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!