Playing the Victim

Photos via Coffee and Yoga and My Morning Coffee on Tumblr.

Sometimes I fall into this cycle of playing the victim.

This happened recently when I was having intense low back pain. I’d be standing at work, or driving in my car, and be completely overwhelmed. What did I do to deserve this pain? When will it end? I just want to be back on my yoga mat! This isn’t fair!

I felt helpless to my own situation. There’s nothing I can do to make this better.

Then, last week, I started actively pursuing healing for myself and it was uncanny, how quickly I felt better.

Seeing my doctor and chiropractor is helping to rule out the possibilities. Seeing my reiki healer is helping to release fear and attachment to the physical pain. Choosing to eat better, to go for walks, and to get more sleep is helping my aching body to heal.

Talking it through with people I love is helping me to remember I am not alone.

The reality is that there are things that I am doing to make it better.

It’s getting better, and will continue to.

The reality is that I have a choice in how I react. I can choose to see myself as beautiful, perfect, and healed. In fact, I can step into that reality right here, right now and let things be OK as they are.

Instead of playing the victim and living in the fear, I choose to love myself. To heal.

Shavasana: Final Rest

Photo by Justin Kral.

In shavasana all effort and all determination fall away. The body lies in stillness.

We are not the body, which is subject to death, but rather we are the unborn, the unchanging. The death of the body invites us to come back to our true nature, which is consciousness.

This letting go of artificial identification with what is impermanent is shavasana.

Shavasana, when done properly – as the letting go of everything – shows us what we truly are. Both the Yoga Sutra and the Bhagavad Gita state that the pure existence, pure awareness, pure being that is left at the end of the body is without beginning and end.

It cannot be cut by knives,

It cannot be pierced by thorns,

It cannot be burned by fire,

It cannot be drowned in water.

It is eternal, the true self.

This post is an excerpt from Ashtanga Yoga: Practice & Philosophy by Gregor Maehle. Namaste.

No Mud, No Lotus (On Suffering, Injury and Tattoos)

Through my struggle, I am developing compassion.

My back has been hurting again this week. I think it became aggravated during a chair twist, one I demonstrated while I was teaching. I wasn't careful, and now there’s pain again.

I've been frustrated. I cried about it. My ego showed up, saying, “What did I do to deserve this? Why me?”

But I choose to breathe. Today I invite patience, calling upon my yoga practice.

I read recently that you can tell you've been practicing yoga for a while – that it’s working – when you notice that you’re a little slower to anger, a little more aware, that maybe you can laugh when something unexpected or uncomfortable comes along.

I think about my beautiful sleeve of lotus flowers, each of them a reminder of some pain I’ve been through.

“Most people are afraid of suffering,” Thich Nhat Hanh says. “But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower grow. There cannot be a lotus flower without the mud.”

I am in the mud, and I am the lotus.

All is exactly as it should be.

I consciously choose to adopt an attitude of gratitude for what this experience of back pain is bringing me: new appreciation for my body… new appreciation for those who support me…and a chance to step away from my mat and let my teaching be my practice. 

To see my students with adoration, and to have an intention of helping them stay safe in their yoga—good alignment, careful, integrated movement.

I even have plans to develop a class for people who are dealing with injury, and for those healing back pain. 

I have plans to use the next few months to study anatomy, to dive back in to my teacher training curriculum and expand my understanding of how each pose affects the body. And to start fundraising for my next training. 

I may be off my mat, but I am still actively involved in my yoga practice.

 

Longing, loss, devastation… they make way for repair. They are the mud that creates the beautiful, graceful lotus.

I invite the fullness of healing. I invite patient awareness. I invite growth. This, too, shall pass; in fact, this is already exactly as it should be.

Wanderlust Festival at Squaw Valley

Photos by Ali Kaukas, via Wanderlust.

Are you Wanderlust-ing this year?

Wanderlust is my favorite yoga and music festival. I went to Squaw Valley last year and absolutely loved it.

I took classes with Dharma Mittra and MC Yogi, hula hooped with Shakti Sunfire, and had a blast wandering around seeing performers, eating delicious food, and listening to great music.

At night, the party came to life when Quixotic, Gramatik, and Moby played live.

This year’s lineup is amazing, too, and I’m really excited to go!

It’s crazy reflecting on the past year and how much has changed… and how much I’ve grown since I was at Wanderlust for my first time…

Since I took Dharma Mittra’s workshop last year, I’ve been eating vegetarian. (Well, pescetarian :)

Last year I attended the festival as a yoga student. Now, I’m a yoga teacher, too.

Then, I walked into the fest with one friend. I left for home with a handful of new friends from Tahoe who I’m still close to. This July, I’ll be attending among dozens of yogi friends, fellow teachers, and members of my local community. It is an amazing feeling to be so plugged in here in California!

I’m feeling very grateful and excited about Wanderlust this year. Will you be attending? XO

PS You can read about my experience at Wanderlust 2013 to get an idea of how it was... amazing!

Wholeness Over Happiness

I had an amazing conversation last night with a person who I really love. We talked about how often we see

people shy away from ‘negative’ emotions

, and how it’s so much easier to let them go when we allow ourselves to experience them.

“They wash over you like a wave,” I said. “And

if you fully embrace them and allow yourself to

feel

what you’re feeling, it’s so powerful.

If you’re sad,

be sad

. Allow it. It’s amazing what happens when you actually do that.”

He nodded, and we both smiled. “And then the fear or sadness or whatever passes,” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“And it makes that moment when happiness returns

so

much better,” he said. “It’s such a

relief

and so beautiful when you feel good again.”

How powerful it is when we allow feelings to exist as they are. When we acknowledge what is. When we remember that we are never alone in our experiences, however painful they may be.

This quote I discovered on

A Cup of Jo

said it brilliantly, too:

I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that—I don't mind people being happy—but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It's a really odd thing that we're now seeing people saying "write down three things that made you happy today before you go to sleep" and "cheer up" and "happiness is our birthright" and so on. We're kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position. It's rubbish.

Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are.

H

appiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don't teach us much.

Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, "Quick! Move on! Cheer up!" I'd like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word "happiness" and to replace it with the word "wholeness." Ask yourself, "Is this contributing to my wholeness?" and if you're having a bad day, it is.

—

Hugh MacKay

You were made to be real not perfect! I was too!

Softening

Photos via Pinterest.

I’m reading Yoga for Real Life by Maya Fiennes, and I love this quote she includes from Yogi Bhajan:

“Even you just lean slightly in the right direction, you’ll get some benefit.”

This leaning starts with our intention. What am I holding in my heart—softness and openness? Or bitterness?

I can soften, inviting greatness. I don’t have to struggle. I can lean peacefully in the right direction, noticing the difference it makes not to obsess over perfection.

And I can start now.