Happy Pride, Y'All!

When society conditions you into believing that you need to be anything but what you are, you organise your identity on what you think you should be.  This takes an incredible amount of energy - constantly managing how you present, managing how others think of you, and hiding parts of yourself every time you show up.

It can leave you feeling empty and unworthy. And we develop strategies to survive unworthiness - such as overcompensating, spending money, obsessing over our bodies, becoming popular.  We can numb, disassociate, and seek validation.

All of these strategies cut you off from the flow of life, from intimacy, from source. 

In yoga, we explore samskaras, or karmically inherited mental and emotional patterns. We all have them and they define the human condition. Some of them lead to positive outcomes, while others do not. A particularly insidious one that I often see in the LGBTQI community, is the belief that we should be ashamed of who we are, and that we should edit ourselves to be tolerated for someone else’s comfort. 

The whole process of yoga is stripping back everything we are not, clearing away our conditioning, so we can spend a life loving who we are.  When all of the conditioning is stripped away, all that remains is our truest, most beautiful, and most loving, selves.  In living proudly, authentically, and without shame, we are the most empowered, creative, and whole. In other words, yoga is a practice to be as authentic as possible.  My deepest wish as a yoga teacher is for my students to be as authentically themselves as possible.

I’ve spent many years of my life equating my self worth to how attractive other men found me.  I’ve incurred significant student loans to attend an expensive university because I craved the esteem. I’ve made myself small, kept quiet, and tolerated abuse, all because I grew up believing that I had to change who I was to be worthy of acceptance.  These strategies are a mirage.  They promise that if you go just a little further, if you give just a little bit more of yourself, you’ll soon arrive at the oasis and everything will be okay. But of course, no matter how much you give, it will never be enough to get you where you think you need to go.  The paradox lies in that you don’t need to give anything to get anywhere - you are already where you need to be - which is fabulous, just as you are!

My greatest heroes are the ones who choose to love themselves in spite of what society has conditioned - for they know firsthand and embody a universal truth that makes the world a better place for us all: each and every one of us is worthy of love.  For many of them, it is a hard wrought truth, earned through hardship, rejection, blood, sweat, tears, and many dark, lonely, nights.  They are often the most down trodden, the people of color, the addicted, the immigrants, the abused, the poor, the queer - and many of these heroes occupy these spaces intersectionally.  They are our teachers.

Our ability to know life is proportional to our ability to know death, our ability to know abundance is proportional to our ability to feel poverty, and our ability to feel acceptance is proportional to our ability to know rejection. 

If you have lived in those dark, lonely, places - as many of us have - and lived to tell about it, you have an enriched understanding of what it means to live with Pride.  You are grateful to experience love, because you have lived for so long without it.  

To experience this life fully, we open ourselves up to all emotions, for the selective pursuit of positive emotions is a futile endeavour that will only leave us feeling empty. We need laughter, joy, and sunshine to know the best part of what makes us human.  But to fully know the best parts, we must also know our pain, our difficulties, and darkness. And to survive the challenging moments - we need each other.  The vulnerable and radical act of needing each other is part of what makes us human.  This is one of many reasons straight allyship is important, but also why we should always be allies for each other, and for other marginalized people. 

It takes a tremendous amount of courage to let go of the strategies we use to manage how others think of us.  And I promise, the more we let go, the more we receive, the better we feel about ourselves, and the more we can let love flow in and out of our lives.

“More than anything, I pray that you can carve out a purpose for yourself, a calling beyond your own survival, a sweet offering to the world. You gain a life by giving yours away - not everyone is meant to raise a picket sign, and yet each of us can choose a path of impact. Rearing your children with affection and warmth is a form of activism. Honoring your word impeccably is a way to raise your voice. Performing your job with excellence, with your chin high and your standards higher, is as powerful as any protest march. Sowing into the lives of young people is a worthy crusade. That is what it means to leave this world of ours more lit up than when we found it. It's also what it means to lead a magnificent life, even if an unlikely one. The father has a way of choosing the flawed to attempt what many deemed improbable. My journey upon this stage and every moment in between is a testimony to the mystery in God’s choosing. Here in my twilight years, as my Christmas tree towers and glistens, folks are always asking me what legacy I want to leave. What roots beneath my soil I most hope will outlive me. I want to go home knowing that I loved generously, even if imperfectly. I want to feel as if I embodied our humanity so fully that it made us laugh and weep, that it reminded us of our shared frailties. I want to be recalled as one who squared my shoulders in the service of Black Women, as one who made us walk taller and envision greater for ourselves. I want to know that I did the very best that I could with what God gave me, just as I am.” - Cicely Tyson

The Soul in Solstice

A few weeks ago, during the first hot week of the season, my heart was overflowing with gratitude, my body with energy, and my spirit with strength.  To be honest, there were moments in which I could barely stand the intensity of the bliss.  I knew all of the outward, yang, energy was unsustainable, yet my attempts to to cool myself off weren't doing the trick.  I tried cold swims, cardio, sauna, weight lifting, yin yoga, herbs, mantra, and meditation, yet I still felt overwhelmed.

I outwardly expressed my joy through song, dance, words, and movement.  But my meditations on emptying the mind, which had been so effective at managing challenging emotions, were no match for this joy. 

This whole experience revealed to me that I was not used to being joyous and engaged in the world.  I already knew how to sit with grief.  I already knew how to breath through anger, how to accept betrayal, how to surrender to things beyond my control. But intense joy? That was new.

And then I crashed.  My energy levels plummeted, my body rebelled with persistent aches and pains, and my creativity dried up.  Throughout this process, I asked over and over again, how can I find balance?

Feeling like a car that'd been driven until the wheels fell off, I escaped to the bush to connect with nature and myself.  I'm always astounded by the answers we find in the quiet, the secrets of the universe whispering to us in the form of of wind rustled leaves.

Teachers all around the world instruct their students to sit with discomfort, perhaps because there is no shortage of seekers asking for their pain to be taken away.  I've applied these techniques to my own discomfort with great success, but it never occurred to me to sit still and experience joy.  With no words, no labels, I needed to express my joy inwardly.

From this I learned the importance of balancing the inner and outer expression of my emotions.  I will continue to express all of my emotions and share them with the the world and people in my life, but I've also committed to sharing all of these emotions with myself, and committed to feeling them as deeply as possible. 

The symbol of a cross captures this teaching: balancing the horizontal, outward expression, with the vertical, inner expression.

On December 22nd, my brothers and sisters in the Northern Hemisphere experienced the winter solstice and those of us in the Southern Hemisphere experienced the summer solstice.  On this moment, the day and the night are equal in length, their energies in balance.  May you all find similar balance and harmony in your lives.

Yin Yoga and A Day In the Life of Adam & Eve

It took years for my spiritual relationship with vinyasa yoga to bloom.  Like many others, it initiated as a physical practice to enjoy low impact exercise while my knee healed from an injury sustained during marathon training.  My spiritual relationship with yin, however, was ripe from the beginning. 

Yin Yoga is a slow-paced style of yoga as exercise, incorporating principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine, with asanas (postures) that are held for longer periods of time...Yin Yoga poses apply moderate stress to the connective tissues of the body—the tendons, fasciae, and ligaments—with the aim of increasing circulation in the joints and improving flexibility. A more meditative approach to yoga, its goals are awareness of inner silence, and bringing to light a universal, interconnecting quality. (Wikipedia, Yin Yoga)

When I first found yin yoga, I experienced states of frustration, followed by deep contemplation, which flowed into awareness, and ultimately, surrender of body and spirit.  What I found most fascinating was that I could feel different stories in each tissue group, and even became of aware of the connection between the stories and between the tissue groups.  This deepened my understanding of the aphorism your issues are in your tissues, but it also piqued a curiosity into how and why yin yoga transcends movement on a cellular level. 

Fascia is the story of how we move; how we move is the story of how we live.  While we often think of nourishment as nutrients from food, biomechanist Katy Bowman makes the case that, in the same way we need a complex variety of edible nutrients to thrive, we similarly need a complex variety of movements to optimise our health.  This is not about eliminating certain foods or movements any more than it is about expressing too many of the same movements. For instance, neither sugar nor sitting are inherently bad. In fact, they both have value. But in excess, and without balance of other inputs, they can become problematic.

Through a process called mechanotransduction, cells respond to their physical movement by adjusting “to their structure and function accordingly” (Bowman).  We see this with bunions, blisters, and atrophied muscles after a cast is removed. Often these inputs are overlooked, but there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that “mechanotransduction may contribute to the development of many diseases, including atherosclerosis, fibrosis, asthma, osteoporosis, heart failure, and cancer” (Wikipedia, Mechanotransduction).  Other potential diseases may include glaucoma, irritable bowel syndrome, pelvic floor disorders, hemorrhoids, lymphedema, and sexual health dysfunction, among many others. 

Bowman writes, “Trees are shaped by the wind...it is the movement of a tree, specifically the all-day, every-day stimulation created by wind, that dictates the girth of a tree’s trunk and branches as well as how often and at what angle a tree branches.”  

Similarly, animals are shaped by their environment, which is particularly observable in animals that are in captivity, both in terms of the movements related to the short term adaptations of being in captivity, and the absence of movements they would experience in their native environment.  She describes Flaccid Fin Syndrome (FFS), often observed in orcas in captivity. While in captivity, orcas swim only in a counter-clockwise circle, they only swim in shallow water and thus miss out on varying degrees of external pressure, consume an unnatural diet, and spend a greater time at the surface of the water than their roaming counterparts.  For the orca, FFS is a case of missing a variety of natural movements, such as forward swimming, that would push the “passive tissues of the fin into an upright position,” and is also an excess of “single direction, tight-circle swimming.”

Culturally, it is very easy to attribute diseases to genetics.  While this may be the case with many diseases, it is important to ask, are we as humans experiencing similar diseases of captivity?  Do we see this in the form of deteriorated knees, dowager humps, misaligned gaits, tech neck, tight hamstrings, and collapsed arches? Whether through creation, evolution, or any other interpretation of our genesis, I struggle to believe that our birthright contains so much suffering.  I believe our birthright is to feel at home in our bodies.

It may be jarring to think of humans as in captivity, given that free will is of high importance in Western culture.  For the sake of this post, I am defining human captivity as living in a non-native environment in which, similarly to the orca, we are experiencing the absence of some movements and an excess of others.  It is easier to understand this when we reflect on the timeline of humanity. In his masterful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, historian Yuval Noah Harari iterates that the time we have existed since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago is but the “blink of an eye compared to the thousands of years during which our ancestors hunted and gathered.”  Following the cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago, humans roamed the earth as foragers for 60,000 years, living a life full of complex and varied nutritional and mechanical inputs. Meaning, for the majority of human history, we lived a radically different existence, and our species evolved and adapted to a life very different than the one the majority of us live today.

In addition to mechanical differences in how they lived, our predecessors “mastered...the internal world of their own bodies and senses.  They listened to the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking there. They carefully observed the foliage of trees in order to discover fruits, beehives, and birds’ nests.  They moved with a minimum of effort and noise, and knew how to sit, walk and run in the most agile and efficient manner. Varied and constant use of their bodies made them as fit as marathon runners. They had physical dexterity that people today are unable to achieve even after years of practicing yoga or t’ai chi” (Harari). 

With radically different lives and movement patterns, our ancestors undoubtedly had a radically different fascia profile.  It is unlikely they needed yin yoga. But, if our issues are in our tissues, does this mean that the hunter-gatherers did not hold on to or sustain psychosocial stories in their bodies?

One way to answer this question is to look at the Kalahari Bushman, the oldest continuous living hunter-gatherer society remaining.

The Bushman have only a thin veil between their physical and metaphysical body.  Different energies, emotions, and experiences exist in the same realm as what we describe as tangible.  And if an energy is sharp, it pierces your skin and is lodged in your body. Bushman doctors of the past referred to these as thorns, while today’s Bushman doctors refer to these as nails and arrows.  To the Bushman, an emotional pain in the body is indistinguishable from the metal nail you would use to build a house. Keeney writes:

“Since anything sharp and pointed may pierce and cross the boundary of your skin, all these names of physical objects are used to refer to that which delivers either sickness or medicine...Anger makes your arrows dirty.  The other two toxins that make them dirty are jealousy and selfishness. Be careful when you lose your temper, for it shoots a dirty arrow that can make someone sick. The same thing happens when you lose control of your jealousy or forget to share your wealth with others.  All these things make people sick. When a feeling is intensified to such an extent that it feels real and solid, then it has become an arrow.” (Keeney)

Through listening to their body, the Kalahari Bushman manipulate their tissues through dance in complex and intentional techniques called Shaking Medicine. The aim of this is what Westerners would describe as fascia release, but the Bushman interpret this as healing, increasing empathy, transforming into animals, and cultivating states of transcendence.

In Sanskrit, the word granthi is a knot especially difficult to untie.  In yoga, these are psychic knots, often in specific parts of our body and relating to a particular behavioral or metaphysical correlation.  To the Rishis (great sages), they are knots, to the Bushman, they are nails.  

It is a remarkable feeling when we release a lump in our throat, the knot in our stomach, or a weight on our shoulders.  I often see, through our lives in captivity, that we are burdened with nails, arrows, and knots that many of us are unable to remove.  It’s even more discouraging to learn how unaware of them we are. And I often wonder, how many of them are there because of movement deficits and how many because of energetic circumstances?   My suspicion is that it is, and has always been, an interplay between the two. However, when we approach healing from a singular perspective as either energetic or mechanical, we diminish our capacity to self heal and lose an opportunity to increase our internal sensitivity.

For all of these reasons, I understand the practice of Yin Yoga, through an anthropological lens, as a practice similar to Shaking Medicine.  While we may lack the mastery of the internal world and senses that Harari describes our ancestors as having, a sensitivity the Bushman likely still possess, we still experience the same complexity and drama of what it means to be human.  While many practitioners may struggle to understand this as I do, I believe we still experience the same thorns, nails, and arrows in our bodies, and similarly benefit from some form of release, or as I prefer to think of it, healing.

References

Bowman, Katy.  Move your DNA: Restore Your Natural health Through Natural Movement 

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 

Keeney, Bradford.  The Bushman Way of Tracking God: The Original Spirituality of the Kalahari People

Wikipedia.  Mechanobiology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanobiology

Wikipedia. Yin Yoga. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_Yoga

Undefended, from head to toe

"Do I have to wear shoes?"

I can hear myself asking this question every time mom or dad would tell pre-adolescent Eric that we were off to run an errand or visit a relative.  When you're a child, it isn't defying social conventions to show up barefoot, but we eventually learn that covering and protecting our feet is expected.  A few years later, when I was 17 and accustomed to wearing shoes everywhere, I remember how nervous I was about my teammates seeing my feet at the hotel pool while we were away for a track competition.

It took a decade or so but I'm back on the barefoot bandwagon.  Dr. Irene Davis, professor in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School says that "We have lulled ourselves into thinking that our feet need cushioning and support to survive and to withstand the loads of walking and running. It’s very hard for people to make this paradigm shift back to really the way that we were running for the majority of our evolutionary history."

The human foot has vast capabilities when allowed to function in its natural form. This is the beginning of a powerful inquiry: What else has vast capabilities when allowed to function in its natural form? For starters...

The Heart.
 

For many modern yogis, the concept of heart opening begins with backbends.  And while I wholeheartedly agree that these poses directly affect the energy of the heart and our ability to relate, asana is only the beginning of lasting Heart Opening.

When we are young and a little bit wild, we don't bother protecting our feet or our hearts.  As they become more protected, they lose their dynamic qualities and strengths.  The range of acceptable experiences becomes increasingly constricted.  From a young age, we are barraged with messages that indicate we are somehow not good enough just as we are.  We are told that to be loved, we need to constantly prove our worthiness or somehow change and disguise innate elements of our Selves.  Eventually we believe it.

Walking barefoot after decades is initially alarming and uncomfortable.  But I can promise you, with practice, the tiny stones and twigs eventually feel less like pain and more like information. 

When we open ourselves to uncomfortable experiences, when we take the exquisite risk of showing up just as we are, what once terrified us becomes less like pain and more like information.

There is joy in walking barefoot on fresh grass and cool sand. 

There is a joy when you live authentically. I can't promise you what will be on the other side, but I do believe we are all innately worthy of being ourselves.  Living from this place informs meaningful connection to others.  It inspires empathy, compassion, and trust. 

While I believe this from a theoretical perspective, a pervasive fear resides within me that says, "Don't do it.  This won't end well."  It is because of this voice that I am still shocked and relieved that every time I act with an open heart it actually ends well.  Sometimes I get the outcome I wanted and sometimes I do not.  But I never regret it.

I still do backbends.  I still love to teach backbends.  My own heart opening practice shifts beneath my feet, as does the way I teach it.

What do you mean, your dog is your teacher?

Have you ever heard your yoga teacher describe one of their “greatest teachers” as a baby or pet? Upon first hearing that, I thought it was baloney.  At the time, the most useful interpretation I could glean was that it perhaps related to patience.

One of my greatest teachers, Tara Brach, who I promise is a celebrated author and beloved adult human being, uses meditation techniques to draw her students into a compassionate heart space.  This often involves visualizing in great detail an experience or memory that naturally inspires feelings of love and comfort, where the mind is calm and the heart is full.

She often describes this as taking refuge in the experience of boundless compassion.  One of Tara’s techniques in finding refuge that helps me profoundly is her instruction to find this place by remembering a “person or pet.”

This resulted in my daily mantra: I am love. I am awareness. I am connectedness.  I take refuge in love.

The last refrain, I take refuge in love, always involves my beloved pet, son, companion, savior, and teacher, Lucas-José.  There are daily moments in our cuddles where I’m speaking and interacting effortlessly, without thought and inhibition.  In those moments I am wholly myself, I have found refuge.

Yes, his toenails are pink.  That is his favorite color, after all.

I draw on any memory of that experience in daily meditation, effectively retraining my brain to be happier and less anxious.  And it works. I feel a shift in my body, my shoulders drop, the corners of my mouth curl up, and the grip in my belly releases.  For the rest of the day, I feel more centered and resilient, less reactive to the life’s curve balls.

How does a 6kg rescue pet save my life every day, drawing me out of some of the darkest places I’ve ever been? To answer that question, we have to go back...way back. Between 20,000 and 40,000 years back, when dogs were wolves.  It's commonly believed that humans domesticated wolves to help with hunting, however, new evidence has turned that paradigm on its head.

April Short at Alternet writes describes the model that ancient “humans used dogs to hunt doesn’t hold much water because humans were already successful hunters without wolves, and didn’t tend to be friendly towards other carnivorous species….The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated.”

Selecting dogs with hyper-social behavior made bonding easier over the years, also resulting in phenotypes we would describe as endearing to humans: floppy ears, silky coats, wagging tails...in other words, cute. Conversely, and in the same vein, few things are as blood curling as the sound of a dog in distress.

As it turns out there is a genetic explanation for these friendly proto-dogs.   The friendlier wolves likely had a mutation “which involves stunted social development and overly-friendly behavior.”

This is why dogs are able to be easily trained and are active during the same hours as their owners, as opposed to truly nocturnal animals (Livescience).

As ancient humans shifted towards an agricultural lifestyle, both humans and dogs developed an increased tolerance for starchy foods.  In dogs, this is possible because they have a gene called AMY2B, which is 28 times more active in dogs than in wolves, thus further differentiating dogs from wolves as a result of human intervention.

So basically these mentally ill wolves who didn’t know any better endeared themselves to humans and we intervened in their evolution to suit our emotional needs, simultaneously rendering them incapable of surviving on their own.

And then we abandoned them.  Any developing country will have an obvious epidemic of neglected dogs.  Developed countries have this epidemic, too, but we invest great resources in the public sector to remove any reminder of our great abandonment from our consciousness. We would rather send them to their deaths than deal with the consequences of our collective behavior.

Most great tragedies reflect the nature of the ego, and in this case, the rampant proliferation of neglected dogs is a reflection of our egoic nature on a societal level.  The ego can be understood when we understand how humans typically respond to discomfort. As individuals we find something to bring us comfort, and unless we address the underlying issue, we abuse our comfort object, and ultimately find ourselves in a crisis we’ve created, usually more complex and painful than the original experience we so desperately sought to avoid.  So what do we do?

Do we make peace with it, throwing cooked rice and scraps of chicken outside every night? Or do we go to murderous lengths to adopt an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality? Do we opt for an expensive boutique route, equating value with money and hoping it will somehow be more comforting? Or perhaps the most radical solution of all is to take ownership.

Without Lucas’s love, and my love for him, I would not ask these questions of myself or of you.  I would be ignorant to humanity's role in this crisis or even the very existence of this crisis. I would not gently weep in the back seat of a Balinese taxi as we drive past unwanted, completely bald-from-mange dogs that would have once made me cringe, but now make me sad.  Because the one thing this dog wants more than anything, as a result of our intervention, is to be loved and looked after. We have created a reflection of our own humanity, because we wanted the exact same things first. To be loved and looked after.

Without Lucas, I would be ignorant to the boundless joy that exists in my own heart space and to the truth that this refuge is reachable in any moment.  Without his enthusiastic greeting I would easily forget how much love exists in any moment, including this one. This is what I mean when I say Lucas is one of my greatest teachers.

Are you truly prepared to hold space?

(Photo: Getty Images/Quinn Lemmers for Yahoo Lifestyle)

Suicide is terrible. I'm grateful people are talking about it and that there are hotline numbers people can copy and paste on their Facebook pages.

The best thing we can do with loss is to look inward and explore what it means for us. Usually it happens on an individual level but in this case it affected a good part of the western world.

There's no tactful way to put this but a lot of the recent posts remind me of everyone googling Maya Angelou quotes when she died, that this whole experience, while reflective and raw for many, is for many others somehow adjacent to slacktivism.

It is awesome that you are posting publicly you are available to chat with someone who is depressed and suicidal. I believe you and I believe you mean it.

But if you want to take it a step further, establish patterns of communication and emotional infrastructure to make yourself more accessible to people in your life whose main symptom of their illness is believing that nothing, not even talking to you or calling a 1800 number, can make the situation any better.

When I worked at USDA one thing I learned is that the world produces enough food to feed everyone, but we lack the infrastructure to get it to the places that need it the most.

I believe everyone's hearts are in the right place but we lack the infrastructure to effectively open those difficult and important conversations.

Before asking someone, "are you OK?" - ask yourself, are you asking for your sake or for theirs? Are you asking in an environment where you can hold space and dedicate time to someone who may be on the verge of suicide or deeply depressed? Or are you asking to relieve your own anxiety about your social responsibility, as if to somehow put your own mind at ease?

What if you don't have time for a deep and meaningful? In the mean time, ask open ended questions that require a thoughtful response. It can be about anything, "what did you think of that movie? How was your day? How are things going at work? How is your relationship?"

At least then you'll get valuable insight in the people in your life, even if you don't think they're depressed. You'll connect. And if the time comes, you may be the one your friend opens up to or feels comfortable reaching out to.

To anyone reading this, your role in suicide prevention is more than perfunctory. It's taking a genuine interest in the all the people in your lives and supporting them appropriately. It's paying attention and having conversations without agenda and calculation, not the kind where you're just waiting for your turn to speak next.

And, if you really are worried about your loved one, don't ask "are you ok?" Just don't. 
Instead ask, "how are you?" and mean it. If someone raw and fragile starts to open up, and you shut them down or have to run off to your next appointment, that may be it. They may not even bother opening up to the next person, because what's the point? He might run off too, or make it about himself. Or offer suggestions and solutions when all that is needed in that moment is to be heard, seen, and possibly understood.

Everyone is doing their best, even if it hurts you

If you had asked me in the 7th grade what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you that I wanted to be the psychiatrist on the first manned mission to Mars.

The MD didn't happen, nor did mars, but Western Australia is about as Mars as you can get. Perth is the closest thing to an antipole my stateside home has.

Today is Mother's Day; I've chosen to spend it in reflection on family. There are so few times I can count where I actually felt I fit in with my own. Times I felt resented for being there and equally resented for not being there. I was an effeminate and sensitive child, compounded by a palpable aura of weird awkwardness that comes from a lifetime of side glances you get for not fitting the mold. I had no redeeming athleticism or hand eye coordination. The only part of me that was celebrated were good grades and doing my chores- also known as not rocking the boat. People in my life found ways to keep me in check, offering me polite suggestions on how to hold my limp wrists when I walk and telling me at age 8 the way I danced to Celine Dion was "of the devil." For years I didn't move my arms when I walked because I didn't want to attract attention to myself. That is, until in 8th grade, when my stiff arms started attracting attention and I started moving them.

At 17 I packed up and left to Virginia on full scholarship, and my mom offered this insightful question: 
"Have you ever thought that they're giving you a full scholarship because everyone at that school is dumb and you're the best they can do?"

I went anyway. Resented for going and resented for staying. If being the first to go out of state for college didn't help, then moving to D.C. at 22 only created more space. Now in Australia, there's no place I could go further away- except for the moon or mars.

And the truth is, I still feel incredibly awkward about my body. I love dancing alone with my dog but going out dancing with friends is not fun for me- it's uncomfortable for a long time before I can start enjoying myself. But I know it's good for me so I go anyway. When I practice asana, which for some reason I excel at, I have 75 minutes of conscious movement where I don't feel ashamed, but instead empowered and capable. And this is a feeling I can find anywhere in the universe, a feeling I have inside of me.

One of the greatest challenges of my life but also the most liberating realization is that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. As hard as that is to learn it's so easy to forget.

I am flawed, but I am also certainly trying my best. And on this Mother's Day, I am publicly offering out the intention to remember, even if for a day, that your mother tried her best. And I follow that up with a mantra of gratitude for all the men and women who celebrated you and filled in the gaps in the moments that her best wasn't enough.

Healing is a lifelong journey

Where the Wild Things Are

I was 24 when he was diagnosed, I was 27 when we lost him. The morning he left I remember walking into am empty bedroom across the hall and sobbing uncontrollably. The next few days and weeks I "held it together" and only last year did I realize a deep and unresolved need to grieve.

Australia has been diving from one unknown to the other, sitting with my unrelenting and merciless emotions. I left because I missed the relaxed feeling I had around my father, the way my shoulders dropped when I walked into his house after a long journey, recognized the scent of his fabric softener, how he always had milk in his fridge and drip coffee in the morning, how he saved the grass for me to mow because he knew I liked to do it...I missed that distinct feeling of home, not having experienced it for seven years, since I was 24, since dad was diagnosed and my world fell apart.

As much as I rail against hollywood's use of sitcoms to spoon feed us mores of a heteronormative framework, the TV shows I do watch happen to be ones about loving nuclear families (The Middle, Blackish, Bob's Burgers), because I long for that sense of belonging and unconditional love.

Today, after months of conscious unearthing of emotions, after abandoning vehicles for bypassing discomfort, I watched this video, on the anniversary of his death, and had the biggest, ugliest, messiest cry over him. I loved seeing his life and his love for his family, particularly his children and nieces, who he loved as his own. He was badass, he knew how to fix things, he was annoyingly cheap but taught me how to be thrifty, loved Led Zeppelin and Dwight Yoakam, he let us be wild and climb on roofs, he didn't mind that I was weird or gay and loved me just the same, he always made sure I had a cell phone so I'd be safe, and if I wanted to earn money he'd give me the most boring jobs at his office. He loved his family so, so, so much.

I feel incredibly gauche making this so public, but I do it because people of the same generation tend to share events in waves: getting the first cars, getting married, having children, parents dying. Unfortunately I was early in the last one, and years later I'm seeing the first wave of my peers lose their's. It is heartbreaking. Please love the ones you've got, and make sure they know it.

Healing is a lifelong journey...

"I felt that the world was no longer safe if my young handsome lively father could be so suddenly dead. It felt like it was a shooting gallery out there. And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn't have to anymore. And then over time I became more or less okay: I did feel joy again, and I feel it now sometimes bigger than I ever thought possible." - Anne Lamott

I have almost no memory of making this video.  I made a similar one for my uncle exactly one month before, and while looking through images, I sorted ones out that featured my father, because I knew.

Move with Integrity

Running in South Fremantle

My first two weeks in Australia I maintained a daily movement practice, but the past week all I've wanted to do was eat, sleep, and drink coffee. I'd move a little bit here and there, but without enthusiasm.

Today the energy came back, and I had a great workout at my new gym, pictured below. It's a trail along the beach and some rings I brought over in my carry-on from the states.

When I ran my first big race- the Austin Freescale Half Marathon when I was 19 years old, I was averaging a 10 minute mile. I later switched to Vibram Five Fingers, and my pace dropped to 9min/mile. I became injured and started taking yoga, and as my hamstrings and hips opened, down it came to 8min/mile.

From over stretching and postural balances, my relationship with running was off and on. I shifted more to indoor cycling and loved the community of the shared experience.

Now I know more about the body than ever, and am retraining my body with a lot of awareness on my pelvic floor. The way I'm running now is faster than ever, and I'm rapidly approaching a 7min/mile. Before, this pace would have been an all out sprint, flinging my body forward. Now it feels controlled, I am shocked when I look down and see my pace. It feels like 9min/mile, but it's so much more sustainable and quite a bit faster.

I'm not even trying to move quickly, just trying to move with integrity.

Sitting with Ganesh and a Mexican Dentist

On my last month of teaching in DC I frequently shared a message I received, that was playing louder and louder:

When faced with a challenge, do you contract or expand? This is wisdom. 

I've been paying for, but not using, dental insurance for 18 months (Thanks, Obama! Sincerely, thank you. You, too, Pelosi), and in the twilight of my time in the states I went in for a cleaning and to fill a cavity I've had longer than I'd care to admit. The cleaning was covered, but the rest of the work costed over $1,000 and there was no way I could afford that.

Since I grew up on the US/Mexico border, I knew I could get affordable dental work on my upcoming visit to the family.

Immediately after walking across the international bridge, there are at least a hundred dental offices within a square mile. The first one I walked into had a sign out front, "We speak English," but no availability.  A nice man with gang tattoos, bright blue eyes, and incredible English overheard I needed fillings and walked me to a dentist he knew.

Walking across the international border the morning of December 26th 

This dentist didn't speak English, but his equipment was more modern than the dentist I saw in Northeast DC and he at least has a hygienist to suck the excess saliva out of my mouth. I've had incredibly positive experiences with my dental work in Mexico over the years. When I suffered from TMJ 10 years ago, all the US dentists I saw wanted with either break my jaw and surgically reattach it, or put me back in braces for two years. I visited a Dr. Alatorre in Mexico once a week, and he slowly adjusted my mouth guard until the chronic jaw pain finally relented. And it was a tenth, probably less, of the cost of a dramatic and painful US intervention.

The DC dentist told me I had two cavities, the one today said I had four. I didn't have time for a second opinion and all I could say was "fill em up."

In the chair with the bright light in my face the dentist performed the most questionable dental work I'd ever received and I was worried my teeth would be irreparably damaged, I would have to pay big bucks to a dentist on the US side, or more realistically, live with the consequences for a few years until I could afford to fix it. We could barely communicate and I felt vulnerable, helpless, scared, even angry.

My fingers slipped from one mala bead to another as I chanted a mantra for Ganesh. Remove my obstacles. But instead the sneaky Lord gave me the very wisdom I had been teaching.

This experience happens every day in the US. We have millions of non-English in our country who have no idea what kind of service they are receiving because of language and economic barriers. I'm fairly educated, I've had money before, I know what it's like to be rich - but for a moment I knew what it was like to be fearful about my health because I had to make decisions driven by financial scarcity. The fear in my heart was no longer alone, alongside it compassion. I continued to thumb my mala, taking a full inhale and exhale for every bead, looping around once, coming back, and then forward again. Om gam ganapataye namaha. Through this experience, I expanded.

Jai Ganesh!  Thank you for the wisdom. 

And I am so fucking excited about all of the opportunities I will have to expand from this next adventure, the greatest of my life

(thus far)

What the fuck, Abby?!

“Emotions are energy in motion.  If they are not expressed, the energy is repressed.  As energy it has to go somewhere.  Emotional energy moves us, as does all energy...To deny energy is to deny the ground and vital energy of our life.” - John Bradshaw

Yoga teachers don’t always know when you’re having a bad day.  Sometimes it's hectic before class.  We don’t often know how you look in different emotional states.  We’re pretty good and telling when you’re relaxed in savasana.  We don’t care if you cry for sixty minutes.  In fact, we think it’s brave.

But yesterday everyone was having a bad day.  I spent the morning thinking about the three classes I would teach that night.  By 11am, an above average amount of people signed up for all three classes.

What would I tell my own students to do when faced with uncertainty and fear? The answer is clear - practice, whatever that means to you.  Asana, pranayama, meditation.  Practice.  Even if the answer remains unclear, you will be clearer.  But yesterday I could not bring myself to practice, I could not even close my eyes.  By 1140am I made the call that it was time to surrender and turn myself into the capable hands of a yoga teacher and take a public noon class.  Self practice is beautiful, but sometimes you need someone to hold your head up when you’re too broken to do it yourself.

We sat silently as the teacher locked the door and took her seat at the front of class.  Before she could speak, someone in the back shouted, “What the fuck, Abby?!” He said what everyone in the packed room was feeling.  People were looking for something, and they wanted her to guide them.

I’ve never felt so much empathy for another yoga teacher.  These were her dedicated and loving students and she was about to do what I was too sad and too helpless to do.  She showed herself; she was raw, thoughtful, and present.  I doubt I’ll ever forget that class - her words, where my mat was, that I hadn’t showered, that I could barely sit up, that moving from down dog to warrior pose was exhausting and there were times I didn’t think I would make it up, viloma pranayama, the crying.  We’re more likely to remember things in highly emotional states, and the entire room was palpably emotional.

After class, I told her she was a first responder. I’ve talked to other yoga teachers about what it meant and felt like to teach on November 9th.  Energy workers will always remember this day similarly.  It’s the same for massage therapists, personal trainers, coaches, psychotherapists, etc.  Imagine massaging crying clients all day while feeling your own burden of sadness, or motivating someone to lift weights when you can’t even lift your own head.

I am so thankful for that class and admire that she held space when things were at their rawest. I felt selfish for moving to Australia, because I knew I’d be needed in DC more than ever (I’m still going).

The task of teaching a triple header seemed less like Everest and more like Kilimanjaro.  Leading a class about Lord Shiva floated around in the back of my mind, but I felt it was “too soon” to explain why the destruction of the universe is actually a good thing.

I began class by with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance.  They aren’t necessarily linear and you can move in and out them.  When I didn’t have words, I brought out my book of quotes so that others could speak for me. Anne Lamott, Melissa Gilbert, and Pema Chodron showed up, and so did Sutra 2.33.

"When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite (positive) ones should be thought of. This is pratipaksha bhavana." (translated by Sw. Satchidananda)

The space was a container for tears, anger, fear.  We did lots of lion’s breath, audible exhales, sighing. They were to bravely feel what is in the heart, and after learning from it, cultivate the opposite.

The 5pm class had the most years, and as I watched over them in savasana, many were twitching, fidgeting, and visibly uncomfortable.  I thought I failed.  

The next class at 630 was meant to be an alignment class, but I taught a steady flow.  Nobody needed to be staring at their toes and shortening the outer ankle while contemplating the end of the world.  There were less tears, and the savasana was sweeter and stiller.

By 8pm, the numbers dwindled, we moved more slowly, no tears, and we shared tender hugs after drinking the nectar of savasana.  As the arc of the day went on, students were collectively processing in tandem.  The shellshock was wearing off.

The journey ahead is long, and there will be many who step forward and answer the call of duty.  But today, I say thank you to all the first responders out there (Thank you, Abby).  If you have a first responder in your life that held space for you, show your gratitude.  You can nourish the body (food, massage), the heart (a note, a hug), the mind (a book, run an errand).

Through all of this, I received a brutally delivered and expected gift.  Having dove into sadness, I swam out with the capacity to love the entire human race.  My chest is lighter, wider, longer, and my arms swing effortlessly as they are balanced in my midline.  Tuesday’s sledgehammer crashed down onto my armored heart, and after the shock wore off, a new ray of light shown through.

The Bio and Spiritual Mechanics of Walking

The Bio and Spiritual Mechanics of Walking

On a weekly basis, students share with me an ailment that could easily be fixed by deepening your relationship with the Earth.  These ailments show up as either physical (gross body) or otherwise (subtle body).  Here we examine what it means to Earth.

Most of the conversations about feet start with a student sharing her discomfort.  I’ll ask about footwear, and usually there a story about helpful orthotics or arch support.

Remember when your elementary school rented a parachute and the students formed a perimeter? The parachute would lift up and down, dome and depress, the circumference in constant flux with every little movement.  Rather than think about the arches in your feet like the solid shape of a bridge, think of them like the elementary school parachute - as malleable and dynamic.

Now that we’ve reframed our perception of arches, how can we increase this malleability?

Mobility is like a non-native language: If you don’t use it, you lose it.  The more support your shoes have, the less work your aches have to do.  I can already hear some of you saying, “But I have…” high arches, flat feet, am uncomfortable in minimal shoes.  I have two anecdotes to then share.

When I was a middle school teacher, the principal instituted a policy that teachers should be standing the entire time, as a mechanism to engage the students.  Philosophically, I agreed then and still do.  However, my feet were killing me.  The first thing I’d do when I got home - at 23 years old - was put my feet up.  Wasn’t that what old men did?  So I saw a podiatrist and had custom inserts made.  My feet felt great and I could stand comfortably for hours.  A short term goal was met, and at the time it was fine.  Now I know better.

Sitting is fine - standing is fine - squatting is fine.  But our bodies are not suited to be stationary or excessively maintain a single shape.  Doing too much of anything is rarely good for the body.

One time my mom wanted to dodge out of eye surgery so she ate carrots, more carrots, and then some more carrots.  Her skin eventually turned orange.  The same lense can be applied to movement: a healthy body it isn’t so much about the shapes in which we organize our body, but the variety of shapes we assume and the frequency which we assume them.  Asana in the West, which typically has more standing poses, is more suitable for non-squatting cultures.  In the East, a lot more of the asana is seated, largely in part because seated poses are accessible to squatting cultures.

I’ve learned a lot about feet since teaching 8th grade.  Using an insert to support my high arches is not what I needed.  What I needed was movement and footwear that was less supportive and allowed for the body’s natural biomechanics to support me.  The pain I felt from standing was an internal alarm saying “MOVE!”  I didn’t understand the language at the time, nor did I think I had agency over the issues, so I paid $200 for custom inserts.  This was like taking Advil for a dehydration headache, when I could have just had water in the first place.

Since she says it way better than I ever could (in fact, she literally wrote the book on this, three times), check out Katy Bowman’s guide to shoes.  I bought Earth Runners and wear them every day.  My runs are more fun, faster, longer, and I feel so sore after.  The soreness is a reminder that I’m recruiting muscles that had previously been ignored.

My trusty Earth Runners on a DC bus.

The second story involves a beach camping trip and one of my best friend’s attempts at transitioning to minimal footwear.  If your parachute has been underutilized for years, be thoughtful about your transition.  He slipped on his minimal shoes, ran his usual 4-5 miles, and came back to camp.  He was initially fine, but as the weekend of sleeping in tents moved along, his pain increased.  On the drive home, we stopped at urgent care and he was medicated to unlock and soften his muscles.  For him, minimal running was too much too soon.  Ease your way in, walk barefoot when you can, even if it is just around the house or to the mailbox. Gradually give up support as you transition to minimal shoes.  Trust the resilience of your anatomy. Walk more.  The more you walk in minimal or no shoes, the more mobile your ankles, arches, and toes become.

If you’re still not convinced, make a fist with your hand.  Lifting one finger at a time, find an open palm.  Then, make a new fist with the same hand.  Extend your thumb, then bring it back to the fist.  Extend your index finger, then bring it back to a fist.  Do this with all fingers.  This likely won’t be too difficult.  We’re used to our fingers having this mobility, but did you know your toes have the capacity for similar movement? If you don’t use it, you lose it.  When we walk through life accepting that our feet will always be a struggle, that part of us is limited, we miss out on so much.  Take a different perspective and realize that your feet are a blessing that move you around and are capable of so much more than they are given credit for.

Spiritual Mechanics of Walking

Some of the most revelational experiences I’ve had in recent years involve walking.  If you find meditation confrontational, mindful walking can cultivate a similar effect. One of the most famous pilgrimages in the world - El Camino de Santiago - has pilgrims walking 30-45 kilometers each day. While we don't always overtly label major hikes in the United States as spiritual journeys, anyone who as hiked the Appalachian or Pacific Northwest Trails will share their own revelational experiences. Many of them write books about it.

If you are sad, a long walk increases circulation and creates a safe space for processing your thoughts and feelings.  If you’re anxious, a slow walk with mindful breathing can drop your vibrations. If you want to improve mindfulness, pay attention to every step. My friend Dahlia swears by her 30-45 minute walk every morning.

You can use this time to call relatives of friends.  You can walk with a friend, have a business meeting with a colleague.  You’ll be shocked at how much easier communication flows when the body is in natural movement.  

You can increase your learning.  Even if you don’t identify as a calisthenic learning, that part of you is in there somewhere.  Download a podcast or book on tape, and if you want to up the spiritual mechanics, select material that will grow you in this direction.  Walking unlocks and opens the mind and heart.

In the same way walking helps the feet, walking helps the soul.  When confronted with a negative experience, our mind will scream, “How can I bypass this feeling?”  Just like the arches of the feet, if we bypass the spirit’s “parachute” malleability, the soul becomes increasingly rigid.  The combination of fresh air, endorphins, sunlight, moonlight, and variety in sensations are all forms of embodiment that enhance our spiritual malleability.

Even though it rarely feels this way, there is always a choice.  When you’re in the mud, do you deny it, or do you acknowledge it?  Do you stay rigid or do you grow?  Growth is not always easy.  The lotus flower is born in the mud and pushes through it before blooming, and only then does it reveal its beautiful petals.

Lotus flower I saw in Bangkok. 2015.

THANK YOU!

Me at about sixteen.  I am not known for being a winner. I was an awkward, gangly, kid.

When I was younger, I don’t remember being particularly good at anything.  I wasn’t in the GT (gifted and talented program), was horrible at sports, and had zero self confidence.  My GPA was 33rd percentile in my graduating class.  My family couldn’t afford trendy clothes for me and I had very few friends.  I remember most of my childhood being spent alone.

Things picked up in college but I went on to become a mediocre graduate student and an equally mediocre federal employee. My life was out of alignment in many ways, one of which is that I was not living my dharma.  Within six months of finishing yoga teacher training, I left the USDA to pursue the craft full time.  I was completely prepared to work insane hours for little pay, schlepping all over the DC Metro for whomever would hire an inexperienced teacher.

Three years later - I won Washington City’ Papers Reader Poll for Best Yoga Instructor in Washington, DC.  It was a beautiful recognition of love from the community to which I’ve wholly dedicated.  

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone.  Thank you for those who voted for me.  Thank you for those who thanked me.  Thank you to those who laughed at my dad jokes.  Thank you to those who were vulnerable enough to cry in my classes.  To those who brought their friends.  To those who came back even after I messed up sequences, skipped poses, and took way too long to realize my playlist was on shuffle.  Thank you to those who humbled me, who encouraged me, who took me down a few notches.  

I would also like to thank my teachers, in no particular order, for sharing their wisdom and love.

Chanda Creasy - Chanda taught the second class I attended at the Studio DC - a place I’ve called home for the past four years.  Thank you Chanda, for modeling to me compassion at every turn.  Thank you for inviting me to co-lead what would be my first retreat.  Your classes are drinking nectar from the moon.  For hugging sincerely, plentifully, and enthusiastically.  For showing me there is beauty in everything, for showing me the true nature of the heart is bliss.  For teaching me to show up and unapologetically be myself.

Natasha Rizopolous - Natasha was guest faculty in my first teacher training, and primary faculty in my 500-hr program.  Thank you, Natasha, for showing me that I am not my thoughts and feelings.  Thank you for showing me the marriage between spirituality and asana.  Thank you for healing my body and strengthening my soul.  Thank you for refining my teaching and enabling me to help others in a way I never thought possible.

Jo Tatsula - I found Jo on yogaglo.com, and traveled to India to study with her for two weeks in Rishikesh, India.  Jo, thank you for teaching the importance of tending to the sacred flame.  Thank you for inspiring me to be creative, for teaching me about the breath between the breath, for awakening my heart.

Barbara Benagh - I stumbled upon Barbara via Natasha at Down Under Yoga in Brookline, MA.  She was primary faculty on my advanced yoga training.  Thank you, Barbara, for teaching me how to listen to my body and to observe my breath.  For teaching me that yoga isn’t sweating, it’s paying attention.  Without you, I wouldn’t have sampled the subtleties and softness of yoga.  Learning breath from you was learning a new language, I will always hear it around me and within me.

John Schumacher - I consider John to be one of the most senior teachers on the planet and we are fortunate enough to have him in the DC Metro area at Unity Woods Yoga.  Even after finishing yoga teacher training, I took his beginner series twice and learned every single class.  Thank you, John, for showing me that there is yoga for everyone, and that tough and caring are not mutually exclusive.

Katya Brandis - Katya taught the first class I took at the Studio DC and inspired me to leave my comfort zone.  It was through her that I realized my love of teaching.  I now know that yoga can be fun, funny, and more challenging than I ever thought before.  I am certain that I would not be a yoga teacher at all without her support, encouragement, and mentoring.  Not only did she lead my initial teacher training, but she mentored me after graduation.  I still remember her taking my Friday 630am classes while in her third trimester.  Without her guidance and support in the early infancy of my teaching I would not be teaching at all.

One of the key points I’ve learned from yoga is to not identify with the external/temporary (prakriti), to identify with the internal/eternal (purusha).  The external is always changing.  Natalie Portman, winner of the best actress Oscar for Black Swan, cautions winners to remain grounded, saying: "When you start valuing yourself based on other people's accolades, it is a little dangerous, because then you have to start valuing yourself based on other people's insults, too.”

I see this less as an award for being gifted, but more so a validation for listening to my inner compass, and teaching from a place that is authentic to me in that moment. With time, my pedagogy will shift, my delivery will change, and my offerings will adapt.  Like so many teachers, I am shifting away from sweat and power and exploring the softer, subtler sides of movement.  My orientation and priorities are kindness and introspection, less handstands and heart rates.  This is less popular, but more important.  The role of a yoga teacher is not to offer what the student wants - but what the student needs.

The light in me bows to the light in you.  Namaste.

Breathing life into compassion: Three practical tips.

“Ahimsa and Truth are as my two lungs. I cannot live without them.” - Mahatma Gandhi

After a multi-year relationship ended, I finally got up the courage to not only go on dates, but also open my heart.  Seeking consolation after a particularly memorable bee sting to my heart, a good friend told me, “Of course things didn’t work out.  He is not only way too smart for you, but also more interesting. Not to mention your hair looks like a rat’s nest and your biceps are too small.”

A bit harsh, yeah? In truth, this was no friend at all, but actually the voice of my inner critic.  When explained in this context, the story is more believable.  Not only are we harsh to ourselves, but we normalize the behavior.

Ahimsa, a well known precept in Jainism and Yoga Philosophy, is an observance of non-violence or compassion.  This observance is universal, meaning an outward practice towards the world is equally important as an inward practice to oneself.  In other words, abate the negative self talk.

We say things to ourselves we would never consider saying to anyone else.  The habit of being self punitive is the most opposite act of Ahimsa we can do.  A relative of mine suffers from leg and foot ulcers as a result of a genetic condition called lymphedema.  She is also a farmer, and often walks through knee-high stagnant canal water to tend to the land.  When I heard this, I literally cringed, thinking of the risk and harm to her body.  But we lack the same visceral response and disparagement when we learn of negative self talk, such as, “I’m not cool enough to be friends with them.”  Negative self talk is walking your vulnerable emotional body through stagnant canal water.

Ahimsa is very much a practice.  Like asana (yoga poses), playing the piano, sewing, or any other tactile skill - it must be continually practiced to develop and improve.  Admittedly, I have come a long way in my own Ahimsa practice.  Brian Kest offers a wonderful, refined, and accessible, dharma talk before his class on negative self talk. I heard it in 2012 and the vibrations of his message shape me every day.

One thing I did not expect to encounter from my Ahimsa practice was resistance and confusion from those around me.  Let me preface this by revealing a deep, dark, secret: I am fallible.  In another life, I booked a photographer for some promotional material, but neglected to confirm the time with one of the models, who subsequently could not come.  I was in the doghouse with my boss for a while, and neither time nor apologies could get me out of there.  It wasn’t until I feigned harsh criticism towards myself that I was forgiven.  My boss interpreted my lack of negative self-talk as apathy.

To be absolutely clear, Ahimsa is not the outright rejection of negative thoughts and feelings.  Rather, it is a decision to not actively produce them.  Think about it this way: Volcanoes release carbon emissions (greenhouse gases), but they are naturally occurring and in moderation. When humans dig deep down into the earth, extract fossil fuels, burn them, and release carbon emissions into the sky - it is a very conscious process that humans actively repeat again and again. Negative thoughts are a part of the human experience, but we certainly don’t need to create more of them, spewing them up into the atmosphere of our lives.

So, now what? Here are three tips on a practicing Ahimsa.

1. An impartial quest for truth (Satya).

Acknowledge what went right (“What did I do well?”).  Acknowledge what went wrong (“What can I do differently?”).  View mistakes as hurdles to get around, rather than reasons to stop.  Be as impartial about it as possible, and then move on.  If worrying about the future causes anxiety, dwelling on past causes depression.  Being in the present prevents one from running forward without reflection, and it also prevents tethering to previous mistakes.  Yoga is being present.

2. Gratitude Practice

When people hear gratitude practice, they imagine deep contemplation or journaling about the seismic gifts of our lives.  This is fine, but unnecessary.  The act of practicing gratitude is far more important than the list you produce.  If our ambition is too lofty, we are more inclined to drop out or avoid the practice.  It is best to keep it simple, sitting quietly for 5 minutes a day contemplating anything that could possibly bring you gratitude.  For example, “I am thankful for this chair.  I am thankful for the tree that bore the wood for this chair.  I am thankful for the water that nourished the tree.  I am thankful for the man who crafted this chair.  I am thankful for the people who loved him.”  It may be daunting at first, but just like any muscle, with practice, it gets easier.

3. Pratipaksha Bhavana (Yoga Sutra II.33: vitarka bhadhane pratipaksa bhavanam.  When you are disturbed by unwholesome negative thoughts or emotions, cultivate their opposites).

Pratipaksha Bhavana is a practice that becomes more adept with time.  There is no need to deny negative thoughts, but through observation and reflection, they lose their grip.  In addition to introspection, plant some flowers in your garden- offer opposite (positive, supportive) thoughts.  It seems hokey at first, but this wisdom works.

We get flu shots and vaccinations, wash our hands, brush our teeth, and take vitamins.  These practices keep us alive longer and increase the length, or quantity, of human life.  The practice of Ahimsa improves quality of life.

Naan- attachment: How an Indian diet taught me aparigraha

Baking naan in a Tandur oven.

“You are not your body, senses, and mind; body, senses, and mind, are expressions of your timeless awareness.” Jean Klein

The practice of non-attachment (aparigraha) creates equanimity in our lives leading ultimately to greater harmony and peace.

My diet in India was largely different iterations of the same thing: white rice with curry on top.  The curry would change, but the white rice was the same.  I don’t eat gluten, which ruled out naan.  I would occasionally have dosa or chapathi (breads made of rice flour), but I was still eating different iterations of white rice.  It eventually tasted bland or made me ill.  I felt as if my body was rejecting the food and I would be full after a few bites.  Most of this I’ll own as my unknowing or ignorance.  I’m sure I could have found the right nutritional diversity if I was empowered enough to seek what was around me, but at the time, I didn’t particularly see it as a problem.  Also, I was told by many travel guides to stick to the food offered in the hotel, because it was safer and more sanitary.  Not that it mattered, because my rice diet ultimately coincided with what I’ve determined to be a record setting marathon of not one, not two, not three, but four bouts of dysentery during my seven week pilgrimage.  In short, I was unable to replace the calories to compensate for the rate at which I was losing them.

Did I mention India is hot during the summer? Like really, really hot? It doesn’t take long before you stop checking the temperature, because you know it will be blistering no matter what.  One of the last times I checked the weather app on my phone it was 110F.  Given the heat and my diet, I threw out the idea of my routine high intensity interval training.  My asana practice shifted to gentler and more introspective poses.  One fabulous, and unexpected dimension, of these long holds in softer poses  is that I am more flexible than I’ve ever been, able to do poses I could never do before.

I knew I lost weight, and I knew I would lose weight before I even left for India.  What I did not know was how much, and how shocking my physical appearance would be for some when I returned to the states.  “You lost weight,” I would hear.  

Politely, I would respond, “Yes, I lost a few pounds.  But I am slowly gaining it back.”

“No, but, like, a lot of weight.”

“The diet was different, and I got sick a few times.”

“You look completely different. Are you getting enough to eat?”

The same conversation happened over and over again.  Friends with feet in their mouth, and me sheepishly trying to shift the conversation as quickly as possible.  I lost something.  I lost my body, my shape, my corporal identity.  Kali, the goddess of benevolent destruction, took away something on which I relied a little too much.  I had to remember that she was not destroying me, but destroying something dangerous to me.  She is like a mother punishing her child for misbehaving.  In the short term, the child views the mother as cruel, but ultimately learns that she is shaping him to be a more complete person.

She reminded me that knowing the text isn’t the same as living the text.  Of course I know attachment breeds suffering, but I will occasionally buy that face cream that I want but don’t need.  When my body is 29 years-old and in peak physical form, it is easy to talk about aparigraha.  When your body has betrayed you after giardia exposure and you can’t get a break from diarrhea or vomiting, that is when the real learning begins.  Giardia isn’t an ideal teacher, but it's effective.  That is typical of the goddess Kali:  Swift, brutal, and effective.

She also reminded me that so little of yoga is about the body.  I’ve questioned Ashtanga teachers about this before.  I’ve questioned Mark Whitwell about this before.  Asana is great - but what if you are confined to bed, unable to move, debilitated by extreme pain from spinal cancer, as my father was for many months before he, to quote BKS Iyengar, “changed his clothes” ?  Mark Whitwell said my pops should move his arms and breath as if he was in a vinyasa class - but that didn’t satisfy me, it was still too much about the body.   I’m more inclined to agree with Tara Fraser, who, like Whitwell, is a student of Desikachar, posits that, “Yoga is essentially a practice for your soul, working through the medium of your body.”

I was liberated from my preoccupation from the size of my biceps, the altitude of my glutes, of would people would think of me, of what I would think of myself.   It mattered less than ever, because for the first time, I realized I didn’t have control over it.  In fact, I never did.  You can manage your diet and supplement with protein shakes, you can balance cardio with strength training, but no matter what, you’re always one bike accident away from being paraplegic, one stomach flu away from losing your figure, one cancer diagnosis away from separating from your physical body completely.   I was freed from the idea that yoga, while dimensional and meaningful, begins with the body.  The body can be an illuminating and rewarding aspect of a yoga practice, but is neither the doorway to, nor a mandatory component of, yoga.

It was not directly from losing my physical mass, but rather my attachment to it, my spiritual body grew to be so much stronger.  Suddenly, there was more room for the things I value the most - kindness, authenticity, and joy.  Even though I look different in a swimsuit, there is less distance between my conscious mind and my inner guru; my heart feels more vibrant than ever.  

For me, this was a new path of yoga.

Namaste from Rishikesh, India, the yoga capital of the world. Themighty Ganga rages here as it receives melted ice from the nearby Himalayas. It is said that Mother Ganga is so sacred, one drop can wash away the bad karma of a thousand lifetimes.

I am halfway through my India pilgrimage, having previously visited Rajasthan, Varanasi, and Vrindavan. From Rishikesh, I will travel south to Goa and Kerala. In Goa I will study at Shri Kali Ashram, a place of special significance to me as it is where my teacher and dear friend, Chanda Creasy, once immersed in Tantric traditions.  I am excited to feel the vibrations of her spiritual home. 

Cars, mopeds, and pedestrians zip through narrow streets and every second seems like another collision narrowly avoided. It reminds me of a massive school of fish in the ocean, every organism moving in harmony and never colliding. It indicates what life is like in a country of 1.28 billion people, where 80,000 are born daily and each year the country inflates more than the current populations of Australia and New Zealand combined. Utter chaos is in fact a refined dance as movement becomes liquid and continuous.  The most astounding piece of it all is that they do it with a smile and without any sense of competition. Perhaps that is why it works so well: they collectively understand the only way to survive is through cooperation.

I have been blessed to spend part of my journey with fellow teacher Charlotte Healy, who I met in Varanasi after her Seva in Bihar, the poorest region of India. She spent two weeks volunteering at an eye clinic. We sneak off to roof tops to practice asana and have separately concluded that the best, and perhaps only, way to thrive in India is to dissolve any expectations or attachment to outcomes.  Only when the illusion of control is humbly surrendered can one receive the gifts of Incredible India. 

Together, we stumbled upon an ashram in Vrindivan while in search of an Ayurvedic Cafe. We never found the cafe, but we did find a peaceful paradise and one of our favorite places this far. We were invited to stay for breakfast, given a room to nap through midday heat, offered spiritual counseling, taken to a witness a Vedic fire ritual on the Yamuna River, and once again fed dinner before being driven home in an air conditioned car. Before founding the ashram, the guru spent 3 years and 108 days in a cave meditating without a single disturbance from the outside world. When he emerged, a swelling crowd pronounced him "Yogi Raj" - king of the yogis! Even the sick showed up to be cured by his touch.  He renounced this title on the grounds that all beings are equal, with no single person of more or less value than any other. In a country of caste systems and profound economic disparity, I found this both refreshing and inspiring. When asked about the cave, he calmly said, "that was a really good time in my life."

Everywhere I visit I wish I could stay much, much, longer. When locals ask me the difference between India and Washington, the most accurate and effective way I can explain is by saying India is my mother and Washington, DC is my father. 

My heart is full of gratitude for all the love and support of my kula across the world. Much love to all! ~Eric~