There's a Fireplace in Your Center.

Turkey Day is fast approaching! (Thanks-a-Chickie, as my dad likes to call it.) The time when we gather together with friends and family and try not to let them, and the giant meal, and the nearness of Christmas and New Years and oh my gosh, where has the time gone...drive us all to distraction.

I love the Winter...I love that it gets dark early, that it gets cold (even in LA), and that collectively we just want to snuggle up and spend our days in warm candelit rooms...it's so sweet. But, in addition to the dark-cave-like quality of Winter there is also this...holiday frenticism, that can make a person feel speeded up instead of slowed-ed down.

So, in the face of these cross-winds a blowing (one that is slow and steady and says, hey, just bundle up, drink some tea, fuggid about it, and the other which just kind of whips your hair around in your face), it's more important than ever for us to find the center...and to go there.

The center of what?

Well...in the yoga philosophy, the body is thought of as having these layers, these sheaths, all of which surround a constant center.  Right at the center of the body.  The sheaths are all the stuff that is NOT that center.  The sheaths are the physical body, the energetic body, the mind, the emotions, our wisdom, our bliss--and then, at the center of all of that is...um.  Just, uh.  Total Awesomeness.  What's at the center can be conceptualized in a lot of different ways. The yogis just call it the self, or Atman, but it is sometimes described as light, as pure awareness, as God, as source, as truth--whatever you want to call that big perfect divine A-HA! Which exists at the center of every single one of us.  (I like to call it Total Awesomeness.)  And the practice of yoga, is really just a practice of diving down through all these layers, through all these sheaths, until we can rest in this sweet center, and then try to live from there.  (Try to.)

And I feel like this image, of peeling away the layers, is particularly potent in the Winter.  As if, at the center of our body is where the fireplace is, and when we're stuck out in the cold, way out on the fringes of our experience, our job is just to start opening doors and traveling deeper and deeper in, following the trail of warmth, until finally we get to that fire lit parlor, way down deep inside.

What's so beautiful about this is that, yoga practice or no yoga practice, we can all be scavengers for our bliss.  We can all use our basic powers of deduction, to find the fire that burns at the center.  It goes like this: is this door warm?  No?  Wrong door.  Is this door warm?  Yes?  Open door.  Go deeper in.  Look for the next door.  Rinse and repeat.

That's it...just like a bunch of blind mice, following the scent of burning wood and charcoal, we can find our own way into the center of ourselves and our lives.  Without assistance.  Without books or tapes or teachers...we just have to reach our hands out, and look for the warmth.

So, if you're feeling the chill.  Or if you're feeling shut out...miles from the hot chocolate and s'mores that are waiting for you deep down in the center of your experience, just take your hands out of their mittens, and start feeling for a hot doorknob.  I promise, it's there.

Mouth-Hang-Open-Asana

Break ton Neck from Alex Yde on Vimeo.

Sneak Peek!

I had a super inspiring conversation with yoga goddess Meghan Currie of Vancouver, Canada for the next episode of the Shanti Town Podcast this week...and I can't wait to share it with you!  In the interim, as I get to work editing together our conversation, here's a little Meghan Currie gloriousness to whet your appetite (I hope to have the interview ready to go in the next few days).  Just try not to love her!

Read This Book!

Full disclosure:  I love Suzanne Morrsion.  There is evidence of this here, and here.

So, I was very excited to get her book in the mail (that's right folks, I got a reviewers copy, just like a real writer would!), and also very nervous to get her book in the mail.  Although I knew from being an avid follower of her blog that she was a good writer, there was always the off chance that her book wouldn't be very good.  And then I would have to lie.   Or just pretend that I had never received it.

Luckily, I didn't have to do either of those things.

Yoga Bitch; One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment, is everything it is cracked up to be.  Following here is the email I sent to Suzanne after finishing said book:

Yeah, um...notice the date stamp on that email?  That's right.  September 16th.  It's November, people.  I am a terrible book reviewer.  But, being of the "it's never too late" mind-set, I now present to you (drumroll, please): My Review of Yoga Bitch!!!

Ahem.

I remember when Suzanne went on her trip to Bali in 2002.  Well, I remember seeing her after she'd gotten back...or at least, I remember hearing from people say that she was IN Bali while she was there.  Suzanne and I went to college together...we were friendly, but not friends, so I have only foggy memories of her departure to Bali.  I didn't even really know what yoga was, when I heard that Suzanne was overseas, training in it.  I did remember being surprised, even with my paltry knowledge of yoga, since nearly all of my memories of Suzanne up to that point involved wine and cigarettes. I remember being impressed.  I remember thinking, well, maybe I've got this girl pegged wrong.

After reading Yoga Bitch I realized that, while Suzanne was clearly 11 million times more in touch with herself than I was during those college years (don't ask)...going to Bali for a yoga teacher training WAS as out of character for her as it seemed.

After 9/11, while preparing to move to New York from Seattle with her then-boyfriend, and sort of freaking out about all of it...Suzanne decided that going to Bali to study yoga with her favorite teacher and some fellow seekers, was just what she needed to infuse her life with some clarity.  Little did she know that she'd be shacked up with a bunch of yogis who thrived on journaling, hero worship and um, pee.  As in...urine.  As in...drinking it.  I can't even...this subject is well covered in the book, and in other reviews of the book, so I'm just going to leave it at that. 

(Would it be terrible to admit that while Suzanne was writing about all the myriad reasons that her fellow yoga-school mates were engaging in pee-drinking, that I thought, well, gee!  If it does all THOSE things....  Argh!  I'm a sheep!)

Anyhow, the book is funny and insightful and moving...it's a "yoga memoir" yes, but really it's a book about a woman who is probably too smart for her own good (hollah!) trying to find her way in the world.  It's about a woman who wishes she didn't need a little spiritual guidance, finding herself in a spot where nothing else will do, but a little spiritual guidance.  

And, it's about a woman who, while engaged in all of the above, has a serious earth-shaking moment of transformation.

This is the thing that I've not seen talked about in a lot of the other reviews of Suzanne's book, and for me it was the most riveting part of the book...I'll try not to spoil anything here, but whilst on her Bali adventure, Suzanne has a...what would you call it?  An awakening.  A real one.  For those of you not versed in yogic lore, there is something called a "Kundalini rising" that can happen to a yoga practitioner.  It is the Grand Prize of yoga.  The mythology goes that there is this coil of Kundalini energy that sits at the base of the spine, lying dormant, just waiting to be roused so that it can shoot up the spine and, well, make you enlightened.  That's right, dormant enlightenment.  And Ms. Morrison (lucky duck)...woke up her Kundalini.  Accidentally.  It's an amazing story, made even more amazing by the hilarious pot-shots she takes at herself while recollecting her time walking around Bali, acting like a saint.  

Yoga Bitch is a memoir, it's a love-story, and it's an incredibly insightful look at what it means to start down a spiritual path, even when you are the last person in the world who would ever use a phrase like, "spiritual path".  Suzanne is an incredibly gifted writer with a lot of wit and a lot of heart, who is able to delve into deep emotional depths, without ever being ooey or gooey.  In a nutshell, go get this book.  It's awesome.

Go to Suzanne's website for links to the myriad places to buy Yoga Bitch.  Or just go to your local Barnes and Noble and look in the "new non-fiction" section.  Last time I was there it was on the table right between Malcolm Gladwell and Kendra Wilkinson.  

Raaaaaaaawwwwrrr! Or; Dressing Up On the Inside

First, some business...the podcast is not over, folks!  I know it's been awhile, and for a moment there I thought it might have breathed it's last, but no!  I'm doing some revamping, I'm setting up some interviews, so look out for Episode 6 in the next week or so!  And, on that note...if there's someone out there you'd like me to interview...a yoga teacher, a yoga enthusiast, or just someone doing amazing work in the mind/body world...let me know!

Alright, so, yesterday was Halloween.  I know it was Halloween, because there was a woman in a skin-tight full-body leopard-print cat-suit in my local coffee shop at 7:45 in the morning.  There were also many fat adorable babies dressed as bugs and fruits and dragons being carted around by their proud mommas all day long.  This is the best part of Halloween...the fat dressed-up babies.

I have never been a dresser-upper.  I get sort of weird and shy and embarrassed when I have to put on a costume and I'm not in a play.  In college it was fun...but in college halloween (for the women, at least) is just an opportunity to look as sexy as possible.

Anyhow...I thought about leopard-print cat-suit woman a lot yesterday.

I thought about how often in yoga, or meditation, or art-making or whatever...the goal, stated or otherwise, is to remove costumes...to remove masks...to reveal.  Which is worthwhile, no question.  But can feel, sometimes, very heavy.  Very serious.  What is sometimes forgotten, is that there is a more aspirational way to approach a practice.  A way which involves trying on a version of ourselves that is not quite a reality yet.  A way which allows us to zip ourselves into our favorite cat-suit for a day, and see how it feels.

And what's interesting is that this spiritual "dressing up" can feel just as weird and awkward and potentially-embarrassing as getting your morning coffee in full Halloween garb.  I mean, once I got over feeling a little giggly about the cat-suit woman, my next thought was, "my god...she's brave."  I can barely leave the house in short-shorts without feeling a little flush-faced.  I can't imagine what kind of heavy sedation I would have to be under in order to wear a skin-tight body-suit out of doors!  And why is that?  Why is it so thrilling/scary to dress up?

I think, it's because people are going to look at you.  People are going to look at you, and they're going to know something about you.  You are going to be revealed.  You are going to be bright.  You are going to be taking up space in the world.

It's an old trope, I know...we're not actually afraid of the darkness, we're afraid of our own light, blah blah blah.  But, you've met those people, haven't you? The ones who are really standing in their full glory?  Who aren't apologizing for their existence?  Who are unabashedly reaching for what they want?  Those people are big.  They're bright.  They may as well be wearing a leopard-print cat-suit. (If we're talking about Beyonce, then it's possible that she IS wearing a cat-suit).

"Realized" people take up space.  And people are going to look at them.  And some people are going to look at them and think, oh my god, awesome cat-suit!  And some people are going to look at them and think, oh my god, you look ridiculous! And that is the risk we take when we're revealed.

And maybe it's just me, but I think that can be pretty f-ing scary.

So, if you didn't get a chance to put on a Halloween costume this year, maybe think about dressing up today.  No one has to know.  It doesn't even have to fit you exactly...you don't have to have the perfect thighs you've been waiting for in order to slip into that leopard.   Just, for one day, step into the fantasy of yourself.  Yourself as dynamic, yourself as bright and alive and unafraid.  And if someone giggles at you while you're ordering your coffee...just remember that they wish they could be as brave as you are.

Things We Have Control Over...and Things We Do Not.

We are back at the gate.  Again.  I don’t know how long it’s been since we first taxied away and looped the runway, and came back again…and I don’t want to know.

Travelling with Paul—it’s easy.  I never worry—about bags, about delays, about extra long security lines.  I know he’s going to be right there to help lift my bag on to the conveyor belt, or hold my jacket while I run to the bathroom, or tease me about my lousy attitude if I haven’t had my coffee/water/wine (depending on the time of day).  I have come to rely on this.  I have come to take this as a given.  So now, when I have to brave the airport alone, I feel unprepared at best…and like a sniveling grump-o, at worst.

And this afternoon, when I left our Brooklyn apartment to come home to our LA apartment (don’t ask), the weight of my over-packed carry-on was like a premonition in my hand.  I did a quick mental calculation of subway steps and train transfers, and walked out into the whipping cold—all by my lonesome.

It’s ridiculous, folks, for me to feel this way.  The number of years I spent navigating all the ups and downs and transfers of my life solo—there is no reason I should feel so besotted with loneliness at the thought of, gasp, carrying my own bag AND purse AND jacket.  The. Whole. Way. Alooooooooone.

Alright, so…I lug my bag down the appropriate number of train steps,  I brave a subway transfer or two, I wait diligently for the appropriate “A” Train to come by, the one that goes to Howard Beach/JFK, and not the one that goes to all the other millions of places the “A” Train goes.  I am assured by a very grumpy woman who is also carrying a suitcase (I wrongly assumed she was also airport-bound) that the train will say on the side that it’s going to JFK.  This does not turn out to be the case.  (And when grumpy-suitcase-woman snuck on to an unmarked C-train without a word…I became deeply suspicious.) However, sneaky suitcase woman or not, I ended up on the right train, somehow…though the whole adventure takes me a lot longer than it should.  And this is it—the beginning of things taking longer than they should.

The train, the other train, the harried trip to the self-check-in kiosks…all of it took longer than it should.  And at the airport, as I’m shoving my scarf into my jacket and fretting about whether my carry-on is going to fit properly into the overhead bins when I get there or whether, like it happened on the way there, some nice old man was going to have to help me jam it into one of the compartments while a dozen aggravated travelers wait behind me…the strap of my purse breaks off my arm.  (This early death may, and I emphasize may, have been hurried along by my trying to jam my laptop into a purse that a laptop for certain does not belong in.)  Regardless of the cause, it breaks…and the guilty laptop and several other things go spilling out onto the floor.

“Oh, your purse broke!” Calls out a woman from across the way who is trying to be helpful.  People are always trying to be helpful like this when you’re in New York. 

Yes, thank you, I said.  I noticed.

As I knelt down, repacking my now-disabled purse, I kept hearing my friend Saskia’s voice chanting in my ear, saying, “the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”  It’s something that her father used to say to her when she was young, and it stuck for me, just as it must have for her.  I love it.  The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

Now barely able to keep my personals in check, I go hurrying (yes, I know) down the million mile airport hallways to the security check point where, for some reason, only three of the many security lines are open and traveler traffic is at a standstill.  I look at my watch.  My plane will begin boarding in fifteen minutes.  I can feel my face starting to get flush.

There are very few things that upset me more than being late.  It is a pathological upset for me.  That, and food getting cold before I am able to eat it.  These are two turns of fate that make me feel like I am losing my grip on the handlebars of my life.  Being late makes me crazy.  I used to have serious meltdowns about it.  I have gotten past that, now that 1. I am an adult and can’t really justify having meltdowns about totally meaningless things and 2. I have been late enough times in my life that I now know the world won’t end.  However, the fact of my aloneness and my giant carry-on bag and my broken purse and the idea that I could miss my plane through no fault of my own, was all conspiring to elevate my temperature and heart-rate and internal rage-o-meter.

And as I stood in line, shuffling from one foot to the other, sighing and rubbing my forehead and aggressively planting my bag in front of some chick who kept trying to cut in front of me, I thought back to the yoga class I had taken the day before. 

There is a new (ish) studio in my beloved DUMBO neighborhood that I am trying to pop into when we’re in town, and I was lucky enough to get into a class yesterday with a teacher I knew from Laughing Lotus, back in the day.  She’s lovely and either Australian or South African—(she is cool-accented, wherever she’s from) and wild-of-hair (like me) and grounded.  She’s one of these teachers who has studied yoga with all kinds of people in all kinds of styles, and you can feel it in her teaching—it’s round and robust.  Full.

Anyhow, for all her gifts in the yogic arts, she started class wrestling with the stereo.  The studio’s stereo system is apparently finicky, and so for the first several minutes of class all we could see was her prone body and the back of her curly head as she coaxed the volume on the ancient set up and down and up and down.  And as she fiddled and groaned about the volume (which refused to budge), she told us how she’d been reading an article earlier that day about all of the things in our lives we think we have control over but actually don’t.  “Electronics,” she said, twirling the volume up and down, “elevator buttons…we think that somehow pushing that button over and over again is actually doing something…but it’s not.  It really has no effect on it, at all.” 

And I thought about this, as I stood in the security line, trying not to scream.

What, honestly, was there to be done?  All the griping and forehead wiping in the world wasn’t going to make things go any faster than they were going.  My angry face was not going to stop me from missing my plane, if that’s what was going to happen.  The fact that I, good student that I am, already had my laptop and liquids and shoes ready to go when I was still fifty feet from the conveyor belt was not, as much as I might want it to, going to change anything about the behavior of anyone else in line in front of me.  I was stuck.  That elevator was going to come when it was going to come, no matter how many times I pushed that goddamn button.

(And let me just tell you…it was a lot.)

And for what felt like the dozenth time in as many days, I thought about how much easier things can be, what a relief they can be, when you can just get comfortable with where you are.  Even (god forbid) if it’s not where you want to be. 

The universe does not owe me an on-time flight.  It certainly is not so deeply indebted to me that I am allowed to act like an a-hole, just because I am in a hurry.  No amount of mental gymnastics are going to change the reality of slow trains, slow lines, and broken bags.  So, why does it feel like it might?  What is it, what little crossed wire in the brain makes it seem like if we just get upset enough, if we just grouse enough or pout enough or rail enough against…that things might actually rearrange themselves in front of us, and more to our liking?

It’s never happened that way for me.  What happens for me is that I get myself worked up into enough of a lather, enough things break or malfunction or trip me up (literally), that I eventually have no choice but to surrender to the reality of the situation.  This elevator is not f-ing coming, and so I had either better take the stairs or find something interesting to read while I wait, because I am going to be here for a while.  And when that happens, when I’m able to snap my little internal control freak in half, then things open up.  Suddenly the line doesn’t move so slowly, the machine-operators don’t seem so incompetent, and before I know it, I’m sitting on my plane.  Happily engrossed by the in-flight magazine…waiting to take off.

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?