I'm a teacher, not a caterer.

Sometimes I have so much to say or share that I end up not saying anything because I'm not sure where to start. So, here's what I'll offer today. It's about my teaching.

I don't cater to students, though I do always try to be in service to students.

When I look out at the classroom, I see the folks who have in some way connected to my classes, whether it's the storytelling, the alignment focus, the homey vibe, the other students in the community. I see the students who are specifically connected to what I have to offer.

I don't try to win over a potential student by changing my teaching to suit them or by adding things that feel inauthentic to me.  You want it hotter? I can point you in the direction of 30 classes at this exact same time that will give you that. Want me to spend less time on philosophy, meditation, and pranayama so you can do more "vinyasas?" I'm not your gal. Don't want to learn about alignment? Again, there are plenty of classes out there for you, but I will not let you hurt yourself on my watch.

One of the many problems of the yoga industry is that many people are confused and think that yoga teachers are in the "service industry" and that the customer is always right. We aren't and they aren't.  Creating the problem is that yoga instructors often feel they have to cater to students because we get paid by the student (in general), which means if I cater to you, you might like me, and come back and then I'll make enough money from you on that day to buy a kombucha and if I cater to enough people, I might even be able to pay my rent.  When teachers pander to students, the students then don't see yoga as an education process and the teacher as, well, a teacher.  So, they then expect to have their expectations of what they want in a class met by any class they attend. 

The way I see it, there are more than enough yoga classes in the world that will meet the wants and needs of those who want it hotter, faster, less spiritual, whatever. Way more of those than there is of me.  Those are the students who have a hard time finding what they want.  If people come to my class, it's because there's something in it they didn't find elsewhere. If I cater to potential students, I actually am disrespecting the students who are coming for what it is that I uniquely add to the mix.  We've created a community together over 13 years. I no longer am the sole magnet for my classes, my students magnetize the students.

So, if you stumble into my class, I am going to welcome you wholeheartedly. I am going to be excited that my community may have discovered a new friend. I'll introduce you to the folks on the mat near you. I am going to give my utmost and best to serve you, to teach you and to offer something that may be valuable not only on your mat, but in your life.  And also, if I'm not the right fit for you, ask me and I will tell you where and with who you might find the right fit...

but I will not cater to you.

Trust Me. I've Been There

Odds are that if you are reading this blog, you are doing one thing to nurture yourself--practicing yoga. It's probably how we know each other.  Take a moment to acknowledge and affirm yourself for that. Certainly, with a career, trying to make the house payment, people who depend on you (spouse, kids, parents, dogs, cats, students), getting to class a few times a week is an amazing accomplishment. Well done.

But, have you ever wanted to go to a weekend workshop, or even a retreat and had this sentence come across your mind:

 “I would so love to go to that. I really could use that time for myself. . .

“It’s just not the right time. Maybe next year.”

 

Trust me. I’ve been there.

It seems that for the better part of my 16 years practicing yoga, everyone was going on some sort of a yoga trip. Inwardly I whined and moaned that they were single or didn’t have kids or had more money than I did. I would sit around and think about all the yoga trips I would go on when it was the RIGHT time, which was never in the present moment or even that year. The right time always involved the children being somewhat older than they were at that moment and life being somewhat more easeful than it was in that moment. Somehow in the mystical and magical future, I would have loads of money and I would be so free of responsibility that no one would even notice I was gone (which sounds just horrible, doesn’t it?).

 I have a secret for you. It will never be the right time. It will never be a good time.

There will always be something or someone that is demanding your attention away from yourself.

 

One day, when my children were at truly one of the most busy stages of life-10 and 12 and each playing on a competitive club sports team-in passing, I said to my husband (who worked full-time in Silicon Valley an hour+ commute each way; was a full-time, first-year law student; as well as a baseball coach of a club team) “I wish I could go on this great yoga retreat in Costa Rica with two of my favorite teachers. Maybe I’ll work on making it happen in a few years.”

You know what came back? “You should go. There’s going to be a lot of logistics to deal with all we’ve got going on, but you should go.”

It wasn’t even an issue! Only I was making it an issue! And in that moment, I figured out that the right time or a better time really was an expert tactic in martyrdom and self-sabotage. In that moment, I finally MADE the time I needed to not only take care of myself, but to be taken care of (and to model to my children that I was WORTH taking are of)?

I called in a lot of favors. My husband graciously juggled and made it work taking on all my responsibilities on top of his own. The retreat was one of the most amazing weeks of my life, and when I returned to my family, I was a better me than the one who left. I was refreshed and had been able to do some deep transformative work that made me a better version of myself. I got to model for my children that we have to take care of ourselves, nurture and nourish ourselves so that we can make our best offering to those we love and serve. When I came home from more than a week in Costa Rica, they were alive, happy, and had enjoyed the time away from me as much as I enjoyed my time away.

So, I understand, because I’ve been there.

If you need to take the next step in nourishing yourself, I’m here to help you figure that out. It may start with an afternoon that you dedicate to a special yoga class followed by a massage and dinner with friends. Or it maybe it’s a one-day urban retreat or a close-by weekend retreat. Or, maybe, just maybe, like me, you realize that there is no better time, and take the plunge to go on a longer retreat, such as the retreats I’m offering in Costa Rica this April (event link below). 

Whether it’s a retreat with me, or something closer to home, I can point you in the right direction because I know so many amazing yoga teachers all over the country and world. There IS something for you. And, I promise you, there will not be a “right” time, which means now is the right time. Let me know what I can do to help you nourish yourself as part of our year of cultivating the Pilgrim Heart. 

Today is the new moon and the beginning of the Year of the Wooden Horse. It’s time to take the reins of our own nourishment in 2014!

Details for my upcoming Costa Rica Retreats can be found at:

https://www.facebook.com/events/137421449738144/

or feel free to email me at yogabohemian@gmail.com

 

The Process of Becoming Real

“What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

I'd like to share a personal story that, I feel, has much to offer to our current state of broken-ness as an Anusara community and that it is possible rebuild something that is real and lasting. Last year, my 41-year-old sister suffered seven life-threatening strokes and hovered between life and death in a coma for three weeks. During that, the most difficult period of my life, I had the great joy of realizing the efficacy of all that I had learned from Anusara yoga. Living in the unknown became second nature during those long weeks, and the hope that any spark of life would have given would have been celebrated. The first hope, was that she would live. That was soon followed by . . . what if she lives? Will anything ever be the same again? What of her will we get back? Will we get any of her? Will we, her family, be able to take care of her, or will she need professional caregiving for the rest of her life? Is there any possibility of a ful recovery? Or, harder-to imagine, a vital, healthy, vibrant life?

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

Despite all odds (75 percent of those who suffer her same type of stroke die within 30 days), she not only lived, she was, in fact, transformed into a vital and happy woman. Is her life the same? No. There is a "new normal," but she would be the first to tell anyone, that she is much happier. She is restructuring her life around what is life affirming and enhancing. She has had to look at old ways in a clear mirror and step up to make changes, and she continues to live every day with the limitations she is left with. She has come to love the story of the Ganapati in which he takes the broken piece of himself--his tusk--and uses it to write the epic story. Her significant limp is her broken tusk.

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept."

We have this opportunity as a community. Yes, there will always be a clear and distinct moment when "everything changed." It will never be the same again, but I feel great hope that, as is the case with my sister, the brokeness brought with it the gift of creating something sustainable and beautiful in its real-ness, beautiful because it once had a broken tusk.

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.” ― Margery Williams from The Velveteen Rabbit

If you want to make something Real, love it.
May we love our broken community into Real.

Cultivating the "Holy Wow!"

2012 has arrived! May this year bring you more fully into your heart!


These first six days of the new year have blessed us in Northern California with some of the most spectacular sunsets I've witnessed in my years here. Firey reds and expressive oranges have given way to explosive pinks and deep mysterious purples. Every afternoon I have gone out to witness the unfolding light and a swelling of pure amazement pours out in the oh so eloquent, "Holy Wow! Amazing!" And the cool thing is that each day, it seems to get more incredible.


In our journey into the heart, into the space of the great I AM, we are much the same as this ever expansive unfolding light show I've been witnessing. Delving into our practices and fully engaging our hearts into all we do, we bear witness to our own inner expansion bringing us to a state of sheer delight, wonder, and astonishment at who we are. It's a state called "camatkara," which is eloquently defined by my friend and tantric scholar Chris "Hareesh" Wallis as "the state of fully self-aware expansive wonder, where Consciousness is suffused with the sudden rapture of great beauty, vibrating with awestruck joy." (Tantra Illuminated, Anusara Press, 2011)


As 21st Century adults, it is so easy to step into the current of cynicism (anti-wonder). We get sucked into a black hole of thinking we know everything and being amazed by nothing. People think the spiritual path is is meant to take you closer to a void of nothingness rather than a throbbing, pulsating state of expansive wonder. And, rather than being curious about the mysteriousness of 2012, we grasp on to apocalyptic visions of fear. With all this, it is time for visionaries of the heart to join together and proclaim 2012 as:

The Wonder Year.
Amazing. Astonishing. Awakening.

This is a year to soften ourselves back to a place of curiousity, wonder, and delight at the very fact of our embodiment. To be born at all is really quite incredible, if not improbable. To be born into such an exciting time of Consciousness awakening among so many wonderful practioners of the heart is downright jaw-dropping. In my classes, all of 2012 will be dedicated to actively cultivate this "Holy Wow" so that we can shine light into a cynical culture. Together, we will meet each breath, each pose, each sunset with fresh eyes, enthusiasm, and curiousity.

Ah Yes! I remember!

Sometimes I get really tired of talking and writing about yoga.
In fact, I started this blog as a way to talk about something else.
I created a blog to not talk about yoga.
Pretty much all I talk about is yoga.
And, on top of that, I've never even told anyone I have a blog, so I could write anything I want because there are no followers!
I could talk about junk food and t.v.
Now that's freedom.

So why do I keep going down that path of writing?
"Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" (That is a Brady Bunch reference from my brain archives)
But for me it's "Yoga, Yoga, Yoga"
Am I one-dimensional?
Sometimes I wonder, but then I remember two things.

First, I'm not one dimensional. In fact, to be the yogin is to grow yourself to greater dimensions, NOT to narrow yourself to the one. There are SO many other things to think about, talk about, and do!

The second thing I remember is: Spiritual Life. There's not a difference. I hate the question "do you have a spiritual life?" Duh. Life is the embodiment of spirit. Can't be alive without a spiritual life.

So, yes, I do have the freedom to write about anything I want, and out of that absolute freedom, I tend to always come back to "yoga." And yet, reading through my archives (someone has to!), I note that I never write about "yoga." I just write about stuff in my life, which is a yoga, and the very reason I forgot and thought I only was writing about yoga. (It may take a few passes at that sentence to get it. Gotta keep all those following the blog on their toes!)

To forget is one of the terms of our embodiment.
To remember is to get a glimpse of our absolute, empowered freedom.

The fourth R of Spaciousness: Remember
(R's 1-3 are release, receive, and relax)

Remember the bigger picture.
Remember you are the empowered embodiment of Consciousness
Remember that there's more to life than "yoga"
Remember that there's nothing more to life than yoga.
No, it's not all yoga.
But it all can be.
Why? Because all yoga is is to be bring things into relationship. I bring my "life" and my "spiritual" together. That's why there's no difference--but there is, because life and spiritual are two things that are yoked together through the practice of yoga. That's why it seems like I'm always practicing yoga.

So, I just write. And you can call it yoga or not.