Day 33: Truth, Lies and Confessions

Can you tell the truth from a lie? When someone tells you a very convincing lie, a lie that tugs at your heart, a lie that you want to be truth, can you still tell that it's a lie?

We all have intuitive abilities that help us tell the truth from a lie. You've probably discovered a lie after the fact and then looked back upon it and said, "Dang it! I knew they were lying to me!" Yes, we all have that gut instinct, that little nudge inside of us that tells us when something is true or not. We all have it, but how often do we use it?

I had a lie told to me recently. A big lie. A lie that I wanted to believe, that if I believed, would further my path as a yoga instructor and may bring additional income. I wanted to believe the lie, and so did the teller - in fact I don't even think he realizes he was lying. But he was. And now I'm kicking myself for believing it and begrudgingly looking at the mess I may have to clean up because I believed it. (Note to the reader - until further notice, do not come to my classes at the San Diego Squash club. It's not set up for a yoga space. Yet. I haven't given up completely. Just hold out another week or so).

So why did I believe it in the first place? Well, for starters, I wanted to believe it. I respected the person telling it, and I wanted to share his vision of the outcome. But I had doubts. I had a lot of doubts (Emily, you know exactly what I'm talking about). Isn't it interesting that we chose to believe something we know is a lie; it's as if we lie to ourselves about the truth so that we can accept someone's untruthful vision of the future. It's like when Bush rejected the proof of global warming and asked the country to do so as well. He liked the lie better than the truth, so he convinced himself of the lie.

My meditation tonight is about the truth verses the lie. Obviously. I'm taking a look into my space to see what controls my space about truth and what affects my ability to see a lie. Anyone can take a look at this for themselves in meditation. Or if you're having a hard time seeing your own space, give me a call and I'll take a look for you.

Ah, and confessions. My confession is this: I didn't really do any yoga today. Gasp! I woke early for my last session of physical therapy - an hour of one legged squats, lunges, and abdominal work. Ouch. I spent an hour trying to set up a space for a yoga class that no one showed up to (although, to my credit, I did 15 minutes of sun salutations and flow while waiting), and then I went straight to work until the evening. I had intentions of attending an evening yoga class, but the look on my pets faces (and their body language) stopped me. I've realized that lately with all the new stress in our house (my husband entering into the teaching portion of his professorship plus my two new jobs), my pets are hard hit. My dog seems depressed, low energy, and sad, even. My cat can't wait to jump into my lap every time I sit down. In fact, above is a picture of Zoe "helping" me pay the bills this morning in my 15 minutes of sit down time.

So instead of yoga, I came home for the evening to spend time with my family. So maybe I don't get 365 asana. I thought of yoga. I did some yoga. But I didn't spend an hour on my mat. Instead, I spent an hour as the mat for my cat.

Day 31: Original goal accomplished

Today was my 31st day of yoga in a row. My original goal - to practice yoga everyday for the month of January - is complete. This month I have learned a lot of things, but most of all, I've learned that daily practice isn't just a goal for me, it has become my way of life.

At the end of December, when I looked out over the month of January and what I was aiming to accomplish with my daily yoga practice, I had my doubts. I wondered if I would get bored - I am a person who likes to do a lot of activities to keep my body in shape. I wondered if I would find a daily yoga practice monotonous. I wondered if it would be hard to fit the practice into my days, especially since I was taking on two additional jobs. I thought that I would be relieved when the 31 days were over.

But I'm not. At all. In fact, my daily practice has become a priority. Similar to brushing my teeth or eating dinner. When I am tired, my practice invigorates me. When I am energized, my practice takes me to a level of endorphin-filled ecstasy. When I am stressed, my practice and my breath turn my mind into a sanctuary and allow me to forget my worries.

I look forward to a year of practice. I'm not sure that I will be able to accomplish 365 days of asana practice, but I know that I can accomplish 365 days of yoga - whether it's asana, pranayama, or another yoga modality. I really want to explore parts of yoga that I don't know as much about - different types of pranayama, yoga tradition, and different asana practices - while I continue to learn and teach. I'll continue to blog about my experience here.

Thanks for following me thus far. I hope that my blog has been as helpful to you as it has been for me. I hope you'll continue to read and offer your comments, discussion, and support. Namaste.

Days 29 and 30: Programming

In San Diego, the return of the sun after a week of rain feels like springtime in the mountains. Today, I felt like it was time for spring cleaning - to get out boxes for old clothes to donate, clean behind the stove and clean up the back yard (or, in our case, create a backyard worth being in). And although it's not really spring, we can practice aparigraha, or non hoarding/non possessiveness, any time of the year.

Gates says, "We must let go of the old to make room for the new." That's true. Just last night, my girlfriend gave me a dress from her closet. "Awesome!" she said, "Now I can buy another dress!" Most often, we think of aparigraha as letting go of material possessions, and indeed, this is a challenge in itself. But we also need to be able to let go of old ideas and beliefs in order to make room for freedom of mind and spirit.

Most of us don't even realize that many of the choices we make each day are guided by unconscious assumption or beliefs. Over our lifetime, and I would add over many lifetimes, we have accumulated advice from several sources about basic decisions - how to change the tire properly, how clean the house needs to be, how we treat people who are rude to us, how a fashionable outfit is put together, etc. Sometimes, the decisions we make are based on information that doesn't speak to our highest truth. Instead of consciously making the decision for ourselves, we rely on all the information we've accumulated in our past. Gates says it best. "The point is, we have all been programmed, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, to an extent that most of us are only vaguely aware of."

Programming, or the accumulation of ideas that aren't yours, is nothing to be afraid of, but it is something to start to notice in your life. Programming occurs constantly, and it affects you when you believe that information as truth. For example, your mother reminding you time and time again that a polite woman never calls a man first. Or your brother taunting you that tough kids stand up for themselves and fight. Are those really your own beliefs and your own information?

Aparigraha asks us to let go of outdated beliefs, since they act as energy that robs us of the present moment. As Gates says, "Yesterday's definition of a man or a woman, a race or a religion, a blessing or a curse no longer has any power over us." Wow, can you imagine what would happen if politicians practiced aparigraha?

After yesterday's practice inside, I decided to celebrate the sun today and practice out on my deck. With the sun on my skin, I worked to shed the cultural programming inside my head that said that only women size 2 or 4 should practice in shorts and a sports bra, since those are the only bodies worth looking at. Well, "Watch out," I thought to the programming center in my brain, "because here comes size 8 in hot pink and turquoise." One outdated idea let go of, many more to go.

Day 27 and 28: Intention

The power of intention is incredible.

I like to think of intention as setting the energy of an action. Intentions can be as small and as focused as eating slowly during a meal, bending the front leg to 90 degrees in Virabrudrasana II, or speaking to a friend with compassion and patience. Intentions can also be large, like when we decide to live our lives centered around love or try to see ourselves as infinite beings, dwelling in the light, encompassed by spiritual powers.

Gates says, "Either we believe in our innate goodness and beauty or we do not; it is up to each of us to decide. We may spend our entire lives believing a lie about our true nature, or we may put our trust in our own grace. Either way, most of us have to choose what we believe about ourselves each day, each hour, each moment of our lives."

I believe, as Gates says, in the true grace of my spirit and my being. But I didn't always. It can be hard to see yourself as the epitomy of spiritual grace because in many circumstances, we weren't hard-wired to think that way. We have to decide to change our thoughts and then adjust our intentions accordingly. Intentions are the way that we set our thoughts, the same thoughts that influence our actions. Intentions can also help us to manifest our dreams, overcome difficult hurdles and survive an otherwise rocky situation with grace.

I love my new job (in case I haven't told you, I'm coordinating the completion of an Artists Colony and retreat center at Sacred Rocks Reserve - check out the website at www.SacredRocksReserve.com). I want my project to succeed, and so, believing in the importance of the project, have set my intentions for success. Yesterday, I a meeting in order to find funding. I set my intentions (and the energy in my aura and anything else that might help) and met this woman with grace. At the end of the meeting, I had an additional appointment to meet at the home of a foundation director.

People blame good interactions on coincidence all the time. I don't believe in coincidence. I believe in the power of good intentions and the law of attraction - if you hold good intentions and show those intentions through your actions, you will attract others who use their intentions for good also. And I don't believe it just because I want to believe it - I see it work in my life all the time.

Recently, I've made the decision that I am ready for my spine and hips to open up. Thus, I've set the intention in my yoga practice to work on opening my spine and hips safely. Before, I hadn't decided that I wanted to move into backbends and hip openers, so I tended to avoid backbends, not sure if my body was ready for them. Today, with my new intention set, I was able to happily complete more backbends than I've done since I was a gymnast at age 14.

Intention, intention, intention. Play with your intentions and see what comes. If nothing else, they may enable you to find more joy when things otherwise would have seemed tough.

Day 26: On and on

Sometimes it just takes a good night of sleep to put things into perspective.

Truly, I should have taken a good, long nap before I sat down to blog yesterday. Instead, I sat down with a beer and let my emotions run wild. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - sometimes I think it feels simply delicious to cry and release. I just probably shouldn't blog at the same time. Lesson learned.

I'm feeling much more optimistic today about teaching and life and tight hips and all that. As I sat down with some cereal this morning, I opened Meditations for the Mat and read this: "Most of us have high hopes concerning our practice of yoga and our ability to live our yoga. We entertain lofty visions of newfound equanimity, of a harmonious balance between our inner lives and our outer reality." He goes on to say that often times, we fall short when real life gets in the way. Huh. How perfect is that for my morning's bit of inspiration?

So what to do when I feel like life is suffocating me? Keep trying. Keep acting great. Keep finding my sense of humor and the strength to laugh even the most serious of situations. In other words, we all need to keep our heads, our sense of ourselves, and our moral ground, rather than throwing it all away when things get rocky or you end up digging yourself into an emotional mud pit. What does Gates say about living our yoga through real life, even when we feel like it's three a.m. and we're squinting through the rain (or let's say, hypothetically, it's 6 p.m. and we're squinting through PMS- and alcohol-fueled tears)? He says that it's at these hard times that the world most needs us to live our yoga. "But can do it," Gates says. "And we will do it beautifully."

Days 24 and 25: Fun and Not so fun

Yesterday, I spent the entire day with friends, feeling loved and supported. Today, I feel like I spent the day alone, trying to justify my worth in the yoga world.

Yesterday, I spent they day shopping with one of my best friends and her mom, one of my other-mothers. It was a fabulous day; a great way to celebrate the return of the sunshine. When shopping was over, I felt a little shopping-fried and was so thankful to be doing a yoga class with another of my best friends, who's also committed to 30 days of yoga, via Skype. I lead the class and we both practiced, stopping every now and then to discuss a posture or to talk about how our 30 days of yoga are going.

Today, I taught my 6 a.m. class, with a room twice as full as it normally is. What a blessing. I usually keep the class a tad more simple on Mondays mornings, but today I felt inspired to make it a bit more interesting and challenging with a long standing series, arm balances and inversions. After the class, a student - new to our studio but not to yoga - came to me and discussed her frustration with yoga studios in the San Diego area. "All the classes are exactly the same format," she said. Although she said that she enjoyed my class, and especially appreciated the free time to work on inversions, she was disappointed that it felt like many of the other vinyasa classes she'd taken in the area.

I've been struggling since day one with whether or not I should teach. With the advent of corporate yoga, anyone can take a teacher training and be in the classroom nine weeks later. I struggle with this. Am I a good enough yogi to be leading others through classes? Do I know enough about the yoga tradition, the postures and the anatomy to be the guide? Every time I have this argument with myself, I opt on the side of "yes" because of the joy I find in teaching, and the (usually positive) feedback I get from students. However, I've been doubting myself the last few weeks because of low class numbers in my early morning classes. My conversation with the aforementioned student didn't help, either.

Later today, I practiced at my favorite studio. I really struggled today. On the outside, it looked simply like my instructor was asking me to work into hip openers that my body wanted to reject and that pulled on the muscles in my low back, knees, and ankles. But more than that, forcing me to get my hips open made me question a lot about myself. Was my injury an excuse to not have to look at the deep-seeded emotions tying my hips into knots? Was my back injury, although real physically, an excuse for not moving forward in my practice? With all of those thoughts running through my head, it was hard to have room for more. But of course, there's always more, and so all those doubts came to the forefront in my yoga sanctuary - if I can't sit comfortably in half lotus, or hold my headstand for more than two minutes, should I really be teaching others? I cried through the last half of the practice. I felt ashamed and tried to hide the tears, but they just kept coming.

Tonight, I got word through the grapevine that a student requested that my classes be more challenging. I appreciate the feedback so that I can become a better teacher, I just wish that whoever made the comment would have told me directly. What I'm offering in class is what I feel will challenge the students present without going over their heads, and I always want to know if someone needs more. I must have misjudged. Maybe I'm not doing as well as I thought. Hell, maybe I shouldn't be doing this anyway.

Yesterday was fun. Today was not as fun. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Half of my income depends on me teaching yoga. I don't want to teach if I'm not offering something unique, challenging and beautiful. Most of all, I don't want to teach if I'm not inspiring and helping my students. I want to be a positive part of this world. I want my intentions to be pure and my interactions to be positive. I want to have laugh and have fun, no matter what day it is and no matter how tight my hips are. Hmmm, sounds like I need to find a little amusement. Isn't that what I always say in class?

Day 23: Tired Yogi

I'm finding it so much harder to practice the yamas and niyamas when I'm run-down.

Translation: It's hard to not be bitchy when I'm tired.

I've always been very aware of my body; I know almost exactly how much sleep I need, what foods make me feel lethargic or those I am intolerant to, and how much physical activity I need to feel good. Part of the reason I pay attention is that I'm quite sensitive to some foods, many medications, sleep deprivation, alcohol and other people's energy. So to try to feel my best each day, I like to plan. Some friends would call me Type A. Others, like my more spontaneous friends, just roll their eyes at me when I ask them what their "plan" is for the day, the week, or the month. (As Sam would say, "I don't even know what day of the week it is. How am I supposed to plan tomorrow?"). Although I've become a lot more laid back in my later 20's, allowing myself to be more spontaneous, I also notice that as I age, I'm becoming even more sensitive to certain things.

Usually, I need about nine (yes, I said nine) hours of sleep a night to feel normal. On the two days a week that I teach a 6 a.m. class, I lose two or three of those hours. I feel great all morning long, but come the afternoon, I either need to nap or go to bed really early. When I'm not able to make up that sleep, like yesterday, when I opted instead to spend time with a friend (totally worth it), I feel awful the next day - partly like I have a hangover (which I don't) and partly like I'm getting sick (which I'm not). When I'm not feeling up to par, I find it difficult to stick to my yogi principles.

I worked at the front desk of my yoga studio today (feeling so yucky that it was apparent to my coworkers) and interacted with many people. While it wasn't difficult to speak warmly and smile outwardly with clients, I found it difficult to keep negative thoughts out of my mind. Why is it that when I feel tired, I am less accepting and compassionate than when I feel good? On a good day, I can almost always find compassion, even on the freeway (oh Lydia, you'd be so proud), but on a tired day like today, I take out all my yucky-feeling frustration on the Ford Wind Star driving five miles under the speed limit.

Obviously, I need to try harder. On one hand, I want to feel my best each day, and to do that takes some planning. On the other hand, I want to feel like I have the option to be spontaneous with what I eat, who I spend time with, and what my activities are. What is the balance between feeling great, meeting your responsibilities and being spontaneous? I don't have the answer today. All I can promise is that when I'm tired, I'll do what I can to keep the mental monsters from finding their way out through my words and actions.

From time to time, I'll offer some (very) home-made videos on certain sequences or postures I'm working on, are having lots of fun with, or are especially challenging to me. Here, I was playing around with Taraksvasana A in my living room. My back has a long way to go, and I know I need to work on jumping into handstands, but I had fun during this play time.