Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?!? Rumi

This quote came at me today when I happened upon a photographers Instagram page after being told about him, and it struck me.

I know I've heard it all before but when you have an aha moment, and then you have it again, the AHA gets bigger with the intention of you remembering it finally.

Everything in life is a choice. People are always complaining and I say then you can choose to change this. They make excuses about they have to, they need the job for the money, nah, nah, nah, etc... You know the argument. You've made it before, I have too! But it's just not true.

Look at my life, I make enough money to eat some meals and buy a chai, that's about it. And yet I fly around the planet and do what I love more than anything else, teach Ashtanga Yoga. And hopefully can help people deepen their ideas of practice, because I am not an asana only type person, I believe all the underneath stuff is what's important, not just the asana.

But if you're teaching people these tools of awareness and consciousness and they never use them, is it worth it? Yes, because on whatever level they are on that is where their aha moments will happen. And that's the only place it can happen for them, so maybe they just aren't ready to hear "yes, quit your job and trust that it will all work out." It's the same thing as saying take the leap and the net will appear, or even better in my opinion, take the leap, there never was a net anyway!

I guess I'm a daredevil and don't even know it. I will be somewhere down to absolutely no money and yet still be there, with no means to get anywhere else or make money, but I have faith. And then I'll get that call and fly somewhere to teach, or get some very nicely paying private lessons, or both!

So maybe the component is faith. I seem to only have that, not much else, but I believe the goddess will take care of me and she always does. Is faith of this type odd to find in people? Maybe it is, I don't know, it's a serious question. Do you know?

I have it. I remember one day when I was sitting beside Sharath in conference, and he mentioned how bhakti is a part of our practice. Devotion and faith that it will do what it's supposed to do. And another time I was with my friend Muthu Swamy in Varanasi and I said oh I'm not scared to die, I just don't care. And he said no, no you are not. And your faith shows that. So maybe I'm an anomaly.

But cultivating faith in oneself, or in one deity, or something is what works for me, and hopefully I can inspire you to do so as well. Without it I don't know how you all can live your lives. And then taking the plunge and quitting that job, or moving to another country, or leaving that bad relationship, or whatever it is you don't think you have to nerve to do, well, it's just easier to do.

I am still scared, all the time. And I always say "yes, I'm scared, but that never stopped me from doing the things."

So, how big is your prison?

If you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else...?

This quote is a famous one from RuPaul, who when I was in my early 20's came out with a few popular songs on the charts as the first Drag Queen pop star. But who now hosts this show which I've mentioned before and won't get into again right now. But the point is she's saying it to these men who have created a female character that they dress up as and perform, and yet even then they need to be more aware of who they really are, more fully themselves than ever to carve their own niche in the market. And to me it's not even really about the marketing of themselves, it's more about celebrating diversity and being an individual, even if you steal an idea from someone, someway you're going to make it your own.

This is completely against the herd mentality that is prolific in the Western world, even it's creeping its way into the Eastern world as well. But how do we do this? Learn to love ourselves?

I believe the first step of that is judgment. If you are noticing that you are a judgmental bitch, always pointing out what's wrong with the "other" person, or even always pointing something out, not necessarily a "bad" thing, just a thing. Then that is indication that this same overly discerning behavior is going back to yourself. Now, to a certain degree we need to be aware of what we're doing, how we're acting towards ourself and other in public, and in private, but not for the reasons you think. Because our brain, yes the physical apparatus made up of goo and cells with electrical charges going through it, doesn't know the difference between what we're saying to ourselves or others so takes it to heart that we feel badly about something within us. Whether it be body weight, frizzy hair, judging our judgmental nature, how big our ass is, how small or big our cock is, are there new wrinkles there, have stretch lines popped up, is my back hairier than it was last week, whatever the hell it might be.

If we are judging others, we are also judging ourselves as far as our body knows.

Also, repression. Do you repress your emotions? Do you allow yourself to feel things as they come up?

I just watched a movie again last night, but this time at the theatre ( and was up way past my bedtime), Call Me By Your Name. This very different sort of love story. Not different in that the two characters in love were both men, I'm a gay man so that's irrelevant to me. But different in the way the story unfolded. Oddly enough this movie here is being embraced by many, many straight people because yes, it is just a damn good love story.

I won't get into the story right now but this Professors son has an affair with his father's apprentice who in the book the boy is 17 and the apprentice 24, not a big difference as we get older but then it could have been. But it wasn't treated that way, or as a bad thing by the boys parents. When the summer was over and the apprentice left the boy was heart broken and his father and he had a conversation that was pivotal to me. He embraced the love his son and this older man had shared and told him, encouraged him really, to embrace the things he was feeling, to let them be there in his body and not try to suppress them or bury them into a non-feeling place. It was a long conversation and as a 48 year old gay man who came out in the 80's, the era this movie was set in, this is not something I heard, or anyone I know of heard from their father. So it was lovely and really made me cry.

But it also made me think and feel and cry all the way home. We are taught so hard in our youth, usually anyway, to shut those valves off. To not let anyone see us showing these emotions. Even to not allow them to come out. And this is one of the worst things adults can do to their children. When you repress something you create a separation within your body, something your mind picks up on and believes that we are not a whole person, we are not integrated. So we act in the future from a place of disconnection. But if we were taught this, that this fictional character was teaching his son, we could integrate those emotions into our being, learn to be fully who we really are, and even yes, maybe learn to love ourself.

Would this be so wrong?

Yoga means union. So the question I always ask myself now as I'm getting more and more mature in my practice, and in my life, is does this serve the union. Now you may ask what union? I say the union of self with Self, or inner being with my physical being, or God and man, or feminine and masculine, or whatever else can be in balance, or in union with one another. To me though it's spirit and physical. We so often think they are separate, they are not, they are one thing. The spirit enables these bodies to move and walk around. Even channels the electricity to each corner as it's needed, moving the blood, lymph, synovial fluids and more to where they are needed most at each moment.

So doing the asana/yoga practice to me is about facilitating this union to happen, and sometimes not, depending on how regular you are being with your practice. And once the union is served maybe there is a little more space for you to find love for yourself, and once you truly learn how to love yourself there is no possible way you cannot love others more properly. More unconditionally.

How are you serving yoga today? Yoga as union, not yoga as an asana practice only. Or are you? Are you aware of it? If you're choosing to be less aware today, that's okay too, we all need a little break. But you'll soon find that this will be virtually impossible at some point in the future.

Once the union starts taking root, you feel better and once you feel better you KNOW when you feel the slightest bit less good, or the same, or even better. You know and once you know, it's hard to go back to just allowing yourself to feel not so good anymore.

How are you feeling today?

My life...

My life is a strange one, at least that's the impression I'm getting lately. Not that I mind being strange at all, or even that others think I'm strange. I just never think of what I'm doing with my life as odd, until I hear anothers opinion of it, which I have a lot lately.

I was chatting with someone on a dating app, in person after we'd already chatted for a bit, and it was a very surprising thing that I travel to teach yoga for a living. I guess I've been part of the Ashtanga world for so long that I don't think anything of it, there even used to be a list on the old site for the official teachers authorized by KPJAYI that was called Traveling Teachers, all of which were certified at the time.

I get asked to come, and so I do, I offer sometimes when I see a good opportunity and if they agree then I get flown in. It's very simple. But maybe to many that don't realise how important yoga is in the lives of those who practice it it's a surprising thing, and most of them only think of it as an exercise program too from what I've discovered. To me it's the norm, and what a cool norm to have I believe.I'm constantly surrounded by a language that I don't know these days. For the last two years I've been between South India, North India, Germany and the U.S. I'm now on my third time in Germany and while I still can't formulate a whole sentence I can get by with the few words I know and can figure out often what people are talking about. I am told that ability comes form having an open heart, because when you're open you can feel the intention of the person speaking, that coupled with the amount of words I do know makes it easier to get by.

In fact when I was just in the U.S. for almost 8 weeks I told a friend I was walking with how odd it felt to be surrounded by English. I was understanding every conversation and my brain relaxed because it wasn't always trying to translate what I was hearing. But at the same time I realised how loud Americans are, yes Colleen if you're reading this you've been telling me this for years! But what an odd feeling to feel out of place in your country of origin. I guess I really have grown comfortable in my uncomfortable zones.

In fact another factor I realised was that I never speak full English anymore. I'm always having to pigeon English it for people so that they understand me. And when I arrived here I was speaking as if I was still speaking to other native English speakers and they could not understand me, I'm still doing it a bit, but not as bad as this past 5 days. I had to relearn how to use big words and put them in their proper places. Many friends can attest to me asking them, "what's the word for this?!?"

In India I'm learning more and more of the local language, well in Mysore, and I'm studying Hindi very loosely, so it's getting easier. But there it's always about the hand signals, head wobbles and the intention behind it all. Then communication is very easy. In Germany it can be much the same if you're open to it, but also many people speak very good English even though they will tell you they know "just a little bit..."

There is much much more that I thought about as the idea for this entry was formulating but it's all seeming less than important to talk about now. I've been working on talking less, and when I do talk to make it more meaningful. And requiring less to be going on at all times.

I was just walking through Köln after just getting out of a movie, through an area that is having what we would call a side walk sale. Although this one is a whole area of the city, not just a block or two. And thinking how absolutely no one in the crowd was alone. Everyone was holding hands, touching shoulders and leaning in to whisper in an ear, or yelling over the music to their group of friends, or with their dog and many other scenarios. Everyone. I was literally the only one walking alone. I had spent the greater part of the day with people and took a long walk with a friend and talked, so being alone was the balance for me.

I could have felt lonely, and maybe I should have, but I did not. I just noticed it, and thought how nice it would be to be walking through this crowd with someone I cared about, in whatever capacity, and chatting randomly while doing it. But then I also realised how nice it was to be able to walk alone and enjoy myself, noticing all the little idiosyncracies in folks as I was moving my way towards the space I'm calling home for the time being. Being in India for many months at a time helped mw with this and maybe even made it seem normal. Bieng in Germany also helped me with this.

But both helped me be more tolerant, loving and understanding of what it's like to be in a place and it not be somewhere I can just take to anyone at any time. It's all good, and I'm not complaining, I have a charmed life and appreciate it. I'm just stating what's been floating around in my mind the past few hours.

Namaste...