of situation, and she assured me that although she'd never herself taken from this teacher, she loved the studio and was sure it would be good.

WEEEEeeeeeell.

I am tempted to list here all the reasons that the class was not, um, shall we say...suited for me. I am tempted to talk about how chilly the studio was, about how the teacher didn't even talk to us before getting us moving, which for some reason really upsets me...I NEED to sit quietly and be "introduced" to class. Even though I have taken THOUSANDS of yoga classes, I need it. I need the teacher to hold my hand as I walk out of busy-busy activity world into quiet bliss-y yoga world. I need her (or him) to tell me who she is! (Or who he is.) I need her to tell me something about SOMETHING so that I feel I've arrived and am actually sharing an experience with someone or something other than the inside of my own head!! There was none of that. I am tempted to talk about how the class was basically some kind of glorified "abs and thighs" workout even though it was listed as a "flow" class. I am tempted to talk about how she taught forearm stand wrong. Yes, people. Wrong. And, I can say that because I know everything*. About everything**. I am tempted to talk about how her voice was too whispery and the sequencing was all funky and how I didn't even get to put my mat down next to my friend and how I was actually preoccupied the whole class with whether or not I had left the headlights on in my car in the parking lot as I've been sort of forgetful about things like that lately and wouldn't that just be the way!? But...I am not going to talk about all that.

(* okay, this part is just snarky. I'm sure she taught it perfectly correct. I'm just used to doing it another way and by that point in the class I had already decided I hated everything, so...
** I do not know everything about everything. In fact, the older I get the more I come to realize I actually know a very small amount about a small number of things. )

Instead, I am going to talk about being hate-y. (I'll-timed, I know, what with all the suffering going on in Haiti at the moment--no connection to this post--other than the one that shines a light on how NOT TRAGIC a bad yoga class is...)

Because that is what I was during that class...super duper ultra hate-y.

I was so hate-y, that at the most particularly hate-y parts of class it was all I could do to not chant "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you" in a sing-songy voice in my head.

(Okay, I actually DID do that. And I'm a little embarrassed about it.)

Did I think being full of hate-y-ness was accomplishing anything? Did I think it was making my practice better or making the class les...hate-y? Nooooooo. I did not. But, man it felt good. And I would like to say that I was so full of all this self-satisfied hate-y-ness because the teacher and the class were truly bad (like the class my friend Shelley took where the teacher ripped the block away from her and said, "blocks are for old people and injured people!" Now, THAT is a class that deserves some "I hate you" chanting!) But, this was not like that. In fact, I'm sure this teacher is perfectly lovely and talented. I'm sure she has students who adore her and recommend her to all her friends. Which I knew, even in the midst of all my hatey-ness...I knew that she wasn't some monstrosity of a teacher, and so at a certain point I had to ask myself, "WHY are you so angry at this class?" And when I really got down to it, when I was really honest with myself, the answer was undeniable...

That class was HARD.

Not like, hard as in lots of difficult yoga poses. HARD as in so many core exercises and quad-holdy things that my entire body was shaking...noticeably shaking (convulsing?)...in dolphin pose. So hard that I--and I pride myself on almost NEVER doing this--I had to come out of poses early and at one point I even considered retreating into (gasp!) childspose. So hard that I had to will myself with every ounce of energy in me to just...keep...going.

And it made me feel like a wimp.
And it made me feel...out of shape.
And it made me feel average.
And it made me feel so very, very angry.

And, yes, it was not the kind of class I like, and yes, I probably wouldn't have liked it even if it was only moderately taxing and not I'm-going-to-vomit-if-you-make-me-do-one-more-sit-up kind of taxing, but still...I was not responding with a normal amount of "oh this isn't for me" kind of aggravation. I was responding with hatey-ness. And that is what tipped me off. Hate. Hate hate hate hate hate...because I was being asked to do something that I was not comfortable with. I was being asked to do something that made me feel unsure...like a beginner...ill-equipped, and I, with every fiber of my being, did not want to feel that way.

It made me think about the actors I've worked with who like to walk all over fledgling directors...the ones who are convinced that there is NOTHING someone new or different could possibly teach them about making a play...and about how ridiculous they seem. And how stuck. And how closed.

And how...hate-y.

I'm sorry, teacher whose name I don't know! I'm sorry for being such a grumpy hatey yogi in your class! I'm sorry I didn't even give you the opportunity to teach me anything. I'm sorry I was so closed and so wrapped up in my own "I usually do it better than this" attitude...I bet you had something to offer me and now I'll never ever get that something back. I hope you use me in a yoga analogy in the future...just please don't use my real name...

Yours,

YogaLia

Rest In Your Heart...

I want to talk a little bit about...Resting

This is new territory for me here, people, so just go with me on this one...

Resting is not something I'm very good at. Oh, I don't mean laying on the couch watching tv kind of resting. That kind of resting I am VERY good at. And I don't mean cuddling with my mister and spending too long in bed kind of resting...also, very good at. I'm talking about the kind of resting that can happen at any moment any time and can (and should) last all day kind of resting. I'm talking about the kind of resting that prompts a totally spontaneous and giant sigh of relief. I'm talking about the kind of resting that makes the space of your chest all melty--the kind that makes your mind s - l - o - o - o - o - w d - o - w - n and communicates this slowed-down-ness to the rest of your body in waves of pleasure.

That kind of resting, I am not very good at. Or so I have discovered.

I came to this revelation during a recent class in which the teacher (the excellent and supremely talented Gina Zimmerman--look her up at Still Yoga, people!) started the class by talking about how there are people in the world who are seeking, endlessly thinking that they have to go to this class, or this lecture, or this book, or this healer to find their answers, and that maybe this isn't the most efficient way to live one's life. As soon as she started talking my little ears started to blush. (And when I say little ears, I mean it...my ears are weirdly too small for my head...but that's another post altogether).

Though I'm not yet going to "healers" (or, at least...not very often. heh.) I immediately recognized myself in her description of the endlessly seeking. I thought about how often when I am in a pickle of some kind I immediately think, "well, I have to call s0-and-so" or "I have to do such-and-such" or "if only I could do that thing that that book told me to do...what was that again?" And while I know the act of seeking in and of itself is not BAD, I could feel, in that instant, as I was listening to her, that the energy of seeking is very out and very forward and very fast-moving. I picture myself with my eyebrows raised, and my chin jutted forward and my hands a-flapping the air when I'm in that state. The "I need help from ______" state of mind.

And then she said something that has stayed with me, looping around my head and body, every day since. She asked us if we could just "rest in the heart."

That's it. So simple. Rest in the Heart.

But as she said it I knew, viscerally...CELLULARY, exactly what she meant. I could feel all of that forward eyebrow-raised energy sinking down down down into the center of my chest. I felt my butt plant more firmly to the ground. I felt my breath change. I felt myself--backing off. And I felt that spontaneous and giant sigh of relief. I think I might have even heard some tiny voice inside me utter a long-held and breathless, "finally!" And I thought, my god, do I really NEVER do this?

I have been in a phase for...don't ask me how long, actually...a phase of gathering information and amending behavior, asking advice and refining amendments...gathering, amending, asking, refining, gathering, amending, asking, refining, and feeling at times unbearably frustrated at the dearth of questions and tiny trickle of answers I felt I was getting. And then, in an instant, with that one little instruction: Rest In Your Heart, I felt it all start to change ("finally!"). Not because I was flooded with answers or because some great mystery was revealed to me but because, for the first time in I don't know how long, I was RESTING. And I could listen to instructions and move my body and participate and laugh and fall down and worry and fantasize and all of it from this place of rest.

I don't know how to describe what it feels like, to rest there. Or at least...not what it might feel like to you. To me it feels like sitting in a little hut with soft walls. I think it might be pink in there. It is definitely quiet...and for a little hut, it's spacious...like the sky is in there with me. Try it if you want...take a second, stop what you're doing, look away from this screen or don't, and ask yourself, whisper it, demand it, whatever...just try to feel what it feels like to Rest all that activity inside. You might find, like I did, that you are moving a lot more and a lot faster than you thought you were, and the rest might just do you some good...

That's all for now...

I love you, Shanti-towners!!


xo
YogaLia

Comings and Goings...

Happy 2010 Shanti-Town-ers!!

Twwwweeeeeeeeeeee!! (that's the sound of me blowing one of those new year's noisemakers.)

What kind of cra-zay New Year's did this yogini have? Weeeeell, after a 10 hour cross-country flight, an amazing (and much deserved) Indian dinner, several glasses of wine and a rousing game of "Hamburger, Hotdog" (a little like the game "celebrity" but with less rules)...this little monkey was crawling into bed around 11:45pm and not feeling the least bit guilty about it. The moon was full and blue, and I slept soundly, KNOWING that 2010 is going to be par excellente. More on the special numerology of 2010 later...for now, some stories of my travels.

Many of you may know that I spent the Christmas holiday in New York. Beloved New York. I've not been back since we came out to LA in March and I had been longing for every little bit and bauble of the city--especially at Christmas. I don't think there's a better place on earth at Christmas time than New York, if you're a Christmas junkie like I am. AND, I will admit it, I was particularly excited to get to practice once again at my dearly missed Laughing Lotus. I was practically salivating with desire just thinking about getting in that elevator, walking down that hallway, and doing the strange dance required in the tiny coat room when trying to remove boots and hats and coats amongst all the other yog-sters, coming and going.

Ladies and gents, we flew a red-eye from LA to New York, slept in our precious bed for a few hours and by 5pm that day I was in that elevator on my way up to the warm, radiator-clanking joy of the Lotus.

Even Mr. X was there! Grumpy as ever!

Betsy was teaching, one of my favorite teachers there, and she greeted me with a warm hug and a quick update as to her goings on when I arrived. I was both excited and scared about the possibility of walking into the studio and either A. seeing a bunch of people I knew and having to tell my travel story over and over or B. not seeing many people I knew, but expecting to, and feeling like an embarrassed stranger in my old studio.

It was a bit closer to B, than A.

The girls at the front desk were new (and one of them was a little snarky, in that yoga front desk way), and for the most part I only recognized a few of the students there. But Betsy was teaching, the studio was buzzing and as soon as the music started and my body got to follow along I was in HEAVEN. I was lucky enough to practice next to a lovely guy (who looked a little like Baron Baptiste...bandana and all) who had a very deep, graceful practice, and after class we thanked each other for the good vibes that come from being neighbors with somebody who is lit up. (Lit up as in drunk on yoga...) And I was FLYING after class. I'm in New York! I'm at Laughing Lotus! I'm drinking post yoga hot chocolate from City Bakery with my baby...life is goooood.

Next class was with Ali, another of my very favorites, and she made my year (what was left of it) when she sidled up to me halfway through class, during some vigorous set of standing poses, and told me how good it was to see me. I could have planted the flag right then. That's it--I'm staying! Screw this career nonsense...I'm going to wear an entirely Lulu Lemon inspired wardrobe and stay Right Here.

After this class, also...flying. Soaring. And, also...something else. A bit.... Um. Vaguely...just a teensy weensy little bit...dissatisfied.

I had this fear that after so many months of intense alignment work of the kind I'd been doing in LA, that going back to the quick and rigorous flow practice at Laughing Lotus would sort of...kick my ass. I worried that I wouldn't have the mojo any more for the fast stuff and that I would prove myself to be weaker and less resilient in my practice than I was before I left. But the funny thing is, the opposite actually seemed to be true. The practice at Laughing Lotus was flying by and at the end I didn't feel winded or sweaty or even...done. And I felt myself longing for some more complicated standing poses...for deeper hip openers and handstands! Where were the handstands? Not that they don't do handstands at Laughing Lotus, they do...and not that the classes I was taking there weren't great...they were! Amazing! As always. Betsy and Ali are two of the best teachers I've ever taken from, and Laughing Lotus I still firmly believe is the best yoga studio in New York, but having been away made me see that something had changed...me.

Was I, gulp, missing my LA practice? Yes, I guess I was. But it was something bigger than that even...I began to realize, as I lept back into my former practice, that the work I have been doing at Still has made my practice infinitely better. I could feel it. I was stronger, I was better aligned, I was using my body and my breath more efficiently during practice and I was able to do so much more now, even in the faster more free-form version of the practice, than I could before I left.

And as my week in NYC progressed, every time I walked out of a class I found myself feeling very grateful to Still and my teachers there. I began to feel so blessed that I had found that studio so quickly upon arriving in LA. I felt so grateful for being welcomed into the studio as a whole...for the support and encouragement of all the teachers there, for Erika, the owner of the studio, who has let me dive into a work-study position there...and I realized that Still has become as much of a home to me in LA as Laughing Lotus has been in New York.

On our last day in Brooklyn, as we were starting to pack for the flight home, I began to fantasize about the quiet incense-scented air at Still, the long hallway to the studio in the back, about Hagar and Maria Christina and Tony and Tara and Gina and all the other teachers there whom I have come to love, the classes that start a little late and end a little late and go deep deep deep into silence...

And I could not wait to get back.

More on the Organ Body...

(p.s. doesn't this look like a tree? and a dancing gumby? sigh...)


I told you I'd be back for more...

I have to first give a little shout-out of gratitude to the amazing Tara Judelle, my teacher, who has been leading me and several others deep into this study of the organ body. Other than being a pretty glorious teacher, she has a mind and a focus that is so rigorous it makes me feel a little shy, just to be in the room with her. She's like a pioneer in the back-country of yoga right now and I am just happy to be hitched to her wagon (is that a mixed-metaphor? Did pioneers drive wagons through the back country? I really don't know...).

And as an apt preface I will say that my knowledge of the geography of my inner body is much like my knowledge of geography in general and that is...very, very poor.

I can best Sarah Palin, I'm sure, but the intricacies of my knowledge of the earth's arrangement stop at the very basics. I know the continents, the oceans, the general location of the countries within, but if anyone starts getting too specific I just kind of have to shut up. So as not to embarrass myself.

Same goes for American history, actually.

And my sense of direction....

But, that's all another story. I only preface my talk of the organ body this way to excuse any "revelations" I might have that are or may seem totally dully obvious to my more educated readers. Many of the people I am going on this little organ journey with are much more sensitively attuned than I am. Tara can actually FEEL and communicate with organs as mysterious as her gall bladder. I am just happy to have actually learned WHERE my kidneys are and to finally, finally, finally, after god knows how many acting classes and 16 straight weeks of Linklater training last year to finally FINALLY understand how my diaphragm works! I kid you not, that sucker has always been a total aggravation to me. Wait, what, it's like a parachute? Beneath my lungs there is a parachute that goes up and down in the wrong direction? You may as well have told me that the parachute is operated by a circle of little school children, waving it up and down...the image would have made as much sense.

So, while I am not yet able to communicate with (or even locate) my gallbladder, I am thorougly and happily amazed with what I HAVE been able to locate. My kidneys! My heart! My lungs and the little aveoli inside them, which, when counted as total surface area of the lung would make it equal to the size of a tennis court!! WHHHHAAAAAAAA?! And my brain! (Yes, the brain is an organ), and...my stomach! And my liver (kind of). In all honestly, sometimes I am just glad to be able to feel anything in there other than just a sort of general lump of space.

True confession: I think prior to this class I most often visualized the space my organs inhabit as just that...space. Seriously. Empty space. I mean, I knew I had a heart and lungs and all that, but...I don't know, I just never really thought about it.

I don't say all this so that I can ramp up into some kind of weird gross anatomy lesson, or even just to talk about the anatomy of the body as it relates to yoga and movement, but to instead talk about the way in which the idea of being "in your body" can deepen. So that, instead of walking around feeling like I am skin and bones encompassing an empty cavity where my soul resides (this is embarrassing, isn't it?) I can INSTEAD begin to think of myself as this entire collection of organs and muscles and bones that EACH and every one house my larger self...so that I'm not just a container to be filled and emptied but an entire universe of pieces ALL filled.

I won't even talk about how the organs hold memories and feelings, or how I have begun to notice where my body bears down in times of stress to cut off the flow of energy from one organ to the other, or how the organs all reach all throughout the body with veins and arteries, how the heart has arteries that end in your feet and in your hands and your head which means the heart is not just located in your chest but in your ENTIRE BODY, how the organs, like the poses, have not just practical use but also a symbolic use as well...how we might be controlled or cut off from one organ or another which is also the perfect representation of what we are cut off from in our lives...

It goes and goes people!

We have, right inside of us, RIGHT NOW, this incredible factory--a landscape of organs--and it is moving and pulsing and communicating, and sometimes, when I'm deep in there, trying to send a morse-code message to my liver or one of my two funny kidneys I realize that when I am living there, when I am breathing into all these spaces and listening for the echo-call of delight in return, there is no room for any of the things which keep me seperated from myself to begin with.

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...

Organ Body Bright

For the last few weeks, in one of my quickly-becoming-a-favorite classes at Still, we have been guided (by the complex-thinker/former-filmmaker/kick-ass-yoga-teacher Tara Judelle) through the Organ Body.

I have been both longing to write this post and avoiding this post with all my might, since said beginning of said journey through the organs.

Let me preface this by saying 1) this is probably just one of many posts on this subject and 2) i am reluctant to write because before beginning this little dive into inner-space I knew exactly jack-squat about the shape, placement and purpose of my organs (save the stuff everyone knows, like my heart beats and my lungs inflate and my diaphragm does...something) and now at the close of week 3 of study I know approximately jack about the organs. Which, I have decided, is the next step up from jack-squat. Progress!

However, I am convinced that my jack-knowing self may possibly be a welcome tour-guide for those of you out there who also feel a bit--unacquainted with the insides of their torso.

The premise of the classes, for those who are still stuck on what the hell the Organ Body has been that (and hopefully my teacher will forgive me for possibly butchering her sentiments)--it is possible to:

1) become intimately acquainted with the organs, and

2) to then be able to MOVE--to generate movement--from the organs.

I know, right!?

At the close of the first class I was convinced that the only organ I was becoming more intimately acquainted with was my frustration organ (located, I believe, right between the ears?)...as my apparently woeful elementary and high-school anatomy education reared it's ugly head.

What the heck is a Zyphoid Process?!

Who actually KNOWS where their kidneys are? (Not to mention spleen, liver, pancreas, gall-bladder, etc.)

People, I kid you not, I did not even know that the heart actually sits between the lungs (like a cookie buried in a couple couch cushions)...I'm not sure where I thought it was.... I think I had just never thought about it at all.

And this was the thing that began to slowly Bloooooooow My Miiiiiiiind. I had Never. Thought. About it.

Any of you who have taken a yoga class or a meditation class or read an Eckhart Tolle book know that there is such a thing as an "inner body". This is something that is referenced all the time in yoga philosophy (perhaps with different names), but it is also a bit of a pop-new-age-spiritual-culture phenomenon. Your "gut", your "inner voice", your "heart center", your "spirit"...whatever it is that is contained WITHIN the magical spaces between your skin....this is your inner body.

I have done a lot of thinking about this space. I have meditated on this space. I have attempted to "check in" with this space in times of trouble. Over the course of my practice, I would say I have begun to consider myself a person with a pretty strong connection to that inner space...and certainly to my own heart. My god, it's actually one of the things which DEFINES how I think about myself, I am "big hearted", I am "heart driven", I "wear my heart on my sleeve", and yet always (always always always) in these conceptualizations about my Inner Self, I have never (never never never) stopped to ask myself what the actual physical construction of that space might be.

I guess I have always just pictured it as some bright amorphous blob.

("I shall be guided, not by my mind, but by my bright amorphous blob." That seems trustworthy...)

And so, to be asked to put a name and a face to this space...to be asked to feel these various parts, either from the outside with my hands or ribs, or from the inside with my sensory perception, really made my head spin.

Because what began as an amorphous blob...my Zyphoid what?...quickly began to fill in. My lungs--they're enormous! My liver...it feels different than my stomach or my kidneys...my kidneys! Crazy moveable kidneys...who knew!

And on, and on....

This is, I think, the sort of "teaser" blog post for this chapter of study, because something vital (no pun intended) will be left out if I try to cover all that I've learned in the past few weeks in this one post. But there is an image I am going to leave you with:

It was last week that we began really talking about the heart. Now, beginning to feel and think about my heart as an actual organ instead of just generally the space of my chest was powerful--what a vulnerable machine--all pink-fleshed and pulsating right there in my chest cavity. Yikes! That's about as far as I can go before I get the heebie-jeebies..... But, what was possibly more profound and definitely more beautiful, is the idea that the heart is tucked between the two lungs, because...

If the heart is tucked between the two lungs, it means it has an intimate relationship to my breath...

If the heart is tucked between the two lungs it means it is quite literally protected and housed by my breath...

If the heart is tucked between the two lungs, I could imagine how slow rythmic breathing could soothe and caress the heart, while sharp erratic breathing could be an instant sign to the heart to speed up and be aware. Not because the breath (as I may have imagined before) travels down some tube whcih then alerts the other systems to speed up or slow down (like a snorkel?!), but because the heart and lungs are literally feeling each other. Communicating with each other...

Sigh! Ain't that beautiful?



xo
YogaLia

My First Yoga Mag!

(Well, okay, it's the Kripalu catalog...but still!!)