Why I (don’t often) write

My nourishing friend, Rachel Dollard of Nepesh Wellness was inspired by a friend of hers to tackle the question: why I write? From there, she challenged others to write about why they write and I have really enjoyed reading and finding aspects of myself in all of the responses.

So I sat down… and I felt a big block against writing. I tried again a few days later. Same thing. Several weeks have passed and I finally forced myself to start putting words down. That was four days ago and here I am, today, rewriting it all. (Don’t know yet whether today will be the day I finally post… we’ll see!)

I used to write a lot and I have always been into stories. As a kid, I would make my parents, relatives, parents’ friends (pretty much any adult I encountered) tell funny/crazy family stories. I would collect them. When I could read, I would get wrapped up in books and stay up all night reading. Mom would come in and take the books away from me to get me to sleep, so I started hiding them under my pillow. It wasn’t very subtle, sometimes there were so many books under there that my pillow would be at least six inches off the mattress! When I re-read ‘books’ I wrote in elementary school, I am amazed at my creativity and joy – and I laugh to see how much my writing then were pastiches of my favorite books at the time.

From the joy and creativity of youth, my writing transitioned to angsty poems all about unrequited love and the struggle of being a sensitive, caring being in a world that felt like it was always hurting. Although I never intended to actually follow through with it, they would sometimes take on the sound of a suicide note. When I began traveling, I began journaling and I would keep notes of all the places I went and people I met and how I felt about it all. Most of my life, writing was my way of learning to become aware of, expressing, and validating my experience and emotions. It was how I learned to put myself in someone else’s shoes and see from other perspectives.

Then, one day, and for a very purposeful reason –  I decided I need to stop. So here it is – why I (don’t) write:

Words were a power I suspected I had not yet learned to wield responsibly.

Looking back through those travel journals, I became aware that there were more words of hurt than beauty and when I wasn’t traveling, my journals were only written in when I was sad or in emotional turmoil and pain. Through yoga, I have learned that what we focus on is what we see and I began to wonder: what stories was I reinforcing when I wrote? Were they stories that were uplifting or inspirational? Were they stories of gratitude and compassion? Truthfully, they were usually stories of victimization – of a small being, trying to understand why everyone hurt it all the time and when that small being didn’t want to blame others for it’s pain, it turned on itself and wrote words that were so hateful and violent about how it looked and who it was at it’s core that if I re-read those words now, I am shaken. I realized I needed to see differently. So I stopped writing to retrain myself to focus on beauty.

But why couldn’t I just force myself to start writing only when I was happy instead, and record all of my happy moments? Because I also realized I needed to learn to process my experience with something other than my head – the domain of words. Yoga teaches us a way of balance – a union between body, mind, and soul. I spent much of my life to date, cut off from my body. There are many reasons for this (low self-image being one) but our culture and our education system encourage an approach to life that is very intellectual and rational. My writing was a place of creativity and thus a place where I could pour out everything in me that was emotional and non-rational. But it still used words – a property of intellect. Looking back on it now, I suspect the reason I didn’t write when happy was that I was enjoying the experience and didn’t need to remove myself or try and escape the experience. Writing when sad was a way of avoiding communications and confrontations that needed to happen. It was a way of feeling the feelings without actually feeling them deep enough to truly heal and let them go. So I stopped writing to train myself to go for a walk when sad, or to speak to the person involved rather than disappearing into myself. I stopped writing to train myself to stop hiding from life in my head.

Don’t get me wrong: words are still a huge part of how I process my experience. Friends of mine can tell you how much I talk and ask of my support network to listen while I verbally process what’s going on in my life, and as a ‘writer’ and lover of words, much of the time I use too many and they are flowery and descriptive. In learning to teach yoga effectively, we discussed the idea of minimum, relevant wording and directive, rather than descriptive cueing. Both these ideas are important in facilitating an experience for our students where they can get out of their heads and into their bodies. They make the class less about the teacher and more applicable to each student and their individual experience. They help us all move into focused action. I knew the concepts were important. I felt immediately they were not my strong suits as a teacher. So I stopped writing to train myself to speak more clearly and communicate more efficiently and effectively.

But I am still a writer. Using words is still one of preferred (and more effective) ways of relating to others and forging community and connections. I sometimes write blog posts like this. When I know I am not expressing myself verbally because I’m scared of being vulnerable or misunderstood, I write what I want to say and sometimes I give it to the person and sometimes it just helps me get clear or find some closure. Sometimes I write the victim stories popping up in my head so I can better see the patterns and identify what parts of myself are not being nurtured and are crying out for attention. I started a gratitude jar back at the New Year (and have fallen off writing down my things I’m grateful for each day but still have it sitting by my bed, reminding me of how much there is to be grateful for). Slowly, I am finding balance in my writing and getting better every day at learning when to speak, when to be silent, when to speak through action – each day trying to wield the power of words more compassionately and responsibly.

And it’s hard because writing, like any other creative endeavor, is a muscle that has to be used or it atrophies. So I am grateful for this prompt and the inspiration of the amazing lady writers who have responded to it in their words. And even though I promised this before (see my post ‘Good Enough’ is a long time coming…) this time I really mean it: that I will try and flex my creativity more and reach out to you all more through blog posts because maybe I have something to say that is useful and because, at the very least, maybe you seeing me flopping around in my life will help inspire you to realize that it’s OK if you feel that way, too. So that is why I will write.

(And – yes – today is the day I hit publish!)

Accept It Like You Had Chosen It; or; Lessons Driven Home after Stepping on a Hornet

This morning, I had a lot of trouble waking up for my 6am class. Between work and moving, my schedule has been non-stop and it’s starting to wear a little on me mentally and physically.

I got to the studio and saw a dead hornet on the floor and my fatigue thought, “Eh. I’ll pick it up later.” But then I forgot and stepped on it. That woke me up.

First, there was only pain. But then I started to focus on my breath. The pain didn’t become less, but there was more space around it. I was aware of something other than my pain. There is a story about a monk and his apprentice: the apprentice is always complaining so the monk gives him salt to mix into a glass of water and has him drink it. The apprentice notices it tastes very bitter. The monk then takes him down to the lake and pours the same amount of salt in the water there and has him drink from it – the water tastes sweet. The lesson, he instructs, is that the pain of life is just salt and the amount of it is always the same. What matters is the size of the vessel in which we put the salt. When in pain we have to stop being a glass and become a lake. So it is when we breathe through difficulty – we become connected in with something other than the hurt, something bigger and more timeless.

By the time the students had shown up and it was time to teach, the bottom of my foot was totally swollen and I couldn’t put weight on it. I mostly teach without demo-ing, but I still move around the room. Today, I sat in a chair and I taught. And that took me out of my comfortable routine enough to have some interesting insights. I found myself thinking the students might judge me for sitting down even though that’s probably not true since they knew I had been stung. Ah – there you are, my old workaholic tendencies, my fear that I need to be matching or exceeding everyone else’s efforts in order to be worthy. When teaching, I hide my need to be worth it by pacing around.

And then there was the thought that I needed to be DOING something, keeping busy, somehow ‘acting like’ a teacher. Ah – hello, Fear-that-I’m-not-enough,-just-as-I-am. We meet again in striving to achieve or be something in order to teach a good class. I am pretty good at watching my students and really SEEING their practice, but until I had to cut out all movement and rest entirely in stillness, I hadn’t realized how many details my own movement can still keep me from truly seeing. Today, I had to be still. And I noticed how much more aware I was. It was still a powerful class, even when I sat in a chair, leg throbbing the whole time. Did the pain magically go away, as I shifted my awareness even more deeply to my students? No, but it didn’t stop me from caring about them either – which busts another self-destructive myth of mine that when I am hurting I am only able to be selfish. Like anything else, whether I isolate and wallow or continue to reach out in love is a choice I make.

Which brings me to my final big awareness and something we talked about in class today: accept it like you had chosen it. Things happen and they’re not always fun or convenient, nor do they always feel good. But we choose whether we receive them as obstacles or challenges/opportunities for further growth an awareness. So I choose stepping on a hornet because it forces me to slow down a little bit today, which my body needs. And it forced me to step out of my teaching routine – it literally shocked me awake and gave me a chance to look at my day from a new perspective – less tired, whiny victim and more connection to breath and an alert stillness.  And, you know what? I’m actually having a better day for it.

Thoughts from winter hibernation:

I’ve been quiet on here for a long time. Last summer, I took some big steps personally and professionally and some worked and some didn’t. Late Fall and Winter, I felt called to draw back inside and do some reflecting – take a couple of steps back and work on a stronger foundation for new growth. Now the seasons are changing again and the energy of Spring brings me out of hibernation and moves me into action. It asks me to take the self-reflection I’ve been practicing over the winter and apply it now on a bigger scale. I’m starting by breaking my silence and sharing my thoughts.

The foundation I’ve been working on is a big one: Self-Love. It’s at the heart of questions such as: How am I playing small? How am I demo-ing to the world my expectations of what I am worth and how I am to be treated? How, in my professional and personal life, have I let my self-doubts set the boundaries and expectations for relationships and compensation? If everything is an energetic give and take – how can I clean up my end of things so that I can show up fully for myself and for others and participate in setting the tone for our interaction and community? How can I lend my support to those whose support I need and want? How can I be the kind of person who is supported by the kind of people I want supporting me? How can I live a life of abundance?

Big AH-HA moment for me: I have no one else to blame. I am treated EXACTLY how I teach and allow others to treat me.

So this winter, I focused not on ‘believing’ (it goes deeper than that), but rather trusting and owning that I am Enough. I am worth it. This brought changes in my social circles and relationships, it brought shifts professionally. And most importantly of all – it brought clarity and new tools to use when things get rough and I need to reevaluate and recalibrate. I feel myself standing on a stronger foundation as I look forward.

Here are some practices that help me make the big leap to self-love:

1) Watch the self-talk. Would you talk to a friend the way you talk to yourself? Does your language allow for possibility and empowerment or does it bring you down? Note: this does not necessarily mean standing in front of a mirror and speaking overly positive sound bites to yourself (although, if that works for you…far be it from me to judge!). In my experience, daily affirmations are just band-aids that ultimately deny the wounds the healing oxygen they need by covering up the ugly rather than a) looking at it; b) becoming aware of how the wound came to be and what continues to open it up; c) and then just allowing breath, time, and different choices to heal it gradually.

2) Watch the self-deprecating jokes. News flash – they’re not actually that funny. They’re cheap and easy ways to deflect discomfort and they only serve to make you feel small or to fish for compliments. This DOES NOT mean you can’t or shouldn’t laugh at yourself. Laughter is awesome. Taking yourself too seriously is usually not. But in every joke lies a grain of truth – what story are you choosing to tell others about your truth? Note: Self-deprecating jokes CAN be awesome tools to help you become aware of the areas in your life where you feel inadequate or uncomfortable.

3) Follow Connection. Where you feel connected, there is flow and acceptance. Where you don’t feel an easy connection, you are most likely going to be caught up in some type of people-pleasing game – always competing for a perfection you will never achieve. That’s painful. Nobody enjoys playing a game you can’t win. You either give up or get bitter. And here’s the thing – there’s no need to play that game because you were born worth it. You may make mistakes (who doesn’t?) but as long as you show up each and every day with a sincere intent to do your best in any given moment, you can’t actually BE wrong. You can Do wrong, but you can’t BE wrong. So whether it’s professionally or in personal relationships, ask yourself if you are being empowered to grow and learn even in mistakes or if you feel wrong all the time. Make giving your time and energy a priority where you feel acceptance and where you feel safe when open.

4) Forgive yourself. You WILL make mistakes. And the habits and responses in your life that aren’t serving you will keep coming back until you manage to change them. Here’s the beauty in that – you get to keep practicing! Rarely do you only get one shot. The circumstances and people may change, but the larger stimulus and programed response does not (at least without awareness). My mantra in these circumstances is “Each time with more grace.” This reminds me that I have a choice. When I find myself about to respond in a way that I KNOW (based on multiple past experiences) does not work, I take a breath and try something different. Rarely is my new response ‘right’ either, but at least it’s different. So then the next time, I can try something different again. I can forgive myself for making mistakes if they are new and different ones because at least I am learning and growing. And although it may not be perfect, usually each new attempt leads to a situation where the suffering for myself and others who may be involved is slightly less. That’s compassion. That’s growth. And there’s only room for those two things when we can forgive ourselves for not being perfect and look at our mistakes clearly, rather than running away from them in fear and failure.

5) Be the type of person you want in your life and surround yourself by the kinds of people who teach you more about who you want to be. There are memes going around facebook right now that say it more succinctly: “Your vibe attracts your tribe.” I am so filled with gratitude when I look around at the people in my life and see what amazing things they are up to; the courage with which they face the world authentically, vulnerably; and their commitment to choosing love over fear. But then I realize – hey, I am friends with them (and I see those traits in them) because I am that way, too, and I value and look for those things. How we perceive others is a reflection of ourselves, after all. This means not only have I attracted that type of person to me, but that it becomes mutually re-enforcing as they inspire and remind me when I’m having an ‘off day’ of what is big, true, and important. Note: this doesn’t mean that ALL your relationships will be this deep and meaningful. Nor does it mean you have to cut tons of people out of your life or judge others for their journey- it’s a question of prioritizing where you send the majority of your time and energy and being intentional in who you hang out with and how it might affect your mood. When you can be honest with yourself about you, you can see your relationships with others more clearly and can seek out at any given moment those who will reinforce what you are needing at that time.

6) Have faith in your experience. Trust that your gifts and challenges are exactly the ones you were meant to have on your journey and that your journey is yours for a reason. It may not be self-evident, but you are here to be the best possible version of yourself and that person has their part to play in healing the world. A fish only looks stupid if you ask it to fly and you can’t win or feel awesome about yourself if you’re trying to live someone else’s life. Live YOUR life. It’s the only one you have any hope of succeeding at.

7) Set yourself up for success and confidence. I recently saw another (unattributed) meme on facebook that states: “Confidence isn’t walking into a room thinking you’re better than everyone, it’s walking in not having to compare yourself to anyone at all.” This has stayed with me because I most definitely have a lively jealousy monster. She lives inside me and she can definitely turn green. When I find myself struggling to live my own life, becoming jealous of someone else, or in a competition mentality wherein if they succeed at something, I will automatically fail, I ask myself: What do I need to shift right now to be able to walk into a room and not compare myself? What boundaries do I need to set? Do I need to sleep or eat (because yes, my little monster is most lively when I am hungry and tired)? Have I spent too much time focusing on others and do I need to come back to myself? What quality are they possessing or what goal are they achieving right now that I feel I am not and is there something I can do to bring more of that into my life? How can I give success to myself?

8) Don’t take failure personally. No matter how much we practice, prepare, or plan, until the timing is right on our end and the ends of anyone else involved – we will not succeed. This does not mean we are a failure. It’s just a sign that the timing isn’t quite right yet. As humans, we dream big and that’s the gift that keeps us propelling forward. But often our eyes are bigger than our stomachs and we seek achievements that we are not yet ready to steward or wield responsibly. Trust that when you ‘fail’ it doesn’t mean you won’t ever succeed – just maybe you need to take a few steps back and build up competency or a stronger foundation, get some more clarity, or find a new approach. Cultivate patience, trust in a timing you have no control over, and follow what you brings you alive. As long as you keep passion and dreams in your life and roll with the punches, the life you want will come to you when you are ready (and maybe even in ways you never dreamed of)!

9) Develop a hobby that you do alone. No matter how wonderful your friends and loved ones are, there are days when people need to recharge. Lives are busy and it sometimes happens that our support network can’t be there for us. I have wasted time struggling with that – feeling alone, feeling rejected, feeling not good enough. I have to remind myself that ultimately, it’s not about me. And so now, when I reach out to friends to hang out and am turned away, I take my camera and got outside and get lost in patterns, textures, light, scenery, etc. Or I read a book. Or I cook food. Or I go play in the garden. Sometimes I blast music in my room and dance around dressed in crazy clothes, singing loudly. Sometimes I curl up in bed and watch Netflix until my eyes glaze over. In these moments, I have some things I truly enjoy doing alone so that my happiness is not dependent on others and circumstances I have no control over. Note: Although I am a HUGE fan of the Netflix marathons, I do also recommend a hobby that does not involve tuning out the world or distracting yourself from the feeling of being alone, but rather allows you to embrace it. There IS a difference.

May you see yourself as others see you. May your world be filled with abundance, rather than competition. May you live your gifts and trust your light. May we all choose Love over Fear and in so doing, may we heal the world.

Let me entertain you!

This weekend I attended and taught at a weekend-long women’s retreat. It was an amazing group of women and some powerful instructors and I practiced 4 times in total and taught once between Friday evening and Sunday lunch. Then I came home and went to my Sunday night power vinyasa class.

I debated whether or not going to another class this weekend was doing too much (I’ve been feeling really tired and have been still trying to get caught up on things post-Nicaragua), but I went. I was feeling off and having a good sweat usually makes me feel better.

Tonight was no exception. And, the weekend left me so open and grounded that instead of having to focus on that, I had the experience of going deeper into the poses than I normally get. It was an amazingly smooth, powerful, at times messy, but very limit-expanding practice.

Then I got to savasana and I had the sought after experience of a quiet mind. In fact, my mind was like a black box theatre with no show going on. it was one of those diorama boxes, a blank slate, a space just existing so things could be created in it and there I was, the witnessing presence, just waiting for the show… Tada! my ego was there to provide me with one. No sooner was I aware that it was very quiet up top, all kinds of noise and chatter rushed in to fill that space. There was mental tap dancing – complete with canes and top hats… I think I might have even glimpsed some booby tassels.

I just smiled and tried to let the monkey mind hop around and out the other side, restoring quiet. Then – ‘Ooh! This would make a great blog post. Here’s what I’ll tell everyone about this experience I’m having…” And off we galloped into the future.

It was just another one of those times when I become aware of how much my mind needs to be DOING to prove it exists. And how much it seeks validation from outside sources to reinforce that proof of existence. If a tree falls in the forest of my mind, and no one’s around to hear it the real question isn’t whether it made a sound, but whether it existed at all to begin with.

It was a moment where I became acutely aware that there is something in me that is EXTREMELY resistant to a pleasant sense of nothing.

And that’s not necessarily bad. If I were happy to live in a black void and wait for Godot, I would never get any where in life. I would never go to that sixth yoga class of the weekend, pushing my boundaries and finding out what I’m capable of. BUT it’s also not necessarily good. That mental chatter usually doesn’t have too many new ideas – we rehash the past or worry about the future. We put on reality TV shows, filled with caricatures of people I think I know, and then believe them to be true.

So ultimately, it’s moments like this that make me grateful for the practices of yoga and meditation. It’s because of them that I can be aware of the opposing forces of stillness and movement in me and can make a more conscious choice about when it’s appropriate to DO and when I should just let it BE.

‘Good Enough’ is a long time coming…

It’s been a long time since I last posted. And there are many reasons for that: a new job and busier schedule, a trip to Nicaragua, other things to focus on… We all have our intentions and then life gets in the way, right?

But there’s something else going on here and I’m coming clean: I feel the need to have something profound to say and most of my ideas don’t pass the ‘good enough’ test.

I’ve always been someone who struggled with that good ol’ tripwire: perfectionism. I wouldn’t even let myself try things if I didn’t think I could wow people my first time out. What a limited life…. There are TONS of things I’m not particularly good at. And a lot of them bring me joy anyway. I love playing soccer with friends (even though the words ‘control’ and ‘skill’ might as well be a different language). I love singing (#sorrynotsorry – but I promise I’ll only do it in the car). I love art (my feedback from my ceramics instructor in college was that he appreciated my enthusiasm and encouraged me to work for more precision the next time I took the class; and my family can only eat very dry foods off the somewhat-slanted plates I made for them).

Don’t get me wrong: there is a time and a place for steady dedication and the slow building of competency, and yoga has helped me develop those muscles in myself and my life is the better for having them! But that creative, messy impulse to reach out an grab a new experience and swing it around, even if you knock everything over while doing it – it’s that impulse that breaks us open; allows us to see new ways of seeing; to try new ways of being; and to connect with all the people in our lives who are there to love us, shake us up, and help us grow. And the truth is: for all the times I’ve looked around in surprise and thought, ‘Hey! I’m kinda cool and I have something to offer this big, beautiful, crazy, hurting world,” I’m not sure that I will EVER with every fiber of my being believe that I am good enough. Maybe someday….and maybe not. I guess the secret is to just keep on living somewhat-skillfully-somewhat-messily-and-always-leaning-towards-Grace-Connection-and-Love.

So rather than trying to always find some deep, profound, spiritually uplifting topic to share with you guys – I commit here and now to connecting more with you – in all of the messy, creative ways I can. Sorry if I knock you over…. Maybe my next post will be on cultivating a gentle approach.