My LA YOGA Magazine email newsletter note for the post-Thanksgiving holiday!

With all of the hustle and bustle heading up to a holiday like Thanksgiving, the day after can leave a feeling a bit like having a hangover. There may be the literal or figurative dirty dishes left over in the sink, the afterglow of company well-shared or the tension of explosive or subtle dynamics with which we’re trying to dance. But no matter the aftermath, the messes needing to be cleaned up or the residual smiles of welcome surprises, the antidote for the hangover feels to me like—more gratitude.

After all, our whole lives contain numerous fortunate events and circumstances, roads taken, instances of saying yes or no—which have brought us to this place in our lives—and to the ability to partake in the practice of Yoga. This fact, along with this day, this sunrise, this breath: these are all things for which our gratitude is meaningful.

We have so much abundance in our lives. When we open our eyes to see it, our hearts to receive it and our hands to share it, we recognize our blessings.

And in this recognition, we can look at how to share our abundance with the people in our lives, both at the center of our inner circles and with the people in our peripheral vision.

This week's note from the LA YOGA email newsletter:

Yoga doesn’t necessarily take your problems away, nor does it even make things easier. Shiva Rea said something similar in one of her interviews in the new film Titans of Yoga. Yoga does provide us with an anchor, a mat, roots that help us connect into the earth and to our own inner silence, our own well that replenishes us and our ability to touch the infinite.

Because sometimes diving into the practice of Yoga can make life more intense as we uncover and recover, unwind and open up. And there are times when Yoga practice may make everyone around us more intense. So just think, my intensity meeting yours, well, then the excitement of it all can make us wonder why we practice in the first place.

In spite of (or sometimes because of) the practice, we can end up in the dark, weeping, confused, looking for the trailing rope of the life-raft that will secure us. In those moments we remember that life, our feelings, our tears, our joys, our accomplishments, our sorrows, are all ephemeral, temporary. Even our breath is more subtle than the wind and it is our life-long companion.

Life is a bit like walking a tightrope over quicksand filled with crocodiles (at least that’s how it feels to me sometimes). If anything, Yoga practice both added the crocodiles and the ability to negotiate the rope with a greater sense of ease, even amidst the impermanence and the shifting ground. Through the practice and philosophy of Yoga, I’ve learned to better accept it all. To look in the mirror and meet the gaze of my own eyes. And breathe, again and again.

It’s Yoga Month this month. At the close of the Q and A held after this week’s sold-out screening of the film Titans of Yoga (sold to raise money for the Yoga Recess project), we were challenged to find ten friends to introduce to Yoga. With free classes (scroll down for more information), free music downloads (also found here), there may be a few more enticements.

Just don’t tell them about the crocodiles.

This is my editor's note from the September issue of LA YOGA, that just hit the newsstands. I thought about it again tonight, after seeing the premiere of the film, Titans of Yoga, on the first day of Yoga Month, which featured some moments that made me smile, laugh and brought me to tears. And made me think, what's next? Although, it just occurred to me that more important than what's next is, really, what's now?


“What’s next?” one of my students asked after class recently. “I want more. I go to class regularly, but I can’t really spend more hours each day doing an asana practice.”
What’s next? It’s a good question and one that begs for an answer more thoughtful than “do more downward-facing dogs.”

Sometimes I ask myself another version of this same query, although mine is sometimes worded, “Have I done enough Yoga yet?” Have I sat through enough grueling hours of meditation, chasing thoughts and remembering mantras and fencing with distraction? Have I rolled out the mat enough times? Is there some cumulative effect from all those sun salutations, mornings churning my way through nauli, months of deciding that yes, I am going to be able to practice arm balances, no matter my particular body type. Have I read through enough texts, chanted the Mahamritunjaya Mantra with enough repetitions to matter? Is there some quality of “Just enough” that mirrors “What’s next?”

The answer is found in this moment, right here in this breath, in our wrestling match with despair, in our waltz with joy, in our playful duet with bliss in our exploration of the everyday that we repeat literally every day.

We can study philosophy, try to fit into just the right size jeans, we can query the nature of the universe. And all of these discourses, these mental and physical gymnastics merely lead us back to this moment and to considering the relationship we have with our body, mind, spirit, heart and our place in creation. The outer questions lead us to the inner question: Do we feel at home—in this life?

Yoga practice isn’t something that we can mark with notches carved into our headboard. There is never a next, neither is there enough. What is really next is to get over this idea of striving for more. After hours of practice, daily commitments, wondering what now, the answer is to stop, as Peter Russell suggests in the interview “Sitting Down With.” When we stop, the reasons for our practice are revealed. This very life is a relationship and each day we cultivate a more intimate connection with the divine and with our selves in all available forms.

So what’s next is not necessarily more practice, particularly since practice itself can sometimes be a trap, become a seduction. The reason we continue to practice, from our first breath until our last, is to cultivate the experience of being in relationship. We stop time when in the midst of our practice, when we are sweating our way through an intense vinyasa, turning our world upside down in an inversion or demonstrating our passion and compassion through a standing warrior pose.

To stop time, dive into the infinite space that is the cavernous expanse of your own heart. This is the treasure that is revealed to us. There is no map that takes us there; no X marks the spot, no matter how many teachers we may follow or books we may read.

While we can hope that we reach some milestone, threshold or place in our practice when we get to breathe a sigh of relief or call out with a loud shout celebrating that somehow we’ve made it somewhere, I doubt that’s how it happens. Even in the many stages of Samadhi before we enter the final absorption, there is an impermanence, a need to enter to doorway again and again.
This is practice, this is what’s next and this is why we’re never done.

So, I guess this means I’ll see you on the mat.

FREEDOM
This was my editor's note from July 2, leading up to the holiday.

This weekend we celebrate freedom. We celebrate the legacy of independence, forward-thinking, rebellion, citizen activism, our collective individual rights, our ability to vote and speak our minds.

This is what this day means to us and what being born, growing up in or moving to this country at this period of time means. With this celebration, I believe we also have a responsibility to cultivate and to maintain these freedoms.

We can look at freedom at an individual level: Where are we imprisoned in our lives? Where are we stuck? Where are we holding ourselves back unnecessarily? What are the blind spots we’re not seeing? What are the obstacles we can break through? When we consider our individual freedoms, when we realize the truth, we know that we are already free. Freedom, liberation, enlightenment—these are our birthrights. This is what we are born to experience.

Living in this time and this place we are fortunate to be exposed to the teachings of Yoga and Ayurveda, in all of their paths, iterations, complexities, traditions—that offer us a template, a roadmap and an ability to discover and experience freedom. When we surrender and soften into ourselves, we know it, believe it, breathe it and embody it.

On Monday morning, July 5, we have the opportunity to go on this journey with Arun Deva (whom I recently had the pleasure of interviewing for the July issue teacher profile) exploring the Alchemy of Consciousness and the Transformative Power of Personal Practice at the Sivananda Center in Marina del Rey.

When we think about our larger freedoms, our ability to choose how we spend our money, what we purchase in order to enhance our health and well-being and our prerogative to support small farmers and ethical businesses, is also part of what it means to live here, in this country, at this time. I believe using our voices to maintain our freedoms is vital. This morning I read community member Tommy Rosen’s account of the recent FBI raid at the private food club Rawsome. (Read the account here.) Whether or not you believe in raw food, unpasteurized milk or the basic premises’ of this club, there are dangers in overregulation, in not allowing us to make choices, in the increased corporatization of our food supply, of factory farming and the dangers we are subjected to with lack of labeling around GMOs, proliferation of dangerous pesticides and other issues. At Rawsome, full disclosure is part of the deal. With true full disclosure, then we really have the freedom to choose. Freedom to choose is part of our independence. And this freedom to choose, I believe, should be more than just freedom to choose which brand of sugar-coated, GMO and pesticide-filled cereal in a box we buy.

If we believe the adage that practice, and all is coming, then do we dare to ask ourselves how are we practicing freedom in all areas of our life, on and off the mat, in and around our minds.
Happy Independence Day and to Freedom!