Doot-doot-doo-doooooooo....

(that was "here comes the bride", in case you don't read type-humming)

Alright, ladies and gentlemen of Shanti Town...it's time.  I am officially signing off until after my nuptials and post-nuptial-vacation (otherwise known as a honeymoon).  I can't fake it anymore...I have NOTHING else on my mind.  So, it's really better if I start the blog-cation now, and not keep anyone clicking around any longer.

I hope that while I'm away you'll check out this book, maybe amuse yourself at this amazing blog, maybe catch up on some episodes of any of my three favorite podcasts.  If I'm really lucky you'll hang out in my archives and catch up on some Shanti Town's of the past...but whatever you do, I hope you'll still be here when I get back.

I'm so touched that any of you are here and reading and commenting in the first place...it means so much to me, and I promise that when I return there will be more posting.  You'll have to let me know if the writing gets better or worse once I'm just another married lady!

I'm so excited, I can barely stand it.  I promise to share stories and pictures and all kinds of things upon my return.

Until then...namaste, y'all.

xoxo
YogaLia

Not Your Grandma's Props

It's a rare moment of quiet here at the ol' homestead...I'm in between classes and errands (like a trip to the makeup counter at Nordstrom where I will try not to reveal myself to be the clueless galumph that I am when it comes to all things cosmetics)...and I'm happy to have a moment to sit and write and sip at some overly-hot green tea.

(No, I have not successfully given up coffee...but I'm now down to one soy latte every-other day.  Pretty much.  They're so goooooooood.  And I'm not drinking any wiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.)

Aren't I allowed?  I'm allowed.

Anyhow, I want to talk props, people.  Not the movie-set variety, but the foam blocks and straps variety, and specifically why they are awesome and more specifically, why more people should know that they are awesome and actually start using them.

Some people are really good about this...some people dutifully grab an armful of blocks and blankets and straps before setting up for class and are quick to slide them underneath errant hands and feet when necessary.  These people are happy when using their props.  These people are usually not trying to win the yoga class, and so it is no great bruise to their ego if they occasionally need a little square foam help.

But not everyone is so, ahem, flexible.

The other night I was teaching a class in which there were several older men (60's?), some of them I knew, some of them I didn't, and all of them had obviously done yoga before...a couple of them seemed like they had probably been doing yoga for years and so their practices were pretty strong.  They were not, however, completely free from physical limitations.  (Who is?!)  And while one or two were doing a good job of taking care of themselves, there were a couple others--men who obviously knew each other, men who (it seemed) had something to prove to one another--who were not interested in this wimpy "taking care of yourself" business.  There was no resting for these fellows, no vinyasa skipping, no childspose-ing...just tight-jawed huffing and puffing their way into and out of poses.

Okay, fine.  Cool.  That's not my lesson to teach anyone.  I mean, god knows when I first started practicing I was just constantly trying to climb my way to the top of the class so I could earn some kind of "best student" trophy...so I knooooow from whence they come.  But there was one pose that we were doing, that involved reaching back for the foot of a bent back leg, that was just proving impossible for one of these gentlemen, and so I encouraged him to use a strap.  A strap, in this pose, would have made it not only possible, but actually ENJOYABLE.  He would have found the rolling back of his shoulder, the stretch at the front of the back thigh...but when I encouraged him to try the strap, even offering to help him set it up, his answer was a very definite:

No.

That's it.  He just looked at me and said, "NO.  No, thank you."  And then went back to aggravating himself with his out of reach foot.

And all that night and this morning I kept thinking...the poor guy doesn't know what he's missing!  He doesn't know that props are amazing, and that they will only improve a practice, that the body will actually open faster if it's supported.  No one's ever told him that.  Or they have, but someone more compelling has apparently told him that props mean you. Can't. Do. It.  And that taking a prop means admitting defeat.  And I have to admit...had this been a young woman who had so frankly refused me, I might have made it a point to say something about props to the class, about how yoga is not about successfully executing poses as much as it is just witnessing yourself attempting to execute poses...but I didn't.  Because, I don't know...I feel like you shouldn't mess with old dudes.

But it got me thinking about props in general, and about this strange stigma around them--I see it in so many students, and certainly for years I saw it in myself.  I had a student this morning who has an injury, an actual injury, and when I told her she should start using a block in triangle on that side of her body she looked absolutely crestfallen.  And I thought, well, this must be because props=help, and we can not avoid our ingrained protestant work ethic which finishes that equation as: props=help, help=failure.

And I thought about how reluctant I am, sometimes, to reach out in my own life when I need supporting.  To use my family and friends and therapist and doctors and dentists and whomever else to prop me up.  Because I don't want them to know I need it.  Because I want to do it on my own.

NO.  No, thank you.

But if it's true that the body will open more quickly if it's supported--isn't the same thing true of the heart and the mind?  Isn't this why we need our homes and our families and our friends so very, very much...because just the knowledge that they're there, just the fact that they make the ground a little steadier, allows us to take wing that much quicker?  And isn't this the really magical part of the yoga practice?  Because by gosh, if you are unwilling to even allow yourself the helping hand of a square piece of foam in a yoga class, a place where there are no real stakes whatsoever, you can bet that same pattern is resonating all over your life in other ways.  And if you missed it in your life, it's going to show up for you right there on your mat.

I just...I love that.

So, Shanti-Towners, do yourself a favor...prop yourself up.  Use whatever you've got.  Just bring the ground a little closer, and then see how much further you can reach...

Pre-Wedding Confessions

1.  This post is not going to be about yoga, please forgive me.

2.  The fiance and I have given up drinking in these few weeks before the wedding, in order to keep our heads and bodies clear.  We have also given up coffee, and even though I know that there is nothing less helpful in quieting my constantly running mental to-do list, I still keep sneaking medium soy lattes from my favorite coffee shop.  I can not help myself.

3.  Though I am teaching a bazillion classes a week, my own yoga practice is currently, well...laughable.  This week it has consisted of a few hour long sessions of rolling around on my mat while listening to NPR.  Why while listening to NPR?  Because (and here's the confession part) I am actually bribing myself to practice with promises of in-practice distraction.  Because the last thing I want to do, honestly, after a day full of public pose-wrangling...is yoga.  I may not be practicing well, but at least I am still keeping up on my Planet Money podcast.

4. Lately I find myself going into short spasms of wedding anxiety, partially because we DO have a lot to do and we DON'T have a lot of time, but also to assuage my bride-guilt for not being more upset about things that have gone wrong.  Like the woman who ran away with my dress.  And the property manager who ran away with our hay.  All stories for another time.  But, having heard from too many female friends that they would have been up nights with anxiety about my (now solved) wedding dress fiasco...I started accumulating a small amount of "I'm not worried enough about this" guilt.  Which has now manifested in several bouts of misplaced upset about things I'm maybe not actually all that upset about.  It is my tragic gift--I am unflappable about most mishaps in my concrete life (i.e. disappearing wedding dress), but often inconsolable about things in my imaginary one (i.e., why aren't I more upset about my disappeared wedding dress?!).

5.  As excited as I am for the wedding, as much as I can't wait for it to get here and also don't want it to be over as quickly as I know it will be over, I have also secretly wished, on several occasions, that we had just hauled ourselves off to a justice of the peace somewhere and gotten married all alone.  When we were first looking for venues, months ago, we ended up in conversation with a young woman running one of the Inns in Big Bear, who had recently been married herself.  Where did you get married, we asked.  In San Diego, she said.  Was it a big wedding, we asked.  No, she said, it was just us, at the courthouse.  That sounds nice, we said, did you have a reception after? No, she said, you're going to laugh--we just went to a baseball game.  We both swooned with the loveliness at the thought of it, even then.  I am doubly swooning now.

6.  One of the things they don't tell you about wedding planning is that the nearer you get to the wedding, the more time you and your other spend talking doing and fighting about all things wedding.  It is a rare meal that goes by these days that we are not to-do-ing each other to death.  It's necessary, I know.  It's temporary, I know.  But still...I can't wait to be able to go see a movie again.  With my (giggle)...husband.

7.  Even for all this, I can't listen to the song we've picked for our first dance without tearing up.  And imagining standing there with him and saying our vows?  Forget it, I'm done for.

8.  And what continues to surprise me, even after these 6+ years we've spent together, is how shockingly lucky I feel to have A. fallen in love with a man who is so good, B. somehow done enough charming somethings to convince this man that he might like to spend the rest of his life with me, and C. have made it through long enough to be standing right on the precipice of marriage to this man.  There are a lot of broken marriages in my family...all necessary and all survived...but because of this (and a myriad of other things) I never grew up with any inkling that I might be blessed with a deep, committed relationship that works and is healthy and does no harm, and so I feel extravagantly blessed these days.

9.  And as long as my recently surgery-ed tooth doesn't explode, my face doesn't break out in pre-wedding acne revenge, and/or no one locks either one of us in a closet on the blessed day, I actually think it all might go off without a hitch.

10.  Or, rather...with a hitch.  A big one.  A mighty good one.

Suzanne Morrison is a (Yoga) Bitch...

Oh, dear readers, allow me, in my total wedding-crazed absence, to point you in the direction of some awesomeness elsewhere on the web...

My dear friend and yoga-blogging-compatriot, Suzanne Morrison, is hurrying towards the release date of her first book, Yoga Bitch, even more quickly than I am hurrying towards matrimony.  She has just launched a fancy new website, which, in conjunction with her blog, is an awesome place to get the scoop on Yoga Bitch, to buy a copy, or to watch her very funny and excellent teaser trailers in preparation of the book's release.

I've written about Suzanne before...she's super cool, and though I've not read her book yet, I'm convinced it's going to be super cool as well...

Go check her out!  Dooooooo it.

This Hamster is FOCUSED...

First of all, Shanti-towners, thank you!  Because, Shanti Town has now hit 100 followers!  Small potatoes in the blog-o-sphere at large, but a big deal for this lady, so thank you, very much!  I'm so happy to have you all here!

Ahem.  On with the show.

The other day, in the midst of my third wedding-related melt-down in as many days, whilst trying to explain my deep state of overwhelm to my very amazing soon-to-be husband, he gently (as is his way) pointed out to me that perhaps part of the problem wasn't the amount of work to be done, but the way in which I was trying to go about doing it.  He reminded me that often it is my habit to try and carry around and accomplish all things at all times, instead of setting out to do just one thing in an allotted amount of time.

The problem, in other words, was focus.

(And just for clarity's sake, let me just say...we are BOTH very involved in the wed-planning.  This is not one of those bride doing all the work until she makes herself crazy, situations.  Just so ya know.  I'm just more prone to, um...crying.)

Okay, so...where was I?

Oh, right.  Focus.

Sooooooo...my wise mister suggests it might be about focus.  And as soon as he says it, I think back to an interview I had been (re)listening to the day before, with these two writers/parents of an autistic child, about autism.  And in the interview at one point the dad talks about how one of the traits common in people with autism is the ability to focus really deeply on something, to the exclusion of all other things.  He talked about how this was also a notable trait in most people we consider masters or geniuses, and I remember thinking, even at the time...argh! I'm doomed!!  

Not because I don't know how to focus, I do...but because I forget, so often, the importance of focus and instead let the guise of obsessive productivity take it's place.

And I thought about what it's like, you know, to really focus on something...the way that the whole world can just drop away and time sort of fans out, like it might just go on forever.  You know that feeling?

So, with all this on my mind and in preparation for classes, I took it to the books...specifically to The Heart of Yoga by Mr. TKV Desikachar (a famous yogi dude), to get a refresher course on the last three limbs of yoga:  Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna, and Samādhi.

Okay, brief primer: Dhāraṇā is the sixth limb of yoga (of the famed eight limbs that make up the backbone of the yoga philosophy) and it is, essentially, concentration.

Dhyāna, is the seventh limb, otherwise known as, meditation, and;

Samādhi, the eighth limb, which is bliss...absorption...the big tamale, the grand prize at the end of it all: enlightenment, yo.

Okay, so, these last three limbs...they're my favorite (philosophically), because of how beautifully they work together and what a smooth final progression they form to lead a body to bliss.  Basically it works like this:

In Dhāraṇā, when you're focused on a singular object (or person or idea, or whatever)...your mind is quiet and moving in just one direction, toward the object of your focus.  You're checking it out, you're learning about it, you're mind is on it, and only on it.  You're focused.

And if you keep doing this for awhile, you get to move up a level, to Dhyāna...meditation.  When you're in Dhyāna, you've still got this movement of your mind and your attention in the direction of your chosen object, but NOW, you've also got stuff coming back at you, from said object.  It's vibing you back.  And so inspirations are arising in you from the object, insights come seemingly out of nowhere...but it's not nowhere, it's just that the lines of communication have been opened (thanks to your dutiful focus) and now energy is moving in two directions, back and forth.  This is Dhyāna.

And last but not least...if you can hang with your meditation, this deepened state of focus, something amazing might just happen...instead of you just sending your attention out to the object or it sending something back at you...now you and the object become one and the same.  There is no more you.  There is no more object of attention.  You are subsumed, consumed, by one another.  And this is Samādhi.  This is bliss.

And isn't it, though?  Isn't that bliss?  To be so deeply involved in what you're doing, in what's right in front of you that the whole world, and you, and it...just disappear?  I think this is just the most perfect description what deep focus is.

But the magic...the amazing part of this whole process, is that you can't just sit down and DO it.  You can't sit down and say, now I'm going to be in Samādhi, or even, now I'm going to focus, because if your mind is wild or distracted or upset, well...good f-ing luck.   These are organic states, that arise organically, so the only thing you can do to practice them, is to cultivate an environment that might just have fertile ground from which they can grow.

And that's why we practice.
And that's why we breathe.

And that's why, when we get overwhelmed, it might behoove us just to go for a walk, or read some lovely something, or just sit on our little porch and drink some tea and let the wind brush against us.

Like I am going to go and do...right. now.

White Girl Yoga

So...one of the places where I teach yoga, is a gym.  A very nice gym.  A sort of fancy-pants gym.  And I am super grateful to be teaching there, it comes with lots of great perks and the students are sweet and very game...but, it took me some time to figure out exactly how to teach there.

Because a gym, in case you weren't aware, is not a yoga studio.  A yoga studio is a place where people go to breathe deep and listen to tinkly chime music...a gym is a place where people go to sweat and not have to talk to people.  Because of this, expectations in a gym yoga class are a little, well...different.

After many months now of teaching there, I feel like I've figured it out pretty well--I give 'em what they want and make them sweat, and I give them what I want and sneak in a bunch of spiritualisms about the breath.  But there is one interesting problem which remains (which, in all fairness, is not specific to gym yoga, but to yoga classes everywhere) and that is the dogged determination, among several students, to push themselves into poses they aren't capable of doing.  Because they want to do it.  Because they want to have accomplished it.  And their body be damned.

Now, honestly, part of the reason I even recognize this behavior to begin with is because that's how I started my own practice.  Read any of my early posts in this blog and you will run across at least one or two references (per post) to my "advanced" practice.  Oooh, yes....aren't you all iiiiiiiimpressed?  And I would be kidding myself if I said that I was completely beyond that.  I'm not.  I just don't do it all in the front row anymore, like a big show-off.  (Now I show off quietly, in the back row.  Everyone knows the back row is where the reeeeeeeally advanced students practice.  That's so we don't make any of you plebeians uncomfortable.  Isn't that gracious of us?)

Ahem.

Anyhow (get to the point, Lia!)...there's this new student in class at the gym, a lovely young man from India, who I like very much, who has obviously done some yoga and is naturally flexible, but WANTS to be a lot further along in his practice than he actually is.  And the other night, over and over again I kept trying to give him assists, and over and over again he wanted to do things his own way.  I tried to pad him up with a blanket in pigeon and he demurred, insisting that his "hips are very open", even though I, looking at his body, could tell that they are, um...not.  He said he knew that his hips were open because he couldn't feel anything at all in "double pigeon" another hip opener.  In response to which I thought, but didn't say aloud, that's probably because you're doing it wrong.  Tee hee.  And then later, during wheel (the big fat back-bend of class) he told me that it went a lot better for him if he just pushed himself right on into it, and didn't pause on the top of his head to adjust his shoulders and arms first.  Right, I said, but that doesn't mean you're doing it safely.  To which he acquiesced, and allowed me to give him some help into the pose.

And this is terrible to admit, but I have to say that afterwards...I felt a little smug.  A little like: I'll show you how to do wheel properly, mister!  Who's the teacher now, huh?  Who's the teacha naaaaaahoooooow? 


But then, ah then...cut to after class...I'm straightening the mats and the towels and my new lovely Indian (did I mention he was Indian?) student comes over to me, to thank me for class, and right away I find out that I'm sort of, um, butchering his lovely Indian name.  "Indian names are hard to pronounce," he says graciously.  (Oh, ouch!)  And then he asks me, did I know that tonight is an Indian holiday?  No, I say (shamefacedly), which one? Guru Purnima, he says.  Oh, I say.  (I have no idea what that is).  Yes, he says, Guru means teacher (I practically have to cover my mouth to keep myself from shouting I know! I know that word!) and Purnima means full moon, so it's the festival of the full-moon dedicated to the great teachers.  Oh! I say (burning with bad-yoga-teacher shame)...awesome.

Oh my god, oh my god...I honestly, people, I had to stop myself from just idiotically naming off all of the Indian holidays that I do know.  I was madly trying to figure out how to work in a reference to Diwali just so he didn't think I was completely clueless.  (Diwali is the festival of lights.  I know about that one.  I've read about it on Wikipedia.)

And after he left, once I got over my weird burn-y shame, I realized...I had been doing EXACTLY what I was (smugly) encouraging him not to do.  I had squandered an opportunity to, I don't know, maybe find out more about this Guru Purnima from the actual real-live Indian man standing in front of me, and instead I had just closed myself off entirely from his knowledge because I didn't want him to know that I didn't know what he was talking about.  Did I really think that he expected me, just because I'm a yoga teacher, to be entirely well-versed in Indian culture?  Maybe as much as he thought that I would expect him, being of Indian descent, to be a perfect yogi....

But the truth is, I have learned yoga, almost exclusively, from young white women...most of whom are American, some from foreign countries, but none of those countries are India.  And while I have learned a lot about Hindu customs and gods and goddesses...my knowledge of all of that, if I'm being honest, is far from robust.  And for my young student's part, people in India, (I do know this), aren't all crazy gung-ho about the asana (the physical practice of yoga) like we are in the west.  I've heard from friends who have gone to India that it's nearly impossible to find a "yoga class" that isn't being led by a foreign teacher on retreat there.  There is much more emphasis put on the other limbs of yoga in India...smartly, I'm sure...so I had no expectations of him being some kind of perfect yogi.

But this is what we do, isn't it?  We paint this picture of where we want to be, what things are supposed to look like, what the finished version of the pose is supposed to be...and then we just jam ourselves into it.  Forgetting that there are steps along the way.  Forgetting that where we are RIGHT NOW, this expression, exactly as it is...is the most important first leg of any journey.  And then, when we get to the end, when we yank ourselves into wheel or just get ourselves out of that uncomfortable conversation...we're less than.  Our back is hurting.  Or our pride.

And I am in this moment in my life right now where there is so much momentum, leading to the culmination of this one particular vision (W-E-D-D-I-N-G) and every day I am trying to remind myself...be here.  Appreciate this, this right now.  This planning part...this pausing on your head to make sure things are properly aligned...you're not going to get this part back.  This is the part that sets the stage for what's to come.

So, enjoy it, Shanti-towners...even if it means you have to admit you don't know as much as you thought you did....

Not Yet Neanderthal Bride...

It's sort of horrifying that if you do a Google Image search for pictures of "stressed bride" you mainly get pictures back of brides LOSING their f-ing MINDS.  The photo above is one of the few I could find that didn't make me feel like I was succumbing to some kind of crazy sexist bridezilla mongering.  This is the cultural signifier for bride-dom I guess, just lots of pictures of women turning into raging you-know-whats...there were even several cartoon images of brides dragging their grooms around by the hair.

Yikes.

Please don't concern yourselves, Shanti-towners...there are very few things in this world that could compel me to drag my groom around by his hair.  One would be if there was some kind of natural disaster, he was passed out, and for some reason the only part of his body that I had access to, in order to rescue him from the burning building or what-have-you, was his hair.  The second would be if he thought that it would be fun.

I can't think of a third right now...

Which is a nice segue into my next point: that, currently, I am having trouble keeping much of my focus on anything that isn't wedding related.  I'm mustering all my non-wedding energy to get my ass to class both to practice and to teach, but that means, unfortunately, that my blogging/podcasting/ruminating has fallen a bit by the wayside.  Temporarily.

I've been feeling particularly guilty about this, as I have lots of new readers...hello out there!  Who I'm very excited to have here.  (Um...whom?  Should that be "whom I'm very excited to have here"?)  And I just want you to know that I'm around, I haven't gone anywhere, I've just been solving last-minute dress and venue issues and generally obsessing about all things wedding, and am determined not to accidentally turn Shanti-town into a wedding blog in the interim!  So, you'll just have to forgive me if my posting regularity dwindles to only once or twice per week over the next couple months.

I love you, Shanti-towners and I am, at this very minute, composing a juicy post about open hips, butchering of Indian names, and why I shouldn't pretend to know more about Indian holidays than I do....Oh, and why Louis C.K. is a goddamn genius.

Stay tuned!!