Act As If

In the early naughties, in my first job out of college, young-professional wear was black pants from Express with a light-blue button-down and clunky shoes from Steve Madden.  I chafed against it.  It reminded me too much of the sorority at my college filled with future young-professionals who had clearly been coached by their parents in how to Get Ahead.  (They almost picked me – ee!, but I was more of a Gryffindor than a Slytherin, with hand-me-downs and sale-rack specials.)

Every morning as I got ready, I would ask my sweetie ‘Can I wear this to the Bank?’ Straining against appropriateness and yearning toward self-expression, I’d wear open-toes and bare legs in summer, funky tights and cozy-bathrobe-style sweaters in winter.  I was young and more interested in approximating Hedwig’s glittery red lips and trying out the strappy heels I could then afford than adhering to the dress-for-success look. 

I’d heard to dress for the job you want, but couldn’t bring myself to do it in that way.  When I left that job, it was a relief to run around in jeans and yoga pants and colors and patterns.  I was living the life!  It prompted at least one person to tell me that I’d dressed as if I’d put on all my favorite clothes at once.  And I thought ‘Why shouldn’t all my clothes be my favorite clothes?’  Living this way did wonders in helping me be comfortable in my own skin.  It was maybe what I should have done first. 

Many of the things we do in yoga invite us to ‘be our future self’ - to be the person who has already gotten to the other side of some trial or tribulation – now.  It means to show us that to have that thing we want, we must be like the person who already has it. 

To develop this capacity, we do things that both require and offer the qualities we seek to grow in ourselves.  If we want to learn more than we already know, we pay attention to our breath and foundation.  If we want to have stamina and be strong, we repeat and hold postures.  If we want to attune and refine, we pay attention to the little things. And if we want to expand, we stretch into the next possibility.

Some time ago, Laura (I’ve learned so much from her!) and I were talking about how we operated in the world.  I was saying how I felt that I needed to know something wholly – and then be invited – before I would present myself for a job or a role.  She was telling me about how her dad got himself in to all kinds of successful situations simply by knowing enough.  He knew the right way to act, to dress, to be with others that allowed him access to situations that his training and experience really wouldn’t or shouldn’t have.  He acted as if he belonged – and he did!  He did so much in his too-short life, and it has rubbed off on Laura.  And now on me. 

My latest career move, a step back in to the corporate world, had me nervous about feeling that old post-graduate way.  This job is something I wanted to do, but did I really want to give up my loosey-goosey ways?  Did I have what it took to be in the Big Leagues, as my colleague puts it? 

There was a time when I was running my yoga studio and my life coach continuously would tell me, “You get to make it up.”  So, this time around I’ve made a conscious choice to look for examples of folks who are doing it well.    Apparently we have come a long way, baby.  I see gorgeous, powerful ladies in soft, feminine clothing and good fabrics.  I see up-to-date haircuts and really good color jobs.  I see people eating healthier diets and lifestyle choices.  Yes, I can act as if I belong, and I can thrive. 

Now. And Again.

Atha yoga anushasanam

Yoga Sutra 1.1

Now, yoga teaching.

Now – and, again – the practice and teaching of yoga.  Now – and, again – together.  Now we start…something…with some sense of urgency.  Again, together, with consistency and a bit of accountability.  Let’s try this one more time, to see if we get any better at it. 

Tonight I was with my old friends at Twisted Trunk.  The ladies there are doing something new now – a new studio, new colors – and deeply, comfortingly old.  They are teaching yoga and offering a place for us to really practice.  I have known these folks for a decade now.  I have learned from them that long.

And tonight I practiced with them again.  Specifically with Dana, whose class I took for the first times in 2005 at 8am before going to work at The Bank.  Before I was a teacher myself, and before I was a mom.  Tonight I heard all the instructions and let my body follow them.  I waited for my breath and stayed in the poses, feeling sensation and deepening expression.  I didn’t rush out or beyond.  It felt like the kind of home that is reliably restorative.  I felt taken care of, and also that I had time and space to have my own private, intimate connection to my practice. 

I know what it’s like to do the impersonal thing, the drop-in semi-anonymous thing.  The thing where the instructions are said, but they are not really meant.  Or not meant for you.  The sequence is fun, the playlist is nice, and the teacher is as hard-working as they come.  Your practice is pretty good, and you think you know a lot about yoga, including Yoga Sutra 1.1.  You’re really OK with the poses you are stuck in, because who really needs to get their leg straight in vasistasana, anyway?  You like the variety of different teachers, and you like that you can go to a class every hour and ten minutes.  Most of them are Vinyasa 2 Flow, so that’s good.  

Back when I met Dana, I had been practicing a few years and felt that I knew enough (really, everything about yoga) to become a teacher.  Thank goddess my teacher trainer had enough sense to hold me to the requirement of 100 hours of practice in this style of yoga to be accepted into her training program.  I did it in six weeks, including a retreat to Costa Rica.  Every single week I had a breakthrough.  This wasn’t just sheer number of hours.  It was that every time I went to class a teacher adjusted my foundation or stance.  They were not afraid to take the time or make the contact with me to teach me something.  I saw the same teachers, regularly, and I saw the teachers in each other’s classes.  

Patanjali and Vyagrapada learn Yoga together from Shiva

Packed in to Yoga Sutra 1.1 is the idea of the study of yoga ‘together’.  Yoga is always a private thing that requires someone else.  Preferably a group of someone elses that you could keep company with over a long stretch of time.  What I’ve found in doing it now, with some urgency, are bursts of intense growth in my physical and emotional bodies.  What I’ve found in doing it again is deepening satisfaction in my wisdom and bliss bodies, all woven together with breath.   

Music, Memory, Mantra

 

If you’re reading this because you have some experience of yoga, possibly with me as your teacher, you may have been offered a mantra to chant or listen for at the beginning or ending of class.  Mantras are phrases of sometimes seemingly nonsensical syllables.  They generally have some sort of meaning, though, and you can know what they mean.  But the key to mantra theory is that you don’t have to know what the syllables mean.  (I write syllable, because some of them aren’t things we’d translate as words.)  You can really only know if it works or not.  Some of them are easy to do and hear; they may ground you and soothe you.  Others are more difficult to say out loud; they may churn you and agitate.  The yoga is what you do with that experience. 

In any case, mantra does to you what good music often does.  It takes you to memory.  Mantra traverses mind to heart and back again (manas means both heart and mind; -tra makes it a tool), crossing the palate to create sound.  Both the sound and the act of making the sound are ways that you connect what has never been and can never be separate.  Mantra just heightens the resonance that was already there.   

For months, I had only been listening to what was readily available on my phone for my hours-long commutes every day.  For being a lady who doesn’t mind to spend a little dough, I was surprisingly cheap when it came to my music library.  There was very little in my playlists that I couldn’t just ignore while I flipped through the Vogue or attended to the Facebook on the train.  I played one of the tracks from Shantala’s Voice of the Esraj or Garth Stevens’ Flying for savasana at the end of class.  I didn’t realize what I was missing – that there could be more.

An unexpected concert attendance back in February re-lit me and reminded me of how it could be, how I could feel.  And so I bought the album, joined Spotify, and was mystified by my newfound ability to think of an artist, type it in, and come up with something that touched my heart again and again.  (I know, I’m a little behind here folks.)  For weeks, I’ve been revisiting old songs, remembering favorite moments.  But not just remembering how I was then, I really felt like that girl who loves those songs.  At the same time, I’ve begun having new feelings and making new memories.  I’m adding to old songs and learning new ones. 

The difference between an old song from your college days and mantra is that mantras take you farther back.  They take you in to the operating system in your heart-mind, allowing you to touch the parts of yourself that are otherwise hard to get to.  These are the parts that are not right before your eyes, but that you’re willing to see with your eyes closed.  And then open.  It’s said that if you meditate and become receptive enough, you’d hear them chanting themselves.  And then you can join in.    

Every year at Rajanaka Camp with Douglas, we spend some time learning a mantra.  We take something that’s effective as simply message, information, instruction and learn enough about it through narrative to give it meaning.  Mantras are gifts, and gifts shouldn’t be burdens.  We are reminded of very few instructions on when and how much to do the mantras.  The only instruction is to do it when you feel like it. 

At the end of Camp, we have a dinner called Curry Night.  After days of lecture and note-taking, we let loose a little, have a drink, and eventually head upstairs to gather around the piano and sing Springsteen and Stones songs.  It’s only just this year that I understand that we’re remembering then, too.  And making new memories.  We’re connecting heart to mind and back again.  I’m really looking forward to this year’s Camp.    

 

Short Step

Today is Day Two of the spring celebration of the festival Navaratri, nine nights of the goddess.  It’s mostly a celebration of the goddess Durga, whose name comes from the Sanskrit for ‘hard’ or ‘difficult’.  (Look at that hair in the picture of her in the 1 o'clock position!)  She’s the promise that resides in all of us that we can be more, but it’s going to be rough going.  On this very Day Two in my back yard, we’ve had just enough sunshine and just enough rain to get my tulip blooms out. 

They’ve been waiting since their last bloom, since I last folded their leaves down, through the heat of a mosquitoed summer, through the fall Navaratri, through the bare winter, creating and storing in their bulbs the potency and potential of their short-lived blooms that will show in the next few days.  At the height of their beauty, they’ll be visited by the bees, and then it will be a short step from the bloomed tulip to a bare stem and exposed stamens and stigmas.  She will have put on her best outfit, only for it all to come off again, to be undone by her own beauty.  For the sake of getting to do it again, of reinvention, of fertilization, to make something more than was there before. 

Every time the weather changes, I vow (vrata) to step up my fashion and beauty game.  Yes, it is a sacred vow and worthy of the Sanskrit word.  So many women must feel the same way, as the fashion weeks and 5-pound issues of Vogue arrive in late February and August.  These are the times of the year when it’s easy for life to feel hard (dukha).  You’re either really cold and miserable and over it or you’re really hot and sweaty and need some relief.  So, that first sunshiney day of about 75 degrees is cause for celebration.  We even have an Argentinian friend who looks forward to El Dia de Pezon, the spring day when ladies throw off their scarves and jackets and run around with just a couple of flimsy layers on their top parts.  They are dressed perfectly in their nakedness. 

Navaratri’s goddess celebration, for me, commemorates a period of time when life shifts from feeling tough to feeling like a girl has options, that she might choose to adorn herself and present herself in her best light.  Maybe she’s a little more colorful, maybe a little more studious, but she looks and feels more refined.  No sooner do I get my nails and hair done and my lips painted on that there will be packages to open and wind blowing and the eating of lipstick (insert commercial for lip stuff made from ingredients that you wouldn’t mind actually eating).  This isn’t about trying to stay perfect all the time, but rather about recognizing that lying barely underneath what looks like the most beautiful and refined version of something is that very thing’s hardship, its effort, its edginess and vices. 

You see, it’s a short step from a yoga teacher who looks strong and like she has it all together to a girl with an eating disorder who was doing nothing more enlightened than looking for more time at the gym.  It’s a short step from a sensitive, giving friend to the scared person who wants to control those around her so that they don’t leave.  A short step from loyalty and protection to being a holding tank for resentment.  From our most outwardly presentable selves to our most primal natures, those techniques that have preserved our survival on the most raw level. 

These nights of the goddess invite me to compassion – for myself, for my friends, and for my family.  They invite me to plant the very seeds that were saved from the most fertile experiences in the last growing period, filling me with hope for something that has not yet been and dread of all the work it will take to get there.  Most of all, thought, they excite me to revel in the gorgeousness, knowing that it is already being eaten by time. 

Fearlessness

 

I’ve been spending some time at my grandmother’s house, along with my four-year-old and my uncle, who also lives there on the farm. During our stay, my son turned four, which is a really fun age for all the family. He’s playing superheroes all the time, especially Spiderman, and he and his great-uncle put up shields to protect themselves when they are fighting off bad guys. He's learning about being strong, about being brave, and even about being feared.  My son asks about these things, and I think about how to answer him in a way that he can understand and still carries the weight of what more there is to know about fear and courage.

While in Western Kentucky, I was excited and honored to teach a workshop in my home county at the yoga studio on the town square.  It's owned and run by a mother and daughter team, and it has been super-fun to get to go to classes there with some of my high school friends, their sisters and mothers.  The ladies at the yoga studio were interested in learning more about inversions and arm balances, so I decided to teach alignment and strength in the upper body and pair the actions with the theme of courage.   

Now, let me paint you a little picture.  The son of the family runs a pawn shop next door. This seeming juxtaposition of the yoga studio next to the place with displays full of guns had not gone unnoticed in the preceding weeks of my visit.  I kept thinking, ‘Only in Todd County.’  (Let's just say I'm a little more accustomed to coffee shops and juice bars next to my yoga studios.)  As we ladies were sitting in the front receiving area, allowing the room to cool off from the heated class before, we were greeted by a burly gentlemen in overalls toting some sort of rifle. Of course, he was headed to the pawn shop, but that didn’t keep him from letting out a friendly,“I’m not headed for you!” to relieve a little of the tension that was naturally there.  Everyone made light of the event, and we moved on with our morning. 

In India, the gesture of fearlessness is the right hand held at chest height with the palm open and facing outward. (See the photo above.)  It has a sort of softness and roundness to it, unlike our hardened palm-face-out ‘talk to the hand’ gesture that means the conversation is over. It’s a showing that there’s nothing being held that could hurt you, and so you are beckoned closer, to the possibly even more frightening process of intimacy. Yoga is not just that which is peaceable, calming, or harmless. It invites us to raise the stakes as much as lower them.It brings us into the churning and heat of facing our interior selves and our exterior lives.

What I taught on Saturday to the ladies who were relatively new to bearing their bodies’ weight on their hands was that fearlessness is not about hot having any fear, but rather being afraid enough of the right things. Something gives us a moment of pause, and we take the time to give the right amount of respect to something that could hurt us. When we do that, we get to keep going, trying, and living. What would otherwise stop us completely becomes the invitation to more. 

The value-added project, a phrase my teacher loves to use, becomes not just staying in your own conversation, not just keeping your same point of view, but rather really bringing your hard-won experiences and opinions to bear in moments when there could really be some growth and learning.

Bravery is not the opposite of staying safe, nor is it willfully putting yourself in harm’s way. It is being willing to take the kinds of risks that you can take, of stepping up to your capacity and capabilities.  I hope that I can give these teachings to my son, over time and through example.  I hope that he will be able to listen, learn, and act in ways that are truly heroic. 

Let it Mix with You

"Christmas light" Nataraja and Sivakamasundari just outside the temple at Cidambaram.  

 

About six weeks ago, I was still in India.  If you read the post before this, you’ll know that it was quasi-miraculous that I was even there in the first place.  It was an adventure and a lesson in stamina of all sorts.  Over something like seventeen temple experiences in the two weeks, it became more natural to me to be wrapped in the six yards of fabric that a sari requires.  I got used to my bare feet on the temple floors, picking up whatever was on the ground there.  And it felt right for my forehead to always be smeared with a dot of kumkum, a red powder, and a line (or three) of vibhuti, the white sacred ash. 

We were asked to do all of these outward shows, because Douglas likes to remind us that, “Nobody cares what you believe.  They care what you do.”  So, we came correct.  In addition to the saris, braided hair was required for the temple (and should always be ‘neat’ in any case), we wore fancy bindis, lined our eyes, and made sure we always had on our earrings, necklaces, and bangles.  Let’s just say it was a time commitment made of love.  And we were rewarded for our efforts: people took our pictures, they thanked us, and they even gave us little sparkly OK signs with their hands and said “Super!” 

That’s not to say it didn’t get old.  Sometimes I wanted to just leave my hair down and put on no jewelry and throw on a nightie.  Ever-vigilant for our modesty, though, the Muslim men who sold me these long, printed cotton gowns were sure to shout “NIGHTIE!” every time I looked at one, just to make sure I knew that it was not daywear.  

 

Photo of village girl in a nightie by Laura Patterson. 

By the end of each long, sweaty day I would inevitably forget about my extra make-up and wipe my brow, smearing together a kind of paste made of my sweat and skin, of kumkum and vibhuti.  Then I would get out one of my hundreds of baby wipes and clean it all off of my face. 

The vibhuti that we got most likely was not made from the ritual fires in the temples where we were.  Apparently, Tiruchendur is one of the major suppliers of vibhuti for Tamil Nadu, the region where we were pilgrims.  It is probably cow dung, with maybe some other ingredients thrown in.  In any case, the ritual fires are offered valuable fuel.  I kept thinking of how much our offerings would cost if I had to buy them from the Whole Foods at Columbus Circle but I knew that what we were doing in ‘wasting’ all those groceries would turn into meals for poorer pilgrims and generally mean a lot to the temple itself.     

Vibhuti is what remains when everything else is burned up.  It is white, the color of the sexual fluid, and so represents both where we all end up and where we all came from.  Siva’s left hand holds the fire of dissolution, one of the five acts attributed to him.  We take the ash from that fire and wear it, applying it to ourselves.  Follow the ring of fire over to his right hand, and you’ll see the two-headed drum of creation that beats and pulses life into existence. 

On our penultimate night in India, I watched as Siva’s wife, Sivakamasundari (‘the beautiful desire of Siva’), was ritually bathed.  Mythically, her first child Ganesha was ‘conceived’ in her bath.  I don’t know how many times I had heard the story of her longing for a child while sloughing off her skin, mixing it with water (symbolizing tears), milk (the universe), sandalwood (beauty), etc.  As I waited that night for the curtain to re-open after she had been dressed in her new sari, I understood better.  All that stuff that I was smearing on my forehead was not just for an outward show, it was meant to mix with me.  The temple mixes with me as I do some sloughing.  The temple lives on through my stories and experience.  And, falling in love with my life, I become her, empowered to turn what I want into what I have. 

Photo of me leaving the temple on December 30, 2012, by the light of the almost-full moon. 

You Get What You Want

In yoga, you always get what you want.  This is not to say you get it exactly the way you want it or that you can just throw out ‘wishes’ and magically receive free babysitting and lots of new clothes (my wishes are fairly modest these days).  But I’m currently having this experience with things that I have really wanted, often for some time.   

I like to tell this to students who are new to me that this will happen to them, too.  I tell them that if they want a good stretch, they’ll get just that.  If they want to know the secrets of the universe, they can.  If they want to do crow pose, I don’t see any reason that cannot happen in good time and practice.  Sometimes they get more than they bargained for along the way. 

Seven years ago, I worked for The Bank and would go on lunch breaks (sometimes a couple a day) to this park in TriBeCa near our offices.  I would sit on the benches in my barely-corporate clothing, read a fashion magazine, try not to eat, and daydream about being one of those moms playing in that park with their little kids.  I imagined myself being a yoga teacher and mom to a boy named Van, living a life of happiness and luxury.  This fall, as I sat in that very same park, I realized that is exactly what I’m doing. 

Don’t be mistaken, though.  One of every five women in New York City is a yoga teacher these days.  Many of us are very good, but we still only get a three-minute audition at our local gym along with everyone else.  My bank account is currently a sad state of affairs, and our family arrangement is such that my husband works so much that we often don’t see him for days at a stretch.  It has taken me over a year to find another mom in my neighborhood with whom to have weekday-morning pancake breakfasts.  I’m not being ungrateful here.  I’m being real.  (I really believe we do ourselves and others like us a disservice when we only show the life-is-perfect Facebook-update versions of ourselves.) 

And yet, this realization has given me permission to really want the life I have, to love it, and to radically affirm it.  I’m getting more than I bargained for.   

Next week, I leave for India with Douglas Brooks, on a trip that I have wanted to be on for years, the trip that I announced at the beginning of 2012 that I would be on.  Changes in work, finances, and our yoga community during the year made this trip seem more than impossible.  What has made it possible is the optimism of a dear friend, beneficence from a long-suffering partner, and willingness to step up from grandmas in two states.  In one word, love. 

Once, in a discussion about major and minor deities, Douglas said that if you’re looking for something specific, it’s not necessary to go to the little local deity for that specific thing.  If you want a pregnancy, then probably really what you’re wanting is love and intimacy.  So, go to the major deity and invite that energy more into your life (by whatever means, mantra, mudra, etc.), and you’ll get what you want. 

We’ve probably all had the converse experience of getting some desired outcome only to feel that we didn’t really get what we wanted.  See: child who plays with the vacuum cleaner at someone else’s house only to completely ignore the identical one you just bought.  What the child wanted was the playmate, or the stimulation of being in a different place, or you to pay attention to him. 

Probably what most of us really need is to have an experience of unconditional love.  We experience that love through the conditions of our lives.  In yoga, we call the energy that brings us that experience Kali.  She is time, she is terrible, and she is the great mother.  Through time and life all things are accomplished.  May we love it along the way. 

Just so much...

In my late days of dieting and early days of teaching yoga, I had a neighbor who was studying nutrition and who was also a very early yoga student of mine.  I was still doing the Emily-from-Devil-Wears-Prada thing, “Well, I don't eat anything and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese.” She must have sensed something was a little unhealthy and loaned me a book, called One Bowl: A Guide to Eating for Body and Spirit, by DonGerrard.  It tells the story of a businessman who, over the course of many business lunches and dinners and trips, had gained a bunch of weight.  Somehow (I forget), he decided that he would only eat from one particular bowl.  There were other rules, too, but let’s just call those ‘being mindful’.  He could put whatever he wanted in the bowl and fill it up as many times as he wanted. 

In the beginning, there were lots of bowls of chocolate cake and ice cream, and yet he still saw some positive results. At least, I don’t think he was gaining any more weight like that.  And then, the deeper hunger started to become more important, that of being satisfied in body, soul, and psyche.  Different foods began to ‘sing’ to him.  The practice was the vehicle for the lesson to listen and respond to what the body wants and needs, to wanting and getting enough. 

Yatha tatha.  “Just so much, so much so.”  In some teacher training mentoring group that same year, a wise man named Harrison offered this phrase.  For me, this was really the beginning of learning about having enough.  I am sure he was referring to the fine art of how much to talk during class or something that had to do with applying technique to our practice, but it’s one of those moments that stuck on me.  I had been buying too much and eating too little.  Working, ahem, not at all (but getting paid more than I ever had or have since).  And working out with no great efficiency.  Energy didn’t match desires.  Quantities were off.  I had a deep mistrust that I could monitor and manage the right amount of anything.   

Thankfully, I can say that over the years of practice and the practice of teaching and the practice of living as a teacher, I have learned to trust that I can do enough, that I will have enough, be enough, and not too much, and not too little.  That antsy feeling I get when I haven’t done much work or been very creative lately?  It just means I’m hungry, and that I will soon go through the process of nourishment and satisfaction.  In fact, to reference One Bowl again, the author writes of hunger being just the first note of a whole “symphony of inner sensations associated with my natural digestive processes.”  Whatever that note is, I can say that past experience gives me the faith to trust in following the song through to its final resonance. 

This plays out wonderfully with the little ones who, if you leave them alone, will often pick (over the course of a week) a fairly healthy diet in a fairly healthy quantity.  Taking bites from the stick of butter becomes a reasonable thing to do if that’s pretty much your butter intake for a few days.  But they also need some guidance, as when my son (3) was fighting with a 5-year-old over a little trampoline.  Both wanted it exclusively, but then they agreed that three-year-olds could jump for three minutes and five-year-olds could jump for five minutes.  After about 30 seconds, the five-year-old was ready to share.  He had been given the time to say when so much was enough. 

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Ever thought about what would happen if we took those instructions literally?  We’d be in a captive, torturous, vicious cycle that we could not quit.  Of course we know better than to get ourselves stuck in the shower, unable to get to work or get on with our lives.  The yoga tradition is full of warnings against samskaras, those ‘scars’ that we make through living by habit, unconsciously.  They happen little bit by little bit, until the pattern is undeniable. 

A few months ago, my mom ended up in the E. R.  It was no freak accident that caused this trip, though.  It was her contact lens.  Years and years of wearing hard contacts had literally worn a groove in her eyeball, to the extent that one night she just couldn’t get that sucker back out.  This is a woman who abided by all of the rules of contact lens wearing…the ones that I really, really should.  And yet, here she was, in the middle of the night, with a doctor flushing that little lens of empowered vision out of her eye. 

[This kind of injury is exactly what your yoga teacher is telling you about lifting your finger pads up or dropping the head of your arm bone forward in caturanga dandasana.  You won’t get hurt today, but when it happens it will feel like it happens in a moment.]

Not all repetitive cycles are the negative type.  How many times do you stir the pot, make the bed, pick up the child?  You do it until it’s done.  And yes, it wears a groove.  There’s a certain efficiency in that.  A way that you don’t have to ask yourself, “Should I pick him up again?”  You just do.  It’s only when we slavishly follow the laundry-must-be-done-on-Saturday-and-not-a-day-before-or-after routine that we are victims. 

Mythic consciousness offers us the images of the buffalo and the cobra.  The buffalo is a dense animal, with no extra space to know anything else besides its own nature.  It ruminates, telling itself the same story over and over, unable to hear any other version of the story than the one that keeps regurgitating itself.  The saying goes, “Even if Lord Krishna plays his flute, the buffalo will still chew its cud.”  The buffalo is not aroused, but the cobra is.  Cobras are poisonous snakes, and that poison both protects them and is the means by which they can assimilate food.  The cobra eats, grows bigger, and sheds its old skin, leaving it behind, but with a new skin that will serve well.  Until growth requires a new shedding, during which we’re a little vulnerable to predators. 

Cobra consciousness invites us to the recursive process of growth.  A recursive process is one that reviews what happened in previous iterations and then adds on.  It’s the reason that you can drop in to a yoga class without already knowing everything about yoga.  The teacher starts with the basic instructions about breathing and what to do with your hands and feet.  Every time.  Even in the advanced class.  After a few poses, she tells you how to use some muscles.  In between instructions, she links things together, “Keeping that, add this.”  The review is built in, and each next step requires the steps before.   

And, beautifully, recursion refines, allowing the version that wasn’t the most optimal or most current to pass away, just like your tenth-grade biology book.  Just like old skin.  We just know more now.  We’re bigger now.  We contain more. 

 P.S. – When I was contemplating this post, I had a moment of déjà vu.  Had I written this before?  I can’t find any evidence that I had, but I must have written this a few times in my head before it finally emerged.  I guess it took a few layers of growth.  And I know that I learned while I wrote it.   

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A few months ago, one of my friends posted some photos from Anusara's Inner Harmony days.  It was before I was practicing at all, before most of the teachers there were popular, and before Sianna's pants had ruffles on them. Those images helped me get through the first wave of resignations from Anusara, including my own in March.  It just helped to see these folks practicing together.  I'm sure people weren't all best friends then, and I'm certainly not interested in going back to some perfect time that never existed, but the collective memory should include more than just 'why I'm leaving' stories.  Here's one of mine.

Shortly after my copy of The Poster was hung in my studio (thanks, Lois), another studio in Louisville announced that the very practitioner in those photos would be teaching a workshop at their studio.  I promptly got my ass in gear and contacted both the studio and Darren Rhodes to offer to assist his workshop. Next, I got my ass in gear to make sure I could demo whatever might be asked of me.  I really wanted to show EVERYONE that a viable option for Anusara Yoga existed in Louisville. And that option was me.  This is all just a little embarrassing to write, but there's a point.

So, the very week of the workshop, I'm attempting niralamba sirsasana (look Ma, no hands! headstand). And, of course, I fall.  I'm sure it was right before I taught a class, too, but in those days my classes consisted of my husband, a teacher who liked me, and Mary.  Admittedly, I was kind of hurt.  I did therapeutics on myself, and went to get body work, and hoped for the best. 

The weekend arrived.  Darren, endearingly, showed up to the studio with no yoga clothes, and taught in his Prana corduroy pants the first day.  As expected, I got to demo.  Students from my studio came to the workshop and knew the invocation. I assisted my little heart out in those classes.  He wrote a thank-you to me in my notebook while the students were in savasana. I got to practice with Darren during the lunch break and was invited to the post-workshop dinner.  Admittedly, I felt like a big shit.  He even said to me, "You're not Certified?  You seem so Certified."

I could not have been more proud.  And I was sure that my little studio would soon be overwhelmed with students who wanted me to teach them my mad skills.

As the end of the weekend approached, and I felt more comfortable around this very accomplished teacher, I asked him about his experience in making The Poster, about specific, elusive poses, etc.  I'm sure they're questions that he's been asked a bazillion times by now.  But here's what I took away from his answers, and it's what I've kept in mind every time my best friend challenged me on why I would ever care to attempt the Level 3 Syllabus (Radical Expansion).  It's not about your performance of the poses.  It's about what it does to you as a practitioner to do that kind of a practice. 

Extrapolate that to any puja. It's not what you do to the outside thing that matters.  It's how you shift internally when you do that chant, mudra, hold that baby, etc. 

For me, it was about devoting myself to something difficult (which I was, in the form of trying to run a studio).  It was about not just doing the big, easy thing. It was about setting a goal and sticking to it.  About not giving up, giving in, or accepting what everyone else thinks is comfortable just because it is.  Maybe one of these days I'll write a blog post about comfort and ease, but don't hold your breath.

By the way, not one person who was in that workshop came to my class in the weeks and months afterward.  Maybe someone came years later, but it was not directly related to that experience.  These were years of deep humbling for me, and really the beginning of my yoga practice.  Darren's kindness and encouragement helps me to remember what's valuable about practicing doing what you cannot yet do. 

Join Allison on Saturday, June 2, at Abhaya for three hours of advanced asana, 2-5 PM.

Kartikkeya

 My son is lucky enough to have several grandmas.  He has his expected two, from his dad and me.  Then he has a great-grandma that’s still living, and another one that passed when he was eighteen months old.  He has a ‘local’ grandma in Brooklyn, whose face jumped out at me from a whole slew of people who responded to my care.com ad for part-time sitters.  There are probably a couple more who would claim him, giving him a good seven, but we’re not in close contact with them.  We’ll call the ones he has his mythic seven and leave it at that for now.   

I’m in my second round of studying Skanda (also known by many names to his many mothers).  His ‘birth’ story involves six sparks being emitted from the brow of his father, Shiva.  But since there were five more seeds than usual to make a child, six ‘mothers’ were required to receive them.  We won’t go through all the mothers here, but let’s just say that we’re using this term loosely.  There was even an extra mother, Agni, who served as a sort of father-mother in the way that a boy needs a male outside of his father who can nurture him and teach him. 

One of the mothers who held and nursed this energy that became this beautiful, successful boy is the seven stars of the Pleiades.  (Which are actually a huge cluster of stars.  There are seven sister stars, but two more are often named with them, who are their mythic parents.  The 7+2 thing is cool symbolically, too, since we’re always looking for 7 primary flavors or tones of life, plus shanta and sringara, the peaceful and passionate.) 

Anyway, they are called the Krittikas in Hindu lore, and they are the wives of the Saptarishis, the seven sages.  Now, the point of being a sage is to help humanity thrive, and it’s the wives of the sages who are the power behind them.  They are called jyestha, elder or wise women, often depicted with pendulous breasts.  They are grandmas, past their own child-bearing years, yet they managed to nurse him and raise him. When he's their son, he's Kartikkeya. 

Back last summer, my friend Lenore recommended Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier.  Chapter 13 is “There’s No Place Like Notoriety: Mothers, Grandmothers, and Other Great Dames.”  In it, the author explores theories behind menopause.  Why do women stop being fertile, yet continue to live?  An anthropological study of the hunter-gatherer Hadza elderly women suggests that they live not just to see their youngest offspring out the door, but also to make sure that their grandbabies have enough to eat.  As their daughters have babies and attend to the demands of their new infants, grandma comes along and forages for the no-longer-nursing toddler.  Without her help, the older siblings might very well go hungry.  Grandma makes sure you’re well-nourished.  

Thankfully, I can still attest to the benefits of having a grandmother, or ‘mamaw’ in Kentucky-speak.  Without her, life would be much more bare-bones.  With her, there can be a certain kind of generosity that your mother often can’t give you directly.   

The way you’re nursed by an old lady is how you thrive.  Mamaw can’t hold you in her womb, because that’s already done for her.  She holds you in her heart.  Saum is the seed mantra for the heart-womb.  Any time you need a pendulous breast to rest in, listen for this sound.  When you are mothered by a grandmother, you are Kartikkeya.  

This is my fat baby with my Mamaw Clan in the summer of 2009.  She had mothered seven of her own children, plus her own grandchildren and many others that she babysat over the decades.  She had advanced dementia, but she told us that that baby wanted to come to her. 

Obligations and Frivolity

 Post (from my friend Harrison): I just finished one of those gargantuan yet utterly banal tasks that had it not been done would have wreaked havoc and having now been completed is more or less unnoticeable by anyone other than myself.

Response (from one of Harrison’s friends I don’t yet know): You just described every day of my life since becoming a stay-at-home-mother.

My response: Nityakarmas

Nityakarmas are the things you gotta do.  They are obligatory.  Doing them rarely gets you a pat on the back.  Not doing them raises stakes you’d probably rather not be raising.  The goal is to not spend a lot of time worrying about them.  Their ‘opposite’ is called kamyakarma, the acts that are born of desire.  They are indulgences, extras.  As tantric yoginis, we have little problem with desire.  Desire is how we all got here.   

I am a mom of a toddler and a yoga teacher of all kinds of people, including expectant moms.  I especially love to teach these mommas, who have chosen to do one of the more expensive, non-necessary actions that an individual human can do. (Having a child, I mean.  Yoga class isn’t that expensive.)  As my Mamaw pointed out when I told her that I was pregnant, we no longer have to have children to work the farm anymore.  There are plenty of people in the world without me making more.  Mamaw has a way with words, and she loves her great-grandson dearly, and she is so happy that he is here.  But it’s true that our population was in no danger of collapsing without his birth.   

Once sweet baby is born, indulgence dissipates (or just gets re-defined).  Even though the baby and parents may be surrounded with beauty and love, the reality of the daily requirements permeates every attitude, thought, and deed.  This can be wearing.  Any ritual, regardless of its object, has a tendency to dry up in the absence of desire. 

Our yoga asks us to be not in just one thing or the other.  It asks us to hold two things together, often seeming opposites.  This is how we live meaningfully in the world, in the midline.     

I recently went to the baby shower of a dear friend.  She is so ready for this baby, and the party was a very special occasion.  All of us moms talked about our pregnancies and births, those subjects that make the men glad they don’t usually get invited to such events.  The shower is a metaphor for the pregnancy, a special time set aside to mark what is important.  As guests, we let her know that we’re here to support her through a transition, to help her align to her new role.  It’s a non-required requirement. 

We call these special occasions naimittika karma, to be done as and when a need arises.  When a friend visits and we take special care of him or her, this is naimittika.  It’s like sitting with the divine.  Hopefully your practice feels this way, a midline or alignment between what you want to do and what you have to do.  It’s what I try to offer as a yoga teacher, particularly for prenatal students, who often are either trying to work up ‘til the very end or take care of another littlun (that’s Kentucky for ‘little one’).     

Babies are desire.  They want, and we want them.  They are obligation.  Not taking care of them results in dire consequences.  They are also naimittika.  I’m using the word ‘commitment’ to describe this midline.  Our commitments are that which we choose to tend to out of the importance and primacy of relationship.  May our practice be that.

I teach prenatal yoga at Abhaya Yoga in Dumbo, Brooklyn on Mondays at noon.  I also teach a couple of other classes on that schedule, too. 

Partnership

Here’s a triad of terms that I’ve been thinking about for the past eighteen months or so: Lust, Relationship, Partnership.  I’ll put it right out there and say I’ll be doing a series of classes on this idea on Fridays at 6PM in February at South Mountain Yoga in New Jersey.  For the sake of the flier, I’ve swapped the word ‘attraction’ for ‘lust’, but you get the idea. 

After seven years of studying this tradition (that’s a common-law marriage where I come from), with a few more years of practicing in the tradition of ‘gym’ thrown in, I’ve realized the value of gaining a bit of knowledge and holding it for some time before I actually know how to use it in a sentence.  Well, a teaching sentence at least. 

In the beginning, all the new ideas were coming at me through the fire hose, and I took what I could and it was all so beautiful and magical.  But, through time, I felt at home with more ideas than not, and the sparks just didn’t fly as fast and furious as they did in the beginning.  There’s still practice and commitment, and it works and it’s sweet and healthy, but it’s also all those things that are regular, everyday, normal, and can dull you out.  I could go days and go through motions and not look directly at what I’m doing.  I know what that looks like.  I’ve seen it a million times. 

Some days, though, I find myself meeting eyes in the mirror with that same commitment.  We’re just brushing our teeth together, same as every day, but then there’s that moment of silently saying to each other, “I’m so glad you live with me.”  And then there’s that other, shockingly electric part of the feeling, where you react in the way you imagine you would to an illicit lover.  Really?  We can still do this to each other?? 

That this is lust, which implies a sense of going out and getting something external and taking it.  Oh, yeah.  Lust is at its most desirous when the thing you’re taking is not yours.  This is not problematic in and of itself.  None of us would be here without the power of attraction, of urgency toward something we want. 

But it turns problematic when we think that that’s all there is.  We become like the god Indra, whose successes always come from conquering something external.  When success is only externally-generated, all there is to do is to repeat, vicious-cycle style.  Materialism applies to people, things, even spirituality.  Regardless of how many trainings you do or lovers you have, if you’re only taking – not receiving – you’ll just end up doing the same thing over and over.  No matter who else is there, if you’re taking it’s always still just you, all by yourself. 

Beyond lust lies relationship.  If lust is taking, then relationship is give-and-take.   It’s you and the mirror, which tells you something about how to align, how to make the sacred.  It’s all of the drawing of boundaries and learning “This, not that.  Here, not there.  Now, not then.”  Relationship is the generic term that we use any time two people (or a person and a thing) are in close proximity to each other.  Sometimes, relationship is there regardless of whether any lust is or not.  It can be dessicated and still be a relationship. 

But what it does do, juicy or not, is show us more about ourselves.  We can learn and grow and reap value.  We become successful at what we’re doing, but the peril is that we might get to the point where we go, “Oh, I get it.”  There can be a tendency to look at something in the mirror and see what we think we already know.  Everything fits, nothing more to see here. 

This third term in the triad is partnership.  This is the model of getting up and feeling and aligning again today and knowing that you’ll do it again tomorrow.  It’s not one party taking, it’s a mutual taking.  By receiving another person, we are received.  And sometimes it’s not until the millionth-and-one-time of hearing something that you actually know how to use it.  It becomes wisdom.  For instance, I’ll enter my second decade of marriage with my spouse this year.  It’s been only since just last year that I figured out that he loved me unconditionally.  He’s always been doing it.  I just now knew that I knew it. 

I’m real proud of how far we’ve come as a greater community with ending friendships and marriages and ties to schools of yoga.  I see a lot of great co-parenting and blended extended families that have dealt with divorce.  My parents’ divorce in the eighties was the classic nightmare – my dad lived three miles away but he might as well have been across the country.  When people go separate ways these days, they write beautiful letters to each other and stay friends on Facebook and make business collaborations.  And maybe that’s a certain way of being a good partner, too. 

Partnership firms things up by enduring.  It makes us more powerful by making us more than ourselves.  The partnership model invites us to not just acquisition and success, but to greatness, which is a demanding place to be.  Whatever you want, whatever you align to, there you will find success.  Greatness is the opportunity to savor that success, day after day. 

Which sense do I use for this?

It’s January, it’s cold, and Van and I are watching a lot of Sesame Street.  We’re watching more than our fair share of all of the ‘Preschool on TV’ shows.  They all take a theme and come at it in as many different directions as they can.  Today’s Sesame Street was about the 5 senses.  The characters go through various exercises in deciding how best to experience their outer world.  Oscar the Grouch has a sardine sundae.  Taste!  Radar the Teddy Bear.  Touch tells us he’s soft.  Etc.  

Unless you’ve recently been around a little one, you forget that you, too, had to learn to articulate to yourself that it was your sense of smell that told you it was time for a shower or your sense of hearing that told you that Car Talk is on.  We also have combinations of senses: touch-see (crucial for that satisfactory shopping experience for me), smell-taste (often absent in cold season).  Just try ‘tasting’ banana Laffy Taffy without seeing that fantastic yellow color.  The multi-layered sensory experience gives the world depth and texture and often more information that would otherwise be obvious to us.  It’s seamless now, but there was a time that we could do all this stuff without being able to tell ourselves or share with others what we were doing. 

It’s so important to teach the little ones how to use their senses and describe how they got their experiences.  We teach them which questions to ask and how to go about asking those questions with their senses.  As grown-ups, we often think that we’re done with all that or get frustrated when what we want to get to just won’t come.  We have the sentient capacity to know our hearts, but we often haven’t reviewed how to go about doing just that. 

Through the process of yoga, in one form or another, we learn how to turn these sensitivities inward.  We have techniques for tasting our inner experience as much as our outer one.  We feel, hear, smell (this one’s harder, but try for memory here, especially place memory), and see parts of ourselves that are sometimes hard to reach.  And, just as Van is consciously making smell memories of NYC and letting the visual and physical layout of our home deeply imprint on his brain, I’m doing the same thing in practice and meditation.  Simultaneously making sensory connections and memories, so that in a moment that I seem far from my soul I can know how to get there again. 

Van watches Elmo see and hear and feel, while I do Harshada’s Seven Chakra meditation on Yogaglo.  It strikes me that we’re doing the same thing.  I’m learning how to use my different energy centers to feel around my subtle body.  (Harshada was talking about ‘centers’ and I mis-heard ‘senders’.  Which is cool, too.)  Van is learning that it’s his skin that tells him about the state of his outer body.  The questions seem so simplistic to me, and I almost want to answer them out loud for him.  But then I think that I’m something like a toddler (well, maybe an adolescent) in this spiritual education.  I have a lot of stuff memorized, but I’m still working on what facts and techniques to apply in which case.  I’m still getting my wits about me. 

Prakasha/Vimarsha

On this day, I think of Janus, the Roman god of thresholds, bridges, and new beginnings, whose image is dominated by his two faces.  One looks forward, and one looks backward.  He gives his name to January, which we will make much to-do over in the course of the next days.  Like the Hindu Ganesha, who reigns in the same areas of our experience, they are each the first gods invoked in their respective cultures.  They are the gateway to and the boundary between where you are now and where you’re heading. 

That’s all well and good, and I love Ganesha as much as the next WASH (thanks, Eric).  But Janus’s image really does it for me today.  He is the depiction of prakasha (shining forward) and vimarsha (the light back as reflection).  If you made it to this blog, chances are that you’ve already made it through some others, some Oprah, and some yoga classes.  We understand that we’re each other’s reflections, what with our mirror neurons and all.  What you’re getting is a result of what you’re putting out there.  In a way, though, we can let ourselves off the hook a bit because we’re reflected and refracted through the individual lenses of other, radically free entities.  Sure, it messes us up when we see our insecurities and need to have the last word right out there in the open.  It touches that place inside of us that we’ve been taught to believe doesn’t belong.  But, with other people, we can also tell ourselves that we’ve been doing our own work and that we have very little to no jurisdiction over other people’s behaviors, expressions, and voices.  So there.  You can use it.  Or not.   

Now, turn it around.  When we direct the light toward ourselves, the vimarsha is what comes out as our actions.  When you’re hard on someone else, check in on how hard you’re being on yourself.  When no one can please you, in what way are you unable to please yourself?  When something’s wrong with everyone else on the planet, chances are you’re directing that same attitude toward yourself.  (Take a few breaths with this one, especially if you’re telling yourself that you’re getting it ‘right’ here.)  The point is, you’re always keeping company with yourself and your actions.  Give yourself a break.  Give other people a break.  You will go a long way toward happy. 

Let’s move on.  Janus is more than just forward/backward…

He is two-faced, duplicitous.  When we sit with him, we’re of two minds, loving the leaving while at the same time wanting to keep everything from before.  That attitude, that injury, that habit.  I mean, we never really leave them behind, anyway.  We just crowd them in nooks and crannies, possibly never seeing them again until it’s time to move out of this house (and on to the next?). 

He shows us that we’re more than one person.  We’re all the authentic guises we can handle, the fractalizing making more of us rather than less.  But in order to learn and love, we must not just make more of the same.  We must let in more than just the same. 

Janus’s faces don’t face each other, looking past each other in to the middle distance.  Nor are they side-by-side, looking opposite directions.  They are back-to-back, leaning and merging into each other.  The same, but different.  Just like today and tomorrow.

Solstice Puja

 This afternoon, in the moments preceding the longest, darkest night of the year, my son is taking a long, dark nap.  I’ve been using the time to look through some old notebooks and remember some of the things I’ve learned over the years.  Much of what I wrote down was in the tone of someone who knew she would turn around and teach the ideas to people who – for the most part – have not heard any of this before.  Over the past couple of weeks writing this blog, it’s felt really good to stretch my writing muscles and return to a practice that I’d left off for a few months.  But the truth is that so far I’ve played it safe, a little self-conscious about all the other blogs and teachers out there who have no doubt written very similar posts in much more skilled styles.  What I’ve just learned – again – is that I need look no further than right in front of me for worthy inspiration.  It can be uncertain here in the dark, seemingly alone, but there’s always at least a tiny light.  Sit with that little bit, and notice how you are when you’re not obligated to be anything else.  The extended darkness is a free pass to dive into the expansion of your heart.

Breath - If you’ve been out of your heart for a little while, there’s a swan/goose that will take you from your head to that place.  It’s called hamsa.  Don’t think of it like this magical, mystical creature.  Think of it as this sturdy, workhorse bird.  (It’s what I named my bike, the biggest, steadiest old girl that feels safe and secure.)  She will always do her job, and once the breath takes you to the heart, you’ll feel the tug of a narrative that longs to be remembered. 

Deva (Light) - Then, the notebooks that live right beside your bed will become more than just things to dust every week.  Divine inspiration is right in front of you.  It’s whatever you’ve managed to bring close by, for many years or just for today.  It may be something that everyone else already has.  If it draws your attention, it’s worthy.  Let it bring you a little light on a dark afternoon. 

Mantra - Even though you’re alone, there’s a universal chant that’s vibrating.  That it’s a chant (not a song) invites you to listen first, and blend your vibration to the one that’s already happening.  You don’t have to re-invent everything.  Just let it work on you.        

Mudra – My tantric friends and I like to ‘turn our kleshas in to lakshmis’ (turn our blemishes in to beauty marks).  Similarly, we can turn our samskaras in to mudras (our ruts in to receptive imprints).  How can you do the thing you always do, but make it a vessel for experience rather than a dessicated habit? 

Nyasa – This is how!  You’ve probably read/heard all these other terms before, but nyasa might be a new vocabulary word.  It means ‘placing’, as in the way you lay the puja upon yourself.  Start inside, then bring everything outside through mantra and mudra, then lay it back on your own body.  The idea conveys an element of style, and it’s kind of the point.  You have taken yourself down some rabbit hole or other, be it reading, writing, sitting, throwing things in fires, or doing full king pigeon pose.  As far as this is, it’s still just getting you in to a basic story, song, structure.  It’s still what everyone else is doing or has already done.  The rest is articulation and embellishment.  Take it upon yourself to  inspire yourself to inspire others.