Attiti-That which is before you is Divine

The first thing for a teacher to remember is that all the students who stand in her presence are as important as herself. A yoga teacher must remember that every student before her is the beloved. Whether we are teaching to one student or 100, we must practice the concept of Attiti. Attiti means, "That which is before you is divine."

As yoga teachers, we must practice yoga ourselves. We must learn that we are also the divine. Divine in each pose, in each breath, in each movement, and in each moment. A yoga teacher should be confident, clear, calm, clever, courageous, challenging, caring, considerate, cheerful, critical and committed. These are just a few qualities that come to mind. A yoga teacher must always be learning and have the humilty to acknowledge this.


On Monday, I taught a yoga class where only one student showed up. For me to sit up in front of this student and not appear to be dissapointed with the exceedingly low class turn out was impossible. I am painfully aware that I wear my emotions openly and I vaccilate between the need to keep my own frustrations and dissapointments hidden and the need for speaking the obvious and acknowledging what is truthful even if it is not ideal. The student who did come to my class on Monday is a very wise and sensitive student dedicated to her own yoga practice. To not aknowledge my truth in that moment felt false so I chose to acknowledge the lack of students, not make a big deal out of it, but name the elephant and move on.

In my centering that morning, I privately expressed gratitude for the one student who was there. One student or 100 students, it should not change my intention for teaching. I then did what I always do when I begin a class. I take a moment to center with my student(s) and privately set my intention for my teaching to be as pure as possible, to be exactly what my student (s) need, to teach from my best self, to let my pride, ignorance, and attatchment to self go. Still, even with the intention said and done, I felt a spark of attatchment, the voice of inadequacy, the tight fisted grip of suffering.

When I left the Samadhi Storrs Studio,that morning, I felt stuck. As I transitioned from the warm, dark and cozy studio out into the jewel bright sunshine of the day, I was struck by my unhappiness. My need for others to complete my identity. My need to control the events of the day, believing that the amount of students in my class plays back to me that I am worthy. I am significant. The need for others to validate my worth is an old tape that only leads to my own suffering and the need to cling for more control.

Today is Wednesday and I have had two days to process my Monday morning class. I have paid attention to other situations this week where I have needed validation through recognition from others and I have to admit, it is real and it is ugly. I like to think that this ugly is what my wise sage 11 year old daughter Emily would call, "ugly-beautiful." This is a jumping-off point for me to learn more about myself, for me to dive deeply into my darker places and emerge new. Earlier this week I wrote that where I am in any given moment is exactly where I am supposed to be.

Teaching to one student on Monday morning was exactly where I was supposed to be. Not as a wake-up call to examine my marketing and business skills, but as a wake-up call to examine my own happiness and the "old" patterns of sufferings that I continue to create. Acknowledging this need for external validation as a path I don't want to walk down anymore is the beginning of healing and change.

It is lessons like this that remind me that I am a child. We are all children, even the wisest of us. We are all five year olds learning how to do this precious thing called life. From my yoga practice, I am learning to laugh at my thoughts that keep me living so small. My yoga practice guides me to live in the unknown, hopefully leaving my need for control in the dust.

Today my walk away from teaching a class is much different step than the heavy steps I took on Monday. Today I notice life entering me as I walk away. Life continues to flow into me. Every step is where I am, even though it appears that I'm moving. How wonderful not to need the world, not to go out toward it, but to allow it to meet and enter me. I find that there's room in me for everything, everyone, every situation, every flavor of being. I love the openness that I am.

Trusting The Process Of Life-Headstand

For the past week, I have been using a 5 minute timer. One of the postures I have been staying in for this somewhat intense and extended duration of a holding is headstand. Headstand, or sirsasana, is known as the "King of all postures." It is one of the postures usually associated with a yoga practice. It is an inversion. It is mind clearing. It is quiet. When performed correctly, it is light and it is ease.

Headstand is a posture very dear to me. When I first began practicing yoga and even when I was in my first years of teaching yoga, I never imagined that I would be able to get into this pose. I had tried to get into it many times. Without a teacher instructing me. I couldn't do it. I found it scary. What if I fell? (This was before I understood that you almost always have to fall to learn something new and wonderful.)

I found my inability to kick up into headstand frustrating. I would kick up and kick up from downward dog but I could never catch my core or get my "tuck." This was not a pose I did naturally as a child. Other postures that required strength had come easy to me. But not this one. I began to make up familiar stories for why this pose would never happen. My first story is an Anne classic. "I am just too fat to go into this posture. Headstand is for all of the very thin willowy yogis of which I am not." Then I would tell myself that it was ok that I would never get into headstand, that I was completely happy without it. After all, I was able to get into many impressive postures such as wheel and split.

Yet, in my yoga, something was missing. At the time, I was dedicated to practicing the Ashtanga Series at least 4 times per week. Everytime I watched one of my fellow yogis go into headstand, I could feel something missing in my body. I longed to be able to turn upside down. To raise my legs up over my head. Everytime I watched my fellow yogis slow down, concentrate and kick up into the headstand, I felt it somewhere deep inside me. I felt the pose and I felt the absence of the pose at the same time. My body intuitively understood the strength, stillness and ease which is the essence of headstand. My body was remembering something ancient and sacred. A feeling of movement and body wisdom that was imprinted deeply within my understanding. An understanding that goes deeper than my rational mind.

On September 14, 2001, I was at the Puck building in NYC with 200 other Ashtangi yogi's. We were taking a full Series 1 Ashtanga class with Pattaboi Jois as our teacher. Willam Defoe was on a yoga mat directly behind me. I was in the front row. When the time came up to go into headstand, I peeked back at the remainder of the room from my downward dog. I looked beyond my feet to see 200 yogis go up effortlessly into headstand, from their mats. The twin towers had just fallen days before. It was still early, 7:30 in the morning. Everyone in this room needed this practice to deal with the sadness and the chaos of living in this world immediately following 9/11. We were all practicing together. No one used a wall. It was beautiful. I told myself in that moment, that I would learn this awesome pose. No excuses.

It took less than a year, after that day in NYC, of practicing diligently before I learned headstand. It is such a feeling of exhileration the first time you get it. I still feel exhilerated and there is still a moment of trust each time I kick up. I have fallen in this pose, many times. I may not have always landed gracefully but I have never broken.

This week I have practiced headstand everyday for 5 minutes and it still does not have the ease that it had prior to my birth of Sadie. I practiced this pose until I was 33 weeks pregnant. I gave up the pose when she was no longer breach and had turned herself around. At that time, I instinctively knew it was time to let headstand go as I did not want to risk my baby turning herself back to the breach position. Since Sadie's birth, finding my comfortable headstand has been a slow process. I have had to trust that with a regular practice, my yoga will come back. It might be new and different but I must trust that the body will remember. Headstand requires a strong connection to the abdominals and an openness in the shoulders. Strong abdominals and open shoulders are still not quite where they were prior to Sadie and I must be patient. In yoga, it is not the end result but the journey or the process where all the gifts are to be found.

This week I have practiced headstand and am able to hold this awesome pose for 5 minutes without leaving. I have felt her qualities in my body. I have felt calm and clear and inspired. I have felt gratitude for making a choice, to learn this elegant pose 5 years ago in that remarkable instant after 9/11. I feel gratitude for my body and being able to inhabit it as fully as possible. No stories of being inadequate to keep me from fulfilling my own dreams.

up the mountain

Being out in nature on such a sunny crisp day. Going up the mountain. That is my other practice. Going up the mountain is Sadie's practice as well. We have been hiking together up Case since she was 3 weeks old. Our daily weekday hike takes us about an hour and 1/2. During the first 12 weeks of Sadie's life, hiking was the only thing that soothed her. We have done as much bonding on our well worn path up the mountain as we have nursing in the wee hours of the night. For now, we will hike for as long as we can. Until the snow falls.

Today was exceptionally beautiful and we got a pleasant surprise....... We went with Daddy. He took this picture. Notice Sadie's sweater. I made it. Also, check out her 4 teeth.

Blend Asana and Meditation for a Centering Practice

Students often ask me what my personal practice is like. TodayI describe my morning practice, straight from my sticky mat. Blending the meditation in to this degree is new to me. It felt really sweet.

Note on times: I actually used a clock to time these poses and meditations. I typically don't use a timer in my practice, but it worked well in this practice. For the most part, 5 minutes in a pose means holding the pose for 5 minutes, although this practice would work equally well if you need to rest and then re-enter the pose during the 5 minutes.

The selection and order of the asanas was spontaneous in the practice. I encourage you take the basic template of the practice - alternating long holds of challenging poses, long holds of relaxing poses, and 5-minute meditation periods - and substitute the poses that call to you in the moment.

5 minutes seated meditation in sukhasana.
5 minutes of breathing kriyas.
5 minutes downward facing dog.
5 minutes in seated forward fold (paschimottonasana).
5 minutes dolphin pose and variations.
5 minutes seated meditation in virasana.
5 minutes headstand.
5 minutes seated meditation in virasana.
5 minutes upward facing bow pose.
5 minutes reclining bound angle pose.
5 minutes meditation in a heart-opening, supported backbend (one blanket rolled under shoulder blades/midspine; one blanket rolled under knees, one folded blanket to slightly elevate the back of the head).
Savasana.

Total practice time: 1 hour. How I felt at the end of the practice: Centered, balanced, and inspired.


When I finished my practice, had released my savasana. I was still lying there. A luxurious moment at the beginning of a busy day. The light of day was just beginning to seep into my practice space illuminating the walls and ceilings. It was them that I heard the geese. At first I thought it was sea gulls and I was in a dream. But then it was the geese, flying to their second home. My body is my home. It is the only one I will ever know. The sound of the geese call out harsh and exciting. ( Mary Oliver) It is fall. A time of change.

My other realization on the mat today was that I clutter my life. My practice was so simple and spartan this morning and it felt right and authentic. I will write more about this later.

Full Moon

Last night, the full moon was amazing. As I drove home in the early evening darkness from a 4:30pm yoga class with my daughter Sadie and my son Matthew in the car, I felt blessed on every level. There was finally a fall chill in the air. My cozy sweater was making sense and I was feeling right with the world. Content. In the moment. In my car, following the moon home and I had just practiced yoga. The effects of the practice had landed softly in my heart and bones. My brain was relaxed. My throat was relaxed. I was in a place of knowing and feeling.

I felt right, I felt new, I felt love. My children had just practiced yoga as well. Yes, even Sadie. While I held gentle warriors and triangles in the earth studio with Cynthia J. as the teacher, Caelum, the children's yoga teacher in the sun studio carried Sadie on his hip. As I heard the sound of my ujaii breath and was gently reminded to make this yoga practice right for me, I could here Sadie's cooing throught the walls of my studio. It was very faint, but I could here her calling out in excitement to the other kids as Caelum and Dawn taught yoga postures to 12 children of various ages. Many of them siblings like Matthew and Sadie. Both of my children were so content when we left Samadhi. Matthew couldn't wait to come back next week. He commented on how much he liked shavasana. Caelum had brought in his xylaphone and played this while the kids rested in corpse pose. After class, as we were putting our shoes on, Sadie was busy talking at everyone in the yoga studio who passed her by. She seemed to have a smile and/or advice for anyone who looked her way.

Everytime I see a full moon I am in awe. It's beauty and newness never wear itself out. It is the most patient presence I have ever observed. It's face is non-judgmental and kind. I find it puzzling to think of all the people that a full moon throws out of kilter. The full moon has a bad rap for lunacy. I don't get that. To me it has the opposite effect. A quality of stillness and steadyness coupled with an illumination of a presence I can only describe as the beloved.

Tonight, I think about the moon and how it is continuosly creating. I feel that way about my own yoga practice as well. No matter how shitty, cranky, ugly or out of sorts I am feeling when I begin my practice, I almost always feel different by the end of shavasana. I feel new, I feel love, I feel grateful to be alive. Everytime I bear witness to a full moon, I am in awe at it's beauty and simplicity. I do not take for granted that I have lived through another cycle. The full moon almost always surprises me. Catches me off guard. Takes me out of any self-doubt or pity. I do not keep track of ithe moon's patterns but I feel steady knowing that it cycles with or without my knowledge. I feel reassured knowing it will cycle long after I die. When I complete a yoga practice, it is the same sort of feeling. I feel a steadyiness about my existance. Anxieties and judgements have been cleansed away. I am brought done to my essentials. My blood moving through my veins, the beating of my heart, and my breath. All that matters is here in this moment. All that matters is love and in that moment of fullness I am able to pause.

I love this poem by Lalla. I have every word of it memorized in my body.

The Soul, like the moon,
is new, and always new again.

And I have seen the ocean
continuously creating.

Since I scoured mymind
and my body, I too, Lalla,
am new, each moment new.

My teacher told me one thing,
Live in the soul.

When that was so,
I began to go naked,
and dance.

I am restless today. Was unable to do my yoga first thing this morning. This means that I will have to cut and paste my yoga practice into my afternoon. This will take some doing since I have a dentist appointment, hair appointment, business meeting and am responsible for carpooling kids to pottery class. I am also teaching Power at 6pm. I am also the cook and housekeeper today.

I was unable to practice my yoga this morning as Matthew went into work sometime in the middle of the night and Sadie has been up since 5:30am. Cutting a new tooth. Based on the amount of mucus and her bouts of crying, cutting a tooth must be painful. I let her nurse freely last night. Probably she nursed four to five times. I stopped counting and at some point surrendered over my sleep and my body so that she could have some good "mommy medicine."

When I have to alter my most basic needs such as sleep and yoga for my children, I like to think that the most secure and fearless children are the ones who were allowed to develop their inner core of strength over time. They're not the ones who had their bottles or blankets snatched from them prematurely in a misguided attempt to "toughen them up."

I like to believe that the time I invest into Sadie right now is building her mental and emotional resilience in the world. I like to believe that she is absorbing a sense of safety and seecurity at a cellular level from our middle of the night bonding. I like to believe that I am honoring my intuitive mother's wisdom and am doing what is right.

Having children, a healthy marriage, running a business, and operating as a well adjusted women who is capable of identifying and meeting her own needs is a process. When I doubt myself or sometimes wish I was in a different stage of my life, I rely on the words of Hafiz. "This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you."

You may notice that there has been no blog entries for a week or so. Due to the difficulty of writing with an infant in the home combined with a strong hormonal flux, I have stayed away from publishing my blog entries. I did write, but I chose to keep them as a draft. For now anyways. In spite of it all, I practiced yoga every morning. On my familiar mat. At my studio or at my home and I am better for it. My hormonal rush has retreated and I feel like a normal human being again.

This is yesterday's entry:

I have tried to write about other things for this blog this past week, but at the end of each blog entry, I chose not to post the entries because they felt false. I wanted to sugar coat them so that each blog entry would be sweet and palatable but in the end this wasn't me. This morning I write what feels like a combination of truth with some niceness to make it palatable:

Each morning, the world is still dark outside when I begin my yoga practice, when I sit down on my mat with the word "beloved" written at my feet. The shades are drawn up and the glow of the street lights are my visual backdrop. The world is just waking up outside. Inside my studio, the fan of the heater hums and blows it gentle heat onto my yoga mat, assuring me that the room will soon be warm. A soft flute is playing on my ipod. There are no other sounds except for the familiary of my own yogic breathing.

As I connect with the texture and depth of my ujaii breath and begin to move slowly into my warm-ups, I become aware of a familiar uneasiness. I feel as if I am stepping into a dark cellar. One where I have been before-where the monster lives. In the pit of my belly, I sense a vague nagging and self-loathing feeling welling up inside of me. I hear the voices of shame telling me that I am not good enough. In my yoga practice, as I perform the slower and longer holdings of my warm-ups, these voices get extremely loud. They tell me the familiar- my body is fat and I am ugly and and I should be thinner and prettier. They tell me that the studio I am practicing in is going to fail. It should be better. The studio is going to fail all because of me. I never do anything right. I never do enough. These ugly thoughts don't seem to go away unless I begin to practice my yoga strong and hard. Sun Salutations A's and B's with lions. Deep lunges burning my thighs coupled with handstands and wheels. Sweat needs to be dripping off my body onto my mat. I need to feel spent in every muscle in my body and then the thoughts retreat, at least for the moment.


Do these feelings of inadequacy really retreat? No of course not. They show up again and again and during my day, I manage to find ways to ignore or numb them. Sometimes it is with food, sometimes it is with more self blame. Sometimes, it is with blaming others for my uncomfortable feelings. It wasn't that long ago that I used to believe that someone was going to come and rescue me. If my saviour didn't show up then I would go into my "if only" cycle. If only my house was completely organized and clean, if only I get my body at the perfect weight, if only I got every bit of my life in perfect financial order, if only, if only, of only. Sometimes, I choose not to numb these feelings at all and ride them like a wave. The intensity eventually subsides but they do come back. They come back to say, "Here I am, I am the ugliness, I am the dark sister, the monster that resides deep inside. Now deal with me."


At some point during my childhood, I believe I learned to separate myself from emotional and physical needs. I do not think I am alone on this and I feel that society expects girls and women to put her needs second especially if it will make someone else uncomfortable. The unfortunate result of this is that I do not always recognize what I am feeling and what I need. Yoga can be challenging for me because it brings me face-to-face with my emotions-not always an easy place to be. Lying still on my yoga mat with no place to go, nothing to achieve, and no one to impress, there's nothing to stop my emotions, sensations, and feelings from coming to the surface. Sometimes this can be exhilerating and sometimes this can be frightening.

The connections between thoughts, feelings and language are formed at an early age. It is during this time that a child learns to think about right and wrong and also to feel these concepts in her body. Healthy connections between thoughts, feeling, language and the physical body are essential for a child to be able to express her thoughts and feelings out loud-and also to know which thoughts and feelings support her fully and which don't.

Our yoga mats offer us a safe place to explore our feelings. This starts on a physical level with the body. Today I stayed in a deep Warrior 1 for over ten breaths. As always, when I connect with the breath and physicality of the pose, I learn that I can stay in the pose and be fine-even when it feels uncomfortable, even when I want to bail or run away. I relearn each time that I don't have to act on every impulse, that I can be patient and that I can trust my body to tell me what it needs.

The body is the first place in which we feel emotions. Fear is embodied as a sinking sensation in the solar plexus, a stomachache, sweaty palms, or a racing heart. Anger may be accompanied by clenced fists, overall muscle tension, and a red face, or a scowl. The key to a lifetime of emotional and physical health is being able to name the emotion and, evetually, the event or thought that prompted that emotion in the first place.

The emotion needs to be validated and felt fully. It will then move through the body spontaneously once its message is heeded. Very often, once the emotion is named and vaildated, a spontaneous solution to the problem or situation will arise.

This week I went into some of my dark places. Familiar, ugly, and filled with shame. This week I practiced my yoga anyways. I feel as if the darkness has moved on and out. I understand that some of this is a cycle. I have confronted what has been building up inside of me over the past month. I have felt it, I have let it live and let it release. I feel new today. Alive, sexy, creative, and energized. Thank you yoga for letting me stay in the process, for allowing me to give attention to the shadow side of me. Thank you yoga for letting me be merciful to my dark sister.

Beloved-Days 4 and 5

This weekend was yoga teacher training. A chunk of 21 teaching hours blended together. Matthew and I usually leave this weekend feeling fulfilled yet tired to the bone. This weekend was no different. I did get my yoga practice in each morning. Although Sunday was kind of thin on the yoga but I will count the jala neti, which by the way really helped what felt like the beginning of a cold or sinus infection. Amazingly, that bit of underlying sickness is gone.

This weekend I was a yogic warrior. I was the one who painted war paint lovingly and meticulously on cheeks and eyes and lips. Stroke by stroke, each one purposeful. Each stroke a vivid reminder of who I am and what is important to me. Did I actually paint my face this weekend with the blood of berries and plants? No, of course not. But I did do something totally out character. In the middle of my yoga practice on Saturday morning, I found myself compelled to pick up the permanent black magic marker that I had noticed the day before behind the Samadhi desk.

I took this marker and with breath, introversion, concentration and meditation all seeming to happen simultaneously, I wrote the word “Beloved” across the top of my yoga mat. I felt truly freed by writing this. Before I began writing, I had no idea what I was going to put down on the mat, I only knew that something was wanting to get out and express itself. Loud.

When I practice yoga and I understand that I am the beloved and that all that I can see and know is also the beloved, I am peaceful. Yoga performed with this type of sensitivity is infinite times more beneficial that yoga practiced without. My breath awareness deepens, my connection to my “witness” is so immediate. Perhaps by swearing this union and loyalty to the beloved on my yoga mat, I can make this transition smoother to the everday. I can remember that I and all those that I love are also the beloved.

The wise proclaim that love is the only path. Only love can bring unity and remove the separation between all living beings. Only love purifies the body and mind. Love is not far away. It is only as far away as my heart. You can find it in your heart without taking a single step. Love is my only path. I am, in fact, a warrior on the path of love.

I am not inadequate in any way- Day 3

Today’s practice began at 5am. I could not sleep because I was concerned that I would over sleep. My mind was also reviewing the full day ahead which included a ribbon cutting ceremony, teaching two yoga classes, banking, grocery shopping, and 3 hours of yoga teacher training. In addition to this, my babysitting was not lined up for the weekend. This is a very big deal for me and creates a tremendous amount of anxiety. On yoga teacher training weekends, Matthew and I work 21 hours in addition to the 5 hours I am all ready scheduled to teach .

I started my morning tripping through a dark house at 5 am, praying that I would not wake Sadie, who was sleeping in our living room until she learns how to sleep through the night. I got to the yoga room without waking Sadie, without falling over random objects such as books and shoes, left out of place in the dark. I flipped on too bright lights because the candles were not where they were supposed to be. I propped myself down on the yoga mat and like my fat white cat (whom I adore), I sprawled myself on my back.

I felt stiff. I felt shackled to tiredness. I did a totally organic practice with a minimal of holding and movement. I was a puddle on the floor. As I observed my body, it felt like someone elses. No that was not true, it felt like mine. Tired and resistant. This morning, I wanted my body to be somebody else’s body.

An hour passed. In all of the forward folds, I went in and out of consciousness and eventually ended the practice with my face planted down on my mat. The portable heat was cranking and the warmth was undeniably seductive. My eyelids were weighted and I think I may have drooled on the yoga mat more than once. So.... I called this morning’s practice a "yin" practice and I am deeming it “enough.”

I am not inadequate in any way because I practiced gently this morning. I am not inadequate in any way because I practiced gently this morning. Now, I only have to believe this.

Good Morning.

Bell of Mindfulness

Last night, my wise teacher said to me, “I have an idea for you. I have a strategy to help you become as mindful as possible over the next 108 days with your yoga of relationships.” My teacher, like myself, was not as concerned with my ability to actually practice the asana practice over the next 108 days. I have done that before. Maybe not an actual counting of 108 days but I have had a regular morning practice for months at a time with only a few mornings off each week. Mostly these mornings off were so that Matthew could go into work early. Or I might choose to hike instead of practice yoga for the morning knowing that I could sneak a class in later at the studio. So, in my experience, taking a morning off from yoga practice is because I know that I will get to practice later that day or it is a sacrifice that I make for others. In addition to my love and need of an actual physical practice, I only have to jump in my car and drive 5 minutes to get to my own brand new and beautiful yoga studio or, if I can’t make it to the studio, I certainly can make it to the small yet sweet yoga room in my house. Combine my strong need for physicality in my body plus the availability of accessible yoga space with and an ability to wake up early, before the rest of my clan and I feel strongly I should succeed. My morning yoga ritual is this: light some nag champa, roll out my mat, plug in my ipod and I am ready to go. So with the physical part of the 108 days of yoga being the part with ease, it is the yoga of relationship that scares me.

It was either Eleanor Roosevelt or my mother who said, “Do one thing a day that scares you.” For me-being present and being mindful with myself and others is where I fear I shall fail. I know there should be no judgement here. This is yoga. But still.

My teacher says that I should set a bell to ring through out the day. This is a Buddhist practice. Each time the bell rings-this is a message- for me- to slow down and breathe and allow myself to experience the moment, the here and now. Whether I am folding laundry, cooking, driving kids around, talking on my phone or changing a diaper, I can take a deep breath and slow down. Learn to accept the moment, than I can let go and surrender and allow myself to feel “santosha” the yogic word for contentment.

If I pay attention, mundane occurances seem to happen with some sort of cosmic order beyond my understanding. Last night, my teacher tells me to create a "bell of mindfulness," and this morning I was awakened by a strange beeping sound. In my semi-awakened state, I asked myself, “Is this my mindfulness bell?” If it is, it is so annoying. Where is it coming from? It is only 4am. This is a mean bell for going off at such an early time. I located the beeping sound, which had been going off every minute for at least 10 minutes, and found that it belonged to a dying cell phone deep in the heart of my house. Pitch black, early in the morning, on the first day of my 108 day practice, I felt a sense of despair and pity for myself wallow up big inside me. I had only been asleep for 3 hours. I had nursed Sadie at 1am and had difficulty falling back asleep. The fat cat was hungry and her bowl was empty. Why was I the only one who heard the dying cell phone? Why do I have to feed the fat cat every morning?

I heard my teacher’s voice, “Take a deep breath Anne, maybe this is a sign. Start your mindfulness practice right now. Take a deep breath and begin right now.”

My practice was wonderful this morning. I was joined by Jude, Nikki and Michelle. We started out slow with some gentle udianna bahnda and kumbaka. This morning was the first time since Sadie has been born that I felt my familiar uddiana in my body. I haven’t been able to feel the seal inside and I have been ever patient waiting for it to reemerge. Eventually we moved into downward dogs on the wall and handstand. I was surprised how light handstand felt this morning. I am always pleasantly surprised when handstand feels light.

The biggest gift in my morning practice was shoulderstand. (Honestly, I think Headstand is so much more delightful than shoulderstand.) I do not love shoulderstand. I do not look forward to it and, if I am truthful, I only practice it when I am asked to or confronted with the fact that I have not done a shoulderstand in a long time, like maybe a shoulderstandfree month has passed me by.

This morning –shoulderstand was different. This morning, full shoulderstand felt just as it should. It felt light and open. I felt grounded and tall. I felt perfectly aligned. I was surprised and full of awe. Maybe shoulderstand had so much ease today because I went up into it from bridge. Maybe it was because of the re-emergence of my uddiana and light handstands. Maybe it was because of the beeping of the dying cell phone? Whatever the reason, I am thankful for the ease in a posture that I have preconceived ideas about struggle and difficulty. Maybe my built up fear about my ability to handle mindfulness with relationships and my world around me is just that- built up. A castle built up into the air with no earth to ground it.

Circle In The Sand-Preparing For The 108 Days Ahead.

October 9, 2007

Now, more than ever, I am drawn to practicing yoga. Ironically, now, more than ever, is the most challenging time for me to practice yoga. Maybe this is because of my own talent of taking on too many things at once or maybe this is because of things that I have no control over. As a yogi, I realize the value in letting go of blame and to be truthful. At this point in my life, at 41, there are more obstacles in the way of me carving out time for a daily yoga practice than ever before. The truth is that this is a problem. A problem for myself and a problem for those that rely on me, that love me, that need me to be present, kind and caring. I know I need a change. I have known for a while that I need a change. I need a large quantity of the purist quality yoga shot up in my arm. Piercing my skin, running through my starving veins and permeating into every cell of my body. Only then will I be able to breathe.

This is not the first time I have felt this way. This has happened before. There are many times when I have let life get chaotic and spiral way out of control until all of my essential structure gets pounded down by the raging waves of the ocean. I become tired. My yoga practice gets soft. My ability to take care of myself through meditation, writing, healthy eating, and thoughtful communication becomes almost non-existent. I begin to self destruct. I begin to feel inadequate and see only the inadequacies in those that I love and the world around me. I do an excellent job of combining self-abuse with self-neglect and then I fall apart. Am I there right now? At my self-destructive place? No, not even close. Thank God. But I am on my way. I could go there. In a moment, if I let it. The conditions are right for the eventual spiraling down. I feel the familiarity. Fortunately, I have a strong foundation of yoga in my life right now and because of this foundation-I can hear the voices underground. I can hear what I could not hear before I practiced yoga. I can hear the wise voice buried deep inside speaking to me-telling me that I have the tools to change this. I listen.

In the past, when I start to feel this familiar pull into the spiral of self-loathing and continuous overwhelment, I usually attend a yoga workshop. I go away. I go away by myself, most likely to Kripalu, and practice intensely for one week. Nobody to take care of but me. The week feels like a couple of hours. In the car on the way home, I feel changed. I smile at the people taking my tickets at the tolls on the Mass Pike. I crank up Krishna Das and chant at my loudest right until I pull into my driveway. I empty my mass of dirty yoga clothes dutifully into my washer. I have arrived back into my beloved home surrounded by my dear ones. I come back to my same life feeling recharged and that some pretty good yoga that has taken “root” inside my body. I feel the “bhava” or love of living my life. I not only see the glass as ½ full but I feel it and drink it. Sometimes I get drunk on it. I practice embracing the “fullness” of my life. These yoga retreats can usually get me through 6 months of my life. For 6 months, I can deal.

Sometime during this unseasonably warm fall, as the trees burn their fall colors into my mind and surrender to their own natural rhythm, as the afternoon sun beats down on pavement, as I fill my environmentally correct shopping bag with native squash and overripe tomatoes, I realize that I am barely “dealing” with my needs. I am not connected with my own rhythms, with the rhythms of this earth and the sacredness of the everyday. Fall is the time where I usually feel the most alive and vulnerable. Instead I am thick dust stuck to the forgotten and there is no Kripalu to rescue me this time around. There is no place for me to flee to- I have way too much going on: new studio, Matthew’s new business and a 7 month old baby who is obviously thriving attached to my breast at every chance she gets.

It occurs to me in obvious ways- I need to change. This time I cannot go away to do this. I need to revitalize myself and it occurs to me that I can. I must do this now and I do not need to leave my life to get the self-care that I am so low on. It occurs to me that it’s about time I find the nutrients in my own dirt. Be organic in my own practice and buy local. I can get what I need by going no further than my own “PVC free” luscious yoga mat.

So, I choose to practice yoga for 108 days. 108 is an auspicious number. A lifetime of reasons-none of which I pretend to understand rationally. But intuitively I understand the 108 beads stranded by hand on the sandalwood mala. 108 beads to touch, one by one, under my fingers. Each bead , a sweet inhale and exhale, a connection to life force, to prana, to being in the moment. I commit to practicing for 108 days in a row-not just the asanas but yoga in every way. I am drawn to the possibility of practicing yoga in every aspect of my life. The biggies are obvious: my relationship with myself, with my loved ones, and my surroundings. The subtleties are not so. I want to slow down. I want to slow down. That is the most profound and most challenging gift I can give myself. I want to create intention in everything that I do. I want to acknowledge the sacredness of the everyday, the mundane, the beautiful and the ugly that is right in front of me. There is no other way out. There is no one out there who is going to come in and rescue me. Not Matthew, my children, my therapist, my mother, my students, my teachers, or my friends. I have to do this myself. I have to draw my own circle in the sand.

With this said- to my family, my loved ones, my friends, and those that support me- I am drawing my circle in the sand. The circle is my boundary so that I can have the space and time to practice on my mat each morning at 6 am. The need for the boundary is essential to my success of completing a 108 day practice. What I need to feel full and whole becomes increasingly clear. I need to make the time, no matter what, to connect with what really matters to me. Being grateful, being in my breath, being in my body, being in nature, being creative, being fully alive. These are all the things I need but I don’t always know it. Instead I think I need a clean house, a chocolate chip cookie, a visit to my email, a new pair of shoes. None of these things ultimately work in the long run. I have learned that only I can change this. Only I can create meaning and intention in my life. There is no other way out. I have to draw my own circle in the sand.

So here I am….standing with arms open. I am scared and hopeful at the same time. I am at the threshold of 108 days. The completion of this 108 day yoga practice will bring me to Saturday, January 26, 2008. A new year. The middle of winter. A time where introspection and turning inward aligns with the winter season. I look forward to this process of meeting the yoga mat at 6 am, no matter what, every morning. Seven days per week. I also look forward to blogging it, to be open to what expresses itself, what traces of the practice will reveal itself in the written word. I also welcome your responses as well. I feel a bit strange about putting this out there so publicly but at the same time, I am a yoga teacher committed to teaching from my own direct experience and I seek to learn from others who are out there being real, authentic, honest and open about their connection to healing and what is sacred.

108 days of yoga stretch out before me. A path to take and where it will lead me-I do not know, nor do I care. It is the process I seek; the commitment, the discipline, the mindfulness, the love, the sweetness, the surrender. Each journey begins with one step, so they say.