What’s your story?

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” - Talmud

We all have a story.

On our mats, I’d bet each of us has at least one persistent storyline about our limitations—why we can’t perform a certain asana or perhaps tales of old injuries that we never want to risk exposing ourselves to again (ever). I shared with you my old "drop back” narrative: it’s only an asana, who cares in the big scheme of things, everybody has at least one pose they don’t do, so this will be mine, no way I'm trying it in public, surely I'll hurt or embarrass myself...

“If an idiot tells you the same story every day for a year, you would end up believing it”.

Need I say more about my internal blather?

The most important story we will ever tell about ourselves is the story our inside voice tells to our self. The good news, we are both the author and the hero; heroes are never ordinary. But, even heroes can get stuck from time to time, stop listening, and succumb to complacency. Our stories, similar to the consequences of neglecting our bodies, can suffer from an unhealthy hardening of categories and calcification of perceptions.

So our practice this week focused on listening to the tales we tell ourselves on our mats. To help confront our stories, we performed most of our regular asanas with an element of asymmetry. In short, whether a story or an asana, difference helps us find connection.

Example: Is your story that there is only one way to perform bhujangasana (cobra) or pincha mayurasana (fore arm balance)? What does your internal narrator have to say when you’re invited to change it up, place one hand palm down, put the other on finger tips and twist (goofy style)? Are you open to the change? Or, did you have to confront that inside voice who told you how it was and always will be?

In much the same way, our bodies also respond to being challenged, taken off center, by the new and different, right juxtaposed versus coordinated with the left, hence cross training, or (so they tell me) the reason for those mysterious Bosu balls. You never know your core strength more than when something tries to knock you off center.

And...it's worth mentioning other bylines you offered up:
• Chaturanga dandasana (low push up)…is a short story, or
• Eka pada koundinyasana II (arm balance)…is a fantasy, 30 year epic!

“Be careful how you interpret the world, it is like that.”

Let’s be honest, we don’t just tell stories to ourselves on our mats. We also tell them about work, health, happiness, and family. I was fortunate to attend a seminar by Jim Loehr, a sport and leadership psychologist and author of “The Power or Story”, who encouraged us to first write our old stories on these topics and then compose our new stories. You should definitely try this! I found my old story included some egregiously flawed logic.

As class drew to a close, our last asana was matsyasana (fish) pose, where I suggested a fish spends its entire life in water without knowing it. In other words, once a story inculcates us, it can be difficult to change, because it becomes who we are, the world in which we live. [And duly noted, it’s debatable whether or not a fish knows it’s in water:) How could I really know? Thank you for suspending your scientific inquiry and indulging me to make a point! ]

Finally, we practiced "Talking back to your mind, to change your story (samskaras)meditation."

As you you sit for meditation, listen to that inside voice, and witness the thoughts as they pass by. If a passing thought is negative, painful, or blaming, then take control of the story and substitute it with a positive, loving or empowering thought. You shift the story, but not in a false, or unauthentic way. So for instance only substitute an angry thought with forgiveness, if you mean it. If not, then perhaps an angry story line is replaced with a reminder that “I have what I need to deal with this”, “There is another way of looking at this”, “This will pass” or “My intention is that this situation unfolds for the highest good.”

Our stories are meant to be told.

To be human, is to have a story to tell. As we remember and retell our stories and create new ones we become the authors, the authorities of our own lives. The script is being written, played, whether we are conscious about it or not. My wish for each of you as we left our mats, was that you accept the invitation to co participate in its telling. Whether etched in the corners of your mind or better yet you take pen to paper, write your story, to remember, to learn, to determine who and what you are, and who at what you yearn to be. All in all, it is the story of ourselves and of each other which we keep in our hearts…that makes us who we are.

The whisper of the breathe asks, “Who are you?” To which the internal narrator responds, “I am the story of myself.”

To a blockbuster, NY times best selling, Pulitzer Prize National Book Award winning story, Namaste!

P.S. After class, Connie recommended we read: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Excellent suggestion, thank you!

Everybody dance now….

The Nataraja (Siva as Lord of the Dance)--with his wild dreads entangled with skulls and jewels dancing the universe into existence while stomping out the mini-me of forgetfulness--never ceases to inspire a class theme. So the ancient texts go his anandatandava, dance of bliss, consists of five acts:
• revelation
• concealment
• creation
• maintenance
• destruction.
Having recently sashayed, both on and off the mat, from a period of super fun expansion into multiple moments of suddenly feeling as if I'd been smacked down, his persistent dance routine has been top of mind. For example, I spontaneously began doing drop backs (standing dropping into a back bend and then standing up again), an asana which I’ve feared for years, only to slip and fall on train station steps which I've travelled for years and fracture my knee cap. As I am grudgingly coming to terms with my injury and slow recovery, it occurred to me how being adept at jiving to all five acts(not just high spirited party favorites like revelation and creation) is the key to resilience.

The iconography and stories of the Nataraja remind us that we live within an undulating cyclical dance on many levels. In the broadest sense, by watching ocean waves rising, rolling, spilling and retreating, depending on time of day performing anything from a smooth waltz to an high spirited hip hop number, we can actually see the powerful recursive cycle that embraces the earth in action. Or from a very different perspective, citizens of corporate America like myself may also recognize the Nataraja's five acts in organization design or team development theory which explain the ebb and flow of how we work together. And at the most intimate of levels, all of us will find this same universal dance is in
.....the cadence of our breathe,
..........the metronome of our hearts,
...............the pulse which enlivens every cell in our body…

So we changed our practice this week by turning up the dance music yet slowing down our asanas to active restoratives, proving to ourselves that the dance we so often seek externally, is deep within us (and that there is no shortage of PG rated songs, some sillier than others, from the 90's, 80's, and 70's about dancing!)

During svasana I shared the excerpt below from an accomplished scientist whose work links Eastern thought and physics. As he peered into a high powered technologically advanced telescope, he writes:

I saw cascades of energy coming down from outer space, in which particles were destroyed and created in rhythmic pulses; I saw the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I heard its sound, and at that moment I knew that this was the Dance of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers.
—Fritjof Capra, Tao of Physics

All in all, the Nataraja's dance is everywhere (a.k.a the rhythm is going to get you). Try as we might, we cannot control or trump a phase. It's seductive to only ever want to ride the crest of a wave but invariably each of us will need to maneuver its dissolution. These down turns invite us to give ourselves permission to be hurt and broken, versus chasing the wave that was, and trust destruction is an integral part of growth and not the final act...so long as the Nataraja keeps time with the tick tock of his hand held drum....revelation, creation, etc. is sure to follow.

Our yoga practice this week was intended to help tune in to where we truly are versus where we want to be within this recursive rhythm and then, lean in, surrender wholeheartedly to the hustle and flow, and just dance.

To the dance which resides deep within all of us, namaste (and boogie woogie)!

P.S. Apologies to Ed for torturing him with Barry Manilow’s Bandstand Boogie. While in konasana (seated wide angle forward bend), he held his ears and breathed very deeply, to get through the 2 ½ minutes. Every one's anandatandava is different, I suppose. After class I was inspired to download, the Marcarena, Electric Slide, Chicken Dance…

From Good to Great

Are you a hedgehog or a fox?

What does the business book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, which examines why some companies make the leap from good to great and others do not, have to do with yoga or you? Well, you know by now I find yoga everywhere, even in the most inconspicuous of hiding places. Turns out those concepts which make for good business are similar to the philosophical themes and alignment principles we visit on our mats each week.

Take, for instance, the Hedgehog concept, with roots in a Greek myth about the hedgehog and the fox. The fox knows many things, is cunning, able to devise a myriad of sneak attacks on the hedgehog, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. And you guessed it, the hedgehog always wins! When the fox thinks he’s found a way to pounce, the hedgehog responds the same way time and again—he rolls into a ball, and extends his spikes to successfully ward off the fox.

The gist of the hedgehog concept is that no matter how complex, it’s mastered the ability to reduce all challenges and dilemmas to a simplistic idea, a single organizing concept, or basic principle that unifies and guides everything. Think, Einstein’s theory of relativity E= MC2, where the simplicity is born of deep understanding and complexity. Or, per the authors, Wells Fargo's move from a disperse Citicorp wanna-be to one of the best performing banks in the world (as of 2001).

On our mats, the Anusara style of yoga does much the same. It boils things down to five principles of alignment, so no matter the pose, no matter our ability to master its full expression, we apply the same principles again and again, and it too works.

Set the foundation and Open
Muscular Energy
Inner Spiral
Outer Spiral
Organic expansion

The author (who I now suspect is a yogi too) suggests that these brilliantly simple hedgehog-like business concepts flow from the intersection of:

1. What you can be best in the world at (and equally important what you cannot be the best at)?

Likewise your yoga practice is an invitation to get really good at being an authentic version of you with a deep understanding of your gifts, choosing honest alignment and application of the five principles first over grasping for the external ideal of a pose.

2. What drives your economic engine?

There are three energetic focal points—the pelvis, bottom of the heart, or upper palate—one of which will be the key place of power for any asana. Knowing what focal point fuels an asana helps us expand and experience its full value.

3. What are you deeply passionate about?

Yoga has all types of tools (asana, meditation, pranayama, mantra) to help you do the hard work to discover what you truly desire, so you too can make what you love what you do.

This hedgehog concept is an iterative process not an event. Einstein groped through the fog to uncover the theory of relativity. Businesses who want to move from Good to Great are encouraged to do the same, constantly revisiting the three questions above, until clarity reveals itself.

It’s no different on our mats, and I think the reason we come back time and again. In a smilar way, yoga's long and storied history of trying to make sense of our experiences, created a mala theory, where malas are like dust covering the mirrors of our heart. The dust doesn’t taint or alter the perfect clarity of the mirror, but rather covers it up, and so too a consistent yoga practice can help clear away the haze.

So, this week we practiced being a hedgehog!
• Relentlessly applied the five alignment principles
• Leveraged the focal points to expand our asanas
• Reflected on what were are really (really) good at
• Asked ourselves what it is that we truly desire

Note: As our foxy ways revealed themselves in handstand, you pointed out that the fox may be getting a little bit of bad wrap. Probably right, maybe a theme for another class!

In closing…

Hedgehogs are simple dowdy creatures that are brilliant in their unwavering commitment to know one big thing, the thing that they can do best. In the same way, we come to our mats time and again, and work just five principles of alignment, and instead of monotony, always seem to find there is more.

The Hedgehog concept reminded me that so often I or I see others seeking something outside, something new, different, “foxy”, wanting the cutting edge angle, until…it wears off. At the risk of sounding like a “bumper sticker”, it may be just this simple: whether a business or an individual, what you’re seeking is already inside.

It’s what only you can be best at

It’s what you’re passionate about

That moves you from Good to Great.

To uncovering our gifts and passion, making decisions relentlessly consistent with them and ultimately moving from Good to Great both on and off our mats, Namaste!

Valentine’s Day: Believing when not seeing

Svatantrya: self looming or weaving as in the tapestry of life.

Each February I dedicate a yoga class theme to a matter of the heart— strokes – a brain attack due to interruption of blood flow. Why not true love, cupid and soul mates? Too obvious, (I know some of you will be nodding yes : ) but also because a few years ago now, my Dad, a seemingly healthy man in his mid 50s, suffered a stroke on of all days, the day of the heart, Valentine’s Day.

So, why annually revisit such a traumatic event? Well because his recovery is the story I hold close when I lose trust in believing without seeing. My reflections remind me that radical transformation is possible. I’ve seen it. This story is the “you can do it” which checkmates my doubts that simply doing my best to be an authentic version of “me” will result in progress even when I don't see the change(at times year after year after year...after year...).

All stories need to introduce the main character. My Dad, plain and simple, owns his seat (asana). Regardless of outside influences, however astonishing or heartbreaking, he knows who he is at his core, selflessly shares his gifts (madhurya) and demonstrates an unwavering desire to do what is right. His creative resourcefulness is awe inspiring, and the results a reminder that art is not limited to what you find in a theatre or a museum. Just check out the before and after shots of a dilapidated home he has painstakingly restored or watch him McGyver a problem with ease, like getting an inoperable piece of household machinery going with some string, a safety pin and bubble gum.

It’s no surprise soon after his stroke, while he could no longer find the word for elbow or comprehend a phone number, his instincts said let’s get back to being “me” and start fixing this. And he did. We tried to help. We sat with him through 3rd grade phonics and lame video games, but he knew better. He needed to move, to get back to the type of work he knew best, even if that meant climbing on a roof to make a complex repair, while still unable to speak well.

While I suspect it may not have always felt like this to him, from my vantage point, I watched someone show up each day, no questions, no blame, no why me (ever)…facing the uncertainty of the future, stakes high, not knowing what it would hold, just doing what he could to accept his circumstances, be himself through the process and move on. Now that’s believing without seeing.

Our ability to heal never ceases to amaze me. In the case of stroke, the healing can consist of the restoration of pathways which re-reveal years of knowledge—memories, vocabulary, math—seemingly erased, yet latent and unseen all along. Similarly, on our mats, it’s often hard to believe showing up and doing the best darn chaturaunga (low push up) with head of the arm bones back will build the strength required to one day accomplish pincha mayruarsana padmasana (fore arm balance in lotus). But it does. Or that the power of our hearts and our capacity to love is always there—always—even though it may lay buried beneath layers of disappointment, fear, and in a smattering of broken pieces.

I admit around the holidays of that year I had settled into the idea that my Dad would always need a notebook to remember conversations, stutter as he searched for common words, ask my mom to read his menu or struggle to dial the phone because the numbers would get mixed up travelling the matrix of his mind. Likewise, I’ve given up on an asana or two (urdhva “d” (wheel) drop back and then back up to stand), lost trust in myself, or more often than I’d like to admit let the disappointments of life cloak my willingness to risk exposing my heart.

I did not see the connections being made and doubted healing was possible. Now that’s seeing what I believe.

Then – shazzam, shift happens! I will never forget a random phone call from my Dad in April of the following year. Something had unfolded. Our conversation was lucid and I was talking to someone seemingly lost a year or so ago! Critical links had been made and pathways had been restored. What appeared as rapid transformation was anything but. This progress had been in the works for a long time, I just didn't see it. Similarly, I'm reminded of those latch hook rugs my sister and I crafted as kids. Looming and weaving, spending days on one part—the intricate blades of grass—so much so that we lost sight of the bigger picture—the grand lioness presiding over her forest—which only unfolded when we hooked the last few pieces of yarn into place.

Most of us (knock on wood now!) will only know the symptoms of stroke as an allegory for blockages which restrict that looming flow of energy, the svatantrya, and reveal themselves during times when we find ourselves:
• Numb
• Confused, problems speaking
• Trouble seeing clearly
• Losing our balance
• Painful Headache that comes on suddenly for unknown reason
• Unable to smile, raise both arms, or stick tounge out straight

Now if these symptoms are physical, please dial 911 ASAP! If a stroke is caught within three hours, there are medical advances which can reverse the affects (that’s the public service announcement worth repeating year after year). But if more likely your reference point is symbolic, then I recommend you find your way to your mat, and pull out one of the many technologies in your yoga tool kit, tools that help us: know our seat (meditation), get things moving (pranayama), clear out the fog (mantra), or reopen pathways (asana).

Svatantrya means to loom or to weave freely, not knowing how the pattern will unfold, yet trusting connections are being made. That’s the yoga – the yoking – the making of connections. The invitation is that you own your seat (asana) and steadfastly exploit being you, throughout the process.

Each year my hope is that by sharing this story you are reminded of your own story of affirmation – when you’ve seen the "pop", connections which had been looming and weaving below the surface suddenly manifest themselves. Perhaps it was a yoga asana you never though you could master, simply planting seeds and watching them blossom in the spring, or a much more personal matter of the heart. Whatever it is, however big or small, my wish is that you too now hold it close whenever you need to trust in believing without seeing.

LODO – Lights On Doors Open

“One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us, but still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. Is all this imagination, fantasy? I do not think so. And then one asks: My God! Is it for long, is it forever, is it for eternity? Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is very deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power, by some magic force” – Vincent Van Gogh

Sometimes the Universe keeps on speaking to us through others until we answer. This past week I was asked, “Why do you teach yoga?” so often it made me pause and rethink my light hearted standard response…it’s fun, love seeing people light up when they get an asana.

One of the many things I’ve come to appreciate about yoga is that it is always extending yet another invitation to more (and more and more…) questions. Think Russian nesting dolls, or clown car. Sometimes it throws hard balls: What do you truly desire? And the dreaded follow up, is what you do aligned with what you desire? Other times (thankfully) it lobs soft balls: Is she for real when she says moving your thumbs back/down and pinky fingers up in warrior I somehow puffs up your back kidney area?

When we choose to answer (vs blow off) these questions, it’s a game changer—moving our practice from Simon says, monkey see monkey do toward a more playful inquisitive experiment.

And it’s not always about getting the right answer (whew!) It’s also about asking ever better questions, continuously revisiting them, proving to yourself time and again where you stand.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense. – Buddha

So I accepted the invitation to revisit, “Why do you teach yoga?” After some thought, my response was LODO— Lights On Doors Open—an acronym for a financial term we use in Corporate America referring to the baseline cost of keeping operations up and running.

Simply put I teach public classes with the heartfelt intent to keep the Lights On and Doors Open in an unraveling world which I’ve seen all too often dims (turns off) our lights and shuts (slams) our doors.

On our mats this week we practiced asking better questions and creating space in our asanas. To open the walls, we applied inner spiral (moving your butt back) and kidney loop (sides of the waist back) to hip openers and back bends all the while asking why? why? why? E.g. Why move the thighs back, other than I suggested it was a good idea?

We also touched on an esoteric concept introduced by Paul Muller-Ortega, renowned scholar of Hindu Tantra, at a recent workshop. He talked about a shutter or aperture like muscle, inside all of us, that is a gateway to the always present light. Through meditation this internal muscle can open/flip in a way that you experience pure consciousness. Some of us naturally have more control over it's pulsation than others, similar to how some of us can wiggle our ears while others cannot.

Sidebar: an uncanny number of you can wiggle you ears while doing cobra (bhujangasana)!

Regardless of natural talent, all of us can practice conditioning this muscle. The process is not all that different than maintaining our physical bodies through asana. The unconscious routines of life create veils which contract the energy and stop the shutter from working. Meditation, mantra or deep serious affection can dialate the aperature allowing us to connect with our ephemeral double, that subtle body of light and energy which animates us and is pure, perfect, and independent of our physical age. Being disconnected from this subtle aspect of ourselves is so often what makes us feel confined, trapped, dark.

In closing…

My wish for you as we left our mats is that you too accept the invitation to engage the questions allowing your answers to simmer deepen and refine themselves as you change and evolve over time. So again I responded to the question, “Why do you teach yoga?”

I teach to hold space in my heart for

……those whose light was self extinguished or forever occluded by illness

I teach for me

……because your reflections keep my lights on

I teach for you

……knowing first hand that this practice will keep the doors from closing in

I teach with hope

……that something as simple as yoga enables you keep the lights on and doors open for others

To asking ever better questions on and off our mats, and a practice that blows the doors off, and amplifies the light, Namaste!

P.S. Paul's site is www.bluethroatyoga.com

Perugia Sunset

The view was stunning. The center piazza of Perugia sits on a precipice. As the sun set, there I stood, at the edge of the Saturday night hustle and bustle, along the promenade of a veranda which overlooks all of Umbria, Italy. The twinkling lights of the homes and cars, all the tangible stuff which make up our relative world, were perfectly juxtaposed against the natural hills and valleys created by something absolute, something bigger than ourselves. Lucky me. I had a birds eye view of that undulating cycle on the move—sunrise…sunset—which holds our relative and absolute worlds at the midline. Just as it should be. Perfect.

Put Pocket

Put Pocketer (def.) Twenty or so reformed pick pocketers trawling London’s streets and subways putting money into the pockets of unsuspecting people.

This week marked the eighth anniversary of 9-11 and I was struck by the high number of “put pocket” stories. Tales about ordinary people who “never forget” the generosity exhibited by total strangers in the wake of tragedy. Strangers whose kind acts and selfless helping hands gushed in to fill the deep crevasses created by the awesome tragedy. As an example, the evening news featured a kula started by 30 or so folks impacted by 9-11 who each year take on a project to rebuild an area struck by tragedy or disaster. This year they estimate 500-600 people, mostly former recipients, joined in to resurrect a boy scout camp site that had been ravaged by a tragic lightening storm. Goes to show we can catch all kinds of things, not just the flu, from each other.

And, it’s not only outrageous calminities like 9-11 which pick our pockets. More often it’s just the monotony of work or our never ending to do lists (nittya karmas) that deplete us. So this week we used our practice to play with balancing out the effects of life’s “pick pocketing” with a little “put pocketing” of our own:

• Focusing on our physical alignment to create thoughtful crevasses into which prana flows and puts energy back into the body.
• Partnering together on asanas to validate that ultimately we are in this together and when we join forces we can put each other up to new heights. (and, yes….I did go so far as to place Josh Groban’s song “you lift me up”. I have no shame.)
• Replenishing our pockets through the simple act of taking one hour and fifteen minutes for ourselves so that when we take our yoga off our mats, we too have something to deposit, not for recognition, but more or less on the sly simply because we can. It’s often the mickies we slip to each other unnoticed, such as glances, words or deeds, which have the greatest impact.
  

So why not, as Joan suggested at the end of class, make put pocketing our off the mat an home work assignment? Try it out. See if it works. Validate for ourselves what ancient yoga texts ask us to consider—it’s in the put pocketing, where you place your intentions, make inroads and take action, into which Sri, the abundant power that makes up the energetic world around us, fills in the space and reveals her promises. There is always more. The gift is that it is up to us to make choices which put Sri in the right place (or pockets). To this choice, Namaste!