Mothers and Daughters

This past weekend my mom and grandmother visited me in San Francisco. It was such a delight to have them here!

I noticed some changes in myself, that I'm going to blame on the increased amounts of yoga I've been doing. In the way that only happens when you spend time with people who know your old habits well, I had some realizations about who I've become and how I still have room to grow.

Observation #1 - I don't watch TV anymore: The first day here, after we'd unloaded bags at the bed and breakfast and before the bed and breakfast's killer happy hour, we got to talking about television shows and reality stars. Although I could chime in a bit about LOST, Food Revolution and Kate (of Jon and Kate Plus 8) getting kicked off Dancing with the Stars, the extent of my knowledge about the latter two was limited to one episode each and I'd watched all of these shows on my computer. As the list grew longer and they began to reference shows I don't know about and don't care much about, I started to get peeved. Taking a step back, however, I realized, we live in very different cultures, that's it. My mom and grandma watch TV and I don't. Once I took judgement away from it, as we're encouraged to do about our thoughts during meditation, there was no good, bad or buts about it. They watch TV, I scan facebook for new pictures of pregnant high school classmates. Who am I to judge?

Observation #2 - Fatty foods: At the restaurant I began to get a headache and as I plunged my fork into my leg '0 lamb I realized that I'd been making poor eating choices all week. I'd hardly done any yoga and had blamed it on my busy schedule but I'd really been eating "comfort foods" and skipping class in an attempt to calm my anxiety about their arrival. At the dinner table, I decided to take control because I couldn't imagine a weekend with these two ladies I love so much being ruined by a throbbing head. I took some ibuprofen and made a choice to eat the meal and the meals that followed in moderation. During the weekend, where before I would have gorged myself on free, delicious food, I left last bites for others and only ate one dinner roll instead of two. My mom and grandma had already learned this lesson, I saw, as they were constantly surprised by the big portions and on several instances declined dessert. I think I'd been holding on to a notion, slowly being worn away as I do more yoga, that because I'm from Arkansas I have to maintain a hefty appetite and that I have to love all things fried in large quantities. I'm beginning to see how this was BS. I learned it from my mom and grandma this weekend, too - less can be more (health and vitality) when it comes to rich foods.

Observation #3 - I look good: I got this compliment on several occasions from both visiting parties and was pretty happy to hear it. I blame it on the yoga.

Observation #4 - My heart has opened but still has room to grow: Some of you may have already read the post I wrote a while back about allowing my scar tissue ridden heart to be opened through yoga. Well this weekend I was very aware that my heart had opened up and was beating a steady rhythm of gratitude and respect for these two remarkable women. Though traipsing around San Francisco and Oakland with them was fantastic, the best part about their visit was the time we spent together in their hotel room. I stayed with them and it was nice to just be with these two women who have been a part of my life forever, who I talk with so often but whom I rarely just get to BE with now that I live out here. We didn't have super profound conversations or talk about how we felt the whole time (and I was still peeved by the TV talk), but I could feel how much we love each other and I knew that even during the times when I wasn't able to open my heart to them, their hearts had been open to mine. I'm truly grateful to blame it on the yoga in this case.

Observation #5 - We went to bed each night around 9:30 and woke up at 5:30. I was surprised how much I liked this schedule. I think I might keep it up! Who have I become?

Now that they're gone, I'm back on a more consistent yoga routine and I'm eating greens and rice at my house rather than Macaroni and Cheese at nice restaurants. In addition to these changes, which are good for my body, I notice am having a different sensation than I have had when people have visited and left before. Whereas I used to feel equal amounts of lots of grief and lots of relief at people having come and gone, the experience now is just a toned down version of what I felt when they were here - a whole lot of love.

Discovering what gradualness means...

Sometimes it scares me how much I am like of Veruca Salt of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory fame.


Most of the time, what I want is neither a party, nor a goose that lays golden eggs. No, what I want now are the more elusive things: enlightenment, flexibility, 100% health, financial security, a soul mate. Like Veruca, I'm quite impatient and I shudder at the idea that I might have to wait for any of these things to be present in my life. I just never wear smart little red frocks like she does.


Learning to teach yoga has really shined a light on my inner brat. Each weekend for nearly two months now I've experienced disappointment on Sunday night that I'm still not "there" yet. Fortunately, being here is baked into the practice at yoga, so I've recently come to see the futility of my tantrums. Like it or not, Veruca, you are where you are. And, chances are, where you are (Ahem, a Chocolate FACTORY) is much better than you even know...

Elise Lorimer has been teaching us Alignment 6 hours a weekend for the past six weeks. She's a fantastic, graceful and terribly athletically built instructor who can articulate with her body better than anyone I've ever seen. That is to say, when she shows us how to align our bodies in certain poses, her performance is like that of a Shakespearean actor who breathes life into and teases nuance out of even the Bard's most complicated prose. What's more, Elise has taught us with an incredible amount of humility and with a great sense of (surprisingly geeky) humor! Of course, the downside to seeing her perfectly execute these poses is that I want to be like Elise - now.

Perhaps to counteract the effect she may have on students like me, Elise repeated a phrase to us early and often that I only really understood this last weekend with her: "Try to discover what gradualness means." I didn't even think gradualness was a real word until I looked it up. Sure enough, there is a noun form to the word gradual. Things don't naturally happen all at once, they take time.
I'm learning that through my shoulder. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about my right shoulder being in pain. It is still bothering me and, gradually, I'm noticing that its going to take much more of my attention than I've been giving it. I keep pulling a Veruca Salt and wanting it to just magically stop hurting at the stomp of my feet. But each time I try to override my body, it gets strained and it starts to hurt again. I'm gradually (but stubbornly) learning to listen to it. Its kind of impossible these days, anyway, because I am doing about 10 hours of yoga a week. It is really impossible when my shoulder is screaming at me - "get off of me". Now, I know a lot of you are thinking "Duh! 10 Hours of yoga is going to hurt your shoulder" but this pain has been there long before the training started. Its been building for many years now and the good news is, I'm currently in a training where I can not only learn to modify my practice but also learn how to modify my behavior off the mat that has been causing this for so long. I think what Elise (and my screaming shoulder) are trying to tell me is that this problem, which came to me gradually, does have a solution - but it, too, takes gradualness.
Yesterday in class we learned how to come into a pose called Sirsasana - Headstand. The pose begins by resting on your forearms with your feet on the ground about two feet away from your arms. You then gradually engage your core muscles and draw your shoulder blades closer to the hips to move your hips over your torso and the legs follow. With your legs tucked into your body, its a straight shot to send them up and over your head, resulting in a headstand. Voila! Or maybe not.
I could not do Sirsasana because the forearms on the ground part was just too painful on my shoulder. It sucked and I was pissed. Ellie, Elise's assistant who helped me with this problem before, came over and talked me out of just pushing myself into the pose despite the pain. Instead, she suggested, I should just practice being in downward facing dog with my forearms down on the ground. This is called Dolphin pose. For about an hour, as everyone else did Headstand and variations thereof, I went up and down and up and down into and out of dolphin. Each time I looked up at the 39 other students doing headstand I got even more frustrated by my situation and my energy plummeted.
What I didn't realize until this morning is how much of an effect those dolphins had on me. When I woke up my abs and back muscles were really sore! These are the actual muscles that need to be strong to come into a headstand correctly. Like it or not, my body wasn't ready for headstands but it was ready to do other things that I need to build my base for EVENTUALLY doing a headstand.
As I thanked Elise for her teaching after a beautiful class in Dolores Park today, I told her about my frustration at not being able to do Headstand. She gracefully told me I was in exactly the right spot. "You're discovering what gradualness is," she reminded me. "Its great you did dolphin yesterday," she said, "right now, that is your headstand."

That's yoga, y'all. She could have told my that I should probably quit now, that I wasn't cut out to be an instructor or that I was doomed to never, ever, stand on my head. But she didn't. Instead, she reminded me where I was and placed it in the context that where I want to go is still attainable...somewhere down the road. I'm in a pretty good place right now, too. I'm learning how to come into poses with a lot of physical integrity and I'm learning how to prevent myself from being injured. I'm also strengthening my core muscles, which will help me in every pose I do. Yoga means union and I'm learning how to move my body so that all its parts are in union and none of them are screaming out at me. This is great, because I don't like finding similarities between myself and Veruca Salt. I hope I'm gradually becoming less like her and I can continue to discover what gradualness means for me.

Slow down, Veruca!

Nanny Yoga

For nearly three months now, I've been spending two days a week with Mira - a new found guru of mine. Most days Mira and I take long walks together and sit on the mat in her living room, laughing and pondering the meaning of life. I've learned from her how to take delight in the simple things and approach life as if every experience was a new one. Mira's way of moving through the world is steady and profound. Its clear that she's an experienced yogini. After all, she's been practicing for more than 10 months now.

Mira was born last May and I'm her nanny.

Mira's dad, Parin and I used to work together at Green For All. When I ran into him in January and mentioned that I was wanting to pick up some babysitting gigs to support me while I was doing yoga training, he was thrilled. He and Alison, Mira's mom, had just started thinking they wanted some help a couple of days a week. The timing was perfect. Every Monday and Friday I travel across the San Francisco Bay to her house in Oakland. All jokes aside, its been a pretty magical experience spending time with a person who is so new to this world and I do believe have grown almost as much as she has since we started.

Here are some of the most important lessons my mini-yoda has passed along:


No more multitasking.
Its impossible to do 15 things at once when you're responsible for an infant. Its impossible to do two things at once when you're responsible for an infant. When I'm watching her, I have to give Mira my full attention, in the same way that being on the yoga mat demands that I focus on my body and my breath. After all, she is a tiny baby who is depending on me for both survival and entertainment. My only downtime is when she's napping. And she decides when that is over, interrupting whatever I've decided to do with a cry that I can't ignore. The "poses" of nanny yoga that I focus on range from the basics (watching her to make sure she doesn't put foreign objects into her mouth) to the more advanced (keeping her entertained with toys, songs, and bubbles - oh my!). At times I'm really challenged to not do something else like read a magazine, do my homework or text a friend. I've also struggled internally with the fact that as a college graduate I should be doing something more stimulating. The truth of the matter is, focusing on one thing is proving to be much harder than the multitasking I'm used to - it is also more rewarding. I always have to come back to focusing on Mira because she needs me to and that's my job. There is one time she and I are both content to let me put my focus somewhere else - when I have to pee. Its very considerate of her to not make a fuss when I sit her down in front of the open bathroom door. She must know this is a serious business matter that has to be handled when it has to be handled...

Shake what your mama gave ya!
When Mira hears music, she just has to dance! Her little torso bobs up and down and she bends her knees and lets out a huge grin. Its pretty adorable. Sometimes I marvel at how new she is to moving through the world and I'm constantly amazed at the pace with which her body is growing and learning to do new things. I've seen her go from sitting to crawling to pulling herself up to nearly walking and its truly a miraculous process. What's more, perhaps because she doesn't have solidified kneecaps yet, she's super flexible and will just naturally put herself in very yoga-like positions. If she only knew the poses, she'd be better than I am!

Silence is golden.
When I started taking care of the baby, her grandparents, who are living with the family for a year, were around all the time. I'd come on board because I was more able to take her on outings and run after her as she began to crawl but it was definitely challenging to hold the baby's attention while her grandmother was in the next room. No matter what calming words I said to her, she'd cry (in my ear as I held her) until her "Amma" appeared again. There were a couple of nights when I'd hear her phantom cries as my body unwound when I was falling asleep and I swore that this just wasn't going to work. But as I kept going back, I got lots of reassurance from Aruna that Mira had been just like this when she and her husband first arrived from India and Alison went back to work. The trick, she told me, was to take Mira to the window and stand there silently with her until she calmed down. A little meditation time, if you will. It worked!

Now Aruna and her husband spend long weekends with other family members who live in the Bay Area so I am alone with the baby and our paths rarely cross. Still, Mira and I have spent many hours at the back window, staring at the yard, breathing quietly and just admiring the simple beauty of things. We have a lot of fun now, too, of course, playing and laughing and talking (babbling in her case) but the back window and silence continues to be a golden ticket when times are tough and she, well, lets face it, when we both need to catch our breath.

Just Play.
This is what we do all day. I recently read about the idea of Lila or Divine Play that is a Hindu concept describing the sum of the actions of humans as a play in which we are all actors. Yes, just like the Shakespeare quote. My first read of it, however, I thought they were talking about play the verb, not the noun. This is how I think of Mira's playtime. Totally important and divine, yet play nonetheless. It has been a divine pleasure to be paid to play with her.


Parin and Alison have reconsidered their need for a nanny because its an expense they can't afford at the moment. So, I'm moving on to work for another family and Friday is my last day with Mira (aka "Mira Al-Jazeera" or "Mirabean" as I prefer to call her). I'm going to miss spending time with her. She's taught me a lot about life on her play mat and as cheesy as it sounds, I think I needed her to remind me how simple and miraculous the world can be.

A High Tolerance for Pain

When I was 7 years old I stepped on a nail during a Girl Scouts outing. As one of the mothers tended to my wound I was very proud of myself for not crying. In fact, I remember her say that I must have "a very high pain threshold." Though I barely knew what those words meant, I knew she was happy that I was enduring the injury without a lot of tears and I quoted her later when I told people the story of my stoicism. I considered it a badge of honor that I had a nail in my foot and didn't shed a tear. And, as you may know, badges are a huge thing to Girl Scouts.

This weekend I decided to finally let go of that badge. My right shoulder and wrist have been in pain for quite a while now. In fact, I've been having discomfort in my shoulder for about a year and I've been, well, shouldering the pain with a smile on my face as it gradually got worse. On Saturday morning I helped my friends Helen and Erika move and, despite feeling a little stronger from my recent yoga practice, I felt some pain in my shoulder and, as usual, pretended it was fine. Erika even offered me help a couple of times lifting some heavy boxes and I told her "I've got it, no worries." Then, as I went from their house to my training, it hit me - I was in pain.

My instructor Elise began class by asking if anyone had any new injuries she should know about. Usually I assume my injuries aren't worth the instructors attention but something told me it was time to come out about my pain. I raised my hand and confessed. "I've been having some shoulder and wrist pain," I said, "and I helped my friends move this morning and now its really hurting." She paused and said to me, in a tone that was like a sword cutting through my high tolerance for pain "Why did you do that?" I said I didn't know but as I sat with her question, I totally knew the real answer - I don't like to admit when I'm in pain.

Today in class it came up again as we launched into a series of poses that required holding downward dog for a long time. My shoulder just didn't feel right and I knew I shouldn't be pushing it so, fighting against every ounce of pride I have, I sat on my mat and looked around for help...

At first, no one came to my rescue and I thought to myself, "See, your pain isn't real and its not worth their time. You're fine and stop whining." I got back up started to do what the rest of the class was doing. I started to push through the pain like I always do. And then I stopped again. I put my foot, or rather my butt, down and waved to one of our assistants.

Ellie, (who is the type of beautiful, graceful yogini I assume thinks I am awkward and don't belong in yoga teacher training) came over and asked me very kindly what was going on. I told her about my shoulder and began to feel more vulnerable than I've been in a while. I felt like I was confessing a deep, dark and dirty secret but her response wasn't in line with what I thought was coming out of my mouth. She didn't reprimand me or tell me I was wrong for complaining. Instead, she told me to back off of my shoulder, to give myself a break and she did it all with a warm smile that made me realize how hard I had been on myself.

I picked the practice with the rest of the folks and her warm smile stayed with me. I also cried a little bit, which was scary but felt good. Rather than freak out and try to stop my tears, I let them flow as my body flowed through the poses. With these tears came a new-found sense of ease and awareness. I was able to be gentle with myself and I found that, listening to my own body, I had new experiences in almost every pose that followed. Soon I began comparing myself to other people and coming up short but then I realized that a) they might be dealing with her own pain that they hadn't yet expressed and b) me wanting to look like them is not going to make my shoulder any better. Listening to my own body will.

During our break, Ellie came over to me again and gave me some more pointers on how I could better hold my body to take some pressure off of my shoulder. She also said that a friend of hers had recently commented after a class they took together that she wasn't as "perfect" at yoga as he'd expected. He'd noticed her resting a couple of times during class and was surprised that she didn't come all the way into some of the poses. He'd assumed being a yoga instructor meant you did everything really well. In fact, she said, it just means you know your strengths AND your limitations very well.

I still want to be the girl with a high tolerance for pain. I still think I should be able to do certain things because I'm young or because I'm becoming a yoga instructor. I think I will always struggle with wanting to do things perfectly and get that badge of honor. But this weekend I realized that just because I stepped on a nail once and didn't cry doesn't mean I can't cry now. Ignoring my pain won't make it go away and pushing myself has only proven to make it worse. I'm going to go easy on my shoulder for as long as it takes it to feel better and I'm even going to be a little more tolerant now...of myself.

Week 3: Heart Opening

A common instruction in many yoga classes is to "open through your heart" or "lift through your heart." It means, literally, to push the chest forward starting at the back of or inside of the body, rather than just puffing it out like a rooster. But just reading this phrase or even seeing it be done by someone else doesn't quite convey the feeling it creates in the body. Heart openers, as some people call poses that call for this movement, are powerful asanas or postures that have recently been leaving me pretty sore.

This soreness, or heart ache, if you will has come as a big surprise to me. "But I'm someone who says "I love you pretty freely," I thought. Wouldn't this make my heart open already? Why am I suddenly feeling like an emotional teenager again, with every little feeling, good or bad, surging through my body so strongly? Then again, I can think of a lot of times when my heart has needed a little mending. Times when I've had to put construction tape up around it and curl my shoulders forward to protect it. Sound familiar?

I'm sure it started, as most emo things do, when I actually was a teenager. My poor heart, constantly in a state of unrequited love, needed somewhere to retreat when it was in danger of being hurt again so I dug it a little trench where it could sink down and sulk without the fear of being seen. Then there was, though I didn't admit it at the time, a huge pain in my heart when I moved away to college. And then the ups and downs of college ensued. Lost love, lost innocence, found out life isn't as simple as I'd like it to be, lost my favorite t-shirt, found friends, friends were lost to first jobs in far away places. Lots of mini-heartbreaks that certainly added up. Of course, I began to insulate it during those four years.

And, over the last couple of years as "an adult" its only intensified as I've put my heart out on a limb for jobs, for lovers, and as the distance between me and many friends and my family have pulled my heartstrings thinly across the country. Out of what often seemed like necessity, I've had to protect my heart, make it less vulnerable to all the ways it can be injured. I've built upon the teenaged trench, over the years, a ramshackle casing of brick and mortar, cynicism, fear and standoffish-ness. I've built it a little home that fills up space in my chest and is well decorated with only the happy things that I want to project out the the world. It has given my heart more weight so that it is heavy, serious and not so delicate. You have to knock before entering, too. Add to that the scaffolding I've built up - it is under constant construction - which keeps me so busy around the exterior that even I don't have to feel what's inside.

I'm a busy girl when it comes to protecting my heart and its only recently, when I started doing more "heart openers" that I realized how little of my heart I'd been showing for quite some time. I really believed all this work necessary, to prevent it from falling, cracking, being knocked loose or, heaven forbid, stolen. Yet doing these poses, pushing my heart out from its casing, I am breaking all of the molding loose and I am realizing that most of the strain is, in fact, from all this crap that is surrounding it. Each time I reach through my heart and chip away at its casing, the more I feel that it is much stronger than I remembered. Despite the heart ache these stretches have caused me, and perhaps because of it, I'm feeling much more love emanating from the center of my chest than I have in years.

It really hit home Friday night as a fellow student was being picked up from class by her partner of 17 years. He was waiting patiently for her as we filed out of the studio and when she put her mat down for a second, without saying a word, he grabbed it and slung it under his arm. They both turned to walk out of the building together and he had a huge smile on his face. I knew, just from a simple observation, that this was love. My heart lifted as I watched them for those few seconds. I haven't felt my heart lift for something so simple in a long time. As I told her about it the next day, she lit up and I knew I hadn't been mistaken. My heart had been open enough to feel, if only for a second, their love.

I'm looking forward to, 5 and a half months from now, sharing this experience of heart opening with my students. This ability, to take a phrase that doesn't mean much when you read it and turn it into a powerful action that enables someone to experience life differently, is something my heart is very eager to learn.

Teacher Training Begins Despite My Mood Swing!

Yesterday I woke up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for a big day - last night was the first night of my Yoga Teacher Training! I was going to finish packing up my room by 1pm so our handyman, Martin could paint it before my move, and do errands in the afternoon and then be ready by 7 to be in San Francisco for class at 8. I was so excited even the storm clouds outside of my window made me happy as I pulled open the blinds in the morning.

Yet as the rain began to fall, so did my mood. And both fell hard! I got everything done but was just feeling heavy and put through the ringer as I completed each task on my to-do list. It didn't help that my errand companion, Brendan, was also feeling sour that traffic was crazy because of the weather and that, around 4:30, I got a call from Ellen, whose car had been stolen. As I drove back to my house from taking her to the Berkeley Police station, I tried hard, in vain, to psych myself up about the evening. Even as I scored a parking spot right in front of the Stanyan St. Yoga Tree studio, I was not in the mood for the first day of class like I used to be.

It wasn't until I stepped through the doors of the studio and was welcomed by the faces of 15 of my to-be fellow students that I snapped out my funk and remembered why I was there in the first place...yoga inspires me!

I quickly began to grin uncontrollably as we all signed in and got some of our first required materials. It wasn't long until the studio was filled with over 40 of us, all from different walks of life but here to undergo the same process of learning about yoga.

We began the night with a welcome from Darren Main, our lead instructor, and the two founders of Yoga Tree, Tim and Tara Dale. It was clear as they spoke how much these folks really care about our experience and the quality of this training. It was also clear as Darren spoke how much the outcome of this program depends on our input as students. I'm going to have a lot of homework over the next 6 months!

After intros and going through our requirements, we all got to know one anothers names, where we all live and why we're here. Reasons ranged from wanting to deeping individual practices to a desire to start a whole new school of yoga. I fall somewhere in the middle, knowing for sure that that I'm here to deepen my practice and very open to teaching when I'm done. More on that in another post.

I've got to run and get to day two, but I guess the take away here is my mood yesterday was similar to what they say about the weather in Arkansas: You don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes and it'll change. It was worth the wait to experience the burst of energy I got from training last night and I hope that the next 10 minutes holds more of the same.

Here goes everything...

At the beginning of 2010 I left a great job during a recession, gave up my iPhone and decided to move to a more expensive apartment. Its all in the name of becoming a yoga instructor. Some may call these changes foolish, stupid or even crazy, and its possible that I am all of these things. This choice however, call it what you will, is something I can tell will change my life.

In the past few weeks, since I've been increasing the number of times I go to yoga from 1-2x a week to 3-4x, I've felt shifts in my mind and my body that I just never thought were possible. I'm beginning to really want to move my body on a regular basis and more than ever I can feel the impact that the food I eat has on my mood and my ability to do the things I want to do. Aside from periodic episodes of exercise and participation in some team sports in college. I've never considered myself an athletic girl until about a year ago, when I began to practice Bikram yoga at least once a week.

Beginning February 26th, I'll be shaping my practice and learning the fundamentals of yoga from a handful of instructors at Yoga Tree in San Francisco. To be honest, I don't know a lot about this program. I chose it because the timing and structure were right for what I wanted to accomplish. It meets every Friday night (8-10pm), Saturday and Sunday (1-4pm) for 6 months and during that time I will develop a yoga practice that I plan to sustain (and build upon) for the rest of my life. At the end of it, God willing I pass my tests, I'll also have a 200-hour certification to teach yoga. I'm taking classes at Yoga Tree and like what I've found - mostly vinyasa with a lot of chanting and storytelling woven into the classes.

To support myself while my training is going on, I'm also doing some work that has thrown me for a lifestyle loop. After a little more than two years of fundraising for progressive non-profits, I now spend my days playing with, feeding and changing diapers for an 8-month old named Mira OR creating invoices for a company that is run by a wonderful woman I met on BART out of her home in Berkeley. And, despite the hassles of Cobra and my current baby-induced cold, these dramatically different days have been like a breath of fresh air. I've realized how easy it is to assume your world view is just like everyone else's. Au contraire, I'm learning, my day-to-day activities have a huge impact in shaping both my body and my mind.

I want to share the ups and downs of the next six months here so I can keep a log of these changes. After all, I did major in History. I hope you enjoy my insights and that you share your reactions to my posts, either below or face to face.

Deep thoughts about the picture above: I saw a dog doing what this dog is doing the other day and thought "That movement looks so natural for him." Now, this may seem like a given, since the yoga posture that he's doing is called "downward facing dog" but the image is something I want to carry with me to remind me that movement, on the mat or anywhere else, comes naturally to me as a human being and I don't have to be afraid to go where my body moves me...