Hi.
Thanks for stopping by. Hope you find something that resonates with you. Have great day!
Thanks for stopping by. Hope you find something that resonates with you. Have great day!
One of the daily prompts is, “What are some recent wins?”
Nothing inspires more frantic soul-searching in me than that question because, when left to my own devices, I only see what I did wrong or could do better rather than what went well. So it’s a muscle I’m making myself build. Some days I have big things like updating a website I’ve been putting off forever, getting through a pile of grading, and knocking out some writing. Then some days, my brain just says, “idk? We’re still alive?”
I know how to be a marketer. I’m figuring out how to be a yoga teacher, I’m figuring out how to connect a practice that feels deeply personal to the broader ways I share my life, and how to do it in a way that feels authentic without overly monetizing a thing I do for my actual income. I know there are others in the same position as I am. Yoga, a practice thousands of years old, deeply rooted in personal development and separation from the ego, has been pushed into the stark spotlight of personal promotion.
This morning in the midst of teaching a 5:45 am class I realized I have been reminding people of these things for ONE WHOLE YEAR. For 365 days actual humans have been paying actual American Dollars to learn yoga from me. Sometimes it still feels really weird that that is a thing. As you likely remember I love a good review/performance evaluation and while I do get them on the reg at the studio, nobody evaluates me like I do. Nobody. So....
But just like Piglet, many of the challenges we face are obstacles we put in our own way. What better opportunity to practice Hurdler’s pose?
Even in yoga, a place we go to slow down, we’re enchanted by muscling our way into the big, bold, Instagrammable poses. In last week’s class I wanted to focus on doing less, on just being in a space, even when it’s difficult.
Why not combine BALANCE AND A BACKBEND? That’s right, we went all in on King Dancer.
Camel pose, Ustrasana, is one of the poses that I struggle through. My body resists it and my brain really resists it. I blame some scarring Bikram experiences and near pass-outs. However, the idea of creating a firm base and offering up my heart is something I need to feel both in my practice and in my life.
Last week we worked on Bird of Paradise. This pose is all about finding your center of balance, opening your hamstrings, and lifting your heart.
I don’t like falling. I don’t like things that include the risk of me getting hurt. I tend to hold back a little to keep myself safe, maybe more than a little. Knowing this about me you can imagine discovering that crow pose, or bakasana, would become a regular part of my practice induced more than my usual amount of anxiety. This came about the same time I decided, at thirty years old, to learn how to ride a bike. All of a sudden there was the potential for a lot of falling in my life and that didn’t sit well with me.
