Monthly Archives: March 2010

Yoganand

This time tomorrow I will be just finishing up the first session of the 5-Day Yoga Teacher Training down in Philly.  I am so looking forward to it.  This will be my 4th class in the 10 class series of Pranakriya (500 Hr) Yoga.  This one is called “Advanced Asana 3,” but really, it’s just Yoganand blowing us all out of the water for 5 days, with some advanced asana thrown in, for good measure.

As I have been packing and cleaning today, I’ve been thinking about Yoganand: how inspiring he is, how floaty I feel after being guided through a practice by him, how his description of what yoga is, and does, clarifies everything for me: my yoga, my teaching, my life path, my dreams, my aspirations, even my core values.

In the last 10 years I have had some wonderful yoga teachers, but none of them have come close to the caliber of Yoganand.

I think that learning yoga is a lot like learning about life on the moon.  You can study about the moon with top-notch astro-physicists who know everything there is to know about the moon: its composition, weather and even how to get there. And I’ve studied with some of these “astro-physicists of yoga”and they are incredible.

And then you can learn about the moon from someone who has been there, an astronaut, if you will, someone who has actually walked on the moon, touched it, lived there for a while. That’s Yoganand. The man knows his way around the moon! He doesn’t actually practice yoga, he lives yoga.  He knows every little neighborhood of yoga, and is fluent in all the dialects.

For 15 years Yoganand lived at Kripalu as a renunciate monk, doing all the advanced (read: scary, weird) practices–the practices  only the monks could do because they didn’t have families or loved ones or jobs to attend to, so they could devote 15 hours a day to pranayama if they wanted, and be out of their minds for weeks and months on end, and no one would much notice, or care.

These days though, Yoganand lives like a normal man, a householder, with a wife and a business and a crazy travel schedule. But he still visits  the moon regularly.  He teaches in his school in South Carolina, and he travels around and teaches teachers, because he wants everyone to experience at least a little bit more of what it means to be a full human being.  He understands, because he’s been there,that we are not even coming close to what we are capable of as human beings in terms of energy, awareness and love.

So tomorrow I will be transported to another world.  I will get a little taste of what it might feel like to live on the moon.  I’ll have to leave the training room every night and go back to my hotel room, which will involve negotiating a car through complex, heavy traffic, then locating my room key, and finding my bed.  I won’t be able to stay on this moon-ride for more than a few hours a day, and after 5 days I’ll have to get off completely and come home.

But that’s okay, because even being close to the moon for a little while makes life here on earth seem just a little bit more magical, or maybe it’s just that it feels a little bit more real.

Foisting Books on People

I really don’t want to be a foister, but I am.  I am reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin at the moment and all I want to do is buy 20 copies and give them to people, press it into their hands with that annoying, desperate pleading in my eyes and say, “Pleeeeze!  You simply MUST read this!!”

And I’m not even finished it yet; I’m only on page 120.  This is such an important book (I believe), it’s about becoming indispensable.  Like all his books, it’s brilliant, super easy to read, and so very RIGHT!

Here are a few of my underlinings:

“The job is not your work; what you do with your heart and soul is the work.” (p.97)

“When you have a boss, your job is to please the boss, not to change her. It’s okay to have someone you work for, someone who watches over you, someone who pays you. But the moment you treat that person like a boss, like someone in charge of your movements and your output,  you are a cog, not an artist.”

And here is what linchpins (aka indispensable people) do:

“They produce more than you pay them to, because you are paying them with something worth more than money. They do more than they’re paid to, on their own, because they value quality for its own sake, and they want to do good work. They need to do good work.  Anything less feels intellectually dishonest, and like a waste of time.” (p. 36)

The whole book is about doing emotional labor, work from the heart, work that goes beyond what’s required.

It’s a great book and you should read it!  Now! Today!  Go on Amazon and order it! If you can’t afford it, I’ll buy it for you, just let me know.

And here I am being a “foister” and I really hate foisters.  When someone tells me that I have to read something, I feel this icky pressure, particularly if I know, love and respect the person.

It’s just that we might not have the same interests, the same taste in books.  The person foisting also might not understand  that I have a STACK *this high* of books already queued up, waiting for some time to open up to get to, and their recommendation is just adding to the pressure of that stack.

But all that being said, if you want to be indispensable? If you want to live in a world where people are going the extra mile in their lives and in their work? If you’ve ever experienced first-hand a person who makes a business simply because they give so much more than they  have to, who are emotionally invested in their jobs and in their life? If you want the recipe for this?  Linchpin by Seth Godin

(Sorry for the foist.)

Defogging Meditation

I am writing a book–or trying to, the basic premise of which is that everyone needs, and should have, an Owner’s Manual that they can 1. Refer to daily when questions arise about how to behave, and 2. To give to loved ones to help explain, (ahem) their inexplicable behavior. (‘Here honey, read the chapter about Doors and Locks.”

I am using the Owner’s Manual of my car as the model.  Today I was working on Chapter 4 which is called “Instruments and Controls.”  This involves the Fuel Gauge, Temperature Gauge, Speedometer, Warning Lights, Defogger, Horn and Mirrors.

The thing about your instrument panel is that you always have to keep an eye on it, but you can’t sit and stare at it while you’re driving, or you’ll crash.

But there is one time in your day when you should sit and just watch your panel, and that is during meditation. Meditation is the time you set aside when you take your eye OFF the road, OFF what’s going on out the windshield, and turn all of your attention to your Instrument Panel and Controls.

People tell me that when they first try to meditate either one of two things happens: They either fall asleep due to boredom, or else their minds go a mile a minute and they can’t get any peace whatsoever. In both cases the problem is fog.

When fog forms on your windshield it’s because there’s a discrepancy between the temp inside the vehicle and the temp outside. You have to decide if the temp inside needs to be raised or lowered. You can never  control the outside temp, but you can always raise or lower the temperature inside.

During meditation, when it is very hard to SEE, you have to determine if you need to ramp up your attention (stop sleeping) or lower your attention (stop thinking). Only by experimenting and tweaking will you be able to get the windshield to clear.

Another defogging device is the manipulation of the headlamps. When driving through dense external fog, you need to focus the beams of your attention very narrowly on just the immediate few feet in front of your tires. Using regular or high beams in a fog will just illuminate the fog, rather than disperse it. The definition of self-knowledge is to know when and how to use the fog lamps on your vehicle.

When you sit down to meditate, here’s what to do:

1. Turn your attention away from what’s going on out the windshield.

2. Look at your Instrument Panel.

3. Check your Fuel gauge, your temperature gauge, your speedometer, odometer and your Defogger.

4.Determine if you need to “cool down” or “turn up the heat.”

5. If the outside fog is dense, turn the fog lamps on and just concentrate on the piece of pavement right under your tires. You can’t see very far, but you can make the whole trip that way.

6, If it’s a matter of internal fog, adjust your activity level so that the internal temp is neither higher nor lower than the outside temperature.

Balance is the key to happiness.

A Rumor of Robins

All this week I’ve been hearing rumors of robin sitings.

Facebook Status Update: “I saw a robin!!”

Another one: “Robins!  Yay!”

And another one: “No robins, but redwing blackbirds!”

Then yesterday, on the bike path, during my training run, I saw my first robin.

It’s amazing what the sighting of a little bird sets off in me.  I want to thoroughly clean the house. And today I started by taking down heavy winter drapes and putting up the sheers.  I mopped the floors; I bought a bouquet of flowers for the table.

I thought about changing the bedding, but I know that there are still cold nights ahead, so I didn’t.  But I wanted to.

I am so ready for warm and sunny.  I am ready for long days and lafuma chairs on the porch and sitting out at night and watching the stars.  I am ready for flip flops and fires in the chiminea.

All this because I saw one robin in March.

Amazing.

The Pomodoro Technique

Yeah, it’s come to this the last few days.  I can’t seem to focus long enough to finish anything.  I start to read and then think I should be cleaning. I start to clean and then think I should be meditating.  During meditation I think that I should be running, I can meditate any time, but there are just so many daylight hours in a day. While washing the dishes I think of filling the bird feeders, and then the dog wants to go out, and then mail comes and I check the computer again.

A while back I read about the Pomodoro Technique. It involves a kitchen timer (shaped like a tomato) that you set for 25 minutes. You work like the devil for 25 minutes, the thing DINGS!, you take a 3 minute break, and do it again, and again, until your task is finished.

It’s brilliant, except of course for the constant ticking, and the heart-stopping ding at the end.  I’ve been using it to get through my writing this week, and tomorrow I’m going to use it to clean.

So this is what it’s come to. I am at the mercy of a red plastic tomato.

And it’s working.

The Reader’s Guide to the Internet

The computer is a terrible addiction for me, it really is.  I check my email 5o million times a day, I lurk and play on Facebook, I lurk and play on Twitter, I have at least 20 blogs that I subscribe to via RSS feed and try to keep up with–not to mention keeping up with this blog, which is in week 31 of 5-day-a-week posts.

In short, I spend an embarrassing amount of time online.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the web and I sincerely believe, and know for a fact, that the ideas I encounter here enrich my life and stimulate my brain. I also follow really interesting people on Twitter who inspire me to be creative and disciplined in my life, and it makes me happy to keep up with my friends on Facebook.

BUT.

I spend too much goddamn time here!!

In the past I’ve tried to limit my computer time by locking myself in small time cages and counting every computer calorie. But, as we all know, DIETS DON’T WORK.   And I always found myself back online, poking around indiscriminately, wasting time,  and then bemoaning the fact that certain other things didn’t get done.

What other things? Well, reading, for one.

Books used to be such a huge part of my daily life and now, even though I still buy them and download them onto my Kindle, I don’t read them.  I just stack them. I recently read online about someone who made it her goal to read a book a week for a year.  This idea lit me up, and also provided a natural antidote to my computer addiction.  What if I made it my goal to read a book a week also?  In order to do that I would have to severely limit my computer time.

So that’s what I’ve decided to do: a book a week for the rest of the year.  Last week’s book was Ageless Body, Timeless Mind by Deepak Chopra (recomended to me by Archan, one of my readers).  I finished it this past weekend and it was terrific and has totally changed the way I think about aging.

This week it’s Seth Godin’s latest, Linchpin.

I love it that I am reading more and am online less.  I feel smarter and happier already. Replacing one addiction with another really seems to work for me.  Diets definitely do not.

The Story of Main Street Yoga, part 7 (end)

Shiva Rea, the famous Vinyasa yoga teacher is reputed to have said when someone complimented her teaching, “I am just the river guide. The real teacher is the river.”

After my first year of teaching full-time it became clear that I needed to explore more of the river.  My students seemed happy enough with my “guiding” but if I was to keep them interested and coming back for more, I needed to grow as a teacher.

So I enrolled in the 500 Hour Advanced Teacher Training at Kripalu and finished the modules the next year.  As a Professional Yoga Teacher, I now knew a lot more of the river, and even though most of my students weren’t ready to “shoot the rapids,” I could guide them safely through, if they ever wanted to go for it.

The studio started to take off the second year.  I was now consistently making the rent and people were “hearing about me” through their friends.  But the “tipping point” came in April of 2008.  I had read about a big studio in NYC doing a “Yoga Challenge” for 30 days.  The idea was to challenge students to practice every day for a month so they could see how a consistent daily practice could transform their lives. I thought, “What the hell.”

So in April of 2008 I did “Thirty Days for Thirty Dollars.”  I challenged my students, and anyone else in the community, to shoot for a month of yoga, or at least to coming more than their typical once-a-week. Just to see what would happen.

Over 60 people signed up.  I taught 3 classes a day, 7 days a week.  It was mad-crazy. People who had never stepped on a yoga mat signed up, as well as people who had been practicing for years. They came at 6 in the morning and at 5:30 after work and there was even an overflow crowd at 7.  Classes were packed. There was a lot of BIG ENERGY in that room.  Lots of powerful “Oms” and big Audible Sighs.

I remember one day in particular, about halfway through the month, coming into class and everyone was all happy and chatty and it took a while to settle them in, help them drop into the practice.  But once they were into it, it was magic.  I felt it, and more importantly they felt it.

And as the class proceded, this magical “something”  kept growing and building, breath after breath, pose after pose, until savasana, and even after savasana.

Before they all left, I said,”Man, It feels like a real yoga community in here today.”  And Sarah, in the front row said, “Ya think??“  And everyone laughed, and then, (get this) they applauded.  Not me. No. They applauded themselves, as a community. And that day everything shifted, everything jelled, everything came together.

Now I’m a few weeks away from the 3rd Annual Yoga Challenge at Main Street Yoga.  People keep emailing me, “Is it too early to sign up?”  And I keep emailing back, “Yeah, wait another week.”

As for me, I am still learning about this river and all its currents and twists and turns, with Yoganand, my first teacher.  I am making my way through his Pranakriya Yoga Teacher Training one class at a time, and I’m in no rush, because I know the slower you go, the more you see.

There is a yoga sutra that, loosely translated, says, “Pick one way and follow it.  Don’t keep changing teachers and directions.  Follow a path all the way to the end, even if sometimes it feels like you’re going the wrong way.” I’ve decided that Yoganand’s way is the way I want to go.  He’s a master. There is absolutely no question in my mind.

Now, one more time, let’s take a look at the building where all this magic takes place:See those 5 windows on the second floor?  The big one in the middle flanked by the 2 narrower ones on each side?  That’s all Main Street Yoga now.  In May of last year I added another room to my lease. I made a “Yoga Lounge” out of it, a hang-out for my peeps.  They can sit and have tea there and talk before or after class.  They can meet each other informally throughout the day there.  It’s a homey room with chairs and plants and magazines and books.

Main Street Yoga is growing.  I am growing.  I am still learning the ways of the river and how to guide people safely through the swells and the eddies of their bodies, their minds, and their emotions.

I am still not making that “living wage” I was all obsessed with 6 years ago when I first set out on this journey, but I am making one hell of a life.

The Story of Main Street Yoga, part 6

PICTURES

When I got home from Kripalu, which I now call “Planet K, ” it was Thanksgiving.  I was happy to be home, but I was anxious to start teaching, lest I lose it, and my confidence and nerve as well.

Emily and her boyfriend were home and were willing to be student guinea pigs, and when they went back to school, I taught the dog, who was (mostly) patient and long-suffering.

I called some churches, asking about the availability of their community rooms, but had no luck.  I did some free classes for the teachers at the high school, and that went well.

And then I had an appointment to get my vision checked.  My optometrist, Bob, had a “Commercial Space for Rent” sign in the upstairs window of his store.  During my exam I asked him about it.  He took me up to see it.

He opened the door to 800 square feet of the most beautiful yoga space imaginable: hardwood floors, sky lights, a modern bathroom, lots of uninterrupted wall space.  Oh boy.  I was in love with this space.  Oh boy. This space was expensive.

Over lunch I told G, my best friend, about the space.  I took her up and showed her.  She said, “How much money do you have left over from the teaching gig?’  I told her, “About 5K.”

“Okay then, she said,  “How about I put in 5K, you put in 5K, and that will cover the rent for a year. Let’s see if we can make a go of this.”

And that’s what we did.

We signed a lease for a year and bought some basic supplies and set up shop.  Here are some vintage photos from those early days of setting up:

Here’s the building from the outside:

Second floor, last 2 windows on the right

This is G setting up:

G sets up

The mats arrive:

Box of Mats

Setting up:

Setting up

Setting up continues

G takes a break

Studio desk

Orchid in the window

A quiet moment:

A quiet moment in the empty studio

First class was on March 1st, 2004.  I taught Sunrise Yoga at 6:15 and 3 people showed up: Aleta and Brynne Hafflet (who were high school students at the time and who came before school!)  And Judith Sornberger, great friend and supporter.

For the first few years things were a little touch and go. I had a lot to learn about scheduling and at first, nobody showed up.  If 3 people came, that was a lot.

Everyone who did come however, was so happy to have a studio in town and told me so, which kept me going, and still does.  Without the people who come and practice, there would be no Main Street Yoga.

Tomorrow, where the studio is today.

The Story of Main Street Yoga, part 5

My lion-taming, long-term sub job not only paid the tuition to Yoga Teacher Training at Kripalu, but it also enabled me to afford a private room  with a private bathroom.  (Yee-hah!)  Because by this time I was 51 years old and the thought of living dorm-style with with a bunch of earnest, vegan, menstruating recent college grads gave me the heebs.

I could have done it for a week, (maybe) but never for a whole month.

My private room was awesome.  It faced the forest. It had curtains. It was the place I ran to when things got really squirrely, (and man, did they ever get squirrely.)  The training hours were long and hard, and there was relentless group work, and partner work, and every afternoon there was a “sharing circle” in which one person would take the wireless, hand-held mic, step into the middle of the circle of 65 people and proceed to have a full-out, full-on nervous breakdown.

At first these nervous breakdowns freaked me out, but by the last week, they were (*yawn*) predictable.

The teachers though, were nothing short of “Beyond-ananda.”  There was a woman, Rashmi, who was like the sun. She walked into a room and lit it up.  She was a big, full-hipped, smiley extrovert who had all of us laughing and at ease within the first five minutes of meeting her.

And then there was Yoganand, the Moon. A skinny, shy, soft-spoken introvert who intimidated the hell out of all of us with his intensity, his knowledge, as well as his sweetness and his compassion. I didn’t anticipate  the intensity of this training. I didn’t expect to be brought to my edge every single day. I didn’t expect to be turned inside out. I didn’t expect to be transformed.

I signed up to learn more about yoga, and I wound up plumbing the depths of myself: my fears, my anxieties, my wisdom.

My “final exam” was a practice teach in front of outside observers: experienced yoga teachers and studio owners.  These people were brought in to evaluate us at the end-point of our training. They didn’t know us. They had no idea what we had been through, how much we had improved since Week 1.  All they could see was how how we were now, as we were about to go out into the world as yoga teachers.

I had to teach a full class, from Centering to Savasana with 5 postures, and 2 pranayams in between.  The woman who was evaluating me was the owner of a big studio in Albany.  All through my class she looked bored and non-plussed.  I gave her an assist in Pigeon posture and covered her with a blanket in Savasana.

At the end, all my group members gave the requisite “positive feedback” and then it was time for my evaluator to say her piece.  Here’s what she said:

Kathleen,

I would travel a long way and pay good money to take a class with you.  You are an inspired and an excellent teacher.

All my life I had been waiting for my “calling.”  I had been waiting for some grown-up, some teacher, some authority figure to say, “You’re good at this.  You should be a ____.”

And now, here it was.  Validation.  It was what  I had suspected for a long time, but had thought I was too old, too inflexible, and too afraid to even explore.  And now,  here I was, against the advice of almost everyone who thought they knew me and had my best interests at heart.

I was a teacher of yoga. And even if I never taught another class after that, I now knew my dharma, my calling, my path.

My Group. I am second from the left.

Rashmi, the sun

Yoganand, the moon

The Story of Main Street Yoga, part 4

A LIVING WAGE

I loved being a stay-at-home mom.  It’s a good thing, too, because I was one for a 18 years.  The only time I didn’t love being a stay-at-home mom was when I wanted to buy something and my husband didn’t.  If there was a disagreement about money, he always won because he made all the money.

So when I wanted new furniture or to remodel the kitchen he would say, “If that’s what you want, get a job.”

(Ouch.)

Trouble was, there was no place to get a job, except paper hat places, and we didn’t need the money that badly.

But it galled me this, “Get a job” thing, so one day I decided that I would get certified to teach HS English.  It would mean taking 30 credits of Ed classes on top of my B.A. and then I would “get a job.”  A “living wage” job. Then I would remodel the kitchen, or, something.

I thought I would be good at high school teaching, too  My daughter’s friends loved me, and would always say that if they could just hang around me for a week, they’d increase their Vocab score on the SAT by at least 50 points.

So I held my nose and choked down 30 credits of the most imbecilic Education classes imaginable, and then started subbing.

But every day I’d walk my dog up the hill and think about what Jenny said about teaching yoga.  I never once fantasized myself teaching The Scarlet Letter to 11th graders.  Instead, every day I dreamt of teaching Downward-facing Dog and meditation to a room full of yoga students.

I told my husband what Jenny said, and I told him that I wanted to go to Kripalu, too.  Not necessarily so I could teach yoga, but just so I could go deeper into my own practice.  He thought I was being impractical and ridiculous.

The more I taught high school, the more I knew that this was a path error.  I did not fit.  Not one little bit.  I knew it. My colleagues knew it, and the kids knew it.  It wasn’t that I was a bad teacher; it was that I hated school.

I hated the bells and the passes and the parent conferences and the staff meetings and the conversations in the lunch room and the assessment tests and what they call, “classroom management” which basically meant going in every day with a whip and a chair and making sure the lions stayed on their stools.

And then,  just when I was ready to surrender, throw in the towel, wave the white flag, cry Uncle, I got offered a long-term sub job.  Full time. With my own classroom. For a year.  And with it, “the living wage.”

My husband was thrilled.  I felt nauseous.  But I took it.  But I had my checks deposited into a separate bank account (not our joint one) and earmarked it for Yoga Teacher Training at Kripalu. If I could get through this, I was going to do what Joseph Campbell said we all need to do in order to be happy: Follow Our Bliss.

(to be continued…)