I have noticed over the last 15 years or so that lessons tend to come in groups for me.  What I mean by this is that I’ll often get several opportunities to engage in a lesson that I need to work on all within a fairly short period of time.  My most recent lessons have centered around the theme of boundaries.

Through professional relationships, friendships, familial or one-degree-removed family relationships, I am continually offered the chance to evaluate what is the appropriate quality of energy to bring to each one.  Having taught Ethics and Professionalism for Massage Therapists, I am fascinated by this topic.  How much personal information is too much?

My favorite yoga teachers are the ones who are the most transparent, the ones who let me in behind the curtain.  I love those teachers who illustrate for me how yoga is helping them through their own difficulties.  And yet, there is always a place that one holds to oneself.  How much is too much?

When I was in massage school the teachers referred to the people who would be coming to see us for our services as Loved Ones.  “When your loved one comes to your office, create a warm and welcoming environment for them.  Make sure they feel at home.”  I pour love into the work I do, which leaves my heart open and vulnerable.  And yet thankfully through the practice of yoga I train myself to stay present and work on noticing if and when boundaries are being crossed or tested.

The best thing about this process is that there really is no right answer.  There is only the decision being made right now, and the one that I would like to make based on what just happened.  One thing I am noticing a lot is that it is not particularly comfortable though!

Where in your life can you open your eyes to boundaries?  Is there a predictable way that you respond to certain questions like “How are you today?”  Is your answer always “Fine” or does it delve more deeply into how you’re feeling?  Does it depend on who’s asking the question?  What would happen if you decided to shift that energy in either direction?

What I can say for myself is that I do the best I can.  I regularly re-evaluate the state of my various relationships.  Are we the level of close that I feel is right given the category of relationship this is?  If not, what can I do to shift it?

Not the most eloquent of blogs, this one.  But definitely an issue that deserves its time in the spotlight.  Happy questioning!

I have been frantically searching today for a way out of the feeling I’m having: a heavy, deep ache in the pit of my stomach and my throat and my heart.  The thoughts that come along with this feeling are things like “It doesn’t matter whether you are in this world or not.”, “It only gets worse from here.”, and “You don’t matter.”  As you can imagine, it’s been a really fun day.

I have been vacillating between doing what I can to change the feeling and the thoughts, succumbing and surrendering, processing via talking and writing, and coming up with various action plans and scenarios to haul myself and keep myself out of this place.  I looked around my bookshelves for something to focus on and happened upon When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron, always a solid choice.

Reading through her words on compassion, I am reminded that compassion begins inside, in finding a soft, loving, accepting place for ourselves.  She speaks to the point that the things that irritate, anger, sadden us in other people are direct reflections of the same in ourselves.  She also speaks to the idea that the continuous process of polarizing, creating a right and a wrong way of being in our minds, is a major source of our pain.

“Compassionate action, being there for others, being able to act and speak in a way that communicates, starts with seeing ourselves when we start to make ourselves right or make ourselves wrong.  At that particular point, we could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where we could live.  this place, if we can touch it, will help us train ourselves throughout or lives to open further to whatever we feel, to open further rather than shut down more.  We’ll find that as we begin to commit ourselves to this practice, as we begin to have a sense of celebrating the aspects of ourselves that we found so impossible before, something will shift permanently in us… our protective shells will melt, and we’ll find that more areas of our lives are workable.”

What else can I possibly say?  Herein lies my work, perhaps this speaks to you as well.

Namaste

So I’ve been a little sad for a few weeks now.  I keep going through all the potential reasons for it but I realize that those ultimately don’t matter.  Whatever the reason, the melancholy is there.  This is one of those times where all of the tools and practices that I’ve developed over the last several years come into play.

Here’s my list:

1) Remember that every time I have felt this way before, it has eventually gotten better.  Why should this time be any different?

2) Write lists of what I’m grateful for, as often as I can.

3) Breathe; get present in the moment, in my body, locate where I feel the discomfort and get curious about it.  Pema Chodron calls this “leaning into the sharp points”

4) Spend time outdoors regularly.  Being in nature reminds me that I am so small in the grand scheme of things.  How many cycles of this have the mountains seen?  And yet they’re still there, so steady, so strong, so big, so present.

5) Reach out and spend time with friends and loved ones.

6) Do nice things for myself: paint my nails, make myself dinner, get lots of sleep, get bodywork

7) Be patient and forgiving of myself.  The state passes in its own time.

And oh yeah, write a blog about it.

I know this will pass.  I know I am not alone and yet also am as well, a truth that the mean voice inside likes to turn to its gleeful advantage, twisting it into thoughts that swell the sad feelings inside.  I remember during my yoga immersions they spoke of the 3 Big Lies that our minds tell us to basically hide our sparkling divinity from ourselves.  The cloaking and uncloaking of our luminous essence is the crux of the divine play that is life embodied.

3 Untruths:

1) I am unworthy – anava mala

2) I am different – mayiya mala

3) I can’t (or too much identification with doership/I can) – karma mala

When I take a look at the thoughts that drive in and enhance the sad feelings, pretty much all of them can be distilled into a version of one of these three statements.  And when I can see that I can’t help but smile to myself when I realize it’s just a trick my mind is playing on me to keep my exquisite nature out of view.  What if it wasn’t?  How can I live my life stepping and stretching into the version of myself that is the purest and most beautiful?

So that’s what I have to say for today.  Thoughts?  Ideas?  Anything more to add to the list?  Please share.  Om Mani Padme Hum

I don’t have anything quite as pithy to say as I might normally – I think I pride myself somewhat on being able to tie up a story neatly, succinctly, and with a moral of some sort.  All I have to say for this entry is that the last week of my life has touched my soul in a way that I had forgotten could be.  It is a feeling that I have been tremendously fortunate enough to have experienced on more than one occasion: massage school, at a meditation with Dr. Vasant Lad, meeting certain wonderful souls along my way, singing in an alcove in a restaurant in the Bahamas, the kind of bliss that hurts because it’s so exquisite.

I went on a retreat at the Omega Institute and sang, sang my soul, sang with others who were singing their souls, opening, growing, dealing with pain and conflict and discomfort and pushing through the dirt, sprouting our sweet little seeds up through the surface of the earth and blossoming like delicate and yet hardy flowers, creating a field of beauty (and a really long sentence to boot).

I am utterly blessed to have been in such noble company of my fellow students as well as that of Bobby McFerrin, Joey Blake, Rhiannon, Dave Worm, Christiane Karam, and Judi Vinar.

I pouted and acted like a truculent pre-teen through the first few days (what can I say? I’m really uncomfortable in groups.  Working on it…) and no one repudiated me.  I consistently was inspired (and tormented) by songs and rhythms running through my head 24 hours a day – I felt like I would explode if I didn’t get them out.  And people let me do it.

I met the kind of people that felt like they were cut from part of me, and though it pains me to be away from these parts of myself, the gratitude I have in recognizing these spirit brothers and sisters is like a waterfall appeared out of nowhere when I was dying of thirst and didn’t even know it.

To all of you, thank you more than I can ever say.  Thank you for letting me find my heart again.

Summer in Tucson.  It’s such a conundrum.

I grew up on the east coast, where summer is the time of year to get active, take days off, spend time outdoors, rejoice in the beauty and gifts of nature and thank the stars that the good time has come again.  Moving to the desert has been a challenge to an internal clock that has been set on east coast cycles for 30 years.  I’m still not there yet.

I can’t help but still feel this internal push to be outside, make lots of plans, DO stuff.  It runs counter to the other feeling I have that is slightly depressed, wants to sleep a lot, stay indoors and watch movies and cook and not make plans and just veg out.  The good thing about that is that I have a number of friends and colleagues who not only go through the same thing, but serve as reminders that this is a natural reaction to the extremity of the environment.

My practice changes, my energy changes, my motivation changes.  When I lived in Maine for a number of years, I wasn’t able to see the cyclical changes that came about with the seasons as a gift.  I was too depressed in the winter and too anxious in the summer to notice that these emotions were in and of themselves a part of the seasons, that I was one of the elements that changed as well.  Here, maybe because I do yoga, maybe because I meditate, or maybe just because I’m getting older and can be more observant and less reactive as the years go by, this phenomenon helps me feel like I belong.  I’m like one of the leaves on the trees that opens and unfurls and expands and then withers and falls off, fertilizing the next cycle.

Practices that can help if this post speaks to you:

1) Go see an acupuncturist or Ayurvedic medical practitioner.  Both of these medical philosophies center around the body as it cycles through the seasons and cater to the shifting spikes and valleys that our bodies go through.

2) Consider a restorative yoga practice when the weather is hot and relentless.  Long holds of soft yielding poses fill your body’s reservoirs that get burned away with summer sun.

3) Meditate.  Even 5 minutes of meditation can be enough to bring you back to a place of believing that things really are ok, that no matter how you may be feeling you are not deeply flawed or broken, and that you are a perfectly functioning part of the universal tapestry.  (And if not PERFECTLY functioning, then at least doing your very best and that’s nothing to sneeze at!)

Thoughts or other practices that work for you?  Let me know!

So this week I spent 5 days in the company of Magnificent yogis working on Magnificent poses and Magnetizing Magnificence to ourselves.  This was done under the guidance and care of Darren Rhodes, Christina Sell, and Amy Ippoliti.  The thing that I feel must be impressed upon the reader here is that Magnetizing Magnificence does not come easy.  It’s not just sitting in a room smiling and envisioning high aims.  It involves WORK, and DIFFICULTY, SORTING THROUGH TOUGH QUESTIONS, and trying so hard you collapse sometimes.  This we did in abundance this week.

Upon reaching my practically expected emotional breakdown at Day 5 today, I was able to just allow the tears to flow, allow my feelings to arise and just let them move through me.  I consider this to be progress.  I remember Christina once saying how proud she was of the students just letting their feelings be rather than wallowing.  It’s hard not to wallow.  It’s hard in the midst of pain not to add to the pile: “It’s because I’m not good enough and never will be.”  “I shouldn’t even be here.  Look at how everyone else has their act together.  I can’t even keep myself from crying, more or less do Eka Pada Rajakapotasana !”

I left early on Day 4 to teach a Yoga Hour class, and based my teaching on a simple phrase from Christina; “Aim high, miss high.”  Basically it doesn’t matter if you fail as long as what you are reaching for matters to you.  Big aims mean that if you fall short of the mark, you have worked HARD to get there!  And next time, the arrow may reach a little closer to the mark, or while it flies you might see more clearly what you could have done to aim truer, whether it means concentrating harder, strengthening more, or maybe even resting up a little more before you go out to the target range.

I am trying to have greater compassion for myself and for the people I am lucky enough to call my peers, my students, my clients, my family, and my friends.  If an opportunity comes your way where you can deepen your connection to yourself, through a yoga class, a massage, a walk in the park, a weekend workshop, a solitary sunset, please take it.  We each of us have this work to do, and having listened to echoes of my same story in the struggles of my colleagues in every immersion, intensive, workshop, I can’t help but believe we really are in this together.  Your dark-hearted moments will be a salve to someone in their time of need.  Have them on purpose.  Remember them.  Reach into them and mine the gold from the veins of rock and silt.  They are precious.  Thank you.

There are so many gifts to having friends in your life who have known you for a long time.  I am deeply fortunate to have several friends whom I have known and loved for over 25 years.  The advantages to this are things like that they knew me when my hair was ridiculous (of course so was theirs) and they still love me.  They watched me grow from a child to an adult, have seen the phases I’ve been through, have watched me struggle and break free, fail and succeed, and they have gotten to know my patterns.  Good friends are always there to let you know when you’re repeating a cycle, or when you are finally doing something different this time and they cheer you on.

Another wonderful thing about good friends is that sometimes they are there to repeat back to you some of the advice you’ve given them over the years, which can come in awfully handy in times of need.  Just today I was fretting over an issue that has been repeating itself in my head for some time, bemoaning my situation, and not only did my wonderful friend of 26 years remind me of how lucky I actually am, but she said “Remember when you taught me to ask Who would we be without certain thoughts?  That helps me every day!”

I can’t take credit for that little tidbit, that’s all Byron Katie: But I can definitely give tremendous thanks to my friend for reminding me of what I need to heed when I get into that space.

In case you aren’t familiar with The Work, here’s a very very quick synopsis.  The emotional and psychological pain we experience in our lives is caused, according to BK, by one thing: arguing with reality.  When we believe that something should be different than it is, we experience pain.  According to her, what serves us best in these situations is to come into alignment with reality as it is, not as we believe it should be.

How do we do this?  First, identify the belief you have about what should be different than it is, for example, “My son should pay more attention in school.”  Second, ask yourself the following 4 questions:

 Is it true?  In the above example, is this an objectively true statement?

 Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Can I without a doubt know that my son should pay attention more in school?  How do I know that his calling might not be outside the traditional school mindset?  Maybe not paying attention is something he needs to do to learn a life lesson for him.

 How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? I feel anxious, sad, worried that my son will suffer because of not paying attention.

 Who would you be without the thought? I would feel lighter, freer, easier, happier.  I would trust that my son is doing what is right for him.

After you’ve done this, the next step is:

Turn the thought around. Then find at least three specific, genuine examples of how each turnaround is true for you in this situation.

Turning the thought around in this case would involve several options: 1) My son pays exactly as much attention as he should in school. (in this case, as evidenced by 3 examples I could find about when he has paid attention, how he IS doing well) 2) I should pay more attention (in school, in my life)  and find 3 examples of how I could pay more attention in my “school” 3) I pay as much attention in my life as I should, with 3 supporting examples of how I pay enough attention.

This kind of work is absolutely transformative.  What I come to each time I do it is a sneaking feeling that everything really is going to be okay.  Rob Breszny calls it Pronoia.  I think it’s something the world can always use more of.  Please join me in spreading the pronoia, whether it’s through doing The Work, doing the play, doing affirmations, yoga, somersaults, whatever transforms your state of mind and heart.  

Namaste

I’m reading this book, Conscious Loving, that is one of the few self-helpy kinds of books that I’ve ever enjoyed.  It’s a great blend of insight, advice, anecdote and exercise that is really inspiring me to take an active role in my relationships with other people and the world in general.  A great deal of it centers around looking at how our relationships reflect and replay subconscious habits and patterns established in our childhood which, when focused upon, can be seen for what they are and altered in the here and now.  How freeing!  No more need to blame other people for being the cause of my problems!  Of course this is easier read than done, yes?

One thing that I find a great tool to take out of the toolbox and utilize is that of mantra.  Mantras are essentially statements, words that have power.  They are repeated many times to bring about a change in one’s perception, even energetic field.  If you think about it for a moment, chances are there are already a number of mantras that you repeat to yourself every day and don’t realize it.  Do any of these sound vaguely familiar? “Man I hate traffic/grocery shopping/exercising.” or “Why is it always me that does the work?” or “I can’t have that/I don’t deserve that.” or “_____ is so much cuter/stronger/better than me.”  Maybe it’s just me that has these sort of statements rattling around in my head on a day-to-day basis, but I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

With the practice of mantra, you turn a subconscious habit into a conscious one.  Repeating a mantra like Om Namah Shivaya, giving honor and thanks to the auspicious divine quality and innate wisdom in all things, all beings,  is a way to acknowledge simultaneously one’s own grace and divinity as well as that of all other things in the universe.  It’s a powerful statement to make from three tiny words.  I have come to the habit of periodically reverting to this mantra when I’m feeling stressed out or uncertain or incapable of doing something I want to do.

It’s important to say the mantra a lot.  You have to figure, for every time you’ve said something contrary, you have to say something positive at least twice to equalize, then counteract it.  It’s math.  Negative one plus two equals positive one.  But there are a lot of times over the years you may have said these contrary things to yourself, so you have a bit of catching up to do!  Or rather, I know I do.  So using a mala, (those necklaces that you see us hippie-yoga-type folks wearing with our Om t-shirts and Lululemon pants) is a great way to keep yourself on task in trying to say them a lot.

Another tool to use is affirmations, which are not really any different from a mantra except that often they are not in Sanskrit, and usually are pretty specific sentences that one repeats once a day (or more).  Doing this in front of a mirror can be helpful – awkward at first, but helpful.

Here’s a great long affirmation that covers pretty much all the bases from Gold Star Coaching:

All is well in my world. I love my life and see it getting better every day. I experience joyous relationships with the wonderful, amazing, uplifting people in my life. I feel good and look good. I love and appreciate my body and enjoy vibrant good health. I’m exhilarated and excited as I begin each new day. I have an occupation that thrills me. I experience ever-flowing prosperity and abundance. I expect and believe that something wonderful is just about to happen. I stay connected with Source, happily creating my ideal life. Everything I desire flows to me easily and joyfully. I make feeling good the most important thing and I’m getting really good at keeping my vibration high by choosing thoughts that feel good. I’m filled with appreciation, always looking for more to appreciate and enjoy. I love my life. I love myself. I love my family and friends. I’m a magnet for amazing prosperity, vibrant good health and loving relationships. I’m a successful, confident, prosperous, loving, generous, happy person.”

What might happen if you said this to yourself every day?  How might your life change?  Is anyone willing to challenge themselves to do this every day for a month and let me know how it goes?  If so, I’ll do it with you.  Let me know.

So yesterday I woke up with the weight of the world on my shoulders, or to be more accurate, pressing in on my entire body from all directions.  Even air touching my skin felt painful; breathing was uncomfortable, my head hurt, I was nauseated, I had no energy, all in all I felt like ten kinds of terrible and I had a day that was (once again) going to take a lot out of me.  Having a job where I give my energy to other people, this is a trap into which I can easily fall.  I love what I do.  I give my heart and my attention and my knowledge and my hope and desire for people to feel better both through bodywork and yoga, and it can drain me when I ignore the small (and increasingly larger) messages I send myself to let me know how much is too much.

Luckily I have managed to learn a little bit over the years, and I regularly book treatments for myself with various and amazing practitioners who keep me at my best.  Yesterday I was fortunate enough to get some work from the phenomenal Dan Desmond, who is worth his weight in gold and then some.  I went into the appointment exhausted, sickened from giving more than was wise, and came out feeling like someone had taken that broken ill body from me and replaced it with myself again.  I was able to give one more treatment that day and teach a Yoga Hour class that was totally fun, energizing, and fulfilling.

From the second Dan put his hands on me I could feel waves of gratitude washing over me, through me, cleansing out all the heaviness and pain I was holding.  That joyful, beautiful, connected, deeply loving, open feeling stayed with me the rest of the day.  I give this kind of work to people and yet still can’t believe the difference it can make.

Regular bodywork is not just an indulgence or pampering.  It can change your entire reality.  I have a team of people I regularly see to keep all the aspects of my health in check: physical, emotional, mental, energetic.  Without it I know I could not give the quality of work that I do, and I can imagine that my life would not have anywhere near the sparkle that it does.

If you have any questions about recommendations for various types of practitioners, feel free to ask.  I’m always happy to share the love!