Dancing on the shadows

I fell in love with yoga because it showed me how many boxes I had locked myself in, losing sight my authentic self completely. It taught me that nothing is good or bad on its own, but only when measured against truth, intent, and greater good.

At first it was quite scary to begin breaking down boxes but soon it became exhilarating! At times I can become like the Hindu Goddess, and ego shatterer, Kali, hardly able to control myself.

Still, as a woman, sometimes I get asked to crawl back into my box.  And sometimes I think about crawling back in, all by myself.  But here is my response to that..

Be careful what you ask for, because in trampling out all the negative thoughts I had about myself, I trampled on all the negative thoughts I had about you. In stomping on the judging thoughts about who I was I stomped out the judgements I had made about you. In dancing on the shadows of doubt, and learning to love myself, I started loving you.

When we break down the boxes and walls we build around ourselves, to keep us safe, we break down the barriers we’ve built against each other and we begin to really practice yoga.

If you are my teacher and I am yours, let us not ask anything of each other, just sync your breath to mine and be here. Like we were when we were kids, not swayed by the judging mind, not trying to be something else, and not far from the wisdom we had before. Sharpen your sword of love and cut down any over grown ideas that strangle your true path and keep us from walking it together.

photo by Taya Smyth, Costa Rica

The Space Between

Many of us have experienced it in our lives.. The “something missing” the miss-alignment, and feeling that something isn’t quite whole.  And we have all experienced the opposite. The moment when the gap is filled by a beautiful sunset, or the moment when two souls fall in love.

The alchemy of life is that this feeling crumbles and once again we feel lost in space. We quicken, and in haste, search for the next sunset, lover, or melody that will bring us to that exact place again.  It isn’t about recreating moments.  It is about those times when the unknown becomes familiar.  On a recent trip to India I was surrounded by a culture so opposite of anything I have ever experienced, yet it was the most familiar place I have ever been.

It is like that the first time we see our beloved or birth a child. A familiarity that fills that space. Still these moments always end. The trip always has an end from that perspective. How do we end the cycle of samsara? (The ups and downs and cycle of life)

When we begin to realize that the emptiness is familiar too.  When we quicken to be in silence the way we quicken to be with our beloved.  When we become the beloved.

I think the buddhist have it right by speaking emptiness, which never sat well with me, being a “glass half full” kind of girl. In our rajasic(fast passed nature) society we tend to see emptiness as a bad thing. These teachings help create a familiarity where us as humans, but especially Americans are not familiar.

I remember thinking as a young girl that I didn’t have much time and that every day I had to be better than the day before, but in a very superficial way, like more successful or my waist must look skinner every day to show that I am improving.

We all have the inherent want to better ourselves and to be good, but we need to redifine what good is.

I have made peace with the cycle of life. Life is not as linear as we would like to think. We may not always make more money this year than last, or be more athletic or witty. But in shedding our old conditioned ways, we do have an opportunity to be more authentic, and more accepting of the cycle of the human experience.

 Search for the familiar in all experiences and find comfort there. To end the cycle of pleasure vs. pain, we bring the bodymind back into a state of neutral.  Like a mother craddeling the crying baby back to a state of ease.  Seeing that all is sacred, even the space between that doesn’t have to be filled.

Here is a practical breathing application that I like to use to remind me of the cycle of life and the wholeness that it is.

Coming into a comfortable seated posture. Breath in and out through the nose, focusing on the breath along the spine. As we inhale up to the crown of the head, pause and notice that feeling of fullness and your relationship to that. Exhale down the spine. Pause at the bottom of the exhale. Feel what it feels like to be empty. Notice your relationship to that. Repeat for 2-3 minutes and try to notice if after time you see no difference between the turning of the breath, one continuous flow. Where fullness and emptiness are one.

The Yoga Diet

Photo: Whole Foods.com

I have seen many fad diets over the past 20 years, since picking up my first book on health, Fit for Life, at the age of 16.  Since then I have tried food combining, Eating for my blood type, and tried on even more labels, such as, Fruitatarian, Macrobiotic, Paleolithic, Raw Foodie, Vegan, Omnivore, Vegetarian, Gluten Free, Gluten and Casein Free.  It may also come as no shocker, that within this constellation of food experiments, paired with unhealthy self-esteem, that an eating disorder erupted to further the complicate this already complicated relationship I was in, with Food.  There are as many different diets out there as there are religions, and in a way our diet is like a religion.  There is always a new list of commandments you don’t do to be HEALTHY which equals GOOD. The popular diets and beliefs take over the consumer market.  Gluten is the newest EVIL in the religion of health.  And companies catch on quickly to line the shelves with products catering to our newest set of beliefs. If we ingest Gluten we are BAD or at least feel bad, as I have told myself for the past 2 years, but if we eat super foods we are GOOD and will feel super human.  On a recent trip to whole foods I happened to be in the aisle with a woman that was new to gluten free.  There were 3 employees, opening different packages of gluten free cookies and letting us sample them. (I love whole foods) Of course I tried every one they offered, because it was FREE. I left the store with a sugar hangover, wondering if it was really a good idea to eat all of these sugar-filled, refined foods just because the gluten free industry has found a way to make them taste even better than the real deal, in some instances.  I started to wonder what it is I was being fed, and if the information was true to me.
Through my years of practicing yoga I began the study of Ayurveda, a sister science to Yoga, that teaches us how to live life. Ayurveda told me exactly what I wanted to hear in a moment the pendulum was swinging from, “There is only One Way to be radiantly healthy to I am no longer putting a label on myself when it comes to my relationship with food!”  I no longer believed and believe there could be just ONE way for the complexity of our human bodies.  Ayurveda told me that it was ok to eat meat if I needed some grounding, something that the sister science of Yoga and other philosophies have claimed to be bad. It explained why I craved eating raw during the summer months.  It told me that there is not going to be one diet for every body or even one way for your body your whole life or even every season.  Now I am consumer and practitioner of science of Ayurveda.  Still, it is my yoga practice that has given me the most insight into myself and the world, and has healed the struggles I had in my early twenties with an eating disorder. Yoga has taught me to not be a consumer of fads and ever changing diets and beliefs, rather to believe in myself.  Food is a way to experience the moment, sensations, and mostly nurturing my RELATIONSHIP with myself and the earth. Ayurveda has taught me to keep my body like a smooth running machine so that if I eat a little gluten or dairy, I still feel good. Yoga has taught me, if I eat too many cookies in the whole foods gluten free aisle, I don’t have to run 10 miles to burn them off.  Many times when I am seeing students for nutritional counseling we end up working on forgiveness, self-esteem, and savoring their life.  What we eat is only part of the puzzle, because we are multi-dimensional beings.  It takes more than the perfect meal to make us feel nourished.  How is your relationship with food?  What is happening on the mental and emotional level? Are you feeling integrated and deeply connected with yourself, and with nature?  This is The Yoga Diet Mantra… “I Know that I am FULL and Happy and am not looking for anything outside of myself.”  In the words of my teacher David Frawley, “The consumer is consumed.”