For Our Mothers, Sisters, Daughters

For Our Mothers, Sisters, Daughters

Dear friends ::

I've read just a few the more than one million stories that have emerged through writer Kelly Oxford's invitation to share accounts of sexual assault, and I feel moved within this space we are collectively holding for each other. David Whyte's "Mid Life Woman" came to mind. It's really a poem about all of us -- it's for any moment when bearing witness to another human being can bring us to a more exalted state of humanity within ourselves.

Let's become the antidote to what we observe on the global stage. Let's exalt each other. Let's grow in our care of each other. Listen more closely. Respond more kindly. When we experience dissonance, let's bring reconciliation. When we feel unseen, let's seek a friend's affirming gaze. When our bodies suffer injustice or fundamental misunderstanding -- let's grow our voices and strengthen the inner call to dignity and love. 

Shawn


"Mid life woman you are not invisible to me,
in you I see a young girl, lifting her face to the sky,
I see the young woman in haloed light, full and strong,
standing before the altar of time, waiting for her chosen.
I see the mother in you, in your past or in some yet
to be understood future, I see you adoring and
I see you adored, and now, when I call your name
I want to see day by day, the woman you will become with me. 
Mid-life woman come to me now, I see you more clearly
than all the airbrushed girls of the world.
I became a warrior only to earn your present mature affection,
I bear my scars to you, my eyes are lined to smile with you
and I come to you uncultivated and unshaven walking rough
and wild through rain and wind and I pace the mountain all night
in my happy, magnificence at finding you."

- Mid Life Woman, David Whyte

The Art of Awakening

Join Shawn Friday October 14th at Flow. This class will fluidly weave together meditation, mantra, and multidimensional wave sequencing to journey into the harvest of peak asana and finally into deep stillness for integration and restoration.

When the Learning Starts

I’m not sure exactly when I stopped obsessing over asana. There’s been a gradual shift over the past couple of years, as I’ve become less hungry for the next pose and more hungry for how to become a better teacher, a more devoted practitioner, a better person. This year has been full of unexpected challenges which have shifted my perspective. I went to India to practice and was stopped there by life circumstances. I went to Encinitas to see my teacher to help me through an injury when I was too scared to practice, and now I’m working on new techniques and at a different pace.

I’m here in Boulder almost 3/4 of the way through Richard Freeman’s month-long teacher intensive. This has been on my Ashtanga bucket list for years, and it has absolutely been worth the wait. The practice is slow and deliberate, led mostly by Richard. Confession: we haven’t done full primary yet! It’s a different thing for me, to take a month off from teaching and not bust out my practice. I teach all year, and when I go away I really like to focus on my asana practice because I so often just don’t have the energy or focus to invest into my own asana.

But this year, it seems, is different.

It’s a new thing for me to take time off to practice and to realize that I’m not that interested in practicing asana. Don’t get me wrong – I love asana! But in not focusing specifically on asana work, I’ve been able to focus on being a better teacher, a more devoted practitioner, and a better person. I’ve been able to shift toward serving my students better, and I’ve had this modeled to me so well by my own teachers.

You know what? It’s just as exciting and just as rewarding as any study or practice I’ve ever done.

Over the years, I’ve started to realize what it means to be a teacher. A teacher performs a function to a student, projects possibilities for growth to the student, and is representative of the path – this is no joke! Students are vulnerable to teachers, and that’s a delicate relationship that needs to be honored.

A teacher nurtures the journey of the student while not interfering with their path. Teachers work with all the hopes and fears of their students. A teacher should never hold on too tightly, but instead foster a love for the practice and empower students to be their best selves.

As a teacher, I try to create a warm and supportive environment for my students. A place where everyone feels welcome, safe, and supported. A place where growth and transformation are not only possible, but happen every day. I believe that a teacher should empower students, not hold them back or tell them how to feel. My goal as a teacher is for students to surpass me and eventually to find teachers who know more than me.

I’ve only learned all this because I have been blessed with amazing teachers. Teachers who have given to me generously, who hold me up, who humble me, who give me confidence and tell me I can. My teachers encourage me to study with other people and continue to learn.

What I value most in a teacher now is someone who supports not only my practice but my teaching, and gives me something to model myself after. The way I see it, great teachers are those who want to be surpassed by their students.

As a student I have gotten to the point where I no longer want to be taught about technique. And maybe this is where the learning starts. My growth now is to try to grow into my role as a teacher. And this is why the student-teacher relationship is so important to me. This is why I prioritize spending my time and my money to go learn from teachers who I hope to someday be like. Because I’m no longer looking only to learn the next pose – what I want now is someone who can teach me how to be a better person.

A teacher has to be a leader for their students, but also a follower of the lineage. There needs to be a willingness to lead, and to sacrifice. A teacher has to come from a place of love and willingness to lift others.

And when this happens it is truly is a beautiful thing.

Think of the fullness of possibility! A teacher raises a sangha, a community, to go forth and multiply and build their own communities and support all beings.

So you see, the point of building community isn’t to patrol – it’s to raise them up. And as a teacher, I am at the center not because I want to be the boss but because I want to serve other beings. The energy, power, and love doesn’t flow outwards from the center – it comes inwards.

The most important thing that I have learned from my most important teacher is that a teacher doesn’t hold the student back and the teacher always has the student’s back.

Connection, Addiction, Worthiness, and Blur.

Congratulations on being alive everyone!

In all our life's experiences there is one underlying commonality that moves through everyone, whether we are at the beginning or end of our life. The undercurrent of life is connection. It is the vital fluid that keeps all relationships, regardless of their depth or duration, salient and purposeful. When we are able to experience connection in its positive expression it is joyful, rewarding, inclusive, nourishing and uplifting. When it is expressed in unhealthy ways it becomes obsession, violence, exclusion/isolation, abusive, and lacks dignity or respect. Both forms of connection are present in some way in everyone's lives, and it is our awareness of the necessity for positive connections that allows us to choose to engage in relationships that are meaningful and supportive and rest in the goodness and worthiness of our own being. 

In conversation I have heard myself and others say things that reflect a deeply held belief that in some way we are unworthy or not good enough to have positive and healthy relationships with others. This is a subtle form of self-deprecation and self-harm that can be tricky to identify in our behavior and leads us to making decisions that while appearing to fulfill our desires are ultimately in effect self-sabotage or at worse self-deception. Part of what makes relating to others challenging is the social context that creates the habit of believing that relationships need to fit into certain categories, or have certain characteristics. Every being we interact with is in a relationship with us, regardless of how they appear to look.

When we try to impose our ideas on reality we create a tremendous amount of suffering for ourselves and other people. One of the most intense and confusing ways we can disable ourselves is through addiction. This beautiful short video shows that there is old research showing addiction can be rooted in an unfulfilled need for connection rather than chemical dependency. Addiction, like depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts have been taboo in most cultures such that avoidance, judgement, ostracizing, and discarding people were the standard method of not meeting the issues. It is no wonder, then, that we find ourselves amidst a burgeoning movement of folks working toward opening the doors on family histories, cultural repression, and social transparency. There are no limits to theways we can start to heal ourselves from the burden of seeking connection in unhealthy ways, and the trauma that causes ourselves and each other.

To put us all on the right track, what if we made a pact with ourselves to cherish and invest in the relationships we do have?
What if we agreed that all people who we meet, regardless of the situation and how we perceive them, are delicate, sensitive, exquisitely intricate, and beautifully simple creates that occupy this life-giving planet that sustains us all equally? 
What if we made a commitment to our own dignity, and already complete worthiness, to choose those relationships that foster and blossom our own already present beauty, gentleness, strength, capability, and compassion?

Our lives are valuable and worth living because we are connected. Our worthiness and goodness is guaranteed by our birth and does not come as a result of our actions - it is always with us. Our "work" is to be clear with ourselves about all the ways we close ourselves off to the connections we already have, and do what we need to do in order to foster and invite those connections that firmly place us within the context of our life, whatever it looks like, in a healthy, wholesome, and genuine way. No one else can do this work for us, and we are not responsible for doing it for anyone else. We are here to support each other and together we are strong. The secret, like the name of this Blur song from 1998, is to be with the part of ourselves that is Tender.

"Come on get through it.
Love's the greatest thing that we have..."

Or you could live like this person:

May we remember that we live in a world full of people, just like us, doing their best to live as best as they can. May we stay warm and open to those connections that remind us how fabulous it is to be alive!

Om,

Aqeel

All is Coming?

Pattabhi Jois, the father of Ashtanga, was notorious for rarely giving straight answers to questions. Whether it was a language barrier or just his cryptic charm, he would often respond, "Do your practice and all is coming." 

Some interpret this to be a transactional statement, that Guruji was promising that you would attain what you desire over the course of time, so long as you continued to practice Ashtanga.

Instead, perhaps he was really saying, "Do your practice because all is coming."

In your practice, you will face adversity. You'll fall. You'll be asked to do things you can't do. You'll face injury and embarrassment and learn a lot about yourself in the process. This is good training for life.

Yoga doesn't promise that you'll master handstand in your lifetime. But it does promise to better prepare you for the things that actually matter that lie ahead.

Vastu-samye – Do You See What I See??

Vastu-samye – do you see what I see??

vastu-sāmye citta-bhedāt tayor vibhaktaḥ panthāḥ

Each individual person perceives the same object in a different way, according to their own state of mind and projections. Everything is empty from its own side and appears according to how you see it. (PYS IV.15 translation from Jivamukti Yoga Chant Book)

It’s about perspective. Yours and mine. The objects of the material world – prakriti – that surround each and every one of us, are what they are. And yet, we each see something different. We perceive something different than the person standing right next to us for everything we see. This is true on a very practical, gross level and can be validated by simply placing the same object in front of 2 people and independently asking them to describe it. You will get different answers.

But, the more interesting side of this concept can be explored when we go deeper – beyond the obvious and into the subtle aspects of our perception. Why do we perceive differently? Well, because we each have uniquely colored/influenced thought patterns. And those thought patterns determine our response.

PYS I:5 says, vrttayah pancatayyah klista aklista – we have 5 categories of thought patterns and they are either klista meaning colored, afflicted by the kleshas or hindrances to yoga or not (aklista). These hindrances come about due to ignorance of Self, inflated ego, attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, and clinging to life.

The yogi’s thought patterns begin to change dramatically when he accepts concepts such as emptiness, soul/Self, samskara and samsara. He begins to put everything in the light of the Self and under the scope of our ultimate reality – purusha. Purusha is the changeless reality, the lifeforce we all share that lies beneath the material world – prakriti. Purusha is not affected by the goings on of the world, and yet it remains the constant, strong, energetic force that supports the world. Without it prakriti would not exist and vice-versa.

The yogi’s perspective becomes tempered by the knowledge of purusha. He is less disturbed by what’s happening outside himself. His thoughts are less and less disrupted by the tragedies of the world. It’s not that he doesn’t care, he does, deeply. But, he accepts that the material world is one of change and his place in it is temporary. His efforts become increasingly directed at connecting more fully with his eternal, blissful, Self. There is nothing that has greater impact on his awareness of the objects placed before him. That impact is one of equanimity that brings a calmness to his existence. From this place he can operate in the world with great passion, but limited attachment. The ups and downs, successes and failures, do not have the impact on his efforts that they once did. He is able to stay the course, stay on the path, do the work – because it’s the right thing to do, not because he is seeking material, or even spiritual, gain. As Barbara Stoler Miller wrote in “Yoga – Discipline of Freedom”, “The path to freedom consists of a gradual unwinding of misconceptions that allows for fresh perceptions.”

For more on this sutra, see the Jivamukti Focus of the Month for March – “The Reality of the Enlightened Mind” written by Gabriella Bozic:  http://jivamuktiyoga.com/teachings/focus-of-the-month/p/reality-enlightened-mind