For a couple of months last spring my yoga practice was feeling terrible. Like unpeeling a layer of an onion that was rotten and worn out, my breaking point was when I went to a hot yoga class in Charlotte and could barely do the postures. Knowing that if I stayed in the room, stayed present to what was happening in my body, that these feelings of letting go would all melt into the floor, was all that kept me going. Now I know I was simply avoiding…
This weekend I am taking a yin and yang workshop with Heather Tiddens. In the yin postures we hold them for over five minutes at a time, working deep into the body. Like most challenging postures, I go into the habit of breathing into them, trying to pull out some piece of comfort from the pose. But Heather is asking us to simply feel where we are. To not avoid those feelings or transfer the stress of the posture where we usually do (the shoulders and neck).
Ever since mid-August I feel like everything has been on autopilot. I drive around town from yoga to teaching to career counseling without blinking, maybe stopping for a smoothie for lunch on the way. The only real escape is my music and the mountains, as usual. And it’s not even about there being something wrong with how I am balancing my busy schedule, but there’s a sense that I am not being true to the integrity of the moment. Even now I feel like I’m not getting this written down the way I want it to be. But that’s the struggle.
After that class I got into my car to drive back to my then boyfriend’s house. And for some reason I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stop thinking about how tired I was of feeling terrible and working through my yoga practice in this way. I wanted to give up. The muscles remember pain and pleasure; they remember car accidents and frightening experiences we had as children. Who knows what I was working through that evening, but I knew right then I was letting go.
I was house sitting this week for some friends who were in San Francisco. On my drive into work I took my eyes off of the winding road and stared up at the trees. It was one of the only breaks in rain we had had in the past week and it was amazing. The way the leaves spread open across the sky and then broke; I was shoved into the present moment.
When I was out in Las Vegas in June visiting my friends, we went on a moonlight hike in the desert. We spent the night in the Valley of Fire, sleeping on red rocks that used to be under the ocean. There are certain ideas associated with expanding or exploring your mind, and in my opinion, it’s avoidance of truly dealing with your authentic self. Bull shit, crap, selfishness, grace, determination and all. All of it.
I don’t know where the balance between dealing with and working with the past truly helps us to be in the present moment, but I do believe that without it, we simply avoid things. Instead of dealing with a nagging injury at the beginning of its pain, we push until it breaks. Without stepping back and healing, scar tissue continues to build and build until we have nothing to work with.
I find myself during this break in the workshop writing in my blog, even now clinging to the idea of my dear friend from Las Vegas being here to practice beside me. To talk to about all this yoga bull shit. But the clinging to the idea is not the problem, because really sitting with those thoughts can assist in discovering why those thoughts come up in the first place. For me, I just miss my friend.
I knew then like I’d known when we first starting dating. I stood there in his kitchen, crying uncontrollably; thinking about how to explain it to him. And I knew he knew, too. But we both wouldn’t pay attention to that nagging and then it broke, again. When you keep retracing an injury it takes time away from it in order to heal. But there’s no point in avoiding the scar tissue created over time. We’ll both have to work through that on our own.
I watch the videos on the DC Tea Party with signs about Burying Obamacare with Kennedy and pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache (ironically next to a sign about Socialism), and then I hear the commentary about how FoxNews has planted the idea in these folks that we all need to “wake up.” That somehow politics have suddenly all gone wrong. Rarely does a country truly step back and reevaluate the mistakes it’s made, especially when it relies on its ego to control the world. I find myself feeling so angry and ashamed at the country I live in today. We are beyond repair in some ways, but mostly we need healing. And yes, FoxNews, we all have a moral obligation to “wake up,” indeed.
Not to say I live a perfect life. Not to say that I am completely authentic in my everyday actions. I sit here now, finishing up this blog I wrote on Saturday, at work, sick, and feeling the need to stay and complete a responsibility rather than go home and heal. Sitting here, to me, is less of a hassle than telling my boss that I am overwhelmed and overloaded with to dos in my life right now. But instead of feeling bad about it, I’m going to explore it and see what comes up.
It will take a lifetime to explore it all.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
I and You and Love
Whenever I’m not counseling students at my part-time office job, I’m diligently trying not to play facebook scrabble, gchat my best friend in LA about every detail of my life, or flirt with friends online. Yes, it has come to this. Avoiding the unavoidable which I should be able to avoid but don’t. A series of habits upon habits.
My friend sent me a link to a new Avett Brother’s song. I and love and you. I stare at it in my inbox, thinking back to that romantic love I’d feel swimming in my heart when any of my past boyfriends sent me something. That openness.
It’s a fall kind of song because we are getting to that time of year when my alarm goes off on my cell phone and I feel like it’s really a lot earlier than it seems to be. Some mornings are different than others, but I know that that consistency and time is part of the process. Just getting up and moving on.
There are some relationships that keep evolving long after they seem finished. During a break up you generally don’t hear about what’s going on with the person who used to know everything about you. And for right now I’m keeping it that way. And, unfortunately, it won’t be able to stay that way forever.
Sometimes love is misplaced or misguided, sometimes it was never really there, and sometimes you leave it in little spaces among the wreckage. Rarely does it make any sense to pick those pieces back up again.
I guess there’s a current to it all. I’ve been wading, watching, moving in my day today with ease and humor. But when I woke up this morning I felt part of that wreckage move with me, refusing to let go. Each day a new layer unfolds and I see how well things have fallen into place here in Asheville. Build, build, build, break…build again.
And then it all falls away and there’s a stillness to it. A sense of peace that I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s always been there it was just muddled...
My friend sent me a link to a new Avett Brother’s song. I and love and you. I stare at it in my inbox, thinking back to that romantic love I’d feel swimming in my heart when any of my past boyfriends sent me something. That openness.
It’s a fall kind of song because we are getting to that time of year when my alarm goes off on my cell phone and I feel like it’s really a lot earlier than it seems to be. Some mornings are different than others, but I know that that consistency and time is part of the process. Just getting up and moving on.
There are some relationships that keep evolving long after they seem finished. During a break up you generally don’t hear about what’s going on with the person who used to know everything about you. And for right now I’m keeping it that way. And, unfortunately, it won’t be able to stay that way forever.
Sometimes love is misplaced or misguided, sometimes it was never really there, and sometimes you leave it in little spaces among the wreckage. Rarely does it make any sense to pick those pieces back up again.
I guess there’s a current to it all. I’ve been wading, watching, moving in my day today with ease and humor. But when I woke up this morning I felt part of that wreckage move with me, refusing to let go. Each day a new layer unfolds and I see how well things have fallen into place here in Asheville. Build, build, build, break…build again.
And then it all falls away and there’s a stillness to it. A sense of peace that I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s always been there it was just muddled...
Friday, September 4, 2009
New!! YES!! New Post!!
It’s already getting to be fall in Asheville (although people keep swearing to me it’s going to get hot again-so don’t get too excited, Alex) and more and more I feel like change is still an amazing thing.
I find myself driving through downtown Asheville excited at the gap in terrible tourist drivers, cutting through the beer trucks and food delivery vans to get from teaching grammar to yoga to counseling. There’s a beat and a thought to it all.
Finding myself wrapped up in the buildings, in the mountains that surround the buildings, in the idea of Asheville and its constant reinvention. I almost forget about this pulse until I cut through downtown and remember why I live here. Why I’ve stayed here even when the city seems to shrink with acquaintances and the inevitable conversation at GreenLife.
One of my favorite parts about Asheville is there are no real shortcuts. Growing up my family always sought out the most efficient way of doing things. It was celebrated, in fact. The building of the Toll Road to replace the Leesburg Pike was a welcomed change to my dad’s daily commute into D.C. Up there, efficiency was drawn out into perfect turns onto back roads, new shortcuts around the ever-growing town, and an urgency of getting exactly where you needed to be when you needed to be there.
For a long time, even while I was regularly practicing yoga, I would reflect on the past as if it was the meaning of the present. As if it represented how I should be feeling in the moment.
I teach yoga three times a week at a local gym. While training many people warned me that there were NO teaching gigs left in Asheville and that teaching at a gym wasn’t nearly as “yogic” as teaching at a studio. This was of course contradicted by my fellow yoga instructor trainees and the director at the studio. Because if you put anything out into the universe it will, in some form, return back to you. But at some point you’ve even got to let go of that philosophy.
Any philosophy is a trap, really. Just the idea of living a certain way because of past experience is limiting. I often talk about suspending any ideas of what happened on their yoga mat the day or hour or even minute before. Because once we assign all these ideas we are forced to live by them.
There are layers gone just in time for the fall. Just in time for leaves and cool nights and mosquitoes disappearing.
I find myself driving through downtown Asheville excited at the gap in terrible tourist drivers, cutting through the beer trucks and food delivery vans to get from teaching grammar to yoga to counseling. There’s a beat and a thought to it all.
Finding myself wrapped up in the buildings, in the mountains that surround the buildings, in the idea of Asheville and its constant reinvention. I almost forget about this pulse until I cut through downtown and remember why I live here. Why I’ve stayed here even when the city seems to shrink with acquaintances and the inevitable conversation at GreenLife.
One of my favorite parts about Asheville is there are no real shortcuts. Growing up my family always sought out the most efficient way of doing things. It was celebrated, in fact. The building of the Toll Road to replace the Leesburg Pike was a welcomed change to my dad’s daily commute into D.C. Up there, efficiency was drawn out into perfect turns onto back roads, new shortcuts around the ever-growing town, and an urgency of getting exactly where you needed to be when you needed to be there.
For a long time, even while I was regularly practicing yoga, I would reflect on the past as if it was the meaning of the present. As if it represented how I should be feeling in the moment.
I teach yoga three times a week at a local gym. While training many people warned me that there were NO teaching gigs left in Asheville and that teaching at a gym wasn’t nearly as “yogic” as teaching at a studio. This was of course contradicted by my fellow yoga instructor trainees and the director at the studio. Because if you put anything out into the universe it will, in some form, return back to you. But at some point you’ve even got to let go of that philosophy.
Any philosophy is a trap, really. Just the idea of living a certain way because of past experience is limiting. I often talk about suspending any ideas of what happened on their yoga mat the day or hour or even minute before. Because once we assign all these ideas we are forced to live by them.
There are layers gone just in time for the fall. Just in time for leaves and cool nights and mosquitoes disappearing.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Slacker!
Yeah, Yeah.
Nothing new here...
2 years of a blog and each day I slack more and more...
I'm working on my artist flare. Everyone can be an artist as long as they have a blog, right? I mean, as long as I randomly update it, right?
Nothing new here...
2 years of a blog and each day I slack more and more...
I'm working on my artist flare. Everyone can be an artist as long as they have a blog, right? I mean, as long as I randomly update it, right?
Friday, March 6, 2009
Elk River Falls
There’s a falls right outside of Banner Elk and it was one summer, sunny afternoon up in Boone and a couple of us decided to head out to the falls to jump off into the water below. I had no real idea what it was going to look like, or that my friends would freely jump into the water over and over again while I stood at the top, feeling I needed to prove that girls can do it too, my shorts shaking over my bare legs. I’d heard that people have died or been paralyzed by the fall. Something about rocks and cars being at the bottom.
There’s something in the idea of jumping out into nothing for no real good reason. Even when there are talks of how bad things are or how much money there isn’t or what needs to be cut where. And frankly, I’m sick of hearing about it. Now’s the time to be creative. To innovate. To jump.
At least, that’s what I try to tell myself. I keep picturing this sunny, lazy summer here in Asheville, working at some coffee shop or teaching yoga here and there. And it all seems to make sense. Because sometimes you just push and push and push until there isn’t anything to push up against. Until it all dissolves.
And as much as I love Obama and the idea of things getting better, there’s always something to learn from a “severe” recession. Because really, it’s a recess from money. Because really, security is an illusion. So says the girl who is searching for something to bridge the gap between jobs. Who is a constant in ideas of what could happen…because right now is the perfect time to be thinking of the next great idea.
My coworkers got me a book on writing and yoga and I’m teaching a workshop for yoga and intention during one of our career exploration programs. It’s all about setting an intention for your life and goals and acceptance of what is. Because I feel like I’m really struggling with accepting things the way they are right now. I think we all are.
It got to the point where the crowd (yes, there was a crowd of people hanging out and watching us) was counting down for me to jump into the falls below. And I stood, one foot back ready to launch myself into the falls below, the cheers and claps of the crowd muffled by the water. And then I would have done something that cool summer afternoon.
After I didn’t jump, after hours of waiting for a real reason to jump, one of the women from below came up the rocks to tell me: you’ll do it by the end of summer. I just know it. It’ll happen. It didn’t.
There’s something in the idea of jumping out into nothing for no real good reason. Even when there are talks of how bad things are or how much money there isn’t or what needs to be cut where. And frankly, I’m sick of hearing about it. Now’s the time to be creative. To innovate. To jump.
At least, that’s what I try to tell myself. I keep picturing this sunny, lazy summer here in Asheville, working at some coffee shop or teaching yoga here and there. And it all seems to make sense. Because sometimes you just push and push and push until there isn’t anything to push up against. Until it all dissolves.
And as much as I love Obama and the idea of things getting better, there’s always something to learn from a “severe” recession. Because really, it’s a recess from money. Because really, security is an illusion. So says the girl who is searching for something to bridge the gap between jobs. Who is a constant in ideas of what could happen…because right now is the perfect time to be thinking of the next great idea.
My coworkers got me a book on writing and yoga and I’m teaching a workshop for yoga and intention during one of our career exploration programs. It’s all about setting an intention for your life and goals and acceptance of what is. Because I feel like I’m really struggling with accepting things the way they are right now. I think we all are.
It got to the point where the crowd (yes, there was a crowd of people hanging out and watching us) was counting down for me to jump into the falls below. And I stood, one foot back ready to launch myself into the falls below, the cheers and claps of the crowd muffled by the water. And then I would have done something that cool summer afternoon.
After I didn’t jump, after hours of waiting for a real reason to jump, one of the women from below came up the rocks to tell me: you’ll do it by the end of summer. I just know it. It’ll happen. It didn’t.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
I'll Text Ya an Update at 12:15am
There was a time when I swore I would never, ever, ever in a million years get a cell phone, that I would never be the person in the grocery line talking to a friend while checking out, that I would never, ever, ever be that person who checks her cell phone for texts from friends on a constant basis.
Never, ever, ever.
The gobbly gook I sent out last night was a half awake, then promptly falling asleep with my phone open, then an end of a message that read: Imp psuddenly hak?,?. Yes, it has come to this. I sent a text message in my sleep.
Granted, it didn’t make sense. At least the second half. And I sleep with my phone next to me because it doubles as an alarm clock. So really, I was simply finishing the thought I had hours beforehand.
I’m thinking that what I was attempting to text in my sleep was: I’m suddenly half asleep. Really, I could take this statement to mean many things in my life right now. I do, actually, suddenly fall asleep at around 9-9:30pm every night. I set myself up in bed to read or knit and within minutes, I am out.
So this morning when I woke up with my sticky-slept-in-my-mother-fucking-contacts-again eyes, I grabbed the phone thinking I had texted some big secret to my friends. Like some sort of mass text about something crazy going on in my life. Or that there’s absolutely nothing crazy going on in my life so what the hell are you even talking about and why are you texting me at 12:20 in the morning you crazy friend. But to my west coast friends it would only be 9:20. Just about the time I would be falling asleep in the desert in Las Vegas, if I was still there.
My classes got dropped at the community college and my job here ends at the end of May. Budget cuts for education when really we should all be focusing on what matters. Quite an interesting little society we have here.
I’ve explored a couple of options already. Yogaville for the month of June then some summer job here in Asheville. Maybe I’ll save up some money so I can work part time until I start teaching again in the fall. Maybe I’ll actually commit myself to writing more than just in a journal or on a blog. For so long I asked for things to be more flexible in my life, and now it’s here. I wanted to have more time for yoga teacher training and my classes got dropped. It’s a blessing in disguise. Things like that always are.
Never, ever, ever.
The gobbly gook I sent out last night was a half awake, then promptly falling asleep with my phone open, then an end of a message that read: Imp psuddenly hak?,?. Yes, it has come to this. I sent a text message in my sleep.
Granted, it didn’t make sense. At least the second half. And I sleep with my phone next to me because it doubles as an alarm clock. So really, I was simply finishing the thought I had hours beforehand.
I’m thinking that what I was attempting to text in my sleep was: I’m suddenly half asleep. Really, I could take this statement to mean many things in my life right now. I do, actually, suddenly fall asleep at around 9-9:30pm every night. I set myself up in bed to read or knit and within minutes, I am out.
So this morning when I woke up with my sticky-slept-in-my-mother-fucking-contacts-again eyes, I grabbed the phone thinking I had texted some big secret to my friends. Like some sort of mass text about something crazy going on in my life. Or that there’s absolutely nothing crazy going on in my life so what the hell are you even talking about and why are you texting me at 12:20 in the morning you crazy friend. But to my west coast friends it would only be 9:20. Just about the time I would be falling asleep in the desert in Las Vegas, if I was still there.
My classes got dropped at the community college and my job here ends at the end of May. Budget cuts for education when really we should all be focusing on what matters. Quite an interesting little society we have here.
I’ve explored a couple of options already. Yogaville for the month of June then some summer job here in Asheville. Maybe I’ll save up some money so I can work part time until I start teaching again in the fall. Maybe I’ll actually commit myself to writing more than just in a journal or on a blog. For so long I asked for things to be more flexible in my life, and now it’s here. I wanted to have more time for yoga teacher training and my classes got dropped. It’s a blessing in disguise. Things like that always are.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Two Months of Separation!
I think I finally get it. Not it, it. But it. You know. IT.
I was sitting in yoga teacher training yesterday, finishing up a weekend of yoga and potential teachers and training, my hips in gomukasana, feeling some kind of anger for those tight muscles, patiently waiting for them to peel away the layers and layers I build on them everyday. We hide our emotions in our hips. It’s those sneaky corners that sway side-to-side, crease when we sit, and of course the hips are useful for many, many additional adventures.
After having a month off from both of my jobs and traveling home and to Charlottesville over the holidays, I had a lot of time to sit and think. A lot of time to explore Asheville, welcome my good friends to the area, and of course, yoga.
There really is a constant transformation of things. Everyday really is a new day. Something new to support or listen to, something new to explore and take in. Everyday. Even though things are quite hectic right now, I know that I’m in the best place possible.
There’s something very real and true about feeling who you truly are. About feeling your essence, somewhere buried deep down inside. Because we bury it, thinking that at some point we will all dig it up, scoop it out, and sift through the pieces. Like we will have these huge globs of ourselves sitting out on a coffee table. Sometimes it takes a nervous breakdown when people turn fifty; sometimes it takes a lifetime of yoga to really and truly believe in something inside of you.
I do know it doesn’t take a job or an apartment of your own, or close relationships to truly bring these things to the surface. I’m finally really looking forward to becoming a yoga instructor in May. For a while I was just going through the motions, doing my practice and meditation. Not even really serious about meditation. And then it hit me: this is it.
It’s kind of like the tough guy who writes about tough things his whole life, and then all of a sudden he gets his girlfriend or wife pregnant, reacts really scared and weird but excited about it, then ten months later he’s writing sappy, sentimental poetry about his baby’s eyes or the way it’s belly rises and falls as it sleeps. It’s like that. Before I went through this experience I promised myself I wasn’t going to really dive into yoga on my blog, that I didn’t want to become one of those people who talk about peace and inner harmony and appreciating the moment. I pre-judged myself and judged others for attempting to create a culture of happiness and contentment based on something other than material goods. On what’s under the surface of each surface.
In one of the books we read for training, she explains that we come into this world on an inhale and leave on an exhale. If you watch a baby sleeping on its back, its belly pleasantly moves up and down. For adults, we choke our breath into our throats and the top of our lungs, continuing to short ourselves.
I have my students write out their goals for the next couple of years and it’s an exciting time for me to be revising mine. Added are yoga retreats and writing more, because at some point I really do want to write a book. And in the middle of all this energy, knowing that both my contracts for work are up at the end of May, I know that there’s an opportunity in all of this. That Asheville in the summer teaching yoga is going to be amazing. I want to take a trip back out to the desert to see all of my friends and to teach a class at my friend’s house.
And of course it’s all about what you enjoy. For some people it’s watching a football game on a cold Sunday afternoon, or waking up to your son saying “hello” and “echo” to your high ceilings in your new home, or going to the farmer’s market in your new section of your city on a Sunday morning. For me, it’s that discovery.
I was sitting in yoga teacher training yesterday, finishing up a weekend of yoga and potential teachers and training, my hips in gomukasana, feeling some kind of anger for those tight muscles, patiently waiting for them to peel away the layers and layers I build on them everyday. We hide our emotions in our hips. It’s those sneaky corners that sway side-to-side, crease when we sit, and of course the hips are useful for many, many additional adventures.
After having a month off from both of my jobs and traveling home and to Charlottesville over the holidays, I had a lot of time to sit and think. A lot of time to explore Asheville, welcome my good friends to the area, and of course, yoga.
There really is a constant transformation of things. Everyday really is a new day. Something new to support or listen to, something new to explore and take in. Everyday. Even though things are quite hectic right now, I know that I’m in the best place possible.
There’s something very real and true about feeling who you truly are. About feeling your essence, somewhere buried deep down inside. Because we bury it, thinking that at some point we will all dig it up, scoop it out, and sift through the pieces. Like we will have these huge globs of ourselves sitting out on a coffee table. Sometimes it takes a nervous breakdown when people turn fifty; sometimes it takes a lifetime of yoga to really and truly believe in something inside of you.
I do know it doesn’t take a job or an apartment of your own, or close relationships to truly bring these things to the surface. I’m finally really looking forward to becoming a yoga instructor in May. For a while I was just going through the motions, doing my practice and meditation. Not even really serious about meditation. And then it hit me: this is it.
It’s kind of like the tough guy who writes about tough things his whole life, and then all of a sudden he gets his girlfriend or wife pregnant, reacts really scared and weird but excited about it, then ten months later he’s writing sappy, sentimental poetry about his baby’s eyes or the way it’s belly rises and falls as it sleeps. It’s like that. Before I went through this experience I promised myself I wasn’t going to really dive into yoga on my blog, that I didn’t want to become one of those people who talk about peace and inner harmony and appreciating the moment. I pre-judged myself and judged others for attempting to create a culture of happiness and contentment based on something other than material goods. On what’s under the surface of each surface.
In one of the books we read for training, she explains that we come into this world on an inhale and leave on an exhale. If you watch a baby sleeping on its back, its belly pleasantly moves up and down. For adults, we choke our breath into our throats and the top of our lungs, continuing to short ourselves.
I have my students write out their goals for the next couple of years and it’s an exciting time for me to be revising mine. Added are yoga retreats and writing more, because at some point I really do want to write a book. And in the middle of all this energy, knowing that both my contracts for work are up at the end of May, I know that there’s an opportunity in all of this. That Asheville in the summer teaching yoga is going to be amazing. I want to take a trip back out to the desert to see all of my friends and to teach a class at my friend’s house.
And of course it’s all about what you enjoy. For some people it’s watching a football game on a cold Sunday afternoon, or waking up to your son saying “hello” and “echo” to your high ceilings in your new home, or going to the farmer’s market in your new section of your city on a Sunday morning. For me, it’s that discovery.
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