Letting go...

This seems to be the theme of life right now. Maybe even the theme of the lives of most of those around me at this time!

Not letting go of this mortal coil necessarily, but letting go of my attachment to the outcome, or the way I think things should be. That's a hard lesson to learn from a control freak raised by control freaks lol.

But India has taught me this lesson well. Not getting into specifics about what the letting go is happening with right now, but if you know me then you know what it's about. But still, its a theme that can fit anywhere in my life, or any of our lives.

We're generally taught to hold on tightly to things and never let go of them, but when I began a yoga practice one of the recurring themes was to NOT hold onto things. They are impermanent and in order to maintain some equanimity somehow you have to let go so that you're not so disappointed when things don't turn out the way you think they should.

Letting go sounds awful, it sounds counterintuitive at best, but it really isn't that. It's exactly the opposite.

Especially for someone who's studied the Law of Attraction the way that Abraham teaches it, you have to tell the what and the why, the what so the universe knows what to provide, the why to build up the feeling of how it will feel to have that thing already. But the how and the when are none of your business. So we must let go of those things to allow in the manifestation. Blecccchh... Who the fuck wants to do that. But, nonetheless it is true.

If you hold on to the thing, you're usually holding on to NOT having the thing and so are maintaining that vibration and drawing more of NOT having the thing to you, then you never manifest it.

In the Yoga Sutras, it's talked about abandoning desire. Which I interpret the same way. When you have a longing for something you are living in the not having it, rather than in the abundant state of how it would feel to have it. And its really not about having it, but its about living in the feeling of abundance that is a natural state in the universe. There is enough for each and everyone of us.

I can get there, and I can get out of there, both very easily. I wish I could maintain the former more easily than the latter, but they are about equal. Unless I've practiced the latter more at that time, then that becomes the easiest part.

God, why are humans so complicated?!? Why can't we just feel our way through things the way we're meant to? We have to start thinking about what others will think of us when we act this way, or that way, or have this thing or that thing, or not. Who gives a shit? Why does what anyone thinks about us matter? I know we're often trained that way, but it doesn't mean we have to keep maintaining this silliness.

I'm letting go, right now. Not going to worry about it anymore and just embrace the good feeling of the blessings I already have in my life and release myself from concern about the things I don't!

Last month...

Well, it's the last of my three months practicing with my guru here in Mysore. I'll be here another month after that, but I may travel a little bit, not sure just yet.

This season has been interesting to say the least, more intense than most I would say, but interesting for sure.

It's involved physical injury, wrist pain, cuts and bruises, and all happening on my left side. Left side, right brain, feminine side. Who knows what that means. Maybe I pray to Kali/Chamundi too much! Maybe not enough.

A friend of mine asked me why I'm so drawn to Kali and to write a blog about it, I couldn't come up with anything that sounded poignant enough to write down, but maybe it doesn't have to be, so here it goes.

At first coming to yoga one often sees Ganesh around studios and shalas and then looks him up to find a bunch of his stories, he is known as the removal of obstacles. So is often invoked before taking a trip, before going to work, at the beginning of a day. There is a small Ganesh temple right here in Gokulam that was the first Hindu temple I ever went to, even had a lady who spoke no English have her daughter tell us about the protocol and symbolism in the temple, maybe two seasons ago I think. What you also find out is that he also is often the one who puts the obstacles there as well! So then you have to invoke the energy he embodies within yourself to be able to work your way through whatever problem comes up. Sneaky guy...

Then you find out that his father is Shiva, really he was built from the dirt of his mothers body so has no father, but Shiva is Parvati's husband so he took on the role, and that's a story for another time. Shiva is one of the big three in Hinduism, symbolising the destruction phase of God. Often he is thought of as destroying the things in ones existence that is no longer serving them to make space for new and more beneficial stuff. That's a story I like. When you study him, you find out much more along these lines as well. You also find out there's a whole sect just for him, Shaivites. Then you find out there is another sect that follows Vishnu, Vaishnavites. Then you find out there is a whole sect that worships the mother, the goddess, the shakti. Shaktites, and they believe that the ultimate energy of the universe comes from the goddess energy, the shakti, and that the masculine energy only focuses that, but the real power is from her. That intrigues me, because even though I was never baptised a Christian I was raised in their churches and there really is no feminine principle, not including Catholicism, but the brand of Christian I was raised under also does not even consider Catholics Christians!

Anyhow, I digress. So when you are researching the divine feminine, often this terrifying image called Kali comes up. She is usually dripping blood from her long tongue and teeth, and holding a head in her hand, skulls around her neck and arms around her waist. No thank you, I want nothing to do with this craziness!

Then some young Indian fellow, who is jealous of all the Western students coming here to study yoga (because he is in school to be an engineer to make his parents happy, and wants nothing more than to be a pujari and study yoga and spirituality) befriends you and as you're leaving, he buys you a book- Yogic Secrets of the Dark Goddess. Brilliant fucking book. Pavithra even carries it in the Green House now because I bought it for so many people last season.

This book talks of a womans many experiences of Kali in all her forms and some are softer, some are harder, some involve Krishna, some involve Shiva, some involve Lakshmi. So you start seeing her in a different light and then begin to chant to her and your life seems to be falling apart, but as quickly as it falls apart, other better, newer things come into it and you see, she is the ultimate destroyer but also is like a mother, giving and loving and wanting the best for you.

So you start with where any good pooja in India starts, you invoke Ganesh, then you move to his father, stronger version of the same energy. Then to his mother , who is the most powerful thing you've ever felt in your life. Really also, you're invoking these qualities within yourself, not from outside you at all. So you're seeing your life and its possibilites more clearly, but your also seeing it from a fresh perspective. From a softer, and yet stronger place. Think of water, its the softest thing you've ever encounter, but it also can destroy a whole country with its power or wear down rock to create a groove to flow through. She is the ultimate in creative power, coming from the lower chakras, but embodying the upper chakras. Just aamazing stuff when you invite her in.

So this summer I did a lot of pooja to Kali, nightly for 108 days to be exact, and once I got here I realised I needed to invite her to stay with me more intently again and began this same pooja along with a morning mantra to her and an evening mantra as well. She's definitely shown her face here. I've learned a lot about myself through physical injury and emotional instability, only to come out feeling more stable and more in my power than ever before.

On the softer side I had a great meeting with Sharath and we talked for about 40 minutes, he also gave me his blessing to teach, but in true Kali fashion the other parts of the process toward authorisation have been muddled and even blocked so far. This energy is very much in the soil in India as well, it will teach you your lessons, but will teach them in its own way, and never a way you expect. It's crazy and its wonderful. More on that meeting once I get my certificate, whenever that may be! Hahahaha...

So, that's enough for this afternoon, off to do my evening pooja and to slowly settle in for the evening so I'm able to get up at 2:30am and get to led class. This is last two weeks of practice for this season. It makes me sad, but I'm also ready to move forward and get to my teaching in Germany and then maybe see Sharath in Copenhagen in August, before coming back to India!

Have a great week!

Surgery month...

So most people know my analogy of three months here in Mysore: First month cut you open, second month surgery, third month sew you up! Sharath says: First month tired, second month paining, third month flying! Both basically say the same thing to me.

My first month here seemed amazing, my body wasn't hurting, my mind was soft and receptive and I was going to all the classes, then my wrist went wonky, that last a few weeks before I got a major sinus issue from the pollution in the city one day which brought on fever to fight off the toxins, then Pavithra helped me clear that up with some Ayurvedic herbs and such, then we had the scooter wreck which scraped the skin off much of my left forearm and in places all the way down my left side. I couldn't do anything but sleep for about 3 days, then a minimal practice, then began full practices again and thats when the other effects started coming out. Sore shoulder muscles that were just weak and taking their own time to get back to normal, a rib out of place which was pinching muscle under my left pec, which popped back in place as I was stretching in bed one night and the next day was when I could finally do the whole practice again, and then a few other bruises and aches from everything landing on my left side, including the scooter...

So, state of mind is a big thing to me. How we feel and what we're thinking in combination tell us where we are, and I believe, or rather know that these things manifest in our physicality as well. So things in my psyche were being dredged up and here they were being shown to me. Of course, as one tends to do, I forgot that and was feeling bad mentally and blaming it on the physical things that had happened to me. I had this also in my second trip here where I had my SI joint go out and pinch a nerve and also had a parasite I'd gotten from a salad cause me to have diarrhea for three weeks and I lost 37 pounds. But since then my body has been behaving pretty well, even when my mind was out of it. Of course there were a few things here and there but nothing big. When in the US I can always have a chiropractor pop me back in place and avoid the psychological stuff if I want!

All these things had been muddling my vibration quite a bit and so I would get caught up in an internal dialogue about how I shouldn't be still doing this intense practice and maybe it was time to give it up again, for good this time, and blah, blah, blah. There are many around me who are sensitive to this stuff and haven't been around as much, of course I was in the rotten place and didn't notice that, I'd also been making excuses for myself, to myself...lol. I'm a mess. Well, I"m human, as are we all. I like to fool myself into believing I'm a superhuman yogi who could live in the Himalayas naked and all that, but I'm not there quite yet!

So Saturday in conference Sharath talked about many things, which we're no longer supposed to report on(the idea being that if someone wants to hear conference they need to make the pilgrimage here to hear it in their own words. And if they're not here to listen to it in context it can be taken very wrong and misunderstood and cause a lot of talk to happen), but at one point he was talking about pushing oneself just a little bit and seeing the benefits of how that day may be your best practice yet. At this time a friend looked right at me, and this I noticed right away. During that whole section he kept looking at me and I averted his gaze. Then this morning wrote him a message asking if he thought I wasn't pushing myself enough. To which I got a long, supportive, love filled explanation saying yes basically. And we had a dialogue throughout the day that helped me further, this also started a processing of thoughts and feelings that was much needed and a few conversations with others about it as well.

Not saying I'm all processed and ready for the easy sew me up month, but I'm on my way that direction and the negative slant my thoughts had taken has been shifted in a better direction and I am going to make it back to my first led class since all this physical stuff has happened. Yes, I know, I come here to practice and I'm avoiding it. Not completely, I've been practicing at home at a slower pace, but I've been missing out on that energy and the pace which is something I need to keep me going while I'm here, and more importantly, while I'm not here! And I was doing well this trip and going to them most of the time, but that's a story for another blog entry.

So, I'm feeling better, my mind is in a better state and I'm feeling rededicated to this practice in a way I haven't in five weeks. So surgery month is almost over, that doesn't mean the third month will be completely a breeze but it does mean that I'll be approaching it differently.

Thanks for reading, have a great week!

New body...

The title of this entry refers to a famous quote from K. Pattabhi Jois, "new body, new body, new body is making..." Which referred to the fact that yoga, maybe this specific practice even, changed you on a cellular level. Your body sweats, detoxifies and evolves as you practice. Even most peoples diet and approach to life change from it. So as cells go they replenish more quickly with all the excess sweat forcing the old cells off the epidermis. Your muscles change, they get strong but also longer and more pliable, along with many other things. I tend to get here and sweat so much here, more than in my former home, and break out. The zits only last about a week but they are annoying and painful, then boom, gone, it may happen again if my diet falters while I'm here but again, goes away fairly quickly. My hair and nails grow faster here, I believe because of the energy flow of the place, there is a LOT of prana here, both in the shala and outside of it. But this is maybe the first time I've experienced the feeling of a new body. I have practiced this path we call Ashtanga Yoga since March 1 of the year 2000. I began primary series and didn't really complete it for two years, when I was on the island of Maui studying with Nancy Gilgoff and Guruji for a week as well. Nancy immediately started me on intermediate series and then began me on advanced A during my time there. Maybe during those weeks I was in less pain, but for the majority of the time I've been engaging in this practice I have hurt. I hurt myself as well and that is why I quit in 2008 and studied Kundalini Yoga and Anusara Yoga, to heal, physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. When I came back to Ashtanga Yoga I was safer, studied with many certified and authorised teachers and began my yearly treks to Mysore, India to study with Sharath, who had taken over guiding the lineage once Pattabhi left his body. But even then, I still hurt all the time. I felt better when I was practicing at home because I would take an extra day off here and there but when here and having to do this 5-6 days in a row each week I was just sore, joints, muscles, one season my SI joint went out, this season I'm having a wrist issue, etc. But this is the first season that I am not sore all the time. I've always been jealous of those people who can just get up daily and practice, no matter what. This is another issue, no segway, sorry. I always have a battle of internal dialogue telling me how awful it is to do this daily, that I'm going to kill myself or worse, going to lose my mind! haha, as if... And the soreness always made my mind choose to do the same as I was doing back home, takes extra days off and such. I felt justified for following my body's needs, yay for me! But was I? Or was I just telling myself that? In some ways both. But this season I'm here, I'm practicing 6 days in a row (okay those in the know, yes I still sometimes skip the Saturday led class to avoid the crowds, but I did go once, but I've practiced at home all but one!) and my body is okay with it. Dare I even say my body feels better than it ever has? Yes, I dare. Because it does! I will also state that Sharath still has me doing mostly only primary series. He's always talking about how important it is for the basics of the body, and now I finally believe him. When I was practicing the first go round I love intermediate and after you practice it you feel just ethereal almost, although I hear this isn't so when you're doing it daily. I was on Nancy's regimen of primary one day, intermediate the next, back and forth. Which was pretty good, so we'll see how it goes if I ever get there again. But for now doing mostly primary and adding on pasasana and the backhanding, it's working and making my body feel great, and my mind feel strong and I'm feeling more open than ever, heart-wise and mind-wise. And I will say I love feeling open, even though I fought hard against it for so many years. No, now it feels great. So whether or not you agree with this, that's fine, but from experience let me tell you to keep practicing. Things change, eventually, physically of course (even though that took the longest for me) but emotionally and mentally especially. Then that's when you can enjoy life a little more. I enjoy going out around town with people, or by myself. Or staying in with people, or by myself. Eating, or not eating. Reading, writing, watching tv shows, scanning social media. All of these things, or none of them, I enjoy doing them, or not doing them. Just being okay with whatever comes up, that's a new thing for me. But yogascittavrttinirodhanah, right?

The hard and the soft...

Now, those of you who know me well will likely think the title of this entry is sexual. I do like my potty humour and have a terribly naughty mind, but alas, I'm sorry to disappoint that it has nothing to do with this.

I've been really thinking, most of the summer actually, about the hardness of this practice. The intensity really, which seems like hardness. It comes across to those who don't practice it that it's all about pushing further and further and forcing yourself into these postures that don't seem natural.

In fact, its the exact opposite.

If you try to push yourself into these posture you will do nothing but hurt yourself. I used to do that when I was first practicing Ashtanga yoga, hurt myself a lot while teaching myself third series (I'd previously learned primary and Intermediate with a teacher).

The key to this practice, which already brings a strong yang vibe in its intensity with all the focus on the breath, bandhas and dristhi and the sheer amount of jump backs, jump throughs and posture sequences, is to allow it to happen. Is to soften and just breath without a lot of muscle tension or mental tension to make it worse. It's to find the softness, the feminine energy, the yin, within all that yang.

It took me coming to Mysore and having Sharath poke me with his toe saying relax, relax, relax, thirty times each practice to realise the maybe he wanted me to relax and not push so hard, not focus so much on my alignment, which I'd gotten into with the study of Anusara yoga, and just breathe. Breath really is the softest thing we can offer ourselves, and it changes our postures.

It slowly seeped into my practice that I'm meant to just practice, not thing about everything while I'm practicing. They've given us enough to focus on during our sadhana, so just breathe and do it and look at your nose and do it and just do it, do the next posture! hahaha...

So, I feel like this trip is really going well because I've integrated that softness by now, my fourth trip here, and my back feels great, my wrist was hurting but keeps getting better and my mind I'm mostly able to shut off during the asanas.

I ran across someone I've seen around at the shala on Facebook and found out he does Thai massage, which I also do, but that I never have the opportunity to receive. So decided to contact him about getting some bodywork, even though I didn't really need it, I've been craving that human touch and was following my instincts and they'd told me to contact him.

I must say it was the most bizarre massage I've ever had, very strange techniques that I've never encountered, but my god, it was also the best bodywork I've ever had. I feel better than I've felt in a long, long time and he mostly focused on the wrist, but using the whole body to get the energy flowing to the wrist, and everywhere. But the one thing that stood out is what he said to me after the experience. He told me he felt that I've worked hard on myself and I've achieved a lot but there is some last bit of resistance and that is whats affecting the wrist. I also felt this so agreed and now need to figure that out and let it move on through.

But he also said that he so much appreciated my softness. He could tell I worked hard to get to that point and it was a pleasure to work on someone who received so well. How masculine it is to be with and admit your softer side, rather than harden up (as we're taught to do so intently back in the midwest, maybe everywhere actually) and he appreciated it.

So, I'm soft. I've always wanted to be and I guess I have achieved that. But my hardness comes out a lot as well, as it has in pissing a few people off this week via social media. So it's always a balancing act, isn't it? Finding out when to comment, or not, and if you do to deal with the consequences of it, good or bad. But then good or bad are just labels, and I'm so tired to death of labelling everything.

Put that way, aren't hard and soft just labels as well? They are also ways of being I guess but labels to those ways of being still. Maybe one day I'll learn to just be, to just be content and at peace with whatever comes, as the sutras state. Maybe not. For now I'll be who I am and sometimes I'll remember to back off, and sometimes I won't and Ill make that comment, and sometimes when receiving bodywork I might tense up, but sometimes I'll be able to relax and fully receive it and just breathe.

Those who know me and love me get me either way, they may get irritated when I'm a bit too hard edged, but they know that underneath it I'm just a big soft teddy bear. Now I've spilled the beans and you all know it huh? Oh well, maybe that's part of it too. The catharsis of letting you all know my secrets, or maybe not having secrets at all? Ahhh, I like that...

Practice, practice, practice...

This trip has been very different for me, not sure of all the reasons just yet, but they are there. One thing is my wrist is jacked up, but its slowly healing. Have to take care with that one, we use our wrists A LOT in this practice. So my ego has been poked already around what I think my practice is supposed to look and feel like, which has so far been a good thing.

One thing that's surprising to me is how much I'm looking forward to practicing each morning. I just like being in that room and there is a whole different group this year, well, not all different, but there are many new faces and they seem to be much better behaved than the other groups I've encountered in past trips. Including going in at the gate each morning, it's been not a heart wrenching nervous system jarring experience, it's been quite pleasant and calm mostly, even on led days. And speaking of led class, I'm enjoying them for a change and have been able to get in the room each time, not just been relegated to the change room.

People here seem to be socializing a bit less, less people in the cafes most of the day, not including Santosha in the mornings which has been busy. But not as much going out and about, and that's okay too.

I've taken to visiting the area temples more this trip, much like the end of my last trip. And am getting a lot out of it, more encouragement and welcomeness from the locals too. Not they ever made me feel unwelcome, just looked at me like wtf? lol, but not this time, it's been amazing.

Also, I'm eating less. Not interested in being super full and eating things with more nutrients I think has helped that too. But I feel much more energized, maybe putting that stuff about diet I learned back in the US before I came has been helping that too, interesting to use my body as the experiment and seeing where it takes me. I like having more energy and I like not feel super full all the time, or excruciatingly hungry, as I used to.

Not much more to say right now. Not a lot of deep stuff coming up for me yet, not that it won't, it usually does, but that I'm in a different place so its not affecting me as much maybe? Or maybe I've just not dug deep enough yet? Or maybe I should just enjoy it either way...

Mysore, again...

I've been terrible about writing in this blog this summer, and now that it's fall back in the US and I'm in India again I'm finally feeling like I'm ready to start again, maybe... Let's see how it goes.

I've been here about 2 weeks now, just starting my second week of practice with Sharath again. It feels like home, and like I never left. I truly did not want to leave last time, so much so that I vomited all the way to the airport in March when I was leaving. Well, maybe not all the way, do you remember Katie? It was miserable. And it took me a while once back in St. Louis to shake off the icky feeling of not wanting to be there. In fact, I don't think I ever shook off that feeling. I think I just embraced it and felt that way.

But being back here and with most of the same friends who come with me each time from around the planet, it feels right. And walking into the office to register for classes with my teacher and his "oh, it's you again..." helped it feel even more right, haha. I love India and it feels correct to me to be here. Even though I can't wait to travel around and see more and more of it and it's culture and decide eventually where I want to live, yes I'm planning to live here.

But that's for another blog, at another time.

This past week it has been Dasara, more popularly known as Navaratri. Nine nights of the goddess. Which somehow becomes 11 days, really 10, but the big procession was today and it's the 11th of October. After worshipping different aspects of the goddess for the last 9 days.

I took part in a homa, a fire ceremony, on the 8th day, which according to my astrology was the proper day and version of the goddess for me to be involved in. There was a sankalpa, an intention, to start the ceremony and it was in Sanskrit and beautiful. Asking for guidance and knowledge to be able to follow the path that I'm supposed to. From that I also god a great reading of my chart telling me many things that are meant to happen, not all wonderful, but many not so shabby. In this system you can also change the karma of the future by tapas, mantra or some work on yourself that cancels out the stuff that could be coming your way. So I've been assigned a mantra to recite 1008 times daily, yes that many, even more if I can, but I'm finding that to be quite enough for now. It's amazing how I feel after that.

I'm also having wrist problems, but they seem to be a part of this process of clearing shit out and making way for the new ventures in my life. And there seem to be many coming my way, and that I'm quite ready for.

Practice is hard with the wrist thing going on but I'm able to do it at my own pace and Sharath has been supportive of it, and also he remembers my name now! That alone made me feel great, and it only took 4 extended trips here, but I'm not complaining.

Mostly I feel very grateful and appreciative of the path that has led me here and those who have played a part in it. I'm ready to move forward, in life, in this practice and in embracing all the things possible, rather than feeling like I'm blocking them off. It's time to open up my arms and say yes, rather than cross my arms across my chest as I normally would and say, mmmm, let me think about it, or no.

Well, off to do my japa for the evening, take care, see you soon!

Svadhyaya: Self-study

The following are the words of my teacher Sharath on the above Niyama:

Svadhyaya means studying what we have learned from our teacher: not only trying to understand what has been said, but deepening that understanding and expanding our knowledge by reading manuscripts and thinking for about the subject we are learning. Self-study is to engage out mind, to further our studies. It is out duty to do our homework, to practice and review what the guru has said, to go deeper into whatever yoga subject we are learning, and in understanding and experiencing the self and the divine. the teacher cannot push, he or she can only guid. If he or she shares who Ganapati is, the remover of obstacles, it is up to the student to find out more about Ganapati and those obstacles.

For some reason this has been on my mind today. Partly because I know my students never do this with what I say to them, I'm hard headed and draw hard headed people to my Mysore program lol. But, have I been doing this? The biggest advice Sharath has given me personally is about my diet. And so I have to think about that. He obviously thinks that is where the bulk of my work needs to be done. I overeat, for sure. I try to put the best things in that I can, but I don't cook and so resort to eating out and have to make the best choices I can on where to eat with what my body is needing at that time. But I also love pizza and lots of stuff that doesn't react well with my body anymore. Plus the quality of the food here isn't great, even at most of the restaurants that I will eat at. So for the next month I really need to pay attention, I've been prone to eating far too much these past two weeks and too much stuff that I know affects my stomach badly, and now my back is out again. Hmmmm...

Okay, I'm paying attention, I truly am.

Seeing things differently...

It's odd to be driving around, seeing things that I've seen hundreds or even thousands of times and recognising them, but also feeling like I've never seen them before.

I feel like since I've decided to leave St. Louis this is exactly what's happening to me. I'm sitting in this room in a friends house on a futon that I'm sleeping on that's unfamiliar to me. It's damn comfortable though lol, but not mine. In a room with not too much stuff in it but only a small amount of books in the corner and clothes in the closet are mine. Oh, and this lamp I bought when Tom and I moved in together back in October of 1999. Somehow this damn lamp has followed me from that apartment to Collinsville, to when I lived with Hugh and Steve, to my own apartment, to all five places I moved around to last year and is still here with me. My car is gone, so I'm driving a friends car that's very comfy and has ac in it and so I'm feeling foreign as I drive it around, it's nice in this heat to have ac too, don't get me wrong, I've just not had it in my car in over 8 years!

So all of my circumstances are altered and so I am seeing things, the same things that my mind is acknowledging that it recognizes, from the most different perspective than I've had before. I've lived here for a very long time and had the same "stuff" for a very long time, so have always recreated the same sort of little comfort zone in each place I've lived in these last 16 years. But I've swiped that rug out from under myself.

All this root chakra stuff being stirred up has also helped my very low back go out, which is no fun. It went out on me in Mysore as well my second trip, that was even worse! But to have it go out just when your practice was soaring sucks. I was very distracted and thinking of things instead of lifting my pelvic floor and the deeper inner muscle actions that affect moola bandha and crack, crack, crack. Three cracks. Now it's a mess. I'm feeling better. Had a chiropractic adjustment that got the nerves freed up, they were being pinched, and now it's just cranky. So I'm practicing less and slower but it's working in getting it all where it needs to be. We learn from injury, especially when it was something we did to ourselves! I'm learning, and learning and learning. And will be better for Mysore this time around than maybe ever.

So that pain adds to the surreal quality that life is already taking on around me, giving things more brightness, more color, making scents stronger and sensations warmer, or colder.

I read this passage this morning in one of the books I'm reading about experiencing the heart space. It also was an exercise in going deep within, feeling the void that exists at your centre, at the centre of all things, and then when I came out of the exercise I was also seeing things from that quiet, empty, dark space. Not that things were darker. They actually were brighter, the heat from the sun that was beating down on my flesh didn't feel hot and wasn't making me sweat anymore. The bright green of the surrounding trees and the grass was slicing through me. The smells of the creek at the park I was at were intense and took me away to the Ganga, which I've been thinking about so much.

It seems source is coming through me more and through the experiences I'm having in life this week I'm becoming more and more aware of source in every situation I find myself in. It's very interesting. I'm enjoying it. These new eyes. Or should I say this new vision, same old eyes, but seeing with a new vision. Feeling with a new depth. Experiencing with a different gauge.

I taught a private a couple weeks back and mostly focused on the breath with her, which is really the ashtanga way to do things, but then introduced movement along with the breath and when she left she was teary eyed and spoke of how she was seeing all the things in the neighbourhood differently. Colours were brighter, the sun was lighter, just everything. Maybe I'm experiencing a new level of this, which happened to me many years ago when I began living this yoga we call Ashtanga.

I want to bring this quality to everyones life, are you in? Come see me soon!

Lots of thinking going on...

I haven't written too much lately, been thinking way too much. I hate thinking! Well, maybe I don't hate thinking. I'm just the sort that can get caught up in those thoughts and never come back to being present. It's a pattern from my youth, get lost in my head and not feel things anymore and navigate from my heart, which has really changed my life and opened me up.

I'm leaving for India in just about a month and a half, give or take, and I'm intending to teach and travel from there. I have one four month gig lined up already. Thinking I could go and cover peoples Mysore programs maybe, but also am open to it manifesting however it will.

I also have a lot of money to make before I leave, and that makes me anxious. I also am having lots of feelings about leaving, not the kind that will make me stay, just the kind that will make me nostalgic while I'm here which can again lead to the thinking and then that fucks me up.

Then there's this election and if you know me, I never talk about politics and I've been talking about them. I never even usually think about that stuff, but Trump has me scared. And I actually just had my first discussion and unfriending of someone because they were a Trump supporter. And I'm not the kind of person to hamper anyones opinions of that kind of stuff, but it's what I did.

I also just watched Looking: the movie, which used to be an HBO series that I liked and they kind of left hanging after three seasons, or two? Can't remember. So they made a one shot movie to settle up on some things from the series. Again, like the series used to do, it made me emotional, but also made me think a lot about the past. When I used to have a lot of gay friends and we used to drink and dance and party all the time, not where I am anymore. But after I quit drinking and going to bars almost all of my gay male friends stopped contacting me, and that makes me sad. I do still have some gay friends and even some I've met in Mysore and keep in contact with, but almost none here that I'm in contact with regularly and can hang out with. Not that I need that, but its just like I always say about being in Mysore, hanging around with only Ashtanga yogis is nice because there's that shorthand you don't have with other yoga practitioners, same with gay male friends, its just a shorthand you don't have with your female friends, or straight male friends. Who knows.

I just know that it's been very hot here, actually more humid than anything, and that has been making me stay indoors more and I'm not and indoors sort. So its making me a bit depressed. I think its supposed to finally cool off this weekend with a storm that's coming through, we'll see. I also don't feel totally depressed, I'm just ready to leave. I'm ready to be in Mysore and its not time yet, so I'm feeling a bit held back...

I'm supposed to go to this big Laksmi puja at the Hindu temple, right about now actually, but I'm not sure if I want to go now. The service I usually go to is normally at 6:30, its an abishekam, where they bathe the murthy and chant and have parsed, but its been moved to 5pm and they're havoing a 2 hour celebration after that for a bit holiday celebrating Lakshmi and what she stands for. This is something I would normally love, but again, the heat has me not wanting to go. I don't have air conditioning in my car, so driving all the way out there is a big suffer fest! Oh, I'm so dramatic!

Ok, off here to figure out what it is that I want to do and go do it. Enjoy your evening and weekend!

Nostalgia...

I've been feeling very nostalgic lately. With the prospect of leaving here for gordon the horizon it makes one contemplate odd things. Things I never knew I'd even care about again. Driving down old streets I used to live on, walking past my old school (which I hated), visiting people I haven't spoken with in years. Even eating at old favourite places.

Yes, I said leaving here for good. Doesn't mean I won't come back to visit, but who knows. When I go to India I hope to stay there for a good long while and then if I live somewhere, maybe there, or maybe another place on that side of the world. I had a reading and she said Bali, Bali could work too. Never been there but I like the idea of being near the ocean. But it's time, my life has been here for over 46 years now and it's time for a change.

I love India and can see myself traveling around there and teaching in different locations, then finally finding one place and being there for a while, then maybe another and another. I don't really know, or have a drawn out plan. I can't really plan things, I'm terrible at it and in the doing of that I feel like I'm living worrying about the future rather than enjoying my present. So I tend to not make plans. I know I'm odd to most of you, fucking hell, I'm odd to me most of the time.

I've chosen a life that doesn't fit here in St. Louis. And being here again makes me feel small. I do have a good life here, great friends, great students, and a great family. But feeling small is really painful. And I always feel outside my comfort zone, not that that's a bad thing, but its just tiring to always be uncomfortable. Not saying when I sleep I'm not comfortable or the places I go here aren't comfortable, but the only time I've felt like I'm me and living in my skin is in India.

I never knew that before. Never knew that I wasn't happy and that my life was small (not that its really small, its just not everything I want it to be, so its a figurative small). Odd to find out that I've not been being myself, and then boom, I'm in this strange land with strange customs and find myself more at home than I've ever been. I always said home is wherever I am, I take it with me, so that I could feel better wherever I was and it worked, then I ran smack dab into the place that was home and once you leave that place you can never be comfortable in the old place again.

I've been doing my best to not be depressed since I've been home. In fact that first month I wasn't and I even felt pretty damn good, was excited to see my friends, family and students again. Then it kicked in. Everything here is the same, nothing ever changes and I'm tired of having that experience. So its time to get out of here, but I have to stay and make money enough to afford to go back and be there for a while without income, while I study with Sharath and line up teaching jobs over there. I already have one two month gig lined up that I'm excited about, but I need more. Now, here I go again, living in the future instead of being able to enjoy my present.

I've got to do my best to be okay here while I'm here, things are good for sure, but if I don't maintain my feeling good, then it can all crash down around me.

So I go the Hindu temple a lot, I feel happy and comfortable there, I go to the park a lot, I feel happy and comfortable there (although these past two days with the rain I haven't been able to do that and that's probably a big factor in why I'm feeling this way today) and tonight I'm to the Hare Hrsna temple with a couple of my students. I used to go there a lot many years ago, it can be uplifting and fun, and they have a great meal afterwards.

So I'm doing my best, hope you are too. Sending love out to you all.

Let it in...

Experiences are what define us. I'm not one who is a proponent of speculation, often to me it becomes over thinking something.

If you're all in your head about something are you feeling it in your body? If you're not feeling it, or rather feeling the repercussions of the experience of it, how do you know what is actually happening? You can think about something, even invoke the ideas of the feeling of the situation, but until you've actually had the experience of said thing you cannot invoke the feeling of it again.

I wanted a practical experience of something and yet for years, even decades I was self medicating which dulled the sensory systems to such a level that I almost completely had to relearn how to feel how things felt viscerally again. Self medicating was alcohol mostly for me, and at some point that stopped working, thankfully around the same time I started yoga. The alcohol and the yoga fought in my body for some 9 years, one dulling the sensations, one reactivating them, before I quit drinking and began the path to relearn how things felt in my body when experiences happens.

So when the yoga finally started to work I found myself emotional a lot of the time. And if I'm honest each time I go through a new layer of veils between me and what I think of as me I get a new level of emotional.

Recently I've been having that happen again. It's also affected my willingness to practice and changed my relationship with it. Practice is what brought me to the realisation that I was covering everything up and that I needed to maybe start shedding some of the veils of reality that were covering the real me up. So now I've found a new appreciation for my practice, maybe even just this week again lol.

Of course this started in this last trip to Mysore to study, I felt the shifts happening and would skip a day here and there. But one thing that also became known to me is that practice to me was cemented in me as being so much more than just asana. I need the asanas, and even the sequence we in the tradition of K. Pattabhi Jois use them. I believe it set up to open up the energy channels systematically, from bottom to top, open up the spine the same way, and the musculature. So to me it's the best method. So I need this part of the practice and when I get too far removed from it, which I believe I was beginning to do a few weeks back up until last week even, things shift, the other parts of my practice don't work so well. They do still work on their own, but when all aspects are put together, then I'm the best me I can be.

Pranayama, I was taught the full Ashtanga sequence of pranayama some years back as I was learning the third series, before I took my break from Ashtanga and came back. So yes, I still do it a few times a week, there's nothing like it. But also the simple alternate nostril breathing in the way Sharath has taught us works so well too, that I often use just it for a few rounds and have great results. But one or the other has to be a part of my daily practice for it to feel complete.

Also I've chanted for years, but mostly began with kirtan and would chant along with a cd periodically at home. Once I finally made it to Mysore and took the chanting at the shala, then studied Sanskrit and philosophy with Jayashree and her brother and eventually learned how to systematically chant the Yoga Sutras and quite a few other mantras and songs with Ranjini, I realised that this needed to also be a part of my daily practice. So I devised a routine of regular mantras that I chant each morning, even a few that I do throughout the day with a mala, 108 times. But lately, with my deep interest in deity worship, I've begun to deepen that even further with an evening puja that again employs chanting in Sanskrit but feels more authentic, like the way they do it in India at a Kali temple. Almost tribal, and that feeling is something I'm glad to have.

But when I was just thinking about each of these things, pontificating if you will, they were just ideas and held little value. But bringing the experience to life for real has made me realise that I'm a tactile learner. I have to be the one to turn the page, the one to speak the word wrongly a dozen times before I hit it just right and feel the vibration I'm meant to feel where I'm meant to feel it, I have to eat the food, like the incense, burn the candle, ring the bell. I have to feel these things in the temple well of my pelvis and the burning in my solar plexus, and maybe even hundreds of times, to be able to determine what its like, how it feels to me, will it work for me, can I share this with another so they can also use it to help themselves?

Do you dig in and get into the nitty gritty of things, or do you sit at home thinking about it in fear of what it will really be like? There of course are many things in between those two ends of the spectrum. Where do you fit within it?

Are you letting it in, or are you holding it at bay?

Thoughts

I'm sitting at home in the air conditioning because its really hot outside. There's a lot going on in my mind and I'm not even sure what I want to say or write about here today.

Last night there was a shooting at a gay bar in Orlando, I don't know all the particulars of this story other than that they are saying the man who did it was from an extremist group and hated having seen two men kiss recently, so killed over 50 people that were in the club that night.

Also, I'm living in a country that supposes itself to be the greatest country on the planet. And if you have driven around this country with family, visiting its National Parks as I have done, but also driven around it on my own many times just to see it. You would think it is the greatest. We boast some amazing mountain ranges of all different types, the Smokies, the Rockies, etc. We have a forest of some of the most ancient trees that also happen to be some of the largest living organisms not the planet, the Redwoods. The Grand Canyon, the Badlands in South Dakota, and so much more. I could go on forever. And yet we are for some reason able to allow a maniac to be a possible candidate for the President of this great nation? Yes, I mean Donald Trump. For real, are these people who are supporting him, inciting fights and riots at his rallies, paying attention at all?!?

I'm missing India a lot right now and my teacher whom I spend a lot of time with daily when I'm there happens to be here in this country on tour teaching, so I'm seeing pics from all of my friends that I've met in Mysore being posted on Facebook and Instagram. Its making me jealous and I don't really get jealous. Wonder if I can figure a way how to see him next week in Miami?

I'm a depressive person by nature. For the majority of my life, maybe 41 or so of my 46 years it was easier for me to feel rotten than to feel happy. Feeling happy still takes me a lot of work. Daily I have to focus on something that can lift my spirits enough for me not to be in the doldrums. It's hard work. And yet it gets easier.

Each time I pull myself up from feeling less than I'd like to I'm forcing my brains synopses to pull away from the ones they are used to firing with that keep me in that rotten feeling place, and I'm training them to fire with new ones that have made feeling better a regular state of being for me.

So today, even though there is a lot to focus on that could make one feel terrible, I'm going to choose to focus on things that keep me feeling great. Maybe even not great, but better than I would if I paid attention to the things being forced on me by the media this morning.

It doesn't seem like its going to be easy, but I'm going to try. Off to do that now, will you join me?

Sensitivity

So, this past week I took off teaching. It ended up being a week that I did a lot of self reflection, I added in a new evening practice to bring up those things which I might be burying and explored the direction that I'd like to head in in my life.

Did I figure anything out? Maybe, but nothing conclusive just yet, so I'm extending the practice until I do. I know what I want to do in general and I know what that entails but right now I'm ready to teach again and dig into life in a new way, whatever that means...lol.

What I have noticed is that more and more, the deeper I go into the yoga practice, yoga fully, not just asana, the more sensitive I become. I keep thinking I'm not sure if I can handle being even more sensitive than I already am, but I've discovered that I can and that its okay.

The thing the sensitive does is makes it feel like being in life is harder, oddly enough. Driving almost drives me insane with all the attention to have to give to everything around you and before I kind of just checked out and didn't think so much about it. Being around large groups of people is harder, but I still have other skills that can make that okay. Eating is harder because its a very specific thing what my body is needing and if I don't get it exactly right, then my stomach is rumbly. Etc, etc, etc...

I'm not trying to whine a lot, just putting it out there.

Just a quick entry to reboot my blogging. I'll hopefully be able to write more later, gotta go check if I have to cancel the park class because of this rain.

Have a great day!

Sunday...

Lately I've been finding out what people in this town think of me. Oddly enough I don't have a lot of opinions about their opinions of me.

There are a lot of really good, authentic people in my life. For that I am grateful. I was raised by a good group of folks who are about as real as you can get and don't really realise that most people are not. They have buried themselves far beneath a mound of crap that they've told themselves are real for their entire lives. In being someone who was raised like this, of course I escaped into a world of altered reality that I'd mostly created in my mind, some of it came from comic books, many ideas came from scifi novels I'd read from time to time, some even came from other sources that led me towards the spiritual quest I've been on most of my life.

I've been practicing for a long time too. Not long by some standards, but 16 years is not a short time by any sense of the imagination. And when I say I've been practicing I mean not just the asanas, although that has been a big part of it. But I dug into Hinduism and many of the philosophy systems of the east almost as soon as I dug into the asana practice. And I owe a lot to the asana so I'm not belittling them, as Iyengar always said he'd used them to make himself healthy, how can one think of God when they don't even have their own health? And they've helped heal my back and made my nervous system stronger so that now I can focus on the connection to God I was always interested in as a young boy.

I was raised Baptist and in that connected very deeply to Jesus and his direct teachings. Not necessarily much else the bible introduced but I remember when I first read about the philosophy behind yoga I thought it reminded me much of what Jesus taught. That segwayed into many other spiritual paths, that all end up being my one spiritual path that has lead me to where I am today.

So when I say I've been practicing it's been the asanas, trying to enact the yamas and the niyamas in my life, in my very being, trying to study the mythology behind the Hindu gods, studying Buddhism, studying Kabbalah, learning Sanskrit, reading the texts in Sanskrit, then relearning Sanskrit after not using it for many years, now on my trips to Mysore I've been learning to chant in Sanskrit properly, learning the yoga sutras, all four padas. I've meditated, I've chanted kirtans, I've worshipped with Hare Krishnas. I've not tried it all yet, but I'm in a place where I'm feeling good with myself finally, so I may not need to try anything more. Although I'm open to it if and when it comes up in the future. I'm a big knower of the fact that you never find just the one thing that will keep you growing and moving forward in life for the rest of your life. You've found what works for now, and then it will need adjusted, and then again, and then again. I've done this many, many times.

And now I'm focused mostly on worshipping in the way Hindus worship their deities, and have incorporated that into my schedule and am getting more out of it than I have anything since I became Wiccan back in 1989.

In the past as I was changed and shifting and growing, or thought I was, I would talk a lot of smack about people who I'd perceived had "done me wrong." I never even realised it as it was happening, but now I do and have heard about some of the smack I've talked in the past, very recently in fact. For that I am truly sorry. I can only imagine I was at a level of consciousness at that time that didn't see that I was doing that. When I shifted in India on this last trip and since I've been home I keep feeling the shift happening, I noticed that I do that and then was able to start catching myself before I got too deep into it and stop or shift my focus to a more positive angle and focus on the aspects of that person that I can appreciate.

So like me or not, have you taken a moment to see if you like me or dislike me for who I am right now? Or are you hanging on to an idea of me from the past? Maybe take a look at yourself and see if these are qualities you find you dislike within yourself as well. That's often been the case with me, and with many I know.

Now mind you, I love you, but I don't give a rip what you think of me. I'm finally to a place in life where I like myself, I love myself, and when you get to that place you can see love for others more easily. Like is not as easy I think because it requires that you are very present in someones life, and them in yours to see if you agree with the way they are and the way they think, really with who they are as a person. And them you. So like I don't say as often. That may seem backwards to you, but it makes sense to me. So if I like, and am trying to get in touch to arrange us spending time together, then you need to know that that is something special. And vice versa, if I know you like me I appreciate that and will try to cultivate more within that relationship.

Do you love easily? Do you like easily? How do you feel about yourself? Can you look in the mirror and say into your own eyes "I love you?" Do you like yourself enough to do the same with the word like instead of love? How do you feel in general on a daily basis? Can you change that? And yes, even if its good, it can be better.

Just some food for thought...

Why I practice...

I just finished a book a friend wrote about his deep immersion into drugs and alcohol in his early life to help him deal with emotions, or rather really cover them up, because that's what they do. His journey through that and out the other side which led him to Ashtanga Yoga and that path.

This has me thinking a lot about how I got here.

So I remember when I was young wanting to know God. I remember we went to church so much, or so it seemed, and sat, bored, listening to the preacher yell at us about how we're bad people and going to hell but we were supposed to still work our asses off to not to go to hell, even though we basically were anyway. I know, I know, but this is how I remember it. I also remember being in Sunday School, where we were broken down into smaller groups by age and taught about the lessons Jesus' story had to teach us. That I resonated with more, mostly because he seemed like a nicer person and wasn't always upset with us. He was trying to teach us how to be a nicer person, not scare the shit out of us. I also remember around puberty age I loved going because my Sunday School teacher was hot, and yes I know, but because I was a super hormonal teenager this meant a lot to me and because he was so hot to me I listened to him and took the lessons to heart because I knew he did. So it was a good thing.

I remember them showing us terrible movies about the rapture and how God was going to take some people and leave others and the awful things that happened to those left behind, there were two but I only remember one of them being named "A Distant Thunder." It was good, but it scared me to death so I made a pact with myself that I would be a better person and follow Jesus' example so as not to be left behind and if I were anyway I would be stronger for it. This is where the real thread begins. This pact with myself was really about always working to connect to that God that I knew lived inside of me and live as authentically from this place as I could, although those words weren't there for it back then, but I'm typing from who I am today so now they're there!

This was my basic existence for many years, not including getting shit a lot at school for being gay, even though at the time I didn't know that I was only that for sure, I dated lots of girls. They were always drawn to me, probably because I was in touch with a deeper thing inside that now I call my feminine side but then didn't have the words for it. And in dating so many I realized that I like boys in that way. I still loved girls, they were great friends, they could be beautiful and we could be close to one another, but for intimacy purposes, it was boys for me. I realized that in about 10th grade, right after I'd had a tumultuous relationship with a girl who I'd gone to my first prom with.

I also remember the tv show "That's Incredible" having a yogi on it periodically who would wind himself up into a ball in a clear glass box, his breathing would slow and eyes close and he would stay in there the whole show and come out unscathed at the end of the hour. This impressed me and stuck in my mind. Ever since then I'd been drawn to sadhus, a sadhu is a man, or woman, in India who drops out of society and becomes initiated into the life of a person who wants to experience God in all things, in all circumstances, in every area of life. This is not something I knew at the time, but I remember that yogi and equated him with he sadhus I saw in later life.

The biggest thing I remember is that I had seen "Terms of Endearment" and loved it, being a young gay, emotional man, this was all I needed to exist. A movie that validated all those things I had going on inside. I also loved Shirley Maclaine's character in it because she wasn't so good at showing her emotions and through the sickness and eventual death of her daughter learned how to express herself. And so I thought I could too. So when I saw a movie miniseries advertised to be on local tv called "Out on a Limb" which she was starring in, I of course wanted to watch it. I didn't know it was based on one of her books, and was based on her experiences of life and truths she had come to believe. Rather this was the journey of her seeking to find her truth through different means than going to church and listening to the preacher yell at her. My preacher had recently commented to me that my hairdo made me look like Boy George, which I took as a compliment, but which he didn't mean as a good thing, so I was quite disillusioned with the church at this time. So this 4 night program sounded like it was just up my alley.

In watching it I found out she really believed these things, and also that there were many in world, in fact millions, who also believed them and lived their lives this way. So there were tons of other paths to find God than the only one I'd known my whole life? Yes, and they were more interesting. But they also went against everything I'd been taught and almost everyone I knew at this time would disagree with them as well, should that stop me? Nah, I was very shy but also a button pusher, so why shouldn't I give this search a try? I should, and so I did.

That led me to, after I'd moved out in 1988, to start partying. Mostly as a means to dull all these things I was thinking and feeling, but also to experience a different lifestyle than the one I'd grown up in. Being Baptist, where I would often pray to be Catholic because they at least got out of school for weird reasons, but also were allowed to drink, dance and have fun. But also I was still searching for something.

I met a fellow and his girlfriend who were bisexual and he and I began a sort of relationship. They identified as Wiccan, which most would call Witch, but Wiccan made more sense to me since it connected them to nature, and to worshipping a God and a Goddess, depending on which time of the year it was, and didn't connect them to Christianity. Being a Witch at a certain time in our history was a bad thing if you were a Christian, and I was done thinking about Christianity so wanted to distance myself. So therefore found books on Wiccan ceremonies and rituals and started doing them at home, invoking spirit through the God or Goddess. This also led me to find a coven and we only went a few times because I found that I believed the way I wanted to and it worked better doing it on my own. This also led me to meditating although I didn't label it that at the time. Then on a vacation I found a book on Kundalini and the Chakras at an alternative bookstore and it sounded like it went along with the Wicca, but little did I know it was also laying the foundation for my explorations in the teaching of the further east than the Pagans came from, but I believe is just an extension of them and as they spread further west they just changed and evolved into a different thing, but from the same root.

This slowly left my life as drinking and experimenting with drugs grew more and more to the forefront of my life and so the 90's became a blur slowly. Actually, not too much of a blur, but just a story for another time. I'd been through many, many incarnations of who I was already, so a few more happened. But not to be expounded upon in this message.

Late 90's, I'd found a friend who had found Shirley Maclaine's books and was asking me about them because she noticed I had them as well, and so I pulled them back out and reread them again. We in turn took a trip to New Mexico with the intention of going to this spiritual healer that Shirley herself had been to, and still went to. We even found the place but found out how fucking expensive all the spiritual services were and said no way, we'll just stay in town and party instead, and so we did. But that started rekindling the spark of my search for God.

So when Madonna came out in public about studying Kabbalah and doing yoga and me being the proper gay man who loved Madonna and had grown up with her as an advocate for us, I listened. I also remembered a friend who had begged me to come to a yoga class with him at his college in the early 90's. So when I finally took a yoga class in late 1999 it awakened something within me that I'd never really had touched upon before, but it was very similar to the feelings of searching for God and trying all these religions and studying different philosophies did, for some reason. I couldn't understand why it did, because it was basically a physical exercise, so why would it spark interest in God? I had no clue at the time about yoga, just that it was something from further east than I'd studied before. So I found out from an article that she was practicing Ashtanga Yoga and so I called all the yoga places listed in the yellow pages and found one that taught that. Went and the rest was history. Also, the lady who taught the class was the same one who'd been teaching my friend at his college that he was trying to get me to go to. Synchronicity?

I've written a lot about my yogic path, in fact this blog was started as part of it back in the mid 2000's only under a different name, Yogi in the Mud. Mud denoted St. Louis and their Mississippi mud, but also that the mentality of the people in this area was as if they were buried in the mud. When I realized that focusing on that was stifling my growth I changed it being in the Sun. Being in the light of transformation. Sounds cheesy? Maybe, but it's the truth. I want to stand in my own light and hopefully lead by example of my life.

After many trips to India I now realize I'm still in this for the business of searching for God. My last trip in particle took me closer than I've been, partially due to my exploration of temples and the deities housed in them and what they stand for. But partially because I realized that all of that is really an internal exploration. I'm exploring these ideas of things outside myself so that I can really experience them within myself. Yes within my body, yoga is a perfect vehicle for that. It moves you into corners of your physical body you've never been in, but also uses the breath to connect that corner back to your mind and deeper to your inner being through tapping into your emotions as well.

SO all this God stuff I've been looking for all these years is really inside? Yes, but it's also outside. We are manifestations of that, but so is everything in our existence. The trees at the park, the neighbor out mowing her lawn, the rocks in the stream, the stream itself. Even Starbucks, yes, the chai I drink every morning is a reflection of how I'm feeling inside. Depending on me that day those things looks differently, so they are me, and I'm them? I think so, but I'm no expert.

I think I'll just keep on looking for it. At one point I'll realize I don't need to look anymore, and maybe by saying that I've already realized that, but I enjoy the looking. I enjoy praying at at Hindu temple to the Goddess and feeling her energy light me up from the inside. I enjoy walking in the park and feeling the flowers bloom, and the leaves budding out and seeing the stream flow as birds light to have a drink in it and seeing this hot guy walking his dog nearby (I've oddly seen him every day for the past two weeks no matter what time I'm there, that I also believe is God in the works) and just feeling amazing as I walk in the fresh air and people walking the opposite way can see and feel that and smile and say good morning.

These to me are all instances of God in my life. As the Yoga has made me more aware on the mat, I've become more aware in daily life and so from that am having a fuller experience just living. So why do I practice? I named this entry Why I Practice... I practice so that I can see God in myself, so that I can God in everything, including you, and including every experience I'm having every day. That's why...

Freak Flag Flying...

I can not say I've ever been something I'd consider "normal". Yes I put it in quotation marks because it's really a relative term, my normal and your normal can be two different things and that's all right. But for the sake of this entry I'll use that term from time to time, unless I forget to.

I was driving today and saw a couple different people walking down the street in different locations and thought about how odd they were, then I realized that was not a bad thing. I'm glad to see odd people. One thing I love about India is that all of the people are so different than we are and don't really make any bones about being different from one another, even though they also seem to try to fit in. Yes, India is like that, always a dichotomy of itself. That's a big reason I love it so much.

It seems since I was very young that most people try to fit in, whatever that means. That's another relative term. Fitting into whatever group you're trying to be close with I would imagine. But I always had friends in each little group, some stoners, some popular kids, some band geeks, some of everything. Not that I had a lot of friends, but I had a lot of acquaintances. So I never really knew where I fit in. So I didn't try very hard.

I've always been very nervous about sticking out in a crowd, I think that's my mom in my. She likes you to blend in, but maybe that was my perspective at the time. She always encouraged me to be outgoing and do what I wanted.

I was a very, painfully shy kid, and so going to the extreme opposite of that was the only thing I could do to not be only sitting at home. I had to do the thing that scared the shit out of me otherwise I'd be stuck in a place I didn't want to be. And even with that from time to time I'd find myself sucking all of it back inside anyway and not expressing myself, for years at a time sometimes, only to find that I'd have it manifest in my body in the form of back problems or something having pain, or being sick. Once I moved through that then I would find that it went away.

The biggest regression I ever had was in my 20's. I began drinking and doing drugs at 18, lots of both, but having a lot of fun. But in my 20's after having a wild and crazy time in my late teens I completely went the opposite way. I got all caught up in my head and stayed there for some years. I would get out and go party, and getting wasted was about the only way I could let those walls down, but other than that I'd stay at home and not do too much. In my teens doing the drugs I realized that I was using it to escape and so finally quit after a good hard couple years of it. But I never realized the drinking was the same thing to me, mostly because everyone I knew did it. About the only thing anyone I knew did was to go out and get drunk on the weekends, so I did too. Not realizing until many, many years later that I was using it in the same way I'd used the drugs.

But all in all I mostly found myself expressing myself in many different ways, some of it being used as an escape so I felt more free, but most of it being very beneficial to me becoming who I am now, and I like myself.

In 1988-89 I did drag, only for about 9 months to a year but and when I was in drag I was very often on acid as well, but let me tell you I had a good time. I've recently seen some pics of myself and I always seem to have a sourpuss look on my face, but at the time I was ecstatic, I guess it just didn't show outwardly. I was expressing myself as much as I could doing the drag, having emotions show up as well, well that was just asking too much! ahahaha!!!

After that I started studying wicca, it was popular at the time in certain circles and made a lot of sense to me since I loved being out in nature so much. To worship nature just made sense. To see the god or the goddess in each thing and at different times of the year came easy to me, and was most likely the precursor to my current explorations with Sanatana Dharma (more popularly known as Hinduism). That last until I came crashing down at around 22. It seemed as I was living on my own I blossomed more, and when I would make my way to living back home or in the area that was known as home at the time I became more reserved and tame.

Just a couple examples of how I stepped into different aspects of myself in my youth. There were many incarnations of me and still many more to come I would assume, but now I'm probably the most happy and have the least amount of stuff I've ever had. I'm going to India regularly, which inspires me to allow more and more of the real me out, I teach yoga for a living and love it, I actually live a very disciplined life now with the yoga and the times I go to bed and get up, the rituals I use in my daily life, the way I eat, the type of things I'll use on my skin even. But I feel more free than ever, and less "normal" than ever.

Nowadays it would seem that normal is less in style than it ever was anyway, which makes me excited. Even though I still see a lot of stifling of our true selves out there, its more vogue to let it out now than ever before and I embrace that. In fact I'll go so far as to say I think its the discipline of the yoga and the awareness I try to bring to everything in my life that allows me to be more free, and I hope that those I teach the method to also can feel that coming forth from themselves more as well.

So, as I named the article, is your freak flag flying? If not, why not? What more can you do to let loose of the bounds of your inner being so more of the real you comes forth? How can I help you, if at all? How can anyone help you? Can you in fact, help yourself? Are you worried about what others will think? I was, but I don't let that stop me anyway. I have lots of fear, but still go ahead and do the thing. Can you care less about what others think? It's okay to do so. You can love and care about people and still not allow their opinions to control you. Will you start today allowing your inner freak to fly?

As RuPaul says "if they ain't paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind!" Great advice from a very tall drag queen in his mid 50's who happens to be the most gorgeous woman many of us have ever seen. Take that advice and run with it!

Integrating

Well, I've been back for, oh my, only two and a half weeks. But damn it feels like months and months, how can that be?

I'm using all the skills in my arsenal to keep my mind in a good place and I think I'm doing it but there are some major things I'm missing. The food, I miss the food, I don't even want the options that I have here. I just love the local food in Mysore, I may not have at first, but its become what my body craves. I've written about it many times so I won't elaborate any further.

Biggest thing I miss is the temples. I've never been a religious person so I'm not sure why this became so important to me but I'm going to write a bit and see if I can't work through it.

When I was young and had moved away from home, to St. Louis. It was probably 1989 or 1990, I was invited to go to some gatherings that I realized were coven meetings and so began to explore the life of a Wiccan. I loved that it was practical and put you in touch with the cycles of the moon, with the ruling of the god during the winter and the goddess during spring and summer, which was my first foray into the divine feminine and masculine, I'd never thought of them as options before.

When you start breaking down the aspects of the divine it seems to be easier to relate to it as something "real" or something more tangible than you'd thought before. Not some old man with a white beard living on a golden chair up in the clouds, but as something that is part of the trees surrounding you, the ground and grass you're walking on, the stream you just hopped over... It was a revelation to me to start seeing it this way.

Some years before that in like 5th grade maybe I'd studied Greek mythology and when I became Wiccan, or was around them for a few years, I realized that this was maybe another version of these gods I'd studied as a very young person. So things started to click.

Now that I'm older, I'd been to India, been reading about the gods over there since 1999 or 2000, but it some 14 years after that, I watch the show Vikings. Known for their violence I wasn't that interested but once I realized how spiritual they were, they were doing almost everything to please their gods, I started studying up on Norse mythology. I didn't realize I'd known a lot of it because as a child I'd read so many comics and Thor and Odin and Valkyrie were always in the Marvel universe and their stories in there corresponded to the stories I read in the Poetic Edda. Sids note, that is how I began an interest in Greek mythology too, the Marvel and DC comics also included a lot of Greek Gods.

So on further reading about the Norse gods, reading their stories I felt they were very similar to the Indian Gods, and they were. Other than the fact that each Indian god has so many aspects and each aspect has a different name and depending on what region of the continent you're in they have different names, so it ends up being in the hundreds of thousands of gods and names for them. So when I went back to India last fall I really had a different story going on my head about their religion. It had connected itself back to my pagan roots and so therefore I was much more interested in exploring it. Plus this trip I would be living with a very spiritual Indian who had a degree in religious studies, so even more opportunity for me to explore some of that stuff.

And that I did. I was very interested in the Ganesh temple I'd gone to often the last trip, so started by that. Then I discovered there is a little temple behind that one that people also visited and it was to the Nava Graha, the embodiments of the nine planets. Which led me to discovering there's always a peepul tree around almost every temple and there is always a naga garden around the peepul trees. Then I started thinking about Shiva, who I'd always been drawn to and where I could find s Shiva temple, then I found one and had a most profound experience in it when they began playing the drums and blowing the conch shell as part of the opening ceremony. In the Shiva temple there was also a murthi(statue of the god imbued with the aspects of that divine being) for Parvati, Shiva's consort, so I studied her, found out she was also known by many other names depending on the deeds she had done, one of them being Chamunda for which a humongous temple was there on top of Chamundi Hill where she was supposed to have slain a few demons.

This all led me back to a book someone had given me the last trip, Yogic Secrets of the Dark Goddess, which was all about Kali and her aspects but also applied to the divine feminine or Devi as they call her there, and so I reread that book while there. I also discovered that when I would enter temples solely dedicated to the Devi, no matter which aspect or version of her it was for, that the energy would be very different, much more palpable. Almost dense and it would change you while in there if you stayed long enough and were open to it. This is originally why I kept going back into that little Ganesh temple in Gokulam, because the energy was just that different in there. Well, his mothers energy was that much stronger and intense and through this exploration I found out that the shakti is where all the strength and power are, the Shiva, or the male aspect of divine energy, is the calm centered focus and its really in the balance of the two that you thrive. I also read the Devi Mahatmyam, all the stories of the Devi slaying asuras or demons and her deeds that made her great which made me realize she really is the powerful aspect of the gods, the male is the less active, calmer quieter part of it all. Does that make me Goddess worshipper?!? Maybe so! haha...

Then I discovered through my chanting teacher that there are different gods favored to be worshipped on each day of the week and so figured out which one was for each day, then also realized that many of the days of the week were named after Norse gods and that linked them back to my earlier studies. Through this process I discovered some gods or devas as they are called in India, that I'd never heard of and so studied their stories.

Each one I found a temple for and slowly started integrating going to that temple that certain day of the week where it was auspicious to worship said god. This process was a very slow unfolding over the course of the 4 months that I was there, and was just at its peak when it was time for me to leave so its been something that I keep exploring now that I'm home, not in a physical way because there is only one Hindu temple here and it houses many many different gods, but its also pretty far out in the county, so is not super accessible to drive to each day.

So keeping this worship going even though its in my bedroom at home, rather than out in a temple where many hundreds of people visit the deity each day and bring that energy with them, has actually helped me integrate back here. Not in the same way I did before at all, but in the way that I'm bringing who I've slowly become over this last trip to bear here, I'm not trying to go back to who I was before I left, and I think I was doing that before. This time I'm allowing the new me to become more full here. What an interesting concept, evolving. And yet I am doing that, but also its brought me back to my old pagan roots, coming full circle and I feel more whole. Not complete because to me that would be when I'm ready to leave this body, never complete, but whole none the less.

Yes, I'm missing the food, I'm missing being able to walk everywhere and have grown a big distaste for driving even though I'm fine doing it all day long because I have to, I'm missing that being closer to the earth that walking gives you, so I go to the park and walk (but can't wait until it warm enough to do it barefoot to feel the earth under my feet), and I'm missing my temples but am remembering the old pagan ways of just worshipping those gods within the trees, or the ground, or the streams themselves instead. So its bringing a new depth to my worship. Starting to finally experience and see everything as sacred is good, and is making me happier, and yes helping me integrate...

I'm back

Most of you know I'm back in the Midwest. I've been here since last Wednesday, so just over a week. When I flew in my mom picked me up and I went to her house and stayed there until the weekend, to visit with family and just have adjustment time as well. I really enjoyed it oddly enough, I've not enjoyed going to that area formerly known as "home" for many years, but this time I enjoyed being there and spending three days with my mom, grandma and my sister and her family.

Then Saturday I came back into the city, my mom lives on the Illinois side of the river, and started the process of settling in. Settling in used to be something different to me. I used to need to get all the things in all the right places in the room or apartment or wherever I was staying. That just didn't seem to be so this time. I had moved stuff into a friends basement and when I got here I was thinking I'd move quickly into unpacking and getting things all set up around the room I'm staying in, but I wasn't so concerned with that this time. Maybe India had a more profound effect on me than I'd even realized?

Settling in didn't seem to need to happen. Is it because I've decided to get rid of all of my stuff and move to India on my next trip? Or maybe if that's not a possibility as I move through the summer here and check on things, move somewhere else? Hmmm, maybe so. But I don't think that's it at all.

In my past trips I've felt very much depressed when I got home, almost overwhelmingly emotional and distraught at being back here. Not because I hate it here, but because I just love Mysore so much more and the people of India are hard to get out of your heart as well. This trip I didn't feel that way. I felt content, is that the right word?!? I guess so. Content. And most would probably associate contentment with having all the things you want or need in your life, but this type of contentment is the type they talk about in the Yoga Sutras, Santosha. Was I, or rather, am I, actually feeling an inner sense of peace and contentment? I think so yes.

I'm not super happy by any means, but I'm also not super sad at all. I'm somewhere in the middle. As I saw this last week friends posting pics from Mysore and from Varanasi where many went for Sivaratri, a big holiday celebrating the god Shiva, I felt great seeing them, but not sad that I wasn't still there. Now maybe this sense of contentment in seeing these things and not being jealous came from the knowledge that I'm planning to live in India and will get to be back in these experiences soon enough. Okay, that sounds plausible...

I'm still off this week and hanging out with friends and catching up. But also am lining up teaching gigs. My Mysore program starts next week, the Tower Grove Farmers Market yoga class starts April 16th, I'm leading a night as part of a local teacher training introducing people to Ashtanga, my five week intro series is coming up, my Wash U med students class starts in two weeks, I'm teaching at Whitfield School next Tuesday. Then another more interesting thing came up. I was telling one friend many different stories from my temple exposures, Vedic Astrology experiences and the studying I'd done on the gods in Hinduism over there and she asked me to teach a workshop on this stuff. I was like, hmmmm, what sort of thing would this be? So I saw her again another day and we talked about what it could be and then came up with something that I think I'm more excited about than I have been in a long time about anything. That's to come in early May, keep your eyes open for it. But know that I'm excited about it and when I put it out there on Facebook I got a great response to it, so it should be pretty much fun.

So, I'm home, got a lot of exciting stuff lined up and its not so bad as I thought it'd be. Not that I don't like it here, its my home and always will be, but you know, I love India! But I'll be back in her womb soon enough, so time to enjoy and be fully present here in the Lou, see you all soon!!!

Letting Go...

Just an hour ago I was finished with dinner and saying good bye to a friend and walking past a temple I want to visit tomorrow, hoping they were open tonight so I could find out their timings for in the morning, but they weren't. As I walked down Contour Road I saw little shops with sign all written in Kannada, the local language, and many with signs also written in the roman alphabet but not necessarily in English. All of them that were open have either idols or pictures of the gods they worship. Many of the men and women were chatting across to the next shop, also many were walking on the street and laughing, enjoying the fact it was dusk and the with the sun going down the temperature was cooling off.

Then I looked up and saw them. Each night at dusk the large fruit bats come from the direction of Chamundi Hill. They either live in caves in the hills themselves or in the forest around the hills and come into the city at night to eat the fruit in the trees. Then I noticed the little bats flying around the low trees, eating the mosquitoes.

A little further up I walked past the coconut stand that I frequent almost daily and the man we so lovingly call Van Dosa, because he parks in the field across from the coconut his van, and opens up the back doors and makes dosa out of it. The rickshaw drivers sitting across the street from him chatting because they have a lot less business lately since many of us have discovered Uber and Jugnoo, a rickshaw app like Uber that actually charges the correct fees, not the bloated prices the local drivers, who are used to thinking the Western students have too much money and can afford it, are charging.

Amidst all of this is me, and many, many others out walking for the evening. The Ganesh temple I visit almost every morning is full and people are praying vigilantly. The young men on their motorbikes riding around, or sitting on them chatting.

It's a scene I've grown accustomed to. It's a scene I have been a part of for the last four months, and if you go back to February of 2014 and count I've been here for a total of 8 months since then. It's a familiar scene and one that feels like, dare I say home? Yes, I dare say it. This place, not just Mysore, but India as a whole, even though its varies so much from area to area, town to town and village to village, has become my home. I love it here. I will live here in some fashion for possibly the rest of my life.

Now I'm writing all of this because when I first saw the bats it dawned on me that in a week I won't be seeing this anymore. I won't even be able to. It will be on the other side of the planet from where I will be then. And that though made me sad, and I teared up a bit. I didn't cry fully though. Because here you're never really sad, the emotion is there on the surface and yet you feel this contentment and love deep within, beneath that and you know that's how you really feel. The other is just the temporary, in the moment, way you feel.

I am happy and at peace. I love the multiple Gods being worshipped here all day long. I love the devotion I see and feel in the people as they come in the temple and pray from their heart to Ganesh or to Shiva or Hanuman. I especially love when they see me, this tall white man, coming in with a red dot on my forehead and think for a second maybe I'm in the wrong place, but then embrace that I too can be full of devotion like them and enjoy visiting these strong energetic places of prayer that are used daily, and where no judgment is passed on you if you didn't come one day, or if you didn't bring an rupees to put in the brass plate before taking the flame to your eyes for clarity of vision, to your forehead for clarity of though and to your crown for clarity in your connection to the version of God you choose to worship.

I love that head wobble that everyone here has as an innate part of their body language and some use it so much more than others. I love the way they try to speak English and are so happy and proud that they got their message across to you once you've understood what they were saying. I really especially love that the tiniest little Hanuman temple has disco lights and he's made out of what is likely a paper mache product and yet has a huge crown made out of real diamonds and rubies and they give you greasy vadas for prasad and the priests are all portly and yet so happy you've come. The one yesterday was a fellow I'd not seen before, older with a full head of the whitest hair asking "Where from?" and so happy that I was from the US, Katie and Rachel from Canada and Rami from Argentina, he gave us extra special blessings and held the biggest smile as he watched us circumambulate the temple and tuck the flowers behind my right ear (maybe surprised I knew to do that), and that we knew all the right things to do during parts of the ceremony.

There is so much more that I love and want to express but can't right now, I've got to end this so I don't have that surface sad come back again. But know that this place has been in my heart since I saw that yogi on That's Incredible tv show in the 80's curl up into a tiny pretzel and get into that clear box as we watched and stayed in there the whole show.

That's why I believe in reincarnation, how else could I be so drawn to everything from this country from yoga to the food, from the clothing to the Sanskrit mantras, and so much more. It all is there already, I knew it when I heard and knew that I knew it from some time before. It's in my being, and it will be in my being until I leave this body and maybe beyond that as well.

India I am in you now for just a few more days, but know that you are in me forever, always have been and always will be.

I'll see you again very soon...

At what point...

At what point in your life, when the status quo has become just that, and you feel stagnant or stuck or that things just can't go any further forward, do you actually make the choice to change something???

So that could mean change how you perceive things, which is normally the actual catalyst for change. Once you can see that there are other options or opportunities it can open up avenues of actual physical change as well, maybe that have always been there but you weren't allowing your perceptions to include them, or maybe that you were previously closed off to. Or it can mean moving house, or moving complete locations in your country, or moving to another country, or getting rid of all of your stuff and starting over again or breaking up with someone that maybe you've both been avoiding doing because its easier to maintain the status quo.

But really, is it easier to maintain the status quo? Or easier to move on to new things?

Many would want you to be attached to your things because then they can always just sell you more when they wear out or they know you'll always be using this certain brand of toothpaste, or this certain shampoo, or this, or that, etc...

Well this trip I've been here for a long time, I realized that I'm not missing anything at home. I have a lot of jewelry but I've been wearing these certain few rings, not even all of them that I brought. I have all these clothes, but I've been wearing literally the same 7 tank tops or the same 5 t shirts and the same 4 pair of shorts, this whole trip. And no I've not been unhappy with any of them. I ran out of my Dr. Bronners body wash, and three people told me they'd bring me some, but no, not one of them remembered to bring it, so I found this company who's stuff I'm okay with and have been using it (that company is Soul Tree, I always use their hair oil and body oil even in the US, but have begun to use their other body wash products as well).

The only thing I really miss from that I have packed away are my statues of Hindu gods that I have. Some of them are phenomenal and I'm attached to them. But I have new ones that I've gotten here and they are sufficing just fine, I've even grown fond of some of them...

I even love that here I don't have to drive a car. I love my old car back home, it makes me happy. It runs great and gets decent gas mileage, but I would be just fine without it since you don't really have to have a car here.

So I've discovered that I don't need any of that stuff. Now, what else can I figure out?

Am I at the point that the status quo is no longer working for me, no, my status quo here makes me very happy. Then when I get to teach or do a Thai massage that is just icing on the cake. My status quo at home? Now, I love teaching. My students are great students, most are very dedicated and come daily. So that is okay, I'm ready to shake things up though, that is for sure. Starting new things isn't any easier than feeling stuck, and keeping yourself in a place because its comfortable can be dangerous and lead to stagnation, not for me!

When I go back I'm moving locations of my Mysore program, I'm also lining up some different classes at different places. But yes many of the "normal" things I did there I'm going back to, so how to shake it up even further? Got any ideas? Let me know...

I'm ready to travel and to move around a bit and teach here and there, but also have a home base with a home student base. I'm also ready to learn a new language, to eat some different foods and to embrace many new things in my life.

Can this be done back in St. Louis? Maybe, and yes I'll see how much more I can shake up the status quo there when I go back, but maybe a move is in order? Maybe it's not? Maybe live there 6 months and elsewhere 6 months... maybe, maybe, maybe. I am excited to go back and teach and be there one more summer, but I'm also excited at the prospect of maybe teaching somewhere else, in Europe or on the West Coast, or in India. If those things become options.

Many things are a possibility if I don't cut myself off from them, that's what I've got to do. Learn a level of awareness that keeps me awake all of the time, or most of the time so I know when I'm heading down that path that cuts it off again and can steer back onto the path of least resistance, which allows abundance to flow.

What do you think? Let me know, comment either here or send me a Facebook message, I'd love to hear what you think I should do or where I should go, not that it'll stop me from doing what I'm going to do, but I am curious...

Friday afternoon...

Well, I'm still in Mysore but I am no longer practicing at the shala with Sharath. An area I'm finding much contention with surprisingly.

Last year I'd gone back to the Midwest of the US in February to some terrible winter weather and swore I'd not do that again, so bought my round trip ticket this time to go home in March. I'd planned on traveling a bit and I did for one week, but when I returned home to Gokulam found the money was rather too low to be traveling to the North, which is something I've been drawn to do for a long time. So decided to just stay in Mysore, after all, I love it here and its a fairly easy place to be in the grand scheme of India.

Now I've discovered that its not so wonderful to be practicing here for three months and then all of a sudden to not be practicing at the shala, trying to maintain that same practice in a home setting. When you're on the other side of the world its much easier to do since there is no other option but to practice at home, but when you're here and you live on the same road as the shala and you hear the scooters, and see the people waiting on the front steps and having coconuts after their early morning practice, well, it just sucks.

I am fine, I am happy and have loved having the ability to be in India for so long this time around, so don't get me wrong, I'm not upset I'm still here. I'm just stating how I felt this last week. Now however I feel like I'm making peace with it and am doing okay practicing at home, even making progress because it's getting warmer and my body is staying so open. So I'm not complaining, I'm quite good.

I'm even making friends of the new batch of folks coming in, most of whom I've not encountered before and a few of friends from old trips are here now as well. And it's Mysore, the one place I've come to feel at home on the planet. I love it here.

This morning I woke up hearing my roommate showering and getting ready to leave to practice at the shala (he lives here so practices the whole season and also is assisting Sharath this whole season) around 4am, so I lie there a bit longer and eventually got up and practiced, then went to have coconuts in front of the shala where I ran into one of this aforementioned folks I've met since my time there, we had a nice chat, then I went to have chocolate pancakes and chai for breakfast, then I went to a morning showing of the new movie Deadpool, which just came out today, with two other friends who I met last month but we've been here at the same time before and just never met. After which we went and had a nice lunch, then I came home and had a nap.

Sounds like my typical Friday back in the states! Which is also my day off back there. So, how can one be upset at that sort of a day? One cannot.

I'm feeling quite blessed these days and working on lining up my teaching for once I'm back home. My normal semester with the med students at Wash U is already set up, my weekly park class which goes along with our organic/local farmers market is set up to start in April, and my Mysore program is moving locations and that is all set up. My first 5 week series of Intro to Ashtanga Yoga is set up. Just working on some workshops and a few one off classes that I usually don't teach but am feeling like doing this summer, since it may be my last summer in St. Louis. Seems like its going to be a great summer with great friends and great students and a great family, all that I'll miss once I leave the area but will still visit and be in touch with.

I'm kind of getting excited maybe to go back! Hahaha...

See you all soon!