Act As If

In the early naughties, in my first job out of college, young-professional wear was black pants from Express with a light-blue button-down and clunky shoes from Steve Madden.  I chafed against it.  It reminded me too much of the sorority at my college filled with future young-professionals who had clearly been coached by their parents in how to Get Ahead.  (They almost picked me – ee!, but I was more of a Gryffindor than a Slytherin, with hand-me-downs and sale-rack specials.)

Every morning as I got ready, I would ask my sweetie ‘Can I wear this to the Bank?’ Straining against appropriateness and yearning toward self-expression, I’d wear open-toes and bare legs in summer, funky tights and cozy-bathrobe-style sweaters in winter.  I was young and more interested in approximating Hedwig’s glittery red lips and trying out the strappy heels I could then afford than adhering to the dress-for-success look. 

I’d heard to dress for the job you want, but couldn’t bring myself to do it in that way.  When I left that job, it was a relief to run around in jeans and yoga pants and colors and patterns.  I was living the life!  It prompted at least one person to tell me that I’d dressed as if I’d put on all my favorite clothes at once.  And I thought ‘Why shouldn’t all my clothes be my favorite clothes?’  Living this way did wonders in helping me be comfortable in my own skin.  It was maybe what I should have done first. 

Many of the things we do in yoga invite us to ‘be our future self’ - to be the person who has already gotten to the other side of some trial or tribulation – now.  It means to show us that to have that thing we want, we must be like the person who already has it. 

To develop this capacity, we do things that both require and offer the qualities we seek to grow in ourselves.  If we want to learn more than we already know, we pay attention to our breath and foundation.  If we want to have stamina and be strong, we repeat and hold postures.  If we want to attune and refine, we pay attention to the little things. And if we want to expand, we stretch into the next possibility.

Some time ago, Laura (I’ve learned so much from her!) and I were talking about how we operated in the world.  I was saying how I felt that I needed to know something wholly – and then be invited – before I would present myself for a job or a role.  She was telling me about how her dad got himself in to all kinds of successful situations simply by knowing enough.  He knew the right way to act, to dress, to be with others that allowed him access to situations that his training and experience really wouldn’t or shouldn’t have.  He acted as if he belonged – and he did!  He did so much in his too-short life, and it has rubbed off on Laura.  And now on me. 

My latest career move, a step back in to the corporate world, had me nervous about feeling that old post-graduate way.  This job is something I wanted to do, but did I really want to give up my loosey-goosey ways?  Did I have what it took to be in the Big Leagues, as my colleague puts it? 

There was a time when I was running my yoga studio and my life coach continuously would tell me, “You get to make it up.”  So, this time around I’ve made a conscious choice to look for examples of folks who are doing it well.    Apparently we have come a long way, baby.  I see gorgeous, powerful ladies in soft, feminine clothing and good fabrics.  I see up-to-date haircuts and really good color jobs.  I see people eating healthier diets and lifestyle choices.  Yes, I can act as if I belong, and I can thrive. 

Now. And Again.

Atha yoga anushasanam

Yoga Sutra 1.1

Now, yoga teaching.

Now – and, again – the practice and teaching of yoga.  Now – and, again – together.  Now we start…something…with some sense of urgency.  Again, together, with consistency and a bit of accountability.  Let’s try this one more time, to see if we get any better at it. 

Tonight I was with my old friends at Twisted Trunk.  The ladies there are doing something new now – a new studio, new colors – and deeply, comfortingly old.  They are teaching yoga and offering a place for us to really practice.  I have known these folks for a decade now.  I have learned from them that long.

And tonight I practiced with them again.  Specifically with Dana, whose class I took for the first times in 2005 at 8am before going to work at The Bank.  Before I was a teacher myself, and before I was a mom.  Tonight I heard all the instructions and let my body follow them.  I waited for my breath and stayed in the poses, feeling sensation and deepening expression.  I didn’t rush out or beyond.  It felt like the kind of home that is reliably restorative.  I felt taken care of, and also that I had time and space to have my own private, intimate connection to my practice. 

I know what it’s like to do the impersonal thing, the drop-in semi-anonymous thing.  The thing where the instructions are said, but they are not really meant.  Or not meant for you.  The sequence is fun, the playlist is nice, and the teacher is as hard-working as they come.  Your practice is pretty good, and you think you know a lot about yoga, including Yoga Sutra 1.1.  You’re really OK with the poses you are stuck in, because who really needs to get their leg straight in vasistasana, anyway?  You like the variety of different teachers, and you like that you can go to a class every hour and ten minutes.  Most of them are Vinyasa 2 Flow, so that’s good.  

Back when I met Dana, I had been practicing a few years and felt that I knew enough (really, everything about yoga) to become a teacher.  Thank goddess my teacher trainer had enough sense to hold me to the requirement of 100 hours of practice in this style of yoga to be accepted into her training program.  I did it in six weeks, including a retreat to Costa Rica.  Every single week I had a breakthrough.  This wasn’t just sheer number of hours.  It was that every time I went to class a teacher adjusted my foundation or stance.  They were not afraid to take the time or make the contact with me to teach me something.  I saw the same teachers, regularly, and I saw the teachers in each other’s classes.  

Patanjali and Vyagrapada learn Yoga together from Shiva

Packed in to Yoga Sutra 1.1 is the idea of the study of yoga ‘together’.  Yoga is always a private thing that requires someone else.  Preferably a group of someone elses that you could keep company with over a long stretch of time.  What I’ve found in doing it now, with some urgency, are bursts of intense growth in my physical and emotional bodies.  What I’ve found in doing it again is deepening satisfaction in my wisdom and bliss bodies, all woven together with breath.   

Music, Memory, Mantra

 

If you’re reading this because you have some experience of yoga, possibly with me as your teacher, you may have been offered a mantra to chant or listen for at the beginning or ending of class.  Mantras are phrases of sometimes seemingly nonsensical syllables.  They generally have some sort of meaning, though, and you can know what they mean.  But the key to mantra theory is that you don’t have to know what the syllables mean.  (I write syllable, because some of them aren’t things we’d translate as words.)  You can really only know if it works or not.  Some of them are easy to do and hear; they may ground you and soothe you.  Others are more difficult to say out loud; they may churn you and agitate.  The yoga is what you do with that experience. 

In any case, mantra does to you what good music often does.  It takes you to memory.  Mantra traverses mind to heart and back again (manas means both heart and mind; -tra makes it a tool), crossing the palate to create sound.  Both the sound and the act of making the sound are ways that you connect what has never been and can never be separate.  Mantra just heightens the resonance that was already there.   

For months, I had only been listening to what was readily available on my phone for my hours-long commutes every day.  For being a lady who doesn’t mind to spend a little dough, I was surprisingly cheap when it came to my music library.  There was very little in my playlists that I couldn’t just ignore while I flipped through the Vogue or attended to the Facebook on the train.  I played one of the tracks from Shantala’s Voice of the Esraj or Garth Stevens’ Flying for savasana at the end of class.  I didn’t realize what I was missing – that there could be more.

An unexpected concert attendance back in February re-lit me and reminded me of how it could be, how I could feel.  And so I bought the album, joined Spotify, and was mystified by my newfound ability to think of an artist, type it in, and come up with something that touched my heart again and again.  (I know, I’m a little behind here folks.)  For weeks, I’ve been revisiting old songs, remembering favorite moments.  But not just remembering how I was then, I really felt like that girl who loves those songs.  At the same time, I’ve begun having new feelings and making new memories.  I’m adding to old songs and learning new ones. 

The difference between an old song from your college days and mantra is that mantras take you farther back.  They take you in to the operating system in your heart-mind, allowing you to touch the parts of yourself that are otherwise hard to get to.  These are the parts that are not right before your eyes, but that you’re willing to see with your eyes closed.  And then open.  It’s said that if you meditate and become receptive enough, you’d hear them chanting themselves.  And then you can join in.    

Every year at Rajanaka Camp with Douglas, we spend some time learning a mantra.  We take something that’s effective as simply message, information, instruction and learn enough about it through narrative to give it meaning.  Mantras are gifts, and gifts shouldn’t be burdens.  We are reminded of very few instructions on when and how much to do the mantras.  The only instruction is to do it when you feel like it. 

At the end of Camp, we have a dinner called Curry Night.  After days of lecture and note-taking, we let loose a little, have a drink, and eventually head upstairs to gather around the piano and sing Springsteen and Stones songs.  It’s only just this year that I understand that we’re remembering then, too.  And making new memories.  We’re connecting heart to mind and back again.  I’m really looking forward to this year’s Camp.    

 

Short Step

Today is Day Two of the spring celebration of the festival Navaratri, nine nights of the goddess.  It’s mostly a celebration of the goddess Durga, whose name comes from the Sanskrit for ‘hard’ or ‘difficult’.  (Look at that hair in the picture of her in the 1 o'clock position!)  She’s the promise that resides in all of us that we can be more, but it’s going to be rough going.  On this very Day Two in my back yard, we’ve had just enough sunshine and just enough rain to get my tulip blooms out. 

They’ve been waiting since their last bloom, since I last folded their leaves down, through the heat of a mosquitoed summer, through the fall Navaratri, through the bare winter, creating and storing in their bulbs the potency and potential of their short-lived blooms that will show in the next few days.  At the height of their beauty, they’ll be visited by the bees, and then it will be a short step from the bloomed tulip to a bare stem and exposed stamens and stigmas.  She will have put on her best outfit, only for it all to come off again, to be undone by her own beauty.  For the sake of getting to do it again, of reinvention, of fertilization, to make something more than was there before. 

Every time the weather changes, I vow (vrata) to step up my fashion and beauty game.  Yes, it is a sacred vow and worthy of the Sanskrit word.  So many women must feel the same way, as the fashion weeks and 5-pound issues of Vogue arrive in late February and August.  These are the times of the year when it’s easy for life to feel hard (dukha).  You’re either really cold and miserable and over it or you’re really hot and sweaty and need some relief.  So, that first sunshiney day of about 75 degrees is cause for celebration.  We even have an Argentinian friend who looks forward to El Dia de Pezon, the spring day when ladies throw off their scarves and jackets and run around with just a couple of flimsy layers on their top parts.  They are dressed perfectly in their nakedness. 

Navaratri’s goddess celebration, for me, commemorates a period of time when life shifts from feeling tough to feeling like a girl has options, that she might choose to adorn herself and present herself in her best light.  Maybe she’s a little more colorful, maybe a little more studious, but she looks and feels more refined.  No sooner do I get my nails and hair done and my lips painted on that there will be packages to open and wind blowing and the eating of lipstick (insert commercial for lip stuff made from ingredients that you wouldn’t mind actually eating).  This isn’t about trying to stay perfect all the time, but rather about recognizing that lying barely underneath what looks like the most beautiful and refined version of something is that very thing’s hardship, its effort, its edginess and vices. 

You see, it’s a short step from a yoga teacher who looks strong and like she has it all together to a girl with an eating disorder who was doing nothing more enlightened than looking for more time at the gym.  It’s a short step from a sensitive, giving friend to the scared person who wants to control those around her so that they don’t leave.  A short step from loyalty and protection to being a holding tank for resentment.  From our most outwardly presentable selves to our most primal natures, those techniques that have preserved our survival on the most raw level. 

These nights of the goddess invite me to compassion – for myself, for my friends, and for my family.  They invite me to plant the very seeds that were saved from the most fertile experiences in the last growing period, filling me with hope for something that has not yet been and dread of all the work it will take to get there.  Most of all, thought, they excite me to revel in the gorgeousness, knowing that it is already being eaten by time. 

Fearlessness

 

I’ve been spending some time at my grandmother’s house, along with my four-year-old and my uncle, who also lives there on the farm. During our stay, my son turned four, which is a really fun age for all the family. He’s playing superheroes all the time, especially Spiderman, and he and his great-uncle put up shields to protect themselves when they are fighting off bad guys. He's learning about being strong, about being brave, and even about being feared.  My son asks about these things, and I think about how to answer him in a way that he can understand and still carries the weight of what more there is to know about fear and courage.

While in Western Kentucky, I was excited and honored to teach a workshop in my home county at the yoga studio on the town square.  It's owned and run by a mother and daughter team, and it has been super-fun to get to go to classes there with some of my high school friends, their sisters and mothers.  The ladies at the yoga studio were interested in learning more about inversions and arm balances, so I decided to teach alignment and strength in the upper body and pair the actions with the theme of courage.   

Now, let me paint you a little picture.  The son of the family runs a pawn shop next door. This seeming juxtaposition of the yoga studio next to the place with displays full of guns had not gone unnoticed in the preceding weeks of my visit.  I kept thinking, ‘Only in Todd County.’  (Let's just say I'm a little more accustomed to coffee shops and juice bars next to my yoga studios.)  As we ladies were sitting in the front receiving area, allowing the room to cool off from the heated class before, we were greeted by a burly gentlemen in overalls toting some sort of rifle. Of course, he was headed to the pawn shop, but that didn’t keep him from letting out a friendly,“I’m not headed for you!” to relieve a little of the tension that was naturally there.  Everyone made light of the event, and we moved on with our morning. 

In India, the gesture of fearlessness is the right hand held at chest height with the palm open and facing outward. (See the photo above.)  It has a sort of softness and roundness to it, unlike our hardened palm-face-out ‘talk to the hand’ gesture that means the conversation is over. It’s a showing that there’s nothing being held that could hurt you, and so you are beckoned closer, to the possibly even more frightening process of intimacy. Yoga is not just that which is peaceable, calming, or harmless. It invites us to raise the stakes as much as lower them.It brings us into the churning and heat of facing our interior selves and our exterior lives.

What I taught on Saturday to the ladies who were relatively new to bearing their bodies’ weight on their hands was that fearlessness is not about hot having any fear, but rather being afraid enough of the right things. Something gives us a moment of pause, and we take the time to give the right amount of respect to something that could hurt us. When we do that, we get to keep going, trying, and living. What would otherwise stop us completely becomes the invitation to more. 

The value-added project, a phrase my teacher loves to use, becomes not just staying in your own conversation, not just keeping your same point of view, but rather really bringing your hard-won experiences and opinions to bear in moments when there could really be some growth and learning.

Bravery is not the opposite of staying safe, nor is it willfully putting yourself in harm’s way. It is being willing to take the kinds of risks that you can take, of stepping up to your capacity and capabilities.  I hope that I can give these teachings to my son, over time and through example.  I hope that he will be able to listen, learn, and act in ways that are truly heroic. 

Let it Mix with You

"Christmas light" Nataraja and Sivakamasundari just outside the temple at Cidambaram.  

 

About six weeks ago, I was still in India.  If you read the post before this, you’ll know that it was quasi-miraculous that I was even there in the first place.  It was an adventure and a lesson in stamina of all sorts.  Over something like seventeen temple experiences in the two weeks, it became more natural to me to be wrapped in the six yards of fabric that a sari requires.  I got used to my bare feet on the temple floors, picking up whatever was on the ground there.  And it felt right for my forehead to always be smeared with a dot of kumkum, a red powder, and a line (or three) of vibhuti, the white sacred ash. 

We were asked to do all of these outward shows, because Douglas likes to remind us that, “Nobody cares what you believe.  They care what you do.”  So, we came correct.  In addition to the saris, braided hair was required for the temple (and should always be ‘neat’ in any case), we wore fancy bindis, lined our eyes, and made sure we always had on our earrings, necklaces, and bangles.  Let’s just say it was a time commitment made of love.  And we were rewarded for our efforts: people took our pictures, they thanked us, and they even gave us little sparkly OK signs with their hands and said “Super!” 

That’s not to say it didn’t get old.  Sometimes I wanted to just leave my hair down and put on no jewelry and throw on a nightie.  Ever-vigilant for our modesty, though, the Muslim men who sold me these long, printed cotton gowns were sure to shout “NIGHTIE!” every time I looked at one, just to make sure I knew that it was not daywear.  

 

Photo of village girl in a nightie by Laura Patterson. 

By the end of each long, sweaty day I would inevitably forget about my extra make-up and wipe my brow, smearing together a kind of paste made of my sweat and skin, of kumkum and vibhuti.  Then I would get out one of my hundreds of baby wipes and clean it all off of my face. 

The vibhuti that we got most likely was not made from the ritual fires in the temples where we were.  Apparently, Tiruchendur is one of the major suppliers of vibhuti for Tamil Nadu, the region where we were pilgrims.  It is probably cow dung, with maybe some other ingredients thrown in.  In any case, the ritual fires are offered valuable fuel.  I kept thinking of how much our offerings would cost if I had to buy them from the Whole Foods at Columbus Circle but I knew that what we were doing in ‘wasting’ all those groceries would turn into meals for poorer pilgrims and generally mean a lot to the temple itself.     

Vibhuti is what remains when everything else is burned up.  It is white, the color of the sexual fluid, and so represents both where we all end up and where we all came from.  Siva’s left hand holds the fire of dissolution, one of the five acts attributed to him.  We take the ash from that fire and wear it, applying it to ourselves.  Follow the ring of fire over to his right hand, and you’ll see the two-headed drum of creation that beats and pulses life into existence. 

On our penultimate night in India, I watched as Siva’s wife, Sivakamasundari (‘the beautiful desire of Siva’), was ritually bathed.  Mythically, her first child Ganesha was ‘conceived’ in her bath.  I don’t know how many times I had heard the story of her longing for a child while sloughing off her skin, mixing it with water (symbolizing tears), milk (the universe), sandalwood (beauty), etc.  As I waited that night for the curtain to re-open after she had been dressed in her new sari, I understood better.  All that stuff that I was smearing on my forehead was not just for an outward show, it was meant to mix with me.  The temple mixes with me as I do some sloughing.  The temple lives on through my stories and experience.  And, falling in love with my life, I become her, empowered to turn what I want into what I have. 

Photo of me leaving the temple on December 30, 2012, by the light of the almost-full moon. 

You Get What You Want

In yoga, you always get what you want.  This is not to say you get it exactly the way you want it or that you can just throw out ‘wishes’ and magically receive free babysitting and lots of new clothes (my wishes are fairly modest these days).  But I’m currently having this experience with things that I have really wanted, often for some time.   

I like to tell this to students who are new to me that this will happen to them, too.  I tell them that if they want a good stretch, they’ll get just that.  If they want to know the secrets of the universe, they can.  If they want to do crow pose, I don’t see any reason that cannot happen in good time and practice.  Sometimes they get more than they bargained for along the way. 

Seven years ago, I worked for The Bank and would go on lunch breaks (sometimes a couple a day) to this park in TriBeCa near our offices.  I would sit on the benches in my barely-corporate clothing, read a fashion magazine, try not to eat, and daydream about being one of those moms playing in that park with their little kids.  I imagined myself being a yoga teacher and mom to a boy named Van, living a life of happiness and luxury.  This fall, as I sat in that very same park, I realized that is exactly what I’m doing. 

Don’t be mistaken, though.  One of every five women in New York City is a yoga teacher these days.  Many of us are very good, but we still only get a three-minute audition at our local gym along with everyone else.  My bank account is currently a sad state of affairs, and our family arrangement is such that my husband works so much that we often don’t see him for days at a stretch.  It has taken me over a year to find another mom in my neighborhood with whom to have weekday-morning pancake breakfasts.  I’m not being ungrateful here.  I’m being real.  (I really believe we do ourselves and others like us a disservice when we only show the life-is-perfect Facebook-update versions of ourselves.) 

And yet, this realization has given me permission to really want the life I have, to love it, and to radically affirm it.  I’m getting more than I bargained for.   

Next week, I leave for India with Douglas Brooks, on a trip that I have wanted to be on for years, the trip that I announced at the beginning of 2012 that I would be on.  Changes in work, finances, and our yoga community during the year made this trip seem more than impossible.  What has made it possible is the optimism of a dear friend, beneficence from a long-suffering partner, and willingness to step up from grandmas in two states.  In one word, love. 

Once, in a discussion about major and minor deities, Douglas said that if you’re looking for something specific, it’s not necessary to go to the little local deity for that specific thing.  If you want a pregnancy, then probably really what you’re wanting is love and intimacy.  So, go to the major deity and invite that energy more into your life (by whatever means, mantra, mudra, etc.), and you’ll get what you want. 

We’ve probably all had the converse experience of getting some desired outcome only to feel that we didn’t really get what we wanted.  See: child who plays with the vacuum cleaner at someone else’s house only to completely ignore the identical one you just bought.  What the child wanted was the playmate, or the stimulation of being in a different place, or you to pay attention to him. 

Probably what most of us really need is to have an experience of unconditional love.  We experience that love through the conditions of our lives.  In yoga, we call the energy that brings us that experience Kali.  She is time, she is terrible, and she is the great mother.  Through time and life all things are accomplished.  May we love it along the way.