Just the way I like it...

I was noticing today on Facebook all the reviews of each persons year on their statuses, or links to their blogs with the same theme, so it made me want to write something and I was thinking of what I want to focus on and what direction to take, but really, as the title above says, my life right now is just the way I like it.

This year didn't really begin for me until February, I kept myself on hold during January for some reason, but in February I started watching RuPaul's Drag Race's latest season and was inspired, then I went to the Ashtanga Confluence and broke through some old shit, when I came home I was moving forward in a way I hadn't in quite a while.

I did 5 yoga trips this year, that's more than I have ever done in one year. Hmmmm, maybe I did 4-5 in 2008 to study with Desiree Rumbaugh, but I think it was 4. Anyhow, focus, back on point...lol.

I took the San Diego Confluence trip, I went to Chicago for a weekend to study with Kino, I went back to Chicago to see Abraham live and study with Mark Robberds, I went to Indianapolis to study with Kino again, then to Springfield to study with Jodi Blumstein.

All were amazing and had benefits in their own right, but each one helped me move forward, especially the second trip to see Kino and the week with Mark, both had deeply profound effects on me.

I also had a trip to the Washington DC area to explore love with someone I'd met on Facebook. So I really did take more trips this year than I'd ever expected to. That trip was good and I learned a lot about myself, about how I don't want to be and that I really want to cultivate happiness within myself without the perceived need for external gratification on that front, just what I feel to guide me, which is what Abraham teaches. I do feel bad the way I left things with said person, but still have no clue how to reach out and make peace around it, so am letting be what it is.

So this year I started with a Sankalpa, which means an intention, to let go of things. Letting go was never my specialty and to do so seemed like it would kill me, but letting go is what I did. I let go of many friendships and some of them even blossomed due to my non-attachment to how they were "supposed" to be. I let go of many things that I don't really need to get into on here right now, but all things that I've had little stories around that were no longer serving me and my path.

This year my Sankalpa will be to embrace things. Embrace things that others are happy and feel wonderful about, embrace other people's belief systems as theirs and their right to have them, embrace everything! Why not?!? I've always been the one to think I know the way things are and are done best and I should reform you to feel the same way as I do and then your life will be wonderful, but what? That's stupid.

My life is created by me and therefore is geared towards my beliefs, my feelings and whatever my focus is at that time. Yours shouldn't be and never will be, so I have to embrace whatever it is you like, not for myself because I have my own things, but for you. "You love that, that's great! I'm so glad it makes you happy to have that in your life!" And really mean it, not just be paying it lip service, but to really mean it. I think I've laid the ground work to allow this to happen to!

So, don't let others influence what you want in your life. Feel how you feel when you think about things and either add it in, or subtract it out and create an existence that makes you happy to be living. I slowly have and will complete that year circuit that I began last February at the Confluence and with RuPaul by RuPaul's new season that starts again in the same month this year, and all of the new inspirations it will bring, but also I will be in Mysore mid-February this finally studying with Sharath at the source of the Ashtanga system!

Everything you want can happen if you believe it can, BUT do you believe it can? Still doubting? Don't doubt or it cannot come in. Believe it can and see if it doesn't just come creeping around the corner at you... You can have a life just the way you like it too!

I love you all so much, Happy New Year!!!

Holiday

Typically I'm not too big on holidays, after all holiday is a run-on for holy day and isn't every day holy? Or shouldn't it be? I try to think so anyway, although I don't always act holy...

This year was no different, I wasn't looking forward to it at all. No particular reason why this season, just following an old pattern I think. So when I asked my mom what was going on and we talked for a while, for some reason I agreed to spend the night at her house on Christmas eve, something I never do, but I did this year and I ended up enjoying myself.

This yoga stuff has just proven itself to me even more by helping me grow into someone who can be okay and even happy with anything that life can dredge up. I'm not sure when but I had become someone who didn't like the holidays and this year made me know that not to be my truth any longer.

I went to Illinois to my grandmas early in the day of Christmas eve, then went to moms and we left and went to see a movie, Saving Mr. Banks (very good film btw), then dinner, then home showered and slept. On Christmas morning, after sleeping 9.5 hours mind you, something I never do, off to my sisters which was a very good time as well.

I left there and decided to go see the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, another film, on the way home and dinner too before getting home. The movie dredged up my fears of going to India but also showed me that they are unfounded and without the excitement that fear also offers life wouldn't be worth living. I left the theatre feeling quite amazing and ready to take on the world.

I also left knowing the life of privilege that I lead. Meaning that I have lived quite a life. In the late 80's I left home, started a job in the big city (St. Louis believe it or not lol), started exploring the fact that I was a gay man and going out to gay bars at 18, I then also became a drag queen for about a year, what a crazy bit of time that was (partly because every time I did drag I was also on acid!). I didn't do much but sleep around a lot and drink a whole lot in the early 90's, all the way to the late 90's I think, then I fell in love. A love at first site that no one ever has and we all may only have the privilege to experience once, if that. Then I became a stripper, dancing nude on a bar in socks for tips, just to explore the issues I had with my physical body. Very quickly behind that I discovered yoga, and that's when it all started to change. Now since then I've left a corporate job, studied yoga on Maui, lived in Europe for a month, traveled around the country with my mother, switched yogas completely thrice, coming back to the one I originally fell in love with. Became a Sikh, changed my name legally, built a life for myself around yoga and teaching it, that I love mind you, and began teaching yoga teachers. Now I'm about to embark on a trip to India to study yoga in depth.

I've discovered what I love and what I want in life, and all of that shifts and flows and changes in many unexpected ways all the time, but that's okay. How many people have the privilege of knowing what they want to do with their life and actually set out to do it?!?

See what I mean about privilege?

Now I'm so excited to get up early tomorrow and practice yoga and then go and teach it, I love this! How did I not find appreciation for things before now? Maybe I did, just at a different level than now, but now is where I am and now I'm so happy and in love with all the people in my life and what I do with my life!

I can't wait to be in India and experience the culture and the way they approach everything in life as such a holy experience, I feel like I should be there already. Maybe I am...

Crossroads

So, does anyone else feel like they're at a crossroads in their life? I do. This impending trip to Mysore to study Ashtanga at its source is a big thing in my life that I'm finally doing, but in that it's so big, it's bringing up many, many other things in life that I've hedged on or avoided, or have delved deeply into and went wrong. All the things in life that could be considered a crossroads...

Choices, we all have them, many of us having been trained to take the safe choices. Only to find years later that the safe choice may not have been the right one for you, but as part of your path you took that one and followed it until it led you to another choice, sometimes leading you right back to the same situation, presented differently, and gives you the chance to make that choice all over again usually having different repercussions because you're at a very different place in life at this time.

So, here I am, I'm going to India this time, not wimping out like I did back when I meant to go in 2000 or 2002. Going to dive in deep. And now I'm friends on Facebook with a lot of Ashtangis who are over there now and I'm seeing their pics posted, the notes from Sharath's conferences that are inspiring to me, the status updates telling of their practice and/or adventures for that day and it's just terrifying me. Not terrifying me in a way that makes me scared to go, but in a way that's inspiring me even more because I know I'm facing a fear around something and am still going anyway. So am diving into the fire and asking it to burn away all that no longer serves me.

Much like the practice, which will chisel you into a fine tuned organism, not just your body but your psyche and your energetic fields as well. So everything in life can be approached this way, and I'm going for it. No more backing away, but facing the things and moving through them. I'm teaching a bunch of workshops lately and before I go that are inspired by my practice and things that I've wanted to share for a while and I'm dealing with people that I need to organize my feelings around, all sorts of things.

This will be my work for the new year, maybe you'll join me???