New Moon

This quote from Kino MacGregor popped up in my feed today:

"The new moon is a time of reflection, a time to take stock of all that you have done in the last month and plant the seeds of new intentions going forward. It's a time to forgive yourself and others so that you start fresh. The new moon is about rebirth, so take a step down the spiritual journey of yoga, meditate, turn your attention inwards and direct your life down the road of true awakening. My new moon intention is to release my need to control so that I may be open to receiving things bigger and grander than I can control or imagine."

I believe that we see things that are resonating where we are vibrating at that time, same with people we bump into, same with conversations we have (and I've had a couple today that show me I'm sliding backwards a bit) and situations that arise. Basically, everything in our day is there mirroring back to us where we are. Which can be a good thing, if we're in a good place, or a bad thing if we're in a bad place, OR it could show us where we are and if we're not in a place we really want to be and are conscious enough to catch it we can possibly turn that around more quickly. Which is what I would like to think I'm doing today lol.

But really, I think of myself as a conscious person, but mostly I'm still not as conscious as I'd like to think I am. Or rather, I'm not deliberately taking the time to create my life in the way I would like, or as Abraham would say Pre-paving. Her quote brought that home for me.

When I was younger I did this very much more than I do now. I followed the moon cycles and felt it had great importance in my life, and I still feel the moon cycles but am not using them as wisely as I'd like to, so I'm creating the intention that I will start doing this today, so will you join me?

Boyhood

So, I just saw the movie named in the title of this entry. It's famous for being filmed over the course of a dozen years about this boy, the main character Mason, and his family. It was a good cast, Patricia Arquette plays the mom, Ethan Hawke the semi-estranged dad and a few others including the guy who played Mason.

Now, at first glance nothing about this family life is similar to mine, other than the fact that I had a sister and my mom raised us and dad was around. That wasn't what touched me about the film, it was the kid himself. He was contemplative, quiet, and totally lived in his head but was an artist. This is me when I was young, his art was photography, mine was drawing, but you get the picture.

So he mentions at one point that he couldn't wait to get to that point in life where someone wasn't always nagging him to do more and to just be able to be himself and do what he wants when he wants to and live his own life. I never felt nagged, although I may have been, I lived too much in my head to notice I think lol.

The end of the movie, he's arrived at the point he wanted to be at during the rest of the movie and was at the precipice of his life and has it all to look forward to, but his mom was at a point where she thought there would be more out of life and was disappointed that there hadn't been more up to that point.

I identified with the mom a lot, because with just a flip of her consciousness she could be at the precipice of her life as well, both kids gone to college, she sold her house, moved into an apartment and could have all this amazing new stuff to look forward to. If you look at my life, and if I look at a few other lives of older yoga teachers in the area, there are at the place where there seems to be not that much more to go for but that's their choice. I could feel this way as well, but I'm about to go back to India and study yoga more with my teacher there which sends you into this deep place and brings up whole new things about yourself that you can then figure out where to go with. I could move, I could open a studio here, I could travel and teach. I've got the whole winter to figure all that out.

But my point originally was that I was feeling like the mother and hadn't thought about my life from the point of view of the son, but that was my choice, so now I'm choosing to feel like the son, like Mason.

I am at an amazing point in my life. I am 44 years old, but damn if I don't feel better mentally and physically than I did when I was in my teens and twenties. I even still feel like I just want to be at mom's house and living with not many responsibilities in life (I don't want this btw lol, just sometimes feel like that same little boy). I also don't have a lot of responsibility, no spouse or kids, no house payment. Even my possessions are easily gotten rid of (in theory). But I can go pretty much in any direction I want to go and am going to embrace the thrill of that!

So, how do you feel right now? Do you feel stuck in your life? Do you feel excited in your life? at what's to come? Do you realize that whichever way you feel is your choice? You can choose to be happier and more excited about the direction your life is going, and you can choose not to.

Which do you choose?

Mysore... again

So, India, more specifically Mysore, even more specifically Gokulam, a small area in Mysore that houses the K Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute, has not left my being since I went in February. I came home April 8th, over 4 months ago, and can still feel the heat of the sun, the dryness in the air, can tell you how to get to the chocolate man and Dhatu, can remember walking home from the movies with Petros...etc.

In other words, this place is stuck in my craw. Or rather, I can't get it out of my head. My friend Kelly is in love with Iceland and wrote this great Facebook status about her two trips and going back for her third in a couple weeks and it made me want to write about Mysore, again.

So, just two weeks ago I applied to go back in November, which would mean I would head back that last week of October, and guess what? I got in. Haven't bought my plane ticket yet, but am about to do a search on that. So, I'm going back and I'm excited beyond words.

In 2000 I picked up a Yoga Journal after attending one yoga class at a local place and in it was an article about Madonna playing a yoga teacher in her new movie, and of course, she was practicing Ashtanga Yoga so the movie was to have scenes of yoga in it, including an opening Mysore style scene, but I read the word Ashtanga and never having heard it before didn't know if I was pronouncing it correctly, but knew I'd heard that word before, or felt it in my being before, so did a search in the Yellow Pages (yes, that was how we searched back then) and found one lady who taught a little class in her house, so went.

In about the third class of this Intro to Ashtanga series I remember being in down dog, sweating profusely, crying a bit and shaking, wondering how I found myself there but knowing that I was in love and it was going to change my life.

Cut to about June or July and I'd read somewhere that Guruji, K. Pattabhi Jois, was going to be touring around the states and found myself calling Richard Freeman and talking to his wife, signing up for the week in Boulder they were hosting him for, she even also found me housing with one of their studios current students, and I drove out there by myself and took this mans led classes.

His grandson adjusted me in Marichasana C and D, my spine was always locked up due to being degenerative from about the mid-back down, so I'd never been able to do much with the postures. He talked me through breathing and allowing him to take me into the full postures, both of them. Yes, I thought I was going to die or shit myself, or both, couldnt' breathe, couldn't think, nothing. So I did the whole week, survived and drove home, but during the week they had three nights of conference with Guruji, where he would take questions and answer them. He was asked something about when to practice and looking at me (of course, everyone probably felt he was looking at them directly) he said "you, you getting up, before working, before sunrise, practicing then. Whole life changing!"

Of course for me that would mean at 4am, iiiicccckkkk, no fucking way! But, I went home, told my partner and he said he thought I should do it if I was going to call this guy my teacher. So I did, and yes, my whole life changed. We broke up, I left my job of 14 years and many other things. Not quite right that moment, so before we broke up I planned to go to India to see this man and sent the infamous letter you had to write back then, but quickly found out he wasn't happy about me thinking I was going to India and so I allowed my trip to be vetoed. So no India then, but we broke up...

Since I was off and had a severance package after leaving my job I decided to go to India then, but alas, look online and Guruji was on tour again, so I went to Hawaii to see him this time, and ended up being there for almost 6 weeks and studied with Nancy Gilgoff as well, what a great time. Sharath, the grandson, even remembered me from the Boulder trip two years prior! This was in 2002, two years after I'd seen Pattabhi and he on my first Asthanga trip.

Anyhow, the next Ashtanga trip I took was in 2007 to the Yoga Journal pre-conference with a group I'd been teaching in Illinois, and it was great, but it was also my last great hurrah before leaving Ashtanga, studying KUndalini and Anusara for almost 4 years before coming back to Ashtanga full time in 2012. I've written much about these times in previous entries, so won't go there again now.

So now, after being into Ashtanga again for just over 2 years, I'm already about to embark on my second trip!

It's amazing to get what you want in life, especially when for 40 years you've convinced yourself that you can't ever have what you want. That same friend I mentioned who wrote about Iceland, also wrote another status about observing folks who live the life they want because they believe they can, and the others who live self-limitations that they put on themselves. Each is our choice, so I'm choosing to live an amazing life!