no longer cozy

I've been getting a little too cozy in my life, I have to admit. I work relatively few hours, even by the more civilized standards of countries like France and Sweden. I have all the food and shelter and clothing and organic bath products that I need. People show up for my birthday party. I make people happy just by walking in the room with my dog, although it doesn't work so well when I'm alone.

I keep reading Pema Chodron, and she keeps saying run into the fear, get comfortable with the grief, know your nervous habits. Basically, make friends with yourself, not just the happy, day-at-the-park self eating veggie burgers and basking in a warm Saturday afternoon. Those moments happen, of course, but if all moments are those types, I'm missing out on all my hidden nooks and dusty corners. I actually have been wanting a little angst, and of course, I haven't had to wait long.

This isn't a dating blog. I'm not going to write about dating. Except that actually I am. Sorry. I haven't been in a romantic relationship for the better part of a decade. Yes, you read it right. The smaller side of the better part of a decade, but just that I'm using the word "decade" to describe my lack of love life is saying something.

I've been asked why a few times in the last couple of weeks. My therapist asked, of course, and so has a man that I've been on a couple dates with. One answer is that I have been magnificently successful at avoiding certain types of pain. But Pema says run toward what you fear. Get to know your neuroses. Make friends with your discomfort. Maitri. Know that you are not alone. What better way than to face what I have been avoiding? Thanks, Pema. Thanks, Universe.

I often find myself doing one of two things. I spend a lot of time either fantasizing about the future or  dreading the fact that I've already ruined my chances with someone I'm sort of into. (Maybe a little more than sort of.) I've already fucked it all up. I'm living, in other words, in what isn't happening.

What is happening is kind of interesting. I can see myself, for the first time, doing this, and I know now that it's not real. What is real are all of the emotions that I get to experience. Fear. Dread. Excitement. Curiousity. Nervousness. A little wariness. They're really, really interesting, and I get to just sit in my body and feel them. They're not killing me, y'all. Seriously. It's okay. I feel them AND I get asked out again. Weird.

And I get to play around with living in the unknown. Groundlessness. I don't know what will happen. I can experience this knowing that no matter what I think or fear or fantasize about, life is actually happening right now. Life is the uncertainity, the not knowing. The fantasies and the fears are still around, but they've lost a little of their edge. They're kind of cute. They're not unique to me. It's just part of being human and looking for ground. It's part of hope, which I'm learning to abandon.

So the coziness of the last several weeks didn't last long. Good. The business start-up is over, and I need some more excitement in my life. Until I find my silent, angel investor and start again, maybe I can just enjoy this for a little while and not freak out too much about all the different ways it can go wrong. It's not wrong yet, and I'm actually having a little fun.

Plus, as you all know, more pain means more blog entries. You'll be hearing from me.

abandon hope!

If you still haven't read or listened to Pema Chodron, go right now and order something or reserve it at the library or visit your local independent bookstore. Do what you have to do. Everyone should be reading and listening to this woman.

I was sitting in the bathtub this morning with her book, When Things Fall Apart. She's really into getting friendly with being uncomfortable, with being fearful, nervous, angry, agitated, whatever it is. It was in yoga that I first learned to be uncomfortable in my body. I went to these Iyengar classes at the Buddhist Center in Mexico City. I won't go into a lot of detail right here, but is was probably the most collapsed, defeated time of my life. I was lost. I had no bearing. Looking back, I realize that was the best possible state for me to be in, but at the time it just felt overwhelmingly difficult and hopeless.

The teacher was really strict and direct, but in an amused, slightly smiling way. She was always pushing us to be even more uncomfortable than we already were. It was fun for me, for whatever masochistic reason, and I realized in her class that I could be very uncomfortable in my body without fidgeting or running away. I had never done that before. Really, never. Then what began to happen, again and again, is that she would put us in savasana, and I would also feel enormous amounts of emotional pain. She would chant "Om mani padme hum" in this incredibly strong, ethereal voice. I was just there, still, with tears and snot running down my face. For the first time ever, I just felt it, whatever it was, and it was revolutionary in my life.

So I have learned a little about being present and awake in my discomfort. But I read something different this morning, something that takes it even one step further. Pema Chodron instructs us to "abandon hope." She says that hope and fear are two sides of the same coin, that hope is yet another way of wanting things to be different. We are going to feel lots of pain and groundlessness and insecurity. We are even going to die. She says we have to give up hope that it will ever be any different. The word in Tibetan is ye tang che. Absolutely exhausted. Complete surrender. That is the beginning.

I just read it and laughed. Of course. It's hopeless, y'all. We're on a speedboat that is definitely going to sink. We might as well get used to the idea. Pema says don't practice because you're looking for ground or for security or for a safe haven. The practice is realizing that none of that exists.

It's my birthday today. More evidence that indeed the speedboat is sinking. It's also Barack Obama's birthday, and I'm a little worried that it's not fashionable to say this anymore, but I still love Barack Obama. He provided hope in a political landscape that felt completely hopeless. So there's some dissonance there. Maybe we have to have a little hope to keep making progress. If I hadn't hoped that the studio would work, I never would have built it. If I hadn't hoped that Obama would be our president, I never would have campaigned for him, which I loved doing, and because so many of us did it, he won.

Maybe Pema will address that apparent contradiction. I'm not sure I want to be so Buddhist that I never do anything. But in my personal life, I'm becoming a little friendlier with my edginess all the time. I still have addictions, things that I grasp and cling and turn to for solace. One is shopping for clothes. I'm going to do that today. But I'm going to do it knowing that it won't help. I'm still nearer to my death than I ever have been before. I'm still nervous that my business might fail, scared that I will end up old and alone and broke, uncertain about the future of my relationships and concerned about what people think of me. It's a good thing. I need things to practice with. Enlightenment might end up being kind of boring.

if you think you're enlightened...

Here's why blogging can be so difficult: being honest is hard. Right now all I want to do it hit my cat because he won't quit howling and jumping on the computer. It's been a long night. Lots of little irritating shit keeps happening. All my computers, both at home and the studio are going at 1995 speeds. Even though there was a lot of traffic through the studio today, we didn't come close to sales goals. Then there's the pesky cat, and a conversation with someone that made me realize that I'm angrier than I thought at an important person in my life. I realize that if you read this blog at all, you're well aware that I'm not perfect, but it's still hard to admit publicly, even if I've done it a bunch of times before. I really care what you think. Yes, you.

I didn't hit the cat. I did hit the chair near the cat, which scared him away for a few blissfully quiet seconds, but he came right back. I'm sure all he wanted was food and love, but shooing him away felt like the solution to the immediate problem, which was an annoying cat. I was in a hurry. He could wait.

So as all of this was happening, I was typing away that my amazing job as a small business owner consists mostly of being nice to people, data entry and trips to Ikea. And here's the corollary to the "being honest is hard" problem with blogging: being surface-y is boring. What's really happening is I want to kill my cat for being a cat, and I'm pounding away at the keyboard thinking that will somehow make the computer go faster. I feel knotted and weird and angry. I'd rather write about my awesome yoga practice and how great the business is going. But that is definitely not what is happening for me right this second.

There is a Buddhist saying that if you think you're enlightened, look at how you behave in relationships. To be honest, I don't know if I'm behaving well or not. Definitely not doing that great with George, the cat. I do know that there are hurt feelings and confusion and anger in a couple of my human relationships, some of which I am probably responsible for.

Part of what happened tonight was that I looked at teacher stats, and there are a handful of teachers that I have been worried about, and the stats confirm my fears. They're not retaining students. Originally, part of the concept of the Collective was that the teachers would be totally autonomous and teach however they wanted. Looking at it squarely, I think that was my way of ducking the fact that at a certain point I need to offer unsolicited feedback, which I hate and dread. In the early stages of the business, I was constantly scrambling and trying new things to keep the studio afloat, so I would just take teachers off the schedule when their classes weren't doing well. I didn't offer feedback or give them a chance to improve. There are lots of problems with that. What I know now that I didn't understand then is that the primary reason a class is successful is that the same teacher has been teaching it for a long time. That's just been my experience. So I haven't fired a teacher in a long, long time. I keep them around, but I don't say anything either, even when there are simple, clear things I see that they could do to be more effective. I want to be liked too much, so I actively avoid conflict and confrontation. This particular pattern is as old as I am. Changing it won't be easy.

One of the problems with saying nothing is that I get resentful because they don't understand something that I haven't told them yet, and the relationship suffers anyway. Then I go home and want to kill my cat.

(Note credit where due. There's a Bob Dylan line that I'm sort of poaching: "You keep expecting me to remember something you forgot to say." That's what I'm doing. Like some crazy woman Bob Dylan slept with for awhile.)

There has to be a better way. My job is more than data entry and trips to Ikea. There's toilet cleaning and screwing together the Ikea crap I buy. And I have to do a certain amount of work to make sure the quality of instruction at the studio is high, which will mean having a few difficult conversations.

 I haven't opened the Bhagavad Gita since the last time I blogged, which was like a million years ago. (I guess I'm not as spiritual as I was in early July.) But as Krishna tells Arjuna, we have to show up and do what we're supposed to do. That's yoga. So here's my plan: I'm going to take at least one class from every teacher on the schedule and offer everyone some feedback as well as a look at their stats. Most of what I have to say is actually really positive, so a lot of the conversations will be fun.

As far as my other relationships, all I can say is I don't feel particularly enlightened when I'm alone, but in certain difficult relationships, I can feel particularly un-enlightened. The Buddhists, as usual, have it right. I usually feel like most of us are just bumbling along doing the best we can, but mostly thinking of ourselves and mostly blind to how all of our old habits and fears are directing us. That's me, anyway. As I get older and work at it, I get slightly more skilled at bumbling with some direction. I know better what I want now, and I'm more apt to vocalize it than I used to be. I guess the modern psych term for that is boundaries. I've set some boundaries in my personal life that not everyone involved is comfortable with. I think I'm offering enough, but it's less than what they're used to.

But at least I got clear and said it. At work, it's time to do a better job of getting clear about what the studio and its students need and vocalizing that to my teachers. I've done it, however ungracefully, in my personal life, in really weighty, important relationships, so I should be able to do it here. One would think.

After that, I will clean the toilet. Or maybe before. I'm sure it needs it.

fear

I'm on vacation, and for whatever reason, I decided to use my time away from work to go around looking for ghosts. Ghost towns, actually, but it seems like I what I found is my own ghost, irritated without cause, unable to sit still for any period of time. I have an antsy, agitated ghost living in my brain, and it may be causing more neurosis than I realized.

I also seem to have stumbled upon a haunted hotel, where I booked a room for the night. I'm in the lobby now, and I think the night clerk has just left for the evening. The lobby is one of the supposedly haunted spots, where another desk clerk, long ago, was killed after hitting on the wrong woman. I am in room 205, right next to the elevator that they say goes up and down with no passengers all night. Room 212, down the hall, is said to be haunted by a couple who died there. Buddy refuses to walk to that end of the hall. I tried to drag him, but he leaned back on his haunches and let me tug hard at his leash. He just won't do it.

Am I scared? Yes, a little creeped out, I have to admit. It's an old hotel, very quiet, and I am very alone.

I've been scared a few times on this trip. The first ghost town I found was beautiful. Just off the road, shuttered up, unmolested by historians, not made into a state park, completely overgrown. The town, Chinese Camp, still has a population of 150, and there are houses nearby that are occupied. Run down, with too many old cars and junk in the yard, but occupied.

Main Street, where the ruins are, was quiet. It was just me and the dog peaking in between boards while trying to be mindful of "Posted. NO Trespassing" signs. I heard every creak, every animal scurrying, every branch swaying, every noise, especially the ones I couldn't quite identify. It was quiet though. Too quiet, too empty, too still for noon just off a main highway into a National Park the day after the Fourth. And then someone started yelling. Incoherently. All I could understand was "fuck" and "Goddamn." Whoever it was was angry and crazy and no one was yelling back, so he was either yelling at me or he was yelling at himself. Either way, I was getting the fuck out of there.

I got back in the car and drove through Yosemite. All of the drives this whole trip have been way longer than I anticipated. All the good ghost towns are on long, winding mountain roads off a long, winding mountain highways. Ten miles takes many songs on the iPod, a whole chapter of This American Life, and meanwhile it's just me. Me and the dog and the road and my thoughts and this rising, low-key irritation with life.

The next day, I went looking for Old Mammoth City, which is just outside the recreation mecca of Mammoth Lakes. I found the road, but it was closed for whatever reason, so I parked the car and started walking. My Ghost Town book said that the ruins were behind some thickets, off in the pines, so I took the dog and headed off the road a bit, looking for a way through the brush. We walked around for awhile, and then I looked down. We had been walking for several minutes through lots and lots of  plants with three jagged leaves. Poison oak. My dog, with his low belly and thick fur. Me, with my ankle socks and shorts. We were fucked.

Back to the road where I saw the sign: "Point of Historical Interest. Mammoth City." The State of California says it's so. It must be, even though there's nothing but the marker and a few logs from the foundation of an old cabin. I knew there was more. I just had to walk south a bit. I found a path, and I started down it, but I stopped.

Bears. I'm in bear country. Everywhere I go, there are signs, "Don't feed our bears." My pulse rose and I felt sort of clammy. Did I want to be some bear's lunch? And Buddy, his afternoon snack? I thought about it for a minute. I really wanted to see those ruins. I'd come a long way. But there was no one, nothing around. One bicyclist had come tearing down the road in the whole hour that I had been walking. That was it. I knew that eventually someone would find my car parked on the highway, and they would start piecing it all together. Again, I got the fuck out of there.

Later that day, I asked a local about poison oak. "There's no poison oak around here. Too damn cold." Ok. What about bears? Should I be worried? "They don't care a thing about you. Just yell. They'll walk away. They don't want you. Not if you don't have any food." I didn't have any food. Other than me and the dog.

Hmmm. I had a long drive ahead of me, and when I wasn't getting irritated by myself and my lateness (late for what?) or my dog who was restless and squirming and insistent on being in my lap, I was thinking about fear. I've had some experiences with fear lately. Real fear. I was very, very scared that I had cancer. I wrote about that here. I was really sure that I was almost certainly going to die. Turns out, half the women I know have had the same tests, the same procedure, the same thing exactly. It's really, really common. No one dies, or statistically very, very few die. It's really not that big of a big deal.

I never really knew this before now, but what I'm learning is not to believe anything that I tell myself when I'm scared. I will always eventually end up believing, and then living in, the absolute worst case scenario. When I thought I was going to be eaten by a bear, when I thought I was going to be hospitalized because of an internal poison oak infestation (brought on by drinking water from a bottle I had touched after touching my dog, who clearly had lethal poison oak oil all over his fur), when I was sure I was going to die or -- very best case scenario -- get extremely sick and debilitated by cervical cancer, I was absolutely unable to see any of the infinite other possibilities that could occur. There are so many ways that life can go. Infinitely many ways, but in fear, I only see one, and because of that, I think I know what's going to happen. Sometimes I even call it intuition. It's not intuition. It's narrow, fear-based thinking.

It is biological. I mean, when we were cave women or whatever, I'm sure it served us really well to think about, and then to prepare for, the worst things that could happen, the biggest threats. But now, it's not so useful. It keeps me blind. I miss opportunities. It keeps me from doing things that I really want to do.

So I'm still in the lobby of this creepy hotel, but I feel less scared. It's me that I'm scared of.

As it turns out, I happened to bring along a new Pema Chodron talk I downloaded about fear. She speaks about "ubiquitous nervousness." She says we are always, constantly, in low grade fear. It is so constant that we don't even notice it. It's me getting irritated at the dog. It's me flipping through songs after two notes, sometimes before even the first chord. "Next. Next. Next. Next." It's me, unsatisfied, in a hurry, busy. Even on vacation, I'm busy. Even on vacation I'm late. I traveled two days to get to Bodie, which many people say is the best ghost town in the whole country. I arrive at the gate at 5:50, and the park closes at 6:00. Late. Again. I am always five or ten minutes late everywhere I go. Ask my chiropractor. Ask my friends. The reason is that I'm terrified of having to wait for you. Waiting means sitting. By myself. With my thoughts and nothing to do. Emptiness. Vast emptiness and boredom and ME, ME, ME. There's too much unchartered territory. I'm not prepared to show up. I'm not ready. I'm scared.

It's still spooky here in the lobby. Every time the door opens, I jump. A few couples have come back to the hotel from dinner or drinks or whatever. They smile at me and go right to their rooms. The desk clerk is still gone. It's just me. Me and my dog, who's antsy again. And there's the quiet and the old photos and the mismatched antiques.

I'll take these ghosts, and the horror movie distraction of being in a haunted hotel, over my personal ghosts anytime. My ghosts are crazier, harder to identify, more persistent, more pervasive. I understand now why most people are paired away, insistent on being in relationships. I've been very successful avoiding that because I like to drive, if you know what I mean. I am not a negotiator. I don't know how to compromise. I go my way, so being single has always suited me. I'm not so sure anymore. Here's what's true of cancer, ghosts, screaming violent crazy people, bears, what's true of all my fears: I face them alone. It's just me. And God knows I have a hard time with that.

I need to take the dog out for a last pee before bed. We're going out on a dark street in a town I don't know. But the street is so much less scary than the hotel. And the hotel is so much less scary than me alone with my self. I hope the elevator ghost rests tonight. I'm going to need to sleep.

writing (or not)

Success is not what it seems.

Think about getting a yoga pose. I mean really getting it. Getting it so that (barring unusual circumstances like injury and illness) you do the pose 100% of the time that you try. When I started doing yoga, I couldn't get into crow. I just wasn't strong enough to support my weight on my arms. I used to practice it at home. I would practice and fall, practice and fall, practice and fall. I'm glad no one was watching. The first time I got both feet off the floor, I was thrilled. It was so exciting. But it took a long time after that to be able to do it consistently. Now I can always do crow, but I didn't notice the shift from sometimes (gleefully) getting into the pose to always bringing my feet off the ground with no fuss and no excitement and certainly no hopping. The first time is exciting, but really getting it isn't. It just happens.

Success is that way. The first few times we had freakishly good days or large classes, I was so excited. Now we have good days and large classes all the time, but I'm still the same person. Nothing's changed. It didn't make me happier in a lasting way, and I didn't notice the day that it all changed. (Some of you might wonder if it was the day the Groupon ran. Although our classes got really big then, at this point that promotion has little to do with the financial growth of the business. That might change as the Groupon people convert to regular, paying customers.)

So let's not get too attached to success. That's a reminder to ME, because I do. I think being happy and secure rests on whether the business is successful and profitable and supporting me and writing checks to teachers that actually mean something. I'm not going to lie. It helps. But then other things crop up to make me insecure. Security is an inside job.

Sloka 53, Chapter Two of the Gita is: "When your mind, which has been tossed all about by conflicting opinions, becomes still and centered in equilibrium, then you experience Yoga."

It's the same thing I've been talking about for months in this blog, but in different contexts. Judith Lasater's "May you be like the Lotus Flower, at home in the muddy waters." Pema Chodron's focus on equanimity. It's not about the peak experiences, nor is it about the God-awful ones. It's about how we navigate. Getting a yoga pose requires focus and attention and discipline, and we need those qualities in our life, so they're worth pursuing. But for me, looking back on it, it's the process that's useful. Actually being able to do crow pose is almost completely useless in my life. If I weren't a yoga teacher, it would serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

I was going to write about writing. As often happens, I got side tracked.

Writing will, no doubt, be like that too. I just keep writing and it will all fall into place. I don't need to worry that the book isn't written (or even started) or that I haven't kept up with the blog as well as I would like. I'm still writing. It's a process. The blog continues to be fun. I can sit down to write about one thing, and end up somewhere else entirely. No one has ever complained. Eventually, I want to add some structure to my writing. I do have goals around it, but I don't need to worry too much about it.

I just have to keep doing it. Like trying to get crow pose. Alone, falling, imperfect. One day I'll look back and realize that at some point along the way, I got it. I won't be thrilled or excited or filled with bliss. But I will smile. Because the process was so enjoyable.

Duty

The last blog entry I wrote never got published. I wrote about being very, very tired. It was kind of whiny, maybe, and by the time I made it into the studio to upload it, while still tired, I didn’t feel much like whining to the world about it. Now, readers, you'll be happy to know, I have internet, so I'll just post. No thinking or second guessing. You'll read every last whine.

I’m tired because things are going well. The studio is packed, which is great. I’ve also been teaching a lot. I took on three regular classes and lately I've been subbing at least one class everyday. There was the extra administrative work associated with the Groupon promotion. I really couldn’t take a day off. Sometimes it was fun, but sometimes, I just didn’t want to do it. At times while teaching, I felt like a machine, saying the same things over and over. It almost began to feel rote. I also said the same things over and over to our new Groupon customers. "Bring your Groupon. Mat rental is $1. See you in class!" My communications became a series of cut-and-paste operations. I was over-worked.

I taught Saturday morning, but then took the rest of the day and Sunday totally off. I didn’t go in at all. I hung out with friends who were in town from Texas. I went out dancing. I went sailing all around the Bay. It was great.

Of course, some balls got dropped. I didn’t go in to do a reception shift for a teacher who needs the help. I didn’t return phone calls or emails.

Monday came around, as it always does, and I had an emergency sub request from a teacher during the exact time I had another obligation, unrelated to the studio, that I needed to show up for. I sent out an email requesting a sub, but there was no one available.

It was a tough decision. What do I show up for?

I started reading the Bhagavad Gita. It’s the story of Arjuna, who was to fight a righteous war against his cousins. He is clearly in the right, and Krishna is his charioteer, guiding him through the war.

The translation that I am reading makes clear the metaphor that the war is the battle between good and evil, Krishna is our inner-consciousness, or Atman. He is our teacher.

Before the battle, Arjuna goes to the front lines to see who he is fighting. Among those on the other side are his teachers, cousins, friends and grandparents. He loses heart. He doesn't feel he can fight these people; they are his family. He rationalizes leaving the battles, surrendering before it begins, and Krishna tells him he need not grieve because Self is eternal. Dying is like changing clothes: we shed an old, worn out body for a new one. The Self does not die. So kill away, Arjuna!

Basically, what it boils down to is that Arjuna has to fight the war because it is his God-given Duty. While Arjuna is whining, Krishna says: “Yield not to weakness. It does not suit you. Shake off this petty faint heartedness. Stand up, Scorcher of foes, wake up!”

God, how often have I wanted to tell that to other people?

Arjuna replies later, “I am weighted down with weak mindedness; I am confused and cannot understand my duty. I beg of you to say for sure what is right for me to do. I am your disciple. Please teach me, for I have taken refuge in you.”

Later in the Gita, Krishna talks about doing one’s own duty and not anyone else’s. To paraphrase, it is better to do your duty poorly than someone else’s perfectly. All of this has to do with karma and escaping the wheel of death and rebirth, but we'll save that for some other time. 

Ultimately, the decision I made was to cancel the class and keep my other commitment, mostly because it was my commitment to keep. My duty to the studio was to try to find a sub for the class, which I did. My duty is not to drop everything and cover someone else's class. It's taken me a long time to realize that.

Nothing is worse for business, in my opinion, that not having a class when we say we're having class, but as Krishna would say, “Seeing the same in pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, in battle-just for the sake of the battle-then you will be sinless.”

That’s the path of Karma Yoga. It doesn’t matter whether what I do is good for business or bad for business. Am I doing the right thing, am I doing what I am called to do? Krishna is consciousness. Am I seeking the guidance of “Krishna,” or am I seeking the guidance of other, sensory things, like pleasure and success?

Eventually, at the last minute, someone came through to cover for me, and I was able to teach the yoga class. As I write this though, I wish that I hadn’t even asked. I wish I had just shown up for what I was supposed to show up for and let everything fall out as it will, and that's how I'll do it from now on. I’m not killing my grandfather here. The worst that can happen is a few people don’t get their yoga class.

I like the Bhagavad Gita. I like the story of the war between good and evil. I like the emphasis on showing up for life and pushing through fear and doubt and doing it solely for the sake of doing it, not for the rewards of victory or to avoid the discomforts of loss. It’s about being engrossed in life, and constantly asking to be guided to do the right thing.

So I’m going to try to show up. For all things, not just the yoga studio. That is the hard part, because for the last 18 months, my life's primary purpose has been to get the studio going and successful. I've been very outcome-motivated, which actually may have been appropriate and necessary for the beginning of the business. But that's not all there is. Showing up for myself and getting rest and time off is part of what I’m supposed to be doing. Sometimes time off feels like not showing up. Occassionally it is, but more often for me, it's a much needed break that leaves me with the energy to keep showing up later.

Arjuna was able to ask Krishna point blank for guidance. We sort of have to ask and then wait and reflect and hope that we're doing the right thing. There is also the promise in yoga of acting decisively because our vision is clear. We know what's right. It's obvious. I'm not there yet, but I think I'm getting better.

In the meantime, I am sure enjoying my internet right here at my easy chair, and the fact that I will publish this right now. Even if it sucks.

I heart yoga part 2

Blog, oh blog, I have missed you. I've had that writer's block that I get when I'm content. I write best about drama and pain, so when there's none of that, I just eat dinner and go to bed. But I'm back, content and writing anyway.

I was reading the current issue of Yoga Journal today,  and so much of what I read smacked of self-satisfaction and the joy of being right. Here’s how my diet is so great. Here’s how I’m a giving, self-sacrificing karma yogi. Here’s how I meditate everyday and practice asana and gratitude and how I’m so, so happy. It’s not that fucking easy, y’all. Yoga is for real. I do not go into this holy and self-sacrificing and altruistic. If I do something that makes you happy, I don't mind, but believe me, it wasn't my first intention. I want to be happy and me first.

And I am happy. The studio is packed. I feel like I’m being of service in a real way. I often make decisions I’m content with and that lead to positive results. I planted a flower garden. I had a friend come visit me from far away, and it was just me she came to visit. I didn’t have to show her the Golden Gate Bridge or any museums and take her to Napa. She was happy just to sit in my tiny living room and eat tofu and couscous cooked in my very own kitchen with week old cauliflower.

How blessed I am.

I’ve been meaning to write for awhile about a second way that Desikachar defines yoga. He writes: “yoga is to attain what was previously unattainable…. In fact, every change is yoga.”

Wow. Really? It’s easy to notice this in our asana practice. I can do poses now that I thought I would probably never get. My body has changed profoundly. I used to daydream about owning a business and being self employed and that seemed totally unattainable. I thought I had to be rich first, and I didn’t know how I would do it. But it came.  I didn’t get rich first. I just pieced it together because I wanted it very, very badly, and it seemed like the time was right.

On a deeper level, I’m happy and content and satisfied way more often than not. There was a time when unhappy was a way of life.  I knew excitement, and I knew high and drunk, but I didn’t know how to be at ease. I was suicidal, crazy angry, victimized, and eaten up by fear most of the time. I still have my moments, as you all hear about here, but it’s just not like that anymore. The stretches of being okay get longer and the phases of freaking out become shorter. They are moments, not states of being. 

In yoga, I learned to be uncomfortable and still at the same time. I started to pay attention off the mat. I began to notice what wasn’t working. I was drawn to things that seemed likely to work better. Self-employment. Less stuff. Simpler life. Noticing people. And then slowly, slowly, the non-functional stuff has been dropping away. It didn’t happen on my timeline, and it wasn’t about effort or struggle or setting rules for myself. It was about showing up, day after day, doing the best I could, and letting it all take shape.  Some days were (and still can be) pretty shitty, but I’ve come a long way. Contentment was unattainable for me. Seriously. It’s not anymore. What happened in between is called yoga.

Have I become the annoyingly self-satisfied yoga writer? Never to worry. I wrote this last night and already today, irritating things are popping into my consciousness that I'm sure will provide some material for edgier entries. More to come...

muddy water

The studio got busy. Really busy and very suddenly. We ran the Groupon, 653 of them were sold, and all the sudden people are calling and spending money and buying yoga mats and attending class. It’s great. It’s what I’ve wanted and worked hard for since I opened the place. Even without the Groupon, we had begun making sales goals more days than not, and it looks like Square One is here to stay. I’ve sort of known that for while, but now there’s no question. The thoughts of getting a job that used to float around in the back of my head are gone. I have a job. I have health insurance and working hours and people who rely on me. I just need to start paying taxes.

So why am I not elated?

I have to admit that there is some residue in my emotional body from spending two weeks sure I was dying. That’s a little bit of an exaggeration. Two weeks that I spent full of intense fear and grief and bewilderment. There were those moments in those two weeks that I’ve written about here, when I was very, very centered in the present moment. In many ways, I felt more alive then than I ever have, even though a lot of it was really hard.

So now it’s over. I’ve been thrown back into my life and all its busy-ness and activity, but there is a part of me that is very, very tired. I don’t think it’s life as usual, but I haven’t had a moment to think about what has changed. Am I stopping to smell the flowers? Am I spending more time with loved ones? Am I returning the important calls and letting the ones that can wait wait? Have I stopped texting and driving? No, no, no, and no.

But there is a shift. I don’t want to open another studio. Not right now. I thought that’s what I would do this summer, but it doesn’t sound at all appealing. It’s so much work. I want to take a vacation. I would like to take a whole week. What would two weeks feel like? For years, I took two months every summer. Now piecing together two days feels out of reach. Why in the world would I want another yoga studio?

Judith Lasater ends her classes (or she used to, anyway) by saying, “May you be like the lotus flower, at home in the muddy water.” I think some of the seize-the-day lessons from my two weeks of worry may be lost or too subtle to recognize. What is clear to me though is that when it was happening, I was in the moment, but I was also really, really uncomfortable most of the time. I was not at home in the muddy water. I was insane with anxiety and future tripping and fear. It was difficult to even be awake, and at the same time I was having a nasty battle with insomnia.

More activity is not a long-term antidote to anxiety. I am not looking for more businesses, more jobs, more money or more commitments.  They will find me anyway, I’m sure. Right now, I want time to myself. Time to go on retreat, time for vacation, time to take walks and naps and time to chill out at home and write my blog.

Thank you, Life, for giving me a successful business. That’s what I said I wanted and here it is. Help me just to be okay with that, to acclimate to that, to not need to have the biggest, best yoga empire in the whole world. Let me just stop here for awhile and get my bearings.

May I be like the lotus flower, at home in the muddy water.

back to ambition!

Thanks to all my well wishers... Results are back, and I don't have cancer! Woohoo! I was really sure that I did and halfway convinced that I was already almost dead. Goes to show that I feel fear much more acutely than intuition. Nothing weird about that.

Yesterday we sold 653 packages of 25 classes for $25 through Groupon to brand new Square One students. That's a lot of new students. I was not even excited at all yesterday because I just kept thinking, "I have cancer. I have cancer. I have cancer." I'm excited now!

So I've got a lot of work to do. I have plans to make, and I'm feeling ambitious. Like maybe a second space? Maybe a vacation to a hot, sunny beach somewhere? Maybe a yoga training? Yay! Life!

That's all for now. I know there were a few of you out there wondering...

back to the blog

I've missed my blog. I've been writing, but to myself and to God, waiting for dust to settle.

About two weeks ago, I got a call back from the ob/gyn nurse telling me that I need to come in for more tests after a pap. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, but at the more in-depth exam, spots were found, biopsies were taken, and I got really scared.

I'm still waiting on results, and the odds are really good that it is completely treatable. It may even just be a "let's keep an eye on it" kind of thing. But it is really, really scary. I have been completely consumed by the fear and the not knowing, and I wasn't ready to write about it here. It was too much. It also took me awhile to tell the major players in my life, and I didn't want someone in my family to find out by reading the blog. But now I can write, which I'm really happy about.

I think everyday of this little picture I cut out of a magazine once that had the Five Remembrances from Buddhism. (I just googled it and found the very image. I'm so lucky! Here it is. Thanks, Thich Nhat Hanh and plumvillage.com.)

I carried that little piece of paper around with me for years, pinning it on various refrigerators and office bulletin boards, but it's taken this experience to really get it.

I had a moment alone in my morning practice (which is really, really not a big deal. I sit for like 2 minutes and write a little. On a good day.) Anyway, I had this moment when I realized that I would die, and I felt totally supported, totally calm, totally without fear. Wow. I have, a few times while feeling young and healthy, tried to visualize my death as suggested by the Remembrances. The experience was frightening and dark and lonely, and I haven't ever been able to stay with it for more than a second. For the first time, I had a moment with death and with God that wasn't at all scary. It was like, "yeah, this is what happens. It's going to be okay."

I'm a little worried that this sounds morbid, but it's not. I'm not at all saying that I'm going to die from this, or that it's going to happen soon. That's very, very unlikely. Really.

Don't worry, the holy, peaceful feeling didn't stick. It never does. I became neurotic again. But something big has shifted. I'm going to die; you are going to die. Your mom and your children and your siblings and your best friend are all going to die. So there's nothing left but this one instant right now. This time with this person, this flower, this night sky, this scent of cut grass. This is all we've got. And it's really, really amazing. I swear, the Bay has never been more beautiful, my friends more sweet (even the ones who don't know yet), passers-by more fascinating, flowers more colorful, sun shinier, etc., etc., than it has been the last couple of weeks. As my mom, who is a survivor of both breast cancer and a brain aneurysm said this morning, "you get the moment."

Maybe that little slip of paper has been preparing me for this, whatever this is. Definitely, I had moments in the beginning when I just kept saying to myself, "I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready for this." Whatever this is, which is totally unknown, and what I'm realizing with this stuff is that knowing more doesn't make me any more sure. Every time there is new information, there are more questions. There is no certainty, and even though I really want those results, I know that it won't necessarily set my mind at ease, even if the news is "good." There may just be more questions. And it doesn't change the central fact that life is impermanent. We just don't ever know.

Here are some other, more mundane lessons I'm learning that I need to share with fellow health slackers:
1. Quit smoking. (Okay, I already did that, but if the news is bad, it's certain that my 15 years smoking were not helping the situation any.)
2. Get your paps as recommended by your doctor. Don't blow it off.
3. Keep your health insurance, even if you're healthy, broke and self-employed. Don't worry. I kept mine. I won't have to sell the farm.

Ok, that's it. I'm back to the blog, so you'll be getting updates.

doubt

Managing people is an oxymoron. Or at least that’s how it seems to me right now. People do what they want. I’ve been lucky; 99% of the time what I want and what the people I supervise want are close enough that I don’t have to do anything drastic. Like say no.

Occasionally, teachers and receptionists (God forbid) have higher priorities than the well being of my little yoga studio.  They have families and bodies that sometimes get sick and need attention. Obviously. And then there are situations that are a little more ambiguous, and it feels to me like the needs of the studio aren’t getting met in some way and they should be. By someone other than me.  In these cases, I view it as my responsibility as a manager to draw a line, to say no, to be clear, to set rules.

And I find this incredibly, incredibly uncomfortable. I am filled with doubt no matter what I do. If I say yes when I kinda want to say no, I feel weak and ever so slightly resentful. If I say no, I feel like an unyielding bitch that everyone hates working for. I’m supposed to be flexible, right? I’m supposed to go with the flow. On the other hand, my job is to keep the place afloat and sometimes that means drawing lines and having personal boundaries around time.

A lot of what this boils down to is being unsure of myself. Desikachar writes: “We often determine we have seen a situation ‘correctly’ and act according to that perception. In reality, however, we have deceived ourselves, and our actions may thus bring misfortune to ourselves or others. Just as difficult is the situation in which we doubt our understanding of a situation when it is actually correct, and for that reason we take no action, even though doing so would be beneficial. The Yoga Sutra uses the term avidya to describe these two ends of the spectrum of experience.”

The problem is that I don’t really know. Being right feels great, so it’s super easy to put myself squarely in the righteous camp and hang out there for awhile. But then comes that nagging feeling. Avidya is sneaky because it could be that my perception is correct and appropriate and the doubt is avidya. Or it could be that my perception is harmful and incorrect and the doubt is a crack in the veil of avidya.

Who the hell knows? This is when a teacher would come in handy. My only teacher right now is my breath, which frankly could use some help with enunciation.

“The goal of yoga is to reduce the film of avidya in order to act correctly,” says Desikachar. I’m working on it, T.K.V.

I just have to hold both things. I have to live with some amount of doubt about my actions, but I have to act. I’m the business’s primary steward. Saying no to intelligent, reasonable adults is sometimes my job. Sometimes it’s also my responsibility to tell reasonable adults that their actions are harmful to me or to the studio. Sometimes what I decide interferes with what others had hoped for themselves, and they don’t like it. Luckily, I’m not Barack Obama or anything. I can make mistakes without killing all the life in the Gulf of Mexico or endangering lives in faraway (and nearby) lands. 

I’m just someone who’s particularly uncomfortable being uncomfortable. So it all seems like a big deal. My sane guess is that no one involved is currently thinking about me at all right now, which is really the biggest relief of all.

(Written in Word last night with no internet connection. Proven possible.)

intentional upheaval #496

Moving's a bitch, and I do it more than most people. There was one eight-year period in my life when I moved 22 times. It started when I was eighteen, and I moved from Tallahassee, FL diagonally across the country to Portland, OR.  This current move is my fourth in three years, so my record is improving with age.

I think when I was younger, my life was inherently chaotic so the extra chaos of moving didn't sway me too much. This time, I'm a little more swayed. I love the new little house, and I REALLY love the washer/dryer, but last week just went on forever. Everytime I went back to the old apartment, it seemed like there was more junk to deal with and that everything was way filthier than it was the last time I checked. It just never ended.

Until now. It's over. I'm not completely settled in, but the old place is gone forever. The keys are turned in. Actually, they're not because I forgot to do that, but the point is I'm never going back inside that apartment. It's time to reground. I'm not eighteen anymore.

As most of you know, there's no internet at the new space. I really cannot work there, which is not so bad, although last night some work emails came in, and I couldn't help but wish that I could just take care of them right then. And, as you may have noticed, the blog hasn't been happening. My plan for blogging was that I would write in Word, and then go to the studio, connect and post. But that hasn't proved to be very satisfying. In fact, I haven't been tempted to do it at all. Part of the blogging is the instant gratification of instant publishing. I can look at my stats and see the numbers go up. I know people are reading. It's part of the experience for me.

So I'm at the coffee shop trying to decide if my resolution about not having internet was such a great idea after all or if it's another example of  all-or-nothing thinking. Something in my life becomes a little dysfuncitonal or hard to deal with, so I get rid of it all completely. I toss the baby, the bath water and whole damn tub. Sometimes kind of aggressively.

That probably is related to the fact that I move so often.

There is something that is really great about constantly reinventing and reflecting and making things better. Some people call that growth. Now, I'm not a botanist or anything, but let's play around with the plant analogy for a second. Even the fastest growing plants, say bamboo, grow so slowly that you only see the growth in retrospect. Like, "Wow! Remember when that plant was so tiny? Now look at it! It's only been a week." But watching bamboo grow would be boring as hell.

So is what I do growth? Yes, I grow, but the frequent, intentional change of external circumstances is not itself growth. The growth is internal, not controlled by me, not immediately visible. The constant reinvention is great because when I do it with direction and purpose,which I'm starting to learn to do, my life keeps getting better. I'm trading up. On the other hand, it's exhausting and disorienting. My energy is unpredictable, and right now, I feel very, very ungrounded. I don't know where the flea meds are or where I will fit all my rolls of duct tape. I don't know what the routine of my life is at this new place with no internet. It's all in upheaval. It's chaos that I invited in.

Not bad, not good, just change. I'm ready for the change to settle a bit. I'm ready for my back to quit hurting from moving heavy shit and not finding time to practice yoga. I'm ready to have a habit around blogging and writing again, whether it's at the coffee shop or at home on Word or plugged into my very own wireless connection. I'm ready for it all to take shape. And then I think I'll stay for awhile.

I heart yoga part 2 coming soon. It's linked..

i heart yoga part 1

Ok, so the consensus is that I write about yoga. That's the consensus of one (me) because I didn't hear from anyone. I guess as the writer it is my job to figure out what to write about.

Luckily, I started reading The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar recently, and it's giving me lots of things that I want to think and write about. Desikachar is the son and student of Krishnamacharya, who was both Pattabhi Jois and Iyengar's teacher. But enough name dropping. It's a great book, very simply and clearly written, and I think it may be the perfect book for a new yoga student to start with. It took me five years of practicing to pick it up, but you guys don't have to be as slow as me. (Oh, and, by the way, we sell it in the shop.)

Anyway, he lists a bunch of different definitions of yoga. I'm just going to talk about one, which is from Patanjali, who in the Yoga Sutras, famously writes "yoga chitta vritti nirodah." I've seen this spelled and translated a million different ways. I like Desikachar's translation, which is "yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively toward an object and sustain that direction without any distractions."

So how am I doing with my yoga? God, you know, the more I read about it, the more I see ways I can grow. That's the purpose of self-study, which is actually one of the niyamas, or "dos" in yoga. Study yourself, study the scriptures. It is also possible to use a spiritual practice as a whip. "I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough," becomes the mantra. What I'm doing here is self-study. One day I'll write a blog entry about the difference. It's sort of hard to articulate, and I think I confuse the two a lot. Right now I know by the way it feels. This is self study.

Anyway, back to the topic. I am so often distracted. The only times I can think of that I am consistently not distracted are when I am teaching yoga or when I'm writing. But all the other moments of my life are ripe with multi-tasking and a viciously short attention span. I constantly need to move on to the next thing. Now. And then the next thing. And the next thing, and then, oh wait! I was doing that original thing which is still incomplete, so back to task A.

Desikachar puts it this way: "yoga means acting in such a way that all of our attention is directed toward the activity in which we are currently engaged." This makes me think of my current decisions around getting rid of things. The pruning. Too much stuff is a distraction. That's why monks live in tiny rooms with cold floors and worn, hard mattresses. In the West. In the East, I guess they live in caves.

I'm not a monk, and I'm not interested in renouncing the material world. But getting rid of what I'm not using means I will have more opportunities to focus on what is present and useful in my life. Right now, as I've written about here, I'm considering letting go of the internet at my new house. That would be huge for me. The TV went away long ago, but the TV shows didn't. I'm laptop-addicted. I may have to just sit with myself. Maybe I won't let five years go by before I read another really important book. Maybe I'll write and reflect more. Maybe my yoga will get a little deeper.

It's amazing to me how yoga happens. How it unfolds. Practice and everything falls away. Everything. It's not immediate, but when I look back and I see how much simpler and fuller and happier my life is now compared to when I started doing yoga, I'm in awe. If you had told me then to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit eating meat and give away half of my possessions, I would have told you to go fuck yourself. Seriously. But giving up those things just became so obviously the correct action when the time was right. There was no gruelling decision to make. I didn't have to try. I just kept practicing. This shit works, man. It just does.

My new BFF Desikachar says, "we begin where we are and whatever happens happens." How lovely. I don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be perfect. We start practicing yoga while we are still smoking and drinking and sleeping around or whatever it is for us. We don't start practicing after we got all that figured out. It will never happen. I love yoga. Start where you are.

Dear readers,

OK, I'm kind of sick of this blog right now. I want to keep writing, but really. Is this all I've got going on? A few Joe-joes and a cheap trip to Target? I didn't even eat the whole box. Not even a full row. Where's the angst? Where's the drama?

There is none right now. My biggest problem right this second is that between the cat napping on my right thigh and the dog's head on my left thigh, there is nowhere on my lap to put my laptop. So it's perched precariously on one knee, held up by the heels of my hands while I type. Cozy little life.

My personal finances are still a wreck, but I've gotten really used to that. The more I hear, the more I understand that that's just what happens to new entrepreneurs. It's a hump that I hope I get over on the sooner side, but I'm not alone. The business is solid and profitable, and if I just ignore a couple bills every now and then, I have enough money to get by. There's nothing else to say about that.

So, readers. What do you want to hear about? I can write about running a business. I can write about marketing and management, and maybe it will be sort of fresh and different from the rest of what's out there. But really what seems to resonate is writing about being crazy. Because we're all crazy, so y'all get it. But I'm feeling sane right now, and I want to keep writing anyway. Do you want me to write about how I used to be crazy? Or maybe I should just wait until I'm crazy again. Shouldn't take too long.

Anyway. I may give the blog a little break. I hate to do that because I have some readers, and I really enjoy it. I'm just feeling kind of stumped. Like I need a little direction. Suggestions, please!

checking out

Today I was feeling kind of down. I busted into the emergency earthquake Joe Joes and made a retail therapy trip to Target. It had to be budget retail therapy, so all I got were cheap plastic sunglasses and fake gold hoop earrings. But it kind of took my mind off things for a minute, and the truth is I like my sunglasses and I like my earrings. I see the beginnings of a summer uniform. Unfortunately, neither the cookies nor the buying helped for long. I'm not working much right now. No new projects, nothing to distract me from what ails me.

So what ails me? A few things, but I'm not sure they're really the point. There are always, simultaneously, lots of upsetting things happening and absolutely nothing upsetting happening. It's just my perception at the moment that changes. Unfortunately for me, I haven't yet figured out how to quickly change my perception, if such a thing is even possible. Also unfortunately for me, at some point in this life, I decided that being happy all the time was owed me, and when the discontent or the melancholy starts to settle in, I have to do something quick. Go somewhere. Buy something. Eat something. Drink something. I have not learned yet just to sit with it.

Sort of. Sometimes friends who read this blog tell me I don't give myself enough credit. I sit with it way better than I used to. An old friend told me yesterday that I am the healthiest person she knows. Weird, because I feel like the least healthy person I know. But let's face it. Five years ago I smoked a pack a day, drank like a fish, could inhale an eight ball of coke in one night with no help, and didn't think twice about running through the drive-thru after a long night drinking. Drunk. So compared to the vast majority of friends from that era, I'm an Olympic athlete. Compared to the San Francisco Bay Area yoga community, I eat way too many Joe Joes.

What if I didn't compare? What if I just said, hey, I've come along way, but I'm not done yet. I'm still growing. I still have work to do.

This is self-reflection, not self-flagellation. I wasn't very happy today. I have some ideas why, chief among them that I'm human, and humans have a wide range of emotions, many of which don't feel that great. What's more interesting is that my inclination continues to be to check out.

I'm not exactly sure what the solution is. I think that's why diets fail. I can tell myself that I will never, ever eat Joe Joes again, but unless I face whatever it is that Joe Joes seem to be the answer to (it's rarely hunger), I will eventually go back to eating them.

I don't know why I need busy-ness or chaos or cookies or trips to Target. I don't know why I can't just sit with myself. I'm just noticing now how that plays out, and I'm curious. Just like I'm curious about the rage. I still like myself. Really.