Magic...

A friend of mine just told me the song Magic Man by Heart goes through her head sometimes when I'm talking to her, or typing to her on Facebook while she's at work (and should be working) rather. I asked why, she says because a lot of the things I say sound more like magic to her than what she's used to knowing.

I thought about it for minute, another friend had a thing on Facebook I commented on and she said my car is magic. And now I'm thinking about this too.

So, if many around me seem to think I live a magic filled life, why do I feel it's mundane-ness so often?

So that makes me think of Abraham. Abraham introduced the idea of an emotional scale, different emotions equal different vibrations. So I'm feeling anger but this dude over here, he's feeling anger way beyond anything I'd even be comfortable feeling in my body. Okay, so at the last workshop I went to with Abraham they talked about levels of emotion, so anger even has a scale, say like 1-10. Where are you on that scale? Evaluate and recalibrate to support the direction you want to head in in your life. Good stuff, lots of thinking but apparently thinking is serving me today! lol

So the level of magic I live at feels mundane to me because it's my norm. But apparently not the norm of those around me, ok, I'm okay with that. I'm even happy about that. I don't want to live with any less magic in my life than I do. In fact I would love more, so remember what my new years sankalpa is? Embrace!

So now to embrace the magic and allow it to completely engulf my life! Somehow I feel India will play a large part in this. Going there is a dream I've had for a very long time and the yoga I'll get deeper into there has been in my life for a very long time. India itself as a completely different culture will shock me out of myself while I'm there and when I come back am I going to allow myself to slink back down into the mire I very often find myself getting stuck in? Hell no...

Once I embrace this new level of magic, it's only going to keep growing and growing and expanding and make me look seem like those they call saints in India, people who seems to think a thing and it manifests before them. Beings with no attachments and allow their lives to happen, keeping their vibration at such a level that there is no way the universe couldn't deliver every part and parcel of everything they wish to manifest.

Getting ahead of myself you think? Maybe so, but who gives a shit? I can be excited and amazed at life and in wonderment at the way my life is turning out and enjoy it and love it and love you and everyone who I meet and heal myself and help others heal themselves, maybe even heal themselves myself, and find more ways to love and live and be amazing and happy and peaceful and see others for their amazing and wonderful selves and see the potential in myself and others that maybe I would never have before but know now that it is the truth and the only way any of ever can be. Manifesting the god, the divine, the energy within that truly is us.

To end this tirade I quote Yoda from Empire Strikes Back:

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.”

Truly, luminous beings are we, not this crude matter! When we embrace this we will be living the most amazing lives possible!

Just the way I like it...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holiday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See what I mean about privilege?

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

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

Crossroads

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

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

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

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

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

Change of seasons

For the first time in a long time I'm not being super affected by the shift to Autumn, usually it's the most powerful seasonal change for me. My yoga practice must be working!

I've done a lot of work with the practice this year, especially in workshops with certified teachers, and it has changed my focus to a very internal one. What's funny is that I always thought if I allowed this shift to happen then I would finally be the yogi who wants nothing to do with society and want to go live in a cave, but the exact opposite has happened. The external stuff doesn't bother me as much anymore and in fact I've found that I love being around people and have been spending a lot of time with others, while still enjoying my alone time just as much.

Odd, I know. But then if you do actually know me, you probably think me odd anyway lol... I'm completely okay with that too, so just think whatever you want about me.

This year has been a great year for me as far as studying with teachers go and this weekend I'll be going to another one with Jodi Blumstein, so yet another period of study with me. All of these things has deepened my practice and made me realize it's importance in my life, not just the asanas but pranayama and meditation as well, and the yamas and niyamas in my daily dealings with others, so it's been great.

Also, all of these things this year have been to prepare me for India where I'm heading in February to study with Sharath all of March, yes finally I'm going to be able to do it! Excited isn't the proper word, although it conveys a bit of the emotion I'm feeling, fear of course comes up, but in a lesser quantity than ever before. I got my 10 year visa with such ease and got accepted into classes for March so in my mind that's the universes way of telling me it's time. I even started a campaign on gofundme.com and it's getting donations, so even more reason to know I'm fully supported by source in this instance, I just wasn't ready before. Now I am!

Another sign is that I've got a small Mysore group going, which is the most awesome way to practice as far as I'm concerned and they are enjoying it as well. So all is flowing and even more importantly I'm allowing the flow and going floating along with it this time, not trying to impede it and self-perpetuating my own resistance!

So, come to class, I've been feeling super inspired lately, especially in my Ashtanga classes. You may just have a great experience!

Ashtanga

As fall comes in to full bloom I've been digging into my practice more deeply. After seeing Mark Robberds last month I just spent the weekend with Kino MacGregor in Indianapolis, and I must say it was the best weekend I've spent with her. It made me want to be with her and her husband in India for their two week retreat in January, so I'm looking into that...

A few of my students went as well and we had a great time, or rather I can only speak for myself, I had a good time. Kino was more clear and happy and inspiring that ever before and the group who went were full of great conversations and laughter, so it was a much needed weekend full of hard work (especially shoulders) and fun.

I just felt more connected to her this time and that we're building a bond as teacher and student, it feels good to have someone that knows so much and feels the practice in a very similar way to the way that I do, but then I've had that with a lot teachers this year.

This year has been the year of study for me, starting with the Ashtanga Confluence back in February with my first teacher Nancy Gilgoff, whom it was great to see. Of course there were other teachers there as well, but it was so good to bond with her again. Then Eddie Stern at the same event, who helped me with Marichasana D and the beginning of the healing of my sacrum which was out so intensely then. Then Kino in June in Chicago, which was great because I'd been to Moksha before and was getting to know the people there. Then back to Chicago in September for 10 days to see Abraham and spend 6 days practicing with Mark, which was just awesome, only to see Kino again this past weekend with her best message ever. I may even go to Springfield, IL in November to see Jodi Blumstein for an Ashtanga weekend. Great year for being a student!

This practice is hitting so many of my students so strongly right now, and shifting me yet again, that I just get more and more excited to do it, and to dig into some more of the pranayama as well. I got David Garrigues dvd and book about the Ashtanga pranayama practice, which I've been doing since I learned third series back in 200 or 4, maybe 5? But its broken down with exercises to feel the apana and prana vayus and talks, love it, so as it gets colder I'll be inside digging into this more deeply this winter as I prepare to go to India and if India doesn't happen until next fall, then I'll be digging into some more and more workshops, they are awesome lately!

So if you're reading this, come to my Ashtanga class or something soon, while the inspiration lasts!

Hello, I'm introspective, how are you?

Not sure why I haven't written in a while, it's been a busy time so maybe that's it. I just haven't had the space to become more introspective and allow the integration of the work I've been doing on myself.

Well, not so this day. I've had almost the whole day to myself and it's getting colder finally and the leaves are starting to fall, so let the introspection begin! lol

I've been noticing this week that I've gotten more detail oriented in my classes, not so much as far as alignment goes but as far as the breath and the movements and how they coincide have been going, and working more individually with each person even though we've been in a room full of people.

I'm having deeper experiences and am wanting others to have them too, not just to feel bad when all the emotions come up or to get more sore, but to dig in and get to know themselves better. Really do the work. I've gotten some the best compliments of my teaching this week from some sources I wasn't expecting them from too, one of them even mentioning I'm the only teacher he's ever gone to who tells you to breath into your back while you slide your pubic bone back between your inner spiraled thighs and root down both sit bones at the same time and that detail is what he loves about my classes.

I love that, because I really am just trying to put into words the feelings and deepest expressions of the practice that I have come up for me, and that's just on the physical level, not the emotional or psychic level, but I do sometimes cue those things as well! lol

It's a time of year that all of us seem to be padding our caves and starting to settle in a bit more and prepare for a long winters nap, although we don't technically do that. But the energy of that happens anyway. We start to express ourselves differently, we start to feel everything deeper, become more touchy and almost less expressive because we're so tucked into ourselves.

It's a time for me that I feel I can almost touch my inner being, not just get clues here and there of how to run my day or which turn to take, but with each emotion that comes up we have a chance to notice what we're thinking as it arises and notice what direction we should take our thoughts in order to get back in alignment with our inner being or not. Sometimes we just like to wallow in our icky feelings and hey, that's just part of being human, but these days I try to catch that and turn a corner before manifestations start happening! If we wait until they actually happen they are a lot harder to deal with than if we catch them at the emotional level.

So my work this fall and winter is to keep on my toes in observing my emotions so that I can tell if I'm heading in the right direction in life or if I'm about to trip myself up bigtime. My yoga practice has been strong lately and in the sensitivity that I create within myself from my practice I should be able to maintain.

So maybe I'm about to start cuing in my classes to notice how you feel while you're doing a certain move, or a certain breath? Sound good? Then you can start to gain that level of sensitivity and use it for you growth and expansion too!

All of this depth in my practice started after that week studying Ashtanga with Mark in Chicago and in just over a week I'll be seeing Kino again in Indianapolis, so we'll see how I'm affected by her teachings that weekend. Each time I've gone to study this year, which has been a lot for me I've gotten deeper and deeper and deeper into the knowing that this practice is for me, for the entirety of my life and the way it's affected my teaching has gotten my students deeper and deeper as well, so they tell me, and that's another reason this is for me. To help me expand and grow and the same for them.

Full moon this Friday AND a lunar eclipse this Friday, both adding to all this process of going in I've been writing about, come see me, we'll help each other stay on top of things, not get squashed under them!