3 Very interesting weeks...

So many of you know I took in a guy who was stranded here in St. Louis, some may not.

Back on August 19th I went to the park and started talking to this guy and he had been kicked out of his friends place, but had been traveling and was from Portland. So I let him use my shower and took him to lunch and kept his largest bag for him, so he didn't have to haul it around. When I went to look for him at the park after I was done teaching for the day I couldn't find him, so the next day we found each other and again, shower and lunch, then we missed each other that night.

The third night we finally hooked up and he stayed with me from then through the next Monday morning when two gracious students of mine had donated money and I added in the rest, to get him home on a bus, to Portland.

This experience really taught me a lot about myself and my comfort zone, or rather the current comfort zone I've created for myself and how unbending it is, so I've been paying attention to how I feel when situations arise and how I act, and if I catch myself, adjust accordingly. But I also found out that I do have compassion. I've always thought of compassion as something that would not be found in my being because I do believe we create our own reality based on the vibrations we put out, or if you will, by the choices we make every moment of every day based on how we're feeling and how it corresponds to those vibrations.

But that doesn't mean everyone is in the know about this, and therefore we can have compassion for the way they're feeling while in a situation and very unsure of how to get out of it. There's a bunch more I could write about this but that will be for a future post, since then I've seen Abraham and been through a week yoga intensive with a certified Ashtanga teacher and have a different vein of thought going through my mind.

But then I found myself missing him after I sent him on his way. He's a nice guy and not bad company at all, so even though I love living alone and my alone time, there is space in my existence for companionship, and I contemplated this as I moved through my week before I drove to Chicago. Probably more on that later as well.

So first, Abraham. I have to say their message has never been more succinct, they even remarked how high the vibration was in the room and they just gave it to us. We kept elucidating further and further, gaining more and more clarity. And they used the word clarity and how when we can maintain that high flying feeling, which corresponds to our high flying vibration we basically gain more and more clarity and no, there is never and end to the amount of clarity one can attain or demand. It goes ever deeper and deeper and feels better and better.

So I came off of that very high, couldn't even see straight for two days lol, but I made my way about.

This was in Chicago by the way and one of my students/friends had given me the use of her condo, very lovely of her, and so I didn't have to spend the money on a place to stay for the rest of the week, where I was going to Moksha Yoga every morning for a Mysore class with Mark Robberds, then over the weekend (last weekend to be exact)there were three workshops, a kirtan and then Sunday another Mysore class which was perfect because then we could put into play what we'd been working on in the workshops.

Now, I love Ashtanga and I do it daily but I was sore as fuck for those first four Mysore mornings. Not sure if its because of the energy of the room, having so many practitioners in there with me, the way Mark held the space for the classes, which was a very deep, quiet place to dig in deep, or because of having a teacher observing me there, so I dug my deepest! But also, having the workshops and then final Mysore class just made me that much more sore, but I tell you, my practice has changed and progressed in that short time and tonight when I teach, some of that stuff will be coming out. Probably more and more as I practice at home using the techniques and teach over the coming weeks.

So today I took the day off, did my castor oil bath last night to pull the soreness and heat out of my muscles and joints and just relaxed today all day long. Now though I'm finding myself eager to practice tomorrow morning and wishing I had today lol, I know, we humans are a mess right?!? My body did need the day of rest since I skipped two of them last week due to the scheduling of the workshops and classes.

I'll have more and more to write on this as I move through my week, teaching and practicing, but that's all I've got for right now. I'm adjusting to being back in the Lou after 10 tens gone and many great growth experiences, it's always weird to come back to a place where there just is almost no Ashtanga community and especially from Chicago, because they have such a great, dedicated one, but I'll manage. Always do.

Until next time, keep practicing, see you soon!

Holding the space...

What does this phrase mean to you? To most yoga teachers it means we, as we enter the room to teach are fully in control of the energy in the room, which also means as people come in from their day, they may be in a shitty place from work, or from an argument with their spouse, or they may be hyped up from too much coffee, or too much stimulation of their nervous system from what they've done all day long, or many, many other options. Pick one. The point being that they are coming to you to help teach them techniques that will make them feel better and more balanced, and in that reliance they are giving themselves to you.

In their giving themselves to you, you are responsible for them in a way not many other people will ever be. So, its your duty to serve that need in them.

So in a way, holding the space is being the most selfless being you can be, taking in the energy of the group, and it will most likely be as scattered as can be, channeling it and moving it on out and moving them through to the better feeling place.

I'm writing this mostly in response to a student in my teacher training program at Yogasource, who also happens to be a great friend of mine, who had no clue what this phrase meant.

I had used it in response to how tired I was after having taught the teacher training by myself on Saturday from 8:30-5:30, and that while I was also holding the space for the park class that they attended which had over 230 people in it! But then I also taught my class on Sunday which the trainees also attended and then had them again fro 2 more hours after.

He, being used to working a corporate job for over 8 hours a day didn't understand why I was so drained after only such a short time, so this is why.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love teaching the training that whole time, this is a great group but they are also all strong in their own right, so have lots of big energy to contain, and I was responsible for that, so today my body was having none of the idea of me practicing and teaching. I rescheduled a private and took it easy most of the day, teaching my evening class and doing well, but now I'm more tired.

On top of that I also had my 7th rolfing session this morning which is when they open up your sinuses, your gums, your whole head and neck and shoulders, so was a bit loopy, which made me more tired! lol, but its all good.

My life is getting busier and busier, but all doing things I love, private lessons teaching Ashtanga, training people to be teachers, teaching my classes which I love, and especially teaching more and more Ashtanga (which is my passion)and even teaching an Ashtanga class to only teachers that is awesome as well as getting deeper and deeper into my own practice of asana and meditation. I really must say, I can't complain. When you're doing what you love, you make time and space to do all these things and as you get more and more appreciative of doing what you love, more and more comes your way, money, classes, private lessons, whatever it is that you love.

So figure out what you love, and do it!

As Guruji often said "Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice ... all is coming."

Yes Guruji, I now am just starting to get what you mean by all...

Let go . . . Trust...

So periodically I just pick up a seemingly random book and open it and read the page that pops up and see how it's relevant to my life at that moment. I really do this a lot, not the same book all the time, but once a day at least.

Tonight, just before I meditated I picked up the Yamas and the Niyamas by Deborah Adele, really one of the most accessible accounts of these ancient yogic principles I've ever read. Opened it to a passage on Aparigraha, which many would translate as non-attachment, but R. Sharath Jois, the current guru of the Ashtanga Yoga Method puts it this way: Pari means around, Graha means to grasp, a A means not. Aparigraha means non-grasping of things around you. When expectations are high, one becomes greedy, and ocne you allow the greed to grow, it is difficult to get rid of it.

So, the passage was about how as a trapeze artist one must trust completely in the process by letting go of the first trapeze trusting the the other will be there, hanging in mid-air for a moment, then taking the next one as it comes to you. If you grasp for it it will offset the timing and the flow of the performance will be thrown off. If you hold onto the first bar until you can get a hold of the second bar, it will throw both bars, and you, off balance and the performance will be thrown off. These are my words summarizing the point she is making, not hers.

Here is a quote from the text though..."I'm not a trapeze artist, but my experience of letting go feels very much like being suspended in mid-air with nothing to hold on to. It is raw, naked, vulnerable, and uncomfortable. I would much prefer to let go when I know for sure what is coming. And when I have let go, I want to somehow stay connected, just in case I want it back. To let go completely feels like a suspension in the void."

"The practice of nonclinging is as free as swinging from bar to bar effortlessly, in perfect trust and perfect timing. Any kind of holding too long or grasping too far forward in an effor to maintain a sense of security is deadly to our spiritual growth and the natural unfolding of our lives."

This is where I am in life, learning to let go, and not in anticipation of the next thing, but in complete trust that the next thing will be there and it will be the next stage of my journey. It will most likely be bigger and better as well as long as I'm not attached to it being so.

Abraham (who I'll be visiting with on August 31, yay!) would say that I've filled my vibrational escrow (even thought they're calling it our vortex now) account with things put in there out of my experience of contrast within my life, this one and many others as well, and so as long I am able to allow it in, read let go and trust, then the next thing will come and it will be closer to what I want, if not exactly what I want. But we are built to keep refining and keep refining, until what we want changes again and again, so even in the receiving of it we are meant to let go so that the more refined version can step into our lives.

Lots to think about, for me, hopefully for you too.

Let go...

Allow...

Trust...

Change...

So, the ideal goal of yoga, in my mind, has always been to be able to weather the changes that life throws your way with ease. At least that's always been one of them that makes me want to keep going on this path. I never realized what it meant until recently though.

I might have had some idea, in an abstract way, but I've never actually allowed any of the major changes that have wanted to come up to happen. Now, what does that mean?

That means that when I was younger I had the idea to move to Chicago, I came home from a trip there, checked on branches of the company I was then working for to see if they had openings so I could transfer, they didn't, so I gave up on it. Rather than going a different route which could have taken me there, which was what I wanted. So instead, I stayed here, drank even more than I did before and told myself this was what I got, so deal with it.

Then Hawaii, I was on sabbatical there studying Ashtanga with Nancy Gilgoff, it WAS the right place for me to be at that time, so I call my mom to see if she'd help me sell my stuff and make it easier for me to just stay there and keep studying, find work and whatever. She, knowing me very well, refused to do so because she knew I'd never come back, which was probably true but rather than use the resources I had at my disposal, I let that make me feel defeated and went home, gave up again and and just stayed there, drank even more and kept practicing.

Then during my time digging deep into the Kundalini yoga practice, when I decided to become Sikh, change my name, take the vows, stop drinking, stop eating meat, stop a lot of things. All the while practicing Kundalini Yoga, which clears out your energy channels, got myself all opened up. I noticed a change, I was more resolute in my decisions, more committed. But yet again, I got an offer to move to LA and teach Kundalini Yoga in the West Hollywood area, live with a friend very cheaply and go for it in California (which if you know it has always been a big dream of mine). What happened? I did the same thing, I squelched it down and got stuck here.

This time the difference was that I didn't start drinking more and resolve myself to that dark fate of being stuck here, as I'd always done before. I felt that that opportunity was not necessarily the right one for me at the time, and it wasn't. Very soon after that I began practicing Ashtanga again and started shifting and becoming what I like to think of as more me than I'd ever been before.

So now, you may say, okay, so you're ready to move again. Yes, of course I am, but more so I'm ready for whatever comes up. So, I've met someone, someone who I believe I'm falling for, fully, not just on the surface, but with all of my being.

He doesn't live here, so I'm traveling to visit him this Thursday and am going with whatever come from it from there. Now, does this mean I'll move, maybe, but the point is that I would normally be blocking myself from experiencing whatever it is that comes from this, and not allowing the fullest express of the experience to be realized. I'm opening myself up to receiving this experience and going wherever life takes me, be it to becoming amazing friends or to be lovers who teach yoga together around the globe (I'm rooting for that one lol), but to be fully there whatever comes up, becoming a fully realized version of me.

So dive into your experiences, have them fully. Or, as I read the other day and have decided I love, lean into your life. Lean into it, become it and express yourself fully!

RuPaul's Drag Race

This blog should've come before the last one but its just popping up now, and when the inspiration is there, I follow it, so here it goes.

As many of you who are regular components of my life know, over the winter I became obsessed with RuPaul's Drag Race. Fell in love with it really, not obsessed. I had never seen a whole season of it before, only catching an episode here and there occasionally.

But on New Year's Day I became sick and stayed at home all day long and what happened to be on Logo but a whole recap of the previous season to create anticipation for the new season beginning in a few short weeks. So I watched it and became endeared.

Then the new season started and I totally watched every episode, even bonded with and became great friends with some other homos in the area who also watched it with the same voracity.

The funny thing is that I began to be inspired by what I was seeing. I was seeing the underdog, Jinkx Monsoon, whom no one believed would make it far, come out with talent and amazing qualities that no one suspected and lo and behold, she won the contest! Amazing!!! (she'll be in town June 30th at Attitudes, I and a few friends are seeing her, so excited)

The inspiration came from that, but also from each contestant and the creativity they enlisted to strive to win the title. And even more from the fact that I used to be an artist, as a child you almost couldn't pull me away from my book and pen and coloring pencils. I created character after character and named them, created super powers or planets for them, whole histories for each one, all sorts of things like that. But also in 1988-9 I did drag.

There I said it for public consumption (many of you I'm close with already knew this), but yes I did drag.

I was a terribly shy young man, and I mean painfully so. It hurt me to think too long of talking in front of people or to people I knew, never people I didn't know, but alsways people I knew. I even created scenarios in my mind about it until I would get sick thinking of the conversation that could happen, but never actually did. So as I was 18, just out of the house and working in "the big city of St. Louis" I met folks who quickly surmised my sexual orientation and took me out to bars and dance clubs that had drag shows at them, and I was fascinated. Not because I wanted to be a woman, but because I could see the creative talent they were employing to become a character, much like the ones I had created for over a decade in my notebooks and sketch pads.

So, when Kathy Klein, a prominent drag queen in town. Really the fiercest one I'd ever seen, and still looks amazing now (even though she lives a small life with her partnerh in Iowa now)when she dresses up. When she came to me and said how pretty I was and had I ever thought of doing drag, then talked me into it and helping me do my makeup and buy the proper gear to stuff, pad and tuck everything into, I was ecstatically thinking of how this was my out. I could become someone else and therefore wouldn't have to deal with myself anymore, someone I was sick and tired of, but really in all truth, someone I didn't know. And so said yes and did it.

It lasted all of 9 months but I learned a lot about myself during that time and decided I was using it to hide and not being me, which I still had no clue who that was anyway, but I knew it wasn't healthy. So I quit and explored other avenues, including drinking heavily to be brave enough to speak to others, but that is another blog waiting to happen lol.

Anyhow, all of this to tell you why I've been changing lately.

Any of you who actually know me in person have noticed I've been more daring lately, with my new hairdo, with clothing, with my toenails (lol) and just trying to embrace more of who I am, maybe some of which that had gotten lost along the way. And enjoying being more expressive, finally! Just because we live a yogic life doesn't mean it can't be filled with color, right?!?

So, expect more, and more, as I embrace each new creative thought that comes up. I'm not sure how much more there will be, but there could be a lot and there could be just a bit more.

Either way folks, I'm embracing me, the inner me, the one only I know fully, but I let you see quite a bit of too. And as this me bubbles to the surface, physical changes may be prevalent, or not, but changes will be coming, be they physical only or mostly internal. So be ready!!!

Kino MacGregor

This past weekend I spent with some great friends and with aforementioned young lady. She's become someone I admire and who inspires me in ways I never thought would be able to happen.

I used to think no one younger than me could possibly teach me anything, I guess I'm old enough now to know better lol, and have embraced what this lovely, on the inside and out, woman has to share.

I also had a bit of hard time for the silliest reasons. Comparison, something which I'm not prone to do and therefore almost never do. But when I was there this weekend, and before when I read her mini bio book Sacred Fire, I became . . . jealous, maybe? No, not jealous, envious. Here's why...

We began the practice of Ashtanga Yoga at almost the same exact time, I was 30, she 21 I think. But she took the horse by the reigns and found a good Mysore class, learned a lot there and went even further and went to India to study with Guruji (K. Pattabhi Jois) and began a process of learning that I only dreamed of doing.

I embraced it to the degree I could at the time and drove to Boulder, CO, to study with Guruji on one of his tours and decided that I was going to go the following year to India and leave work and be there for as long as I could. I allowed things in my life to stop me though, and didn't forge ahead as I'd planned to. I'd planned to because never before in my life had something make me feel like this yoga, it was amazing to me and I was in love with it. Problem being I was also in love with someone who was a practical thinker and who had no intention of helping me figure out how to get there, and I allowed him this role in my journey, so NOT his fault.

So, again in 2002 when I retired from the corporate world and had a severance package (and was single again) decided, okay, now I'm going to do it! So I look online only to find out that Guruji and Sharath were on tour and would be the entire summer, so I said fuck it and bought a ticket to Maui to study with him there and decided to stay for a whole 5 weeks so I could enjoy Maui and study with Nancy Gilgoff as well. Neither of which I have any regrets about and I still have a great friendship with Nancy to enjoy too.

Anyhow, advance a few years and I was working part time at the St. Louis Bread Co and teaching little Mysore style classes in Collinsville, IL, which were doing pretty well and I loved teaching this style of yoga in this format. It is what I was born to do. I'm just plugging away at my own home practice and teaching and living, not thinking about it at all. Then the itch starts to hit me again in about 2006-7, so I went to the Ashtanga pre-conference at the Yoga Journal Conference in Estes Park, CO. Loved it, it was awesome, but I couldn't see a clear way to make India happen, then I met Desiree Rumbaugh, started learning Anusara and healing parts of my body that needed healing, then I started practicing Kundalini Yoga as well more often ( I had been practicing it as long as the Ashtanga but only once a week on my day off, this time I got into it heavily and kept going. The energy working aspect of it was healing me in many other ways). So got further sidetracked away from my original Ashtanga path and almost left it completely, only to come back to it at the behest of friends once a week in late 2011, then fully 3-5 times a week in February of 2012 and fully again 6 days a week in April/May of that same year.

Then I met Kino in May of 2012 as well but it wasn't until going back to Chicago to see her again this year that that little demon on my shoulder was whispering about looking at where I could've been and such and such. That's all nonsense, I am where I am and my path brought me here, and she is where she is and we are two different people.

So now, I want to go to India again, this winter, December through February, to study in Mysore with Sharath and learn and learn and learn. If I eventually earn my authorization and further to my certification in the process, so be it, but otherwise I'm just in it for the learning and the growth and the yoga of it.

I love the asanas in this practice, they are like nothing else, I want to dig deep into them and allow them to move energy through me, moving past and through any blocks, emotional, energetic or otherwise, that I may have. I want to learn Sanskrit from Jayashree and Narsimhan in the afternoons and I want to interact with the Indian people and adapt to their way of life for the time that I'm there.

I'm drawn to this as if I've lived there in other lives and therefore tend to believe I did. I mean sometimes I can feel and smell things that I know are totally Indian and I've never experienced here in America.

So, I'm putting it out Universe. I want this. The thought of it makes me ecstatic, lets do this!!!

Practice, practice, practice...

I've been practicing and teaching and not much else, including blogging lol. Didn't realize how long its been until this morning I happened to be thinking a bit.

I'm really trying not to get stuck in my head about things and the problem with that is that it doesn't lend itself to formulating something to write about, so haven't been on here since April.

But I'm seeing Kino MacGregor this weekend in Chicago and am super excited, so have put a lot of focus on my morning practices lately, even when they seem less than optimal. I still search and find the benefit I got from what I did or did not do.

I seem to be regularly practicing the primary series this past month or so and having so much sensation in my arms, from the upper chest down through the elbows, that I don't know what to do with it. Its not pain, its just like my nervous system is on fire, and then when my asanas are done, it seems to be fine, its just during my practice! So this morning I practiced second series to test it out and it did the same thing. The arms represent the heart chakra and as the energy channels that correspond with the arms open up it is the flowing of the energy through the heart chakra that can cause such sensation, but also such peace after the opening happens.

Along with that I'm opening up finally in my sacrum and my shoulders have been having major opening lately. The sacrum though is where I've been locked up on the left side since January and it started to subside when I went to the Ashtanga confluence, but came back strongly, but yesterday during my practice I felt movement in the area that was bound up and it feels so free after that and today, so I'm grateful I kept on practicing through whatever was going on with it and have mostly come out the other side.

It was through pain though that it found the opening, not acute, sharp pain, but tension and just feeling locked in a knot that created a shorter hamstring and pain down the leg, but when the movement happened it hurt for a second and now feels amazing, so we'll see how it goes with this weekend.

It seems that pain has been a theme lately, especially around articles I've been reading, and talking about how Ashtanga brings pain, but its really about it being in the areas that the energy is blocked or not flowing well and if you stick with it, work within your bounds, not pushing through it, but breathing and maintaining your practice through it, that on the other side is a great and amazing place to be.

I will say I agree and I will not quit practicing but will be mindful of how it needs to be adjusted to accomodate or to help heal different things as they come up. And I feel amazing lately, inside and out, so I'm not really worried about any of it, just being with it as it comes up, observing and learning from it and taking that into my teaching.

Namaste, and may you be present and observing in your own life from today onward and see what it brings you!!!