Boyhood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which do you choose?

Mysore... again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attachment

So, I've been practicing yoga for a long time, almost 15 years, and the idea of attachment came up when I first started it. It, of course, hadn't been a concept I'd ever given any thought but once I heard about it I immediately looked into it and realized that I had it! lol, we all do, we're in bodies, we convince ourselves the bodies are going to last forever, our first attachment, and then decide that everything else must last just as long or we'd be upset for losing something.

Just yesterday I put five boxes of books and two tubs of comics into a garage sale my sister is having at my grandma's house and once we loaded the stuff and she left I felt a pang of loss, but was like, oh that's good. I need to unload some more stuff. Not sure what else that would mean.

This morning I get a text that one guy came and bought all of my comics in one fell swoop! And I felt the worst icky feeling in my tummy and realized how attached I had been to those things.

I started collecting comics in 1975 when my grandpa bought me a $.35 issue of Spider-Woman and from then on I was obsessed. Especially with the X-Men and anything related to that franchise. The X-Men being outcasts because they were mutants and I always felt like I never fit in, so identified with them immediately. I continued collecting regularly until say 1989 and then until a few years ago would buy the occasional issue here and there. But it was a big part of my life for a long time and I've now got none of it physically anymore.

Does that really matter? Probably not. I have the lessons learned from the storylines, I have the memories of the stories and characters that will live with me forever. I had some original issues of many things but really, does it matter? Nah.

So, even though right now, today (maybe even tomorrow) I've got this empty sensation in my gut, even in my heart, I'll be fine. I'd not looked at some of them for decades until recently when I got them to my place from storage at my moms house and I'd lived just fine without them all those years, I'll live just fine without them in the future as well.

Yogis in India typically own nothing, and the things that they do have will give away at the drop of a hat. Staying so unattached that they don't even have a place they live in but are always traveling, forcing detachment.

I'm not quite there and may never be, and don't know if I aspire to be that way, but I love the idea of the freedom it seems to give you. So, I'll just work toward that feeling of freedom and not worry about letting go of the things until it comes up and deal with it then. I've let go of lots of stuff since beginning yoga and the things I have right now I may let go of in the future, I'm okay with where I am and not in a hurry to push things out the door though, but to just allow the need for them to leave when it does.

What are you attached to?

Happy people

So, this is my outlet. My outlet for allowing a deeper, more personal side of me out and showing people that I am human and still have a lot of work to do.

I was contemplating putting a Facebook post out there, as a good friend of mine does and he gets a lot of support and comes across very elegantly, but I've done that a couple times and it backfires on me and I get a lot of resistance. I have my own inner resistance to deal with daily, so I don't need it manifesting in external sources like that, not anymore. For some reason when I write a blog, people love it, so here it is.

I have a lot of friends, well maybe not a lot, but a bunch of them who are naturally happy people. They think, they feel emotional and all but their go to place is one of light and joy. I see them and am jealous but also grateful for them as well, because it shows me it is a possible place to live in. I love them and if you are reading this you will know I am speaking of you, I love you and appreciate you in my life, more than you'll ever know.

I, however, am not one of those people. I have to work and work at being happy. My go to place is the dark side of the force. I know that in even typing this I'm reinforcing it but that's okay, I've made peace with it and will go further so as to undo any "bad" stuff it could draw to me.

When I discovered yoga in late 1999 it was the first time it was made known to me that finding the light within was a possibility, but when I discovered the teachings of Abraham in 2006-2007 it was really made known that my being in a dark place was one of a choice, not one out of my control. I remember lamenting then that I was always drawn to the hardest paths on the planet, why me, that sort of thing. I mean Ashtanga Yoga is the hardest asana practice on the planet, yes it is, but goddamn it, I love it with all of my heart. Kundalini Yoga, another of my paths that was a part of my life from 2000 until last year, is also one of the hardest things on the planet. Each kriya, or sequence, was more challening than the one before it and the place it took you was so deep and raw and yet powerful that you couldn't not do it again the next day, and it did help me get to where I am with understanding energy flow and being able to use that in my eventual return to the Ashtanga Yoga practice.

But even worse, the teachings of Abraham is the hardest thing on the planet, more so than either of the other two. Not because there is anything hard physically to do, but the mental work is the most difficult part and the emotional work, omg I can't even talk about it. Then the dawning in my mind that yoga, is really about the mental work but using the body as a tool to get it under control first, then the mind can flow more easily.

The teachings were hard at first because they ask you to notice how you feel, all the fucking time, but noticing that is just the beginning. You have to know what you were thinking about as you notice how you feel, because the emotion was brought up by the thought and the direction of the emotion, whether it be "bad" or "good" shows where you are in relation to the thing you were thinking about. AASARRRahghhhbh!!! lol

So, when you've done it for a while, it does get easier and you are able to catch yourself more quickly or sooner than you used to, so that you don't go down that dark path too far and it is more simple to work your way back to better feeling thoughts, and eventually that gets easier and easier and your "bad" days get fewer and fewer between but even better is that the thing you're calling "bad" gets less and less so, so that bad may be feeling indifferent whereas a year ago it meant anger so strong you wanted to strangle someone.

So, why am I drawn to all the hardest paths possible? I don't know. But I do believe we, when still not in a body, choose our path and choose it based on who we'll be born to and such, so that we can have an experience different than one we've lived in another life, maybe. So our physicality will be a certain way, or our upbringing a certain way. Or whatever, just so that being in a body is a new experience that we come here to grow and expand in, in new ways. So I chose this and therefore I have to make peace with it, because only after I've made peace with it can I begin to appreciate the contrast that is brought to me by me and grow and expand even further.

It all makes sense to me, I get it, I believe in it and how I've discovered it works, so am therefore more easily able to find peace with things.

All of this to say, today, I'm having one of those dark days of the soul. Not dark like they were when I was in my teens, twenties or even part of my thirties after I'd begun yoga, but one of those days where being a little down is just the easier place to go than to be a being full of light and love. Also, on these days where I feel like I need to be around people and feel their love and light (maybe those Happy People I so named this article after) I cannot manifest them in my existence, at all, it's impossible. I did one today though and we spent a few hours together, and a couple others texted with me. So there is my new point of attraction. I am progressing further forward and feeling lighter and lighter, so now the dark days are even more so like at dusk than at night, they still have a little light in them, or a medium amount of light in them. My last one about a month ago I couldn't even raze one of the light people.

See there, I've made myself feel even better than I did at the beginning of this article, good job!

If none of this makes any sense to you, that's okay, its really for me to release this stuff that I write these blogs and if by chance it benefits someone else as well, then that's the bonus.

Love you, happy holiday, see you soon!

Manifesting Mysore

So, on Facebook many people I'm connecting with are authorized or certified teachers in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition and for them Sharath is doing a special teacher training in July and August, and many of them are there and are posting pics already.

It excites me to see this because now I know where these places are that I'm seeing, I've been there, or have been close in person. Which makes me excited to go back.

When I got home I devised a plan to teach and then to save all donations from the park and go back to Mysore in November and December, coming home in January sometime. But so far I've had to use the donations from the park to live off of and haven't put any of it away. So, starting soon I'm going to do just that and visualize and feel Mysore all around me so that I can make it happen again.

I thought of doing another gofundme campaign as well, and I know some people who even have spiritual sponsors that are funding their yoga journeys, there are many ways to do this. But I think I'd like to teach yoga and let the yoga pay for another yoga trip. Typically in St. Louis yoga teachers don't make that much money being the problem there. I'm really not opposed to having a sponsor, so if you want private lessons for the rest of your life and want to pay for me to go to Mysore peridiocally, applications now being accepted! lol

This isn't going to be a long post, I just wanted to share how excited I am to teaching Ashtanga Yoga and in order to keep up my practice and be a better teacher I need to keep going to Mysore and furthering my experience within the Ashtanga Yoga system with my teacher there, and thinking of that excites me too.

Come to class and help me get back to India so that I can come back again and be more and more excited to teach you guys, I love this stuff!

back to "normal" ... ?

So, I've had a few different discussions this week that have pointed to getting to feeling back to normal. Normal to me is better put in quotes like in the title of this article, because what is normal? It is a relative term, right?

I think so because what is normal for me, is not normal for you or anyone else, nor should it be.

But, the big question is, as we move through this life and if you're practicing yoga, and I'm talking about yoga, not just asana (although asana tends to lead you into a deeper place that makes you take interest in the fuller aspects of yoga if you're open to it) as it's meant to be practiced in the east with the fullness of your being seeking liberation then you are trying to remove the veils, koshas in Sanskrit.

Veils you ask? I never thought of it like this before, even though I've read plenty of scripture that uses this terminology, I don't think we get it until we GET it, have that aha moment. Mine was yesterday.

So the idea is that we are spirit, a bright shining soul that is powerful and glowing with this inner power. As we come to the earth to inhabit a body we are cloaked in veil after veil of heavier and heavier substance until we basically forget we are the soul and identify with only the body and the material things in front of our face. But the Eastern traditions have many spiritual paths that are meant to unveil us so that we realize again that we are this bright, shiny spirit underneath it all. And you know those people who are on that path, they do have a glow and you can feel their energy when they walk into the room and the more veils they've uncloaked themselves from the bigger that energy is.

So as I started the practice of yoga and began to have little aha moments, little realizations towards this end, I thought of it as transforming myself into a new bright and shiny being, but the converse is true I now believe.

I am slowly uncovering the true me and the further and further I unveil the more different I feel and the more different I feel and the more different I feel, and even bigger, the more different those around me respond to me.

So, in a conversation back to normal came up, but I said to myself, what if back to normal is not an option. If as is said, the only constant is change, and we as yogis are meant to be able to adapt to any situation as it comes up and be equanimous in each situation, then aren't we also meant to be okay with whom we are as we unveil our true self? And I mean as we truly are.

Think of a lamp and you've put many cloths over it it create a mood, so its still light in the room even though it's dark outside, but it's darker and even a bit green, red or whatever the color the veils you've put over it are. But you remove one, notice the difference, it's lighter, but still a mood albeit a different mood than before, and then another, and another. The mood slightly shifts as each piece of cloth is taken away. BUT as you remove each piece of cloth the room becomes more the room as it is normally before you put all those veils over it. The light bulb is your true self, your "normal" self, not what you thought was you as you were before you began removing the veils when you started your practice of yoga, or Buddhist meditation, or Kabbalah, or whatever you're doing that's bringing you closer to your true self. So will you ever get back to the "normal" that you originally meant? I hope to hell not, you've taken all this time to work in the direction you are going, so normal will be constantly changing until you unveil the bare light bulb which I don't even know if it's possible while we're in a body to do so, but we can get as close as we can.

So, next time you use that phrase "I can't wait to get back to normal." Think about it, do you really want that? Nah, you want the new normal and the next normal and the constant evolution of what that means at that moment, not what you were way back when. Don't you?

Slow going...

So, when I got home from India my plan was to get my classes going again, start the income flowing and then when the park started I could put that money directly in the bank and use it to go back to India in the fall/winter. The park class is a donation based class and while I don't make good money per student, probably only about 60% actually donate, it's an hour class and I can make decent money.

So far that class has been amazing, lots of people great donations, great questions after and this year I have some great assistants to help them out, with over 200-over 300 coming weekly I can't help them all. So, no complaints on that front at all. But my classes at studios have been slow, so slow. What's going on? I'm not a person who believes in lack and I do believe there is more than enough for everyone, so the fact that many of the older teachers in town have been complaining that there are just too many teachers being pumped out doesn't usually bother me. All this while they are doing teacher trainings to keep their studios afloat mind you lol.

So what is it? I've changed, I know that, and the students here have too. The ones who are coming are strong and eager for the deeper work they're doing with the primary series, so, it's me... Has to be.

Not me in the way you think I'm saying, I'm not saying I suck and no one wants to take my class. I like me and think I'm moving in the direction that fuels my fire, but I've just been in a lackful state of mind for a while.

Before I left, I was so excited and in that excitement was inviting abundance from the universe and got it, now, not so much.

I am getting back to feeling better and in feeling better can cultivate that excitement again that will draw more profitability to me and then I'll be good again.

No, dammit, I'm good again now. Intentionality has to be in the present and forward not when I get there I'll get this, so I'm good now. The universe is flowing and is abundant and has enough to give me to live off of, to put away for India and to just put away for a rainy day. It has enough to send me all around the globe if I so choose, I just have to make up my mind about where I want to go and buy the ticket!

Money comes to me easily and often, money comes to me easily and often, money comes to me easily and often!!!