Do Good Work, Ignore the Noise

A couple of years ago I was at the Pink Elephant with some girlfriends. It was a cold day like today. We were meeting for lunch to lift the spirits of our friend Cheri, who was fighting an aggressive bone cancer. Cheri was in a good mood that day and talked non-stop, making us all laugh. She was in the middle of a battle for her life, and she didn’t have any patience for stupid drama or petty crap. She just wanted to have a good time with friends and do something that actually mattered.

photography by rebecca stowe

Cheri and I were not close friends, but we kept up with each other. When her leg first started bothering her, one of her doctors thought it might be ITB syndrome due to her marathon running. We got together, and I taught her some stretches and exercises that were supposed to relieve ITBS. It wasn’t long after that it became clear that she was dealing with something much bigger.

When we all walked outside after lunch one of the girls noticed my old coat, and they started teasing me about it. One of the pockets was torn, and it had a little paint on it. I explained that it only got cold in Oklahoma for maybe 8 weeks, and during that time there were many days one didn’t even need a big coat, so why spend money? My ability to be cheap amused my friends. Over the few months of winter that year, my friends would occasionally see me in the old blue coat and start laughing. I persisted with wearing it, and in fact dug in my heels about the coat even though I knew they were right and it was hideously ugly. It was a combination of being too busy to make time to buy a new one and having fun just being stubborn. Before long, late February came along and the crocus flowers came up. I hung up the blue coat in the closet, determined to pull it out again the next winter. Cheri was still with us.

By that summer Cheri was facing the reality that the cancer was taking over her body. It wasn’t reacting well to treatment. Her family had a big party for her so she could see friends before she wasn’t physically able to do it. She had to use crutches to get around the huge party – but that didn’t keep her from having a good time. Again she was making everyone laugh, telling funny stories. Much of it was her reflections on her life, choices she’d made, and how cancer had changed her perspective. She said that before she got sick she would watch the biggest loser and cry and feel so badly for the people on the show. But once she had cancer she couldn’t watch the show anymore, as she just wanted to yell at the TV, “Hey, whine, whine, so you need to eat less, whatever, TRY CANCER!” I’m pretty sure that she never really had a lot of patience with people whining, but after the cancer this attitude grew stronger. Rightly so, no one blamed her for this. Her attitude was: hey you don’t have cancer, you can go get something done, stop your whining and gossiping. I have to say that I LOVED this attitude and it inspired me to get focused on what was important in my life.

I decided to start working daily on ignoring the noise around me. By noise, I mean others telling me what to do, others talking about me and it getting back to me, others complaining to me about others, etc. Whenever I let myself get sucked into some drama, I realize afterwards how many hours I’ve wasted, when I could have been getting something worthwhile done. My involvement in it almost never changes the outcome.

A teacher friend talked with me recently after she had subbed for someone’s class. She is a newer teacher who went through my training classes. During the class, an older lady made it clear that she didn’t like her teaching by making a snotty remark. My friend handled it the best she could, but it is hard to keep teaching when someone is putting off so much negative energy. Later when she looked on facebook, she saw another older yoga teacher commenting about it on the facebook page of the teacher she substituted for. As she was telling me about this, I was thinking, well there goes the noise again! It’s obvious when other people are being sucked in by the noise, but harder to recognize it when we are involved in it ourselves. I told her to focus on the people who liked her teaching and to do her best to ignore the rest. I also told her to hide the teacher from her facebook feed because she is adding to the noise. If they are not supporting you, if they are not being constructive, then be done with them.

Teaching yoga is a personal endeavor. When we get up in front of class, we are teaching our practice. It’s important to us. For many teachers there is a spiritual dharma or calling behind the practice – this makes it even more difficult when we are not well received. It’s the hardest when we first start teaching and are trying to find our own voice. But even for the seasoned teacher there can be times when student’s negative reactions or other teachers’ condescending remarks can be hurtful. Those that want to teach yoga have to believe in their practice, do the best they can each day, and grow some thick skin.

Keeping focused on what is important and what our goals are actually takes discipline and work. I find myself needing a daily reminder of what it is I said I wanted to accomplish. Half of discipline is just remembering what it is we wanted. It’s awfully easy to just surf the web, post on facebook, and blow half an afternoon with not a lot to show for it. One of my girlfriends was laughing with me about how she had gone to her computer to finish writing a report for work, and 2 hours later she “woke up” to find she was surfing around looking up how to make soap from goat’s milk and other random stuff, with nothing done on the report! I do this too, truth be told.

Facing cancer put Cheri into the position of staying focused all the time about what it was she really wanted and how she wanted to spend her time. I quoted her in a April 2010 blog post, but I think it is worth repeating here, “Get your ass off the couch, and show up for your life.” How many times do we take our daily lives for granted?

At the end of the summer party, I told Cheri that I had to go, and she had me follow her over to the hall closet. She pulled out a brand new red parka and handed it to me. The last thing she said to me was,

“Take my coat. I’m not going to need it. And for God sakes I don’t ever want to see that old ugly-ass blue coat ever again!” I gave her a hug and left.

Yesterday when I woke up, and it was so cold, I went to the closet and pulled out that red parka. I put on Cheri’s coat and remembered that I’ve got an opportunity to wake up each day and make a difference. In Cheri’s coat it feels more like a responsibility than an opportunity. I’m just going to keep getting up each day, doing good work, and ignoring the noise.

Rainbows and Unicorns

Lately I’ve been getting more calls from people who are looking for some way out of their stress and depression. They read my bio on-line about how yoga helped me feel better, and they want to come in and see if it will help them. In some cases, local doctors and psychologists are recommending yoga. Even though they don’t practice themselves, they’ve heard it is a good thing. Although I’m excited that yoga is getting more attention and respect, I’ve been struggling with new students’ expectations of how yoga will help them and how fast. After all, they’ve seen the marketing, and their health care professional has recommended it – so they are hoping for a quick transformation.

The current deluge of transformational marketing from various schools of yoga creates this expectation that after a few sessions the student will be taken to some dreamy happy world with rainbows and unicorns. Yoga is not some kind of magic pill. It’s a practice, which goes beyond the mat – and it’s not easy. Practice means doing something over and over again for a long time, until whatever you are practicing becomes easier and more natural. It becomes a habit. When the mind does calm down from the practice, and the student begins to move deeper into their heart, what they find will not be a magical world of happiness. Within our hearts we experience everything, good and bad.

Yoga often does help people with depression; in my own experience it was a combination of doing the exercises, which have been shown as very effective in countering depression, and the internal spiritual change. It’s the second part, the spiritual “part 2” of the practice, which is the hardest part to describe. In the end, all I have is my story of what happened inside my head over the last 10 years. I’ll do my best to describe it, in the hopes that those who decide to take the time to read it, and suffer from some kind of depression, might see yoga as a process of self inquiry to be added to their counseling and medication. Yes, I’ve seen people get off depression medications after doing yoga for a few years, but that doesn’t have to be the goal. Here is a different goal I like to suggest to students working with depression symptoms: feel good about myself, be good to people around me, and be healthy enough to do my dharma or calling!

In January of 2002 I was having a rough time and barely holding it together. I decided to call around and get a massage; I thought this might help me to relax. For no reason at all I picked this place called, The Massage Center, and a woman named Susan answered. Before long Susan had me talking, and I reached out to her for help. She convinced me to come on in and get a massage right away, and I did. After my massage she said to me, “You’re like a ship floating on the ocean with no anchor. I think you are supposed to do yoga.” Susan was right.

I find myself now working on my tenth year of practicing yoga. Looking back, it is hard to believe where I was at in 2002. Susan is still helping people, as many massage therapist do, and now I’m also taking phone calls. In fact, I spend a lot of time listening to people I don’t know and then trying to convince them to come on in and take a yoga class. Sometimes I get a little weary taking these calls; it’s often the same conversation over and over again, and only some of the callers actually show up at the studio. It’s especially hard if I’m under stress myself and I’m not practicing or sitting enough. I always come to the same conclusion, though, when I struggle with this aspect of studio ownership. There is no better person than me to take those calls. After all, I was there in 2002 on the other end of the phone.

Something happened to me when I started doing yoga, and it happened pretty quickly. I struggle to find the words to explain it, only that I felt better. My window to the world was cloudy, and after I started practicing, the window became clearer, and everything seemed brighter and more colorful. I began seeing people more clearly too. But this was just the beginning of the process. I had a lot of work to do, and I continue to practice and work at it to this day. Yoga is not magic. It’s not a quick fix pill.

I think people do have internal transformations with the practice, and even sometimes an external one too. But I hesitate to promise this to people when they call me, because I have no control over what will happen if they show up and practice. Sometimes people find their breath in a yoga class, and then their mind calms down to a slow spin, and that is when it happens ─ a moment of divine grace, the witness awakens. The students find a place within themselves to witness their own thoughts. They wake up, and from there they start living with a different outlook. Although students sometimes want to credit their teacher for this awakening, it has absolutely nothing to do with the teacher. As a teacher, I just show the student the practice and try to teach her shavasana, and if anything transformational is going to happen, well that is between her and God. If she doesn’t believe in God, then it is between her and her own breath.

I went through, and am still going through, a process of becoming more aware of myself, my mind, my reactions, and my stuff. After I initially found my breath and began to truly relax my body, my first teacher Martita announced that she was leaving for the summer and wouldn’t be back until September. I started to freak out on the inside, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep myself on an even keel without her classes. It was that summer I realized that what I was looking for was inside me, and that I needed to develop my own practice and not be dependent on anyone else to walk me through it every week. I was still quite glad when she arrived back in September! I spent the summer with Erich Schiffman’s book, The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness, trying to do triangle like Erich’s picture (rather unsuccessfully, I might add). I had a lot of fear that I would hurt myself. At that time, I was afraid to even do shoulderstand. Martita had to coax me into a shoulderstand over a period of a few months.

As I started attending yoga workshops in OKC and Dallas and started learning to sit and meditate along with the asana, the process became more intense. After doing pranayama and meditation for a couple hours one afternoon at the Art of Yoga in OKC, I became so aware of my own truth that I felt like I was just going to lose it crying or have some kind of a meltdown. I went outside to the back parking lot where my car was and just sat there. The truth, my truth, was there, and I had to look at the sadness I was feeling and not ignore it ─ not pretend that now that I was doing yoga everything was perfect. Something happened that day, and I saw myself more clearly, both the good stuff and the bad stuff. It was some kind of deeper awareness of my own behavior and reactions that I had previously not recognized. I looked up, and my friend Thomas was crouched next to the car checking on me. No words could explain to him why I was sitting outside in my car instead of inside enjoying the party.

Some students who are suffering from depression get to this point in the practice, and it scares them. They just can’t face whatever truth they’ve uncovered. Maybe they need to make a major life change, like a new job, new city, new lifestyle, or a different spouse. They’ve been staying busy and lying to themselves, and once they find a silent mind, they just can’t keep the truth from coming to the forefront any longer. It’s at this point, when the initial “high” of the practice wanes and the student’s reality breaks through, that I sometimes see people bolt. They are just gone. They quit coming to classes. They cannot deal with what they are feeling. When I got to this point in the practice, I had to accept the fact that my brain, left to its own devices, likes to make chemicals that make me feel sad, hopeless, and alone. It was my chemical reality, even if it wasn’t my actual reality. What yoga helped me do was to create and maintain a system for managing my brain. I had to learn to eat right, get enough sunlight, exercise a lot, and meditate on my breath. If I don’t do these things, my brain goes back to its old tricks. For quite awhile I thought the most important piece of my practice was the exercise, but I’ve come to believe that all four of the above lessons are needed, most especially the following of the breath.

Meditating on my breath leads me to find a place within myself that is constant and calm and unaffected by the chemicals that my brain might be dumping out. This place is like a fireplace in a warm living room. It holds the divine spark within me, and it’s this spark that keeps my internal flame burning. When I sit and meditate, I can find this place of the divine within me, even when I’m struggling, and I am able to get up and walk through my lows to the other side. I hope my practice can help others find the other side, but please don’t believe the spin-doctors of yoga. There are no rainbows or unicorns here. I have found love, laughter, and gratitude. This beautiful practice of yoga does works on us, gradually, in between the breaths, one day at a time.

Perspective

La La La LOOOOO! This is what I heard the other day in Super Target. My daughter Hermione and I were shopping in preparation for the grandparents’ arrival. La la la LOOOOO! There it was again! As we turned into the bread aisle, we saw him – not even two, riding in the shopping cart, being pushed along by his tired mother. I giggled softly to Hermione, and we moved on.

We made it to the next aisle, and then I heard it again. La la la LOOOOO! “It’s that kiddo again, ha!” I said. Then a few more aisles down, we again passed the little guy with his mother. She now appeared annoyed as well as tired. La la la LOOOOO! It was then that I realized he’d been doing this for some time. This wasn’t just a funny moment in Target; he liked LaLooing. He liked it a lot.

I thought it was cute, but to his mother, it might not have been so funny. It was hard to tell, as she was calm and quiet, but if it had been me, I would have had enough. We heard her trying various parenting tactics to get him to stop his LaLooing, but all failed. In fact, the more she tried to get him to stop, the more he kept going, and so she settled wisely on the ignore plan. It might have been driving her crazy, or maybe she just wasn’t hearing it at all anymore, but as a mother it is hard to keep one’s perspective with toddlers. All of us who have cared for children, parents or not, have found ourselves in the mental state of the tired mother. The “I’m losing my mind, shut-up or I’m going to smack you” state. Even the best parents, although they may not smack the kids, will occasionally lose it and scream ranting nonsense at them. Kids are resilient. They just bounce back. Sometimes they even find the ranting amusing. “Uh oh, mom’s losing it, ha ha. We’d better go outside.”

Since I started teaching yoga, I have frequently heard mothers come out of Shavasana and make a joke to the affect of, “Wow, I feel like I might not have to yell at my kids today!” And then another woman will interject sarcastically, “Yeah, I wonder how long that will last?” We have a great class, feel all relaxed and centered, and then within a few hours we’re on the battle lines again. How do we stay in that calm place we found on the mat when dealing with family life? I’m not going to lie on my blog and say I never yell at my kids anymore. I can say truthfully that I yell a lot less since I started doing yoga and meditating. In the end, I like to joke, Samadhi in the ashram is easy compared to the reality of the mini-van life.

I have two teenage daughters, so watching the little boy LaLooing was amusing, and I thought, hey that’s not as bad as all this teen stuff I’m attempting to handle. She was probably watching me thinking, wow, her kids know how to use the bathroom on their own and brush their own teeth, heaven! Maybe if we’d just switched places for 2 hours, we could have each appreciated each of our own situations better.

Trying to keep my perspective, while dealing with my children, has always been and continues to be a daily challenge. It’s especially hard when summer hits and we are together all the time. When I feel anger or frustration bubbling up, I try to remove myself from the situation, even if only for a few minutes. In a past blog post about the holidays, I recommended going and hiding in the bathroom to get away from the relatives when about to “lose it”. I’ve been doing this for years and have found it extremely effective – except when the kids were really little, and they’d follow me into the bathroom. (I’m glad those days are over.) I got a real kick out of one of the chapters in Anne Lamont’s book, Traveling Mercies, entitled, “God is in the Bathroom.” Why? Because there is nothing to do in there but sit and breathe! Anne’s point was that in our busy modern lives, it’s often one of the only places people sit and relax, get quiet and maybe connect with their breath.

In Super Target, hiding in the bathroom is obviously not an option. A mother is left to attempt to find the breath while not reacting to the offending child. Some days this can seem nearly impossible. By the time Hermoine and I got back into the frozen section, the little boy had NOT stopped LaLooing, and I still thought it was hilarious. He was going at it with such determination and gusto. The mother kept catching my glances, and I wondered if she was starting to lose it or if she was just worried he was annoying other people. I was afraid to say anything, as it obviously wasn’t as funny to her, but I tried this, “Well, I guess LaLooing is better than crying….” She took a big breath, and I saw her shoulders relax, and I heard a dejected “yeah, I guess your right.” Silence. LA LA LA LA LOOOOOO!

Since I thought the LaLooing was fun, I decided to try it out myself. As we made our way to the front of Target to check out, I kept LaLooing randomly to the distress of my teenager.

“Mooooom!! Stop it”

“La la la LOOOO!”

“Seriously mom. You are not 2 years old. Stop it!”

“La la la LOOOOO!”

“For God sakes mom, people are staring at us!”

“La la la LOO… OUCH!” She smacked me upside the head.

(Try it right now. Just bust out really loudly with a La la la loo. You’ll feel better).

When we settle into the places between the breaths, the divine bubbles up and begins to wash the anger away. No big time commitment or fancy cushion needed.

Spirit Leads

We’ve been staying in a small apartment for about a month in between selling one house and buying another. Although all of us are pretty sick of the tight quarters, our dog Spirit has been suffering the most. When we were at our old house, she’d spend many hours out in the backyard, either chasing squirrels or just watching the world go by. Even though she can run like lightning, she enjoys just sitting and watching birds and squirrels, and I guess the wind in the trees. She has a very curious nature; whenever we go for a walk she will stop and stare at people she hasn’t seen before. I’ve been suspicious for some time now that the dog is smarter than me in some ways.

The other night about midnight it started raining buckets, and that is not just an expression if you live in Oklahoma. It didn’t stop until just before lunch this morning. We took her out for a quick break, but she is scared of thunder and ran back in. So after the rain stopped I knew she needed a long walk, and I thought it would be fun to see what would happen if I let HER decide where we were going. Normally, as the human, I dictate where we are to walk, such as on sidewalks and paths (generally in straight lines), and I also determine when we are going back. The only time she decides is when I let her off the lead in certain areas where I know she will be safe. Although she comes when called, when she sees a squirrel she loses her mind and will chase it right into traffic. Normally, without “squirrel on the brain,” this is a dog that looks both ways before crossing the street.

This experiment required that I set certain rules for myself. I would try to leave some slack in her flexi-line as much as possible. I would only intervene if she started to go into the street at the wrong time. I would not talk to her or give her any directions or commands. I would just follow. This turned out to be a lot harder than I had thought.

Once we got out the front door I just stood still and waited. She kept looking up at me wondering why I wasn’t walking. After a little bit she started walking, but she still kept looking back at me. It didn’t take long for her to realize that I had turned over the reins, and she made a quick bee line to a big field next to our apartment. From there she headed straight for Reeves Park. I remembered that she had tugged toward the park numerous times since we’ve lived here, but I had never wanted to go. We had to cross a busy street to get there. Spirit stopped at the edge of the road and started looking both ways, and then we proceeded on down the road that runs south of the park in a straight line. We were heading for a group of buildings that are probably run by the City Parks department; I wondered why this was so interesting to my dog. I had to resist the temptation to take the reins back as I looked longingly over toward the grassy park and trees. She continued on in a straight line until we arrived at a spot of land behind one of the park buildings with a big tree in the middle. We came to a stop by the tree, and the dog sat down, looked up at the tree, and then looked at me. I then realized that we were standing in the middle of a small stone labyrinth. It was just the other day that I had been thinking how nice it would be to be able to walk a prayer labyrinth, and now today I found myself in the middle of one with my dog. I remembered reading something in the paper when I first moved to town about a group working to get a labyrinth in a local park. I had just not paid enough attention at the time to find it.

As soon as blurted out, “It’s a labyrinth!” we moved on at a quick pace. From this point forward, it became clear to me that what a dog thinks is a good walk and what a human thinks of as a good walk are two totally different outings. I found myself having to decide over and over again to keep to my intention of letting Spirit lead. We found every dumpster within a mile radius. There was standing water in the park, sometimes over a half a foot deep, and we tromped right thought it. It turns out that left to her own devices, my dog just walks straight through it all with style. There was no effort to go around the mini lakes in the park. At one point I came to and realized that I was standing in half a foot of water near a huge dumpster at the back of the park, and I wondered if anyone saw me what they would think I was doing back there! Sidewalks were no longer necessary; we went in a random zig-zag fashion through the entire park led entirely by Spirit’s sniffer. Sometimes she would go under fences, and I would either have to go under or over, usually without a lot of time to decide which option to take. It was around this point, about an hour into this experiment, that I realized how much fun I was having playing with my dog. I’d forgotten all about real estate agents, HUD statements, mortgages, and my mini-van taxi service. I wasn’t even thinking about YOGA (gasp!).

It was time for me to try to take the reins and head back, so I broke the silence and said, “We have to go home now Spirit.” Here is the greatest part. The dog turns around and starts heading back to the apartment in a straight line. She made her way to the closest sideway and proceeded in the human fashion back home. Evidently she’s known the difference between a human walk and a dog walk for some time, and can make it work either way. When the Sprit leads you never know where you’ll end up. In my case, I ended up very muddy.

Dorothy

The weekend before Thanksgiving my grandmother Dorothy passed away. I was teaching all weekend and didn’t find out until Saturday night. After thinking about it I chose not to tell everyone at the workshop on Sunday morning what had happened so I could stay focused on teaching. I knew that she would want me to finish the weekend strong and teach for everyone as I had promised.

For those of you who know me, you’ve heard a lot of stories about my grandmother. I love to talk about her and frequently posted on Facebook updates about her including both funny and wise comments. I pulled back posting about her awhile ago, as I realized that so many people have lost their grandparents and parents that hearing about a woman who had made it to 100 can be bittersweet. One friend even posted that she missed her grandmother, and so I thought maybe stories about Dorothy should be doled out slowly. In the end though, now that she has left us, I just can’t help telling a few more stories for those who want to read them. Part of Dorothy’s dharma I believe was to inspire others to do their best and to be engaged in their lives. It is certainly what she did for me as my grandmother.

How does someone make it to 100? Genetics? Attitude? Obviously it’s a little bit of both and a good dose of what I’m going to call “spiritual stamina.” No matter what she faced she managed to stay centered and grounded, so much so that people were drawn to her because it. She was the “rock” for a lot of people, who turned to her for help, support, and friendship. I think people liked her in part because she was truly interested in what others had to say. When people talked to her she listened in a way that made them feel like they mattered, and what they were saying was important. She was interested in people, books, politics, religion, science, and more. As her pastor Peter said in his eulogy, Dorothy reminded him of a famous saying about being a good conversationalist and person, “be interested not interesting.” Her avid reading and inquisitiveness did indeed make her an interesting person to talk with, but she just wasn’t trying to be anything special or be noticed by others.

This is not to say that Dorothy didn’t care what other people thought. As a granddaughter I had to learn my manners at her house and try to be as ladylike as possible. I remember being reprimanded for sticking my tongue in my ice cream and swirling it around and generally being wild with it. I also had to know which fork to use and not blurt out anything inappropriate. I still struggle with the latter. Her generation was certainly more formal than our current culture, and she always had the right outfit for any occasion. My grandmother always matched, even her lipstick. About ten years ago I drove over to the manor to pick her up for lunch, and she came waltzing out the front door with a smile on her face. Her slacks looked freshly pressed, matching a crisp printed blouse. Chunky beaded jewelry accented the outfit along with a knitted shawl. With a full stride and a spring in her step she walked through the double doors towards my car. I can still see it clearly, and I thought that day to myself, this is how I wanted to remember her, confident, smart, and in charge.

We had a lake house (a shack really but we called it a house) and we’d all go out there and relax. The grown ups would sit and read in the sun (or drink beer and play cribbage), and the kids would play in the lake. When we caught a fish one day, Dorothy, who had been a teacher in her youth, could not resist the opportunity to give us a science lesson. She cut open the fish and began an anatomy lesson of fish innards. My cousin Todd freaked out and jumped back in the lake, along with most of the other boys. Despite the exodus of boys, she continued to dissect the fish, and I watched along with one of my cousins. She then had us doing dissections on the fish, all the while continuing the lecture. This is how it was growing up with her. She was always teaching us something about nature, about the birds, the bugs, and the plants. It was many years later that I found out she had majored in human anatomy at the University of Minnesota in the 1930s. She had trained to be a scientific illustrator, but in those days when a woman married she gave up her career. Women were only allowed to teach school until they got pregnant.

These two sides of Dorothy – the formal university lady and the nature lover were evident the whole time I was growing up, and I had to make sure I was wearing the right clothes before going to her house. If I was left at her house while my parents were out, then I would be helping with various tasks, certainly not sitting idly. She believed in going outside every day, working in the garden, and getting some fresh air. We were always active and sometimes I remember thinking to myself as a teenager, “grandma is wearing me out!” For a few years we even went through a swimming phase where she’d pick me up and we’d go and swim laps at the university pool. She didn’t like how the chlorine would turn her gray hair slightly yellow, and so I’d sit and watch as she carefully tucked all her hair into her swim cap. After a awhile I was able to get to the other side before her, but not by much.

A few years ago I was talking to my cousin Craig and he told me that he’d just called Grandma Dor to ask her how to spell a word. I asked him why he was bothering grandma with that, he could just look it up on the computer. He responded, “Well Grandma Dorothy is my google.” I laughed at how true this statement seemed, from a grandchild’s perspective she knew about everything!

Over the last few years Dorothy and I began having longer phone conversations. Earlier in my life our conversations on the phone never lasted too long, as she was always busy, or worried that it would cost too much. After convincing her that my cell phone was a flat rate and it didn’t cost extra to talk long distance, she began to settle in and talk. Sometimes the conversations would go on for over an hour. We’d talk about politics, religion, books, and people. We liked to talk about spiritual issues, and I ended up giving her a copy of Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg, which she read and wanted to talk about. On my next visit to Lawrence she gave me an old book and told me to take care of it, that her mother had given the book to her father on the night before they married. On the first page of the book my great grandmothers writing remains in faded pen, “July 20, 1906 from Ora.” The book is a 1902 printing of Sufi Interpretations of Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald by C.H.A. Bjerregaard. Omar Khayyam was an 11th century Persian mathematician and scientist who became known for his mystical poetry. Dorothy always had an interest in poetry and would read it to me sometimes, and it was usually lost on me. It’s only been in the last few years, as I’ve gotten older and into yoga that I’ve had the patience to read mystical writings and poetry. I’ve been working on reading the book on and off since she gave it to me, and I must admit it does not come easy for me. But when I finally “get it” I’m not only rewarded with the satisfaction, but also with the comfort that comes with knowing the experience and struggle of living this life, and the mysteries that surround it, haven’t changed in a thousand years.

Dorothy liked to write letters and I’ve kept all of them – she started writing me in college and the letters didn’t stop until a few months ago. I’d like to end this post though with a handwritten letter that she sent to her pastor and friend Peter in March of 2000. She was 90 years old at the time. He graciously gave me the letter last week. I think it reflects more about my grandmother than anything I could write about her myself.

Dear Peter,

In haste – before my grandchildren arrive, I want to let you know I have been so touched by your sermon this morning.

For me you hit the “mystery” button just right. As a science teacher, I’ve always been somewhat a skeptic. As an aging Christian I want to have an unquestioning faith. So you help me!

The imagery in your sermon was superb! And I loved your tribute to Linda.

Blessings Peter!

Fondly, Dorothy A

Ps. I’m enrolled in the KU extension Science and Religion course. See you there if not before!

 Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam 13-16

Some for the Glories of this World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come,
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

Look to the blowing Rose about us – “Lo,
Laughing,” she says, “into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.”

And those who husbanded the Golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn’d
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

The Worldly hope men set their hearts upon
Turns Ashes – or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour of two – was gone.

Find Your Inner Xena (Warrior Princess)

This summer has brought with it a great deal of drama in the world of yoga. Yoga drama, you say? Aren’t yoga people supposed to be all enlightened, peaceful, and cooperative? Well, it turns out not so much. Yoga teachers, in the same way as preachers, are at risk of taking themselves too seriously. They start to believe they are more enlightened than everyone else. When this happens, they cease to grow spiritually and just fester in self-righteousness or delusion.

On the national level the drama was actually amusing at times this summer especially with the whole “YogaSox” controversy. Everyone took sides on whether Yoga Journal should print ads with sexy, half dressed girls (or in this case, a girl dressed only in ToeSox). We also had the New York Times article on Anusara yoga entitled, “The Yoga Mogul,” which created a surprising amount of debate and emotion. The yoga blogosphere went nuts. Although I was tempted to chime in on my blog, I didn’t because I don’t wear ToeSox and I don’t do Anusara yoga.

But I can’t just leave alone the latest little controversy over Tara Stile’s new marketing campaign, “Slim Calm Sexy Yoga.” Tara, it seems, is determined to bring yoga to the masses, while she of course makes a truckload of cash, promoting her new book entitled, “Slim Calm Sexy Yoga: The 15-minute yoga solution for feeling and looking your best from head to toe.” I don’t even know where to start, because after looking at her site, I’m feeling kind of nauseated.


First off, this photo of her on the front of the book has most certainly been digitally altered in some way. My guess is that her skin has been “smoothed.” Although from the video I watched on her site it’s clear she is about as skinny as they come with toned abs, I’d bet money the abs in this picture have been enhanced in some way. Her perfect abs were not perfect enough for the front of this book. The latest Dove viral marketing campaign shows what models go through in order to get that smooth slim sexy look. The end product is fake and unattainable.

There is no 15 minute a day workout that is going to make a 40 year old, overweight woman look like Tara Stiles. She was a dancer, has model like features (big eyes & mouth), and from her story on her site, has always been tall and skinny. There is a genetic reality at work here. The underlying message is: if you read this book and do these exercises you can get her body. This may not be Ms. Stiles intention, but that is what will happen when women see this book in Barnes and Noble. And yes, some of them will buy it. I have my photographer smooth the zits off my face for the headshot I use to promote myself, we all do. But how far are we going to go with this digital deception to sell yoga? Yoga is supposed to be about letting go of our illusions about ourselves.

I want to make it clear that this is not a personal attack on Ms. Stiles, just her marketing. I’ve never met her or attended her class, so I can’t speak to what kind of a person she is, or what kind of class she teaches. What I can say is that this marketing campaign doesn’t represent the yoga that I teach. Doing yoga 15 minutes a day by yourself out of a book is not going to make you “Slim Calm Sexy”. Learning yoga takes years, and requires a committed teacher that you actually know. After watching a few of her videos on-line, my take is that she is a nice young woman who doesn’t understand what it is like to be 40 years old, have two kids, and struggling with the issues of an aging body. Maybe she just needs to print “results not typical” on the bottom of the front cover. But no, that won’t make it all better. Yoga teachers presenting themselves as “sexy” and using this as a way to sell the practice is contrary to everything the real practice is about, and it is likely to bring about boundary issues with students.

So why the rant? As a studio owner and teacher I talk every week to women about body image issues, and at times it’s heart breaking. It’s a major part of my job that I don’t often reveal. Women ask me if yoga will help them lose weight. They say they want a body like mine. I’ve even had women ask if they do yoga, will their butt look like mine. What I try and impart in these conversations is that yoga may indeed help you lose some weight, but not the way you think it will. Yoga is not about burning calories, it’s about going within yourself and finding a peaceful place to rest and reflect. I also tell them that I’ve always been skinny. It’s my constitution. As I said before, there is a genetic aspect at work here. It is certainly a good thing to pay attention to your body, to eat right and exercise, but the focus has to be on how you FEEL, not on how you look. To blatantly use my naturally slim body, which would be slim even if I didn’t do yoga, as a marketing tool for the practice and my studio would be crass. Yoga is about being OK with who you are right now.

Tonight I was talking to my friend, Carolyn (who is pushing 70 years old), about this topic of women and body image. I asked her when she thought this trend of the super-skinny body started. We all know that it hasn’t always been this way. She started listing off all sorts of full figured actresses from the ‘50s and ’60s… but when we got to the ‘70s and later she had more trouble thinking of any. The skinny thing may have started in the late ‘60s with a model named Twiggy, whose super skinny size was a novelty at the time. When Carolyn was in college in 1962, she was 5’10 and 127 pounds. This would be the super model size in today’s standards (some of them weigh even less). She said she was embarrassed about it at the time, being so tall and skinny, and drank lots of malts trying to put on weight. She was so hungry all the time she never felt full – and so embarrassed to be eating so much food that she would send her boyfriend (now husband) up to get “thirds” for her. Times have changed. If only she was 20 now, she could make a yoga DVD and be a yoga “expert.”

The only full figured women as sex symbols we could think of from the late sixties forward were Wonder Woman and Xena. So why do larger girls have to strap on a metal bra and carry a weapon around to be sexy? What a bunch of crap! (My editor begs to differ, saying he thinks bustiers and swords are hot). Actually both Wonder Woman and Xena were seriously cool characters who made smart decisions, took leadership, and kicked ass in general. All except for the thigh-high boots and push-up bras, not such bad role models for young girls. Even though I was rail thin as a young teenager, I’d still find my inner Wonder Woman, and once in awhile when I got really pissed off I’d open up a can of whupass on the playground. It landed me in the principal’s office on more than one occasion for fighting.

This brings me to my final and probably most important point. Skinny girls aren’t usually calm. Think about it. The words Slim and Calm don’t usually go together when describing women I know. I can say this, as I’ve been in the skinny girl club most of my life and have admittedly been rather high strung, driven, competitive, dramatic, and generally high maintenance. It’s my constitution, and until a few years ago, I burned up food like it was water and I couldn’t sit still for even a minute. I’ve fought problems with depression too. Being slim doesn’t make you happy.

Practicing yoga while also getting older has in fact helped me to be calmer and happier, but I’m still full of energy. It’s just how I am. It’s how I came out. I was getting wound up about something the other day at the studio, and someone said teasingly, “I thought yoga was supposed to make you calm. How can you be such a spaz?” I grinned and said, “You should see me off Yoga!” Part of our practice is to figure out what we need from our yoga in order to make our daily lives better. When it becomes just about how we look or what pose we can get into, we miss all the good stuff.

Most of my girlfriends are around 50 or older and over any body image issues they may have had when younger. But if you are one of my curvy students or girlfriends who struggles with your size, I say, find your inner Xena and take charge. Ignore silly weightloss books, especially when written by someone who has never needed to lose weight. I may be a skinny chick, but I’m still your sister, and we need to get past the divide.

Practicing yoga and meditation helps us to find and cultivate a greater purpose for our lives, and to begin living it right now. It pulls us out of our own little worlds to notice the divine in everyone and every creature. Yoga softens our hearts slowly. In the end it’s not how we look in this life, it’s what we do with it.

Time Keeps on Ticking

Lately I’ve been struggling with my relationship with time. I want to stay calm and not worry about how I’m going to get everything done “on time” but find myself sometimes feeling stressed anyway. Occasionally I get so overwhelmed with everything that I think needs to get done, that I just sit down and sign onto facebook. That’s easier than prioritizing. Then I see my facebook friends’ statuses about their lack of time. When people tell me all the reasons why they can’t come to yoga class, it’s pretty clear that I am not alone with my time dysfunctions. Most of us have some kind of push-pull love-hate way of relating to time. Although we have a lot of self help books out about “getting organized” and “getting more time,” most of them do not get to the core of the problem. It’s how we think about time in our minds that causes the stress. Some of us just have Halloween Head* when it comes to time.

An econometrics test in 1987 administered by Professor Kanazawa brought on my first serious episode of Halloween Head. My mom always told me, “If you don’t know a question on a test, then just move onto the next question and don’t worry about it.” The problem was that until I met Professor Kanazawa there were not many test questions that I didn’t know, so I didn’t have much practice staying calm under pressure.

Halloween Head goes something like this:

I wonder how much time I have left (look at the clock…tick, tick, tick.)
Holy crap I only have half this test filled out!
Just focus, breathe, breathe, just focus, you know this stuff
Tick, tick tick, I’m going to flunk this test! Oh shit!
Just keep working on the ones you know – you’ll get partial credit for some questions.
I should have listened to my dad and studied more! I suck, I suck, I suck!!”
Calm down, freaking out isn’t going to change anything, just focus.

Although it’s been a long time since I’ve taken an econometrics test, lately I’ve been recognizing this “freaking out over time,” not only in some of my friends, but clearly in myself too. When people tell me why they haven’t been to yoga lately, I often hear a long soliloquy of their to-do list. I’m always tempted to give them back my to-do list, which either creates some kind of short-on-time girl bonding, or annoys them when they realize I have more on my plate than they do.

Let’s face it, as humans, we like to whine a lot about time. If we are not whining about time, then we are judging someone else for what we see as their poor use of their time. We all have our entertainment “time-wasting” activities such as watching TV, facebooking, twittering, or playing video games. Before the electronics age, I’m sure people managed to dink around too. My grandmother told me that when the radio first came out when she was a child, she heard the adults insulting each other, “I can’t believe they are sitting around listening to that box, what a waste of time!” We know we have a limited amount of time on this planet, so we struggle determining what a “waste of time” is, and what is truly needed rest and relaxation. I have a few students that think Shavasana (the meditation at the end of a yoga class) is a waste of time. I hope to convince them otherwise.

Sometimes we get into this frame of mind where we believe we have more to do than anyone else. Since I know that I can fall into this trap, I’ve been focusing lately on people that clearly have more responsibilities. For instance, some friends of mine have two special needs children. They don’t have a lick of time. They can’t even eat breakfast without taking turns. My kid on the other hand woke me up this morning, and said, “I’m going out to mow the lawn, mom.” I laid there staring at the ceiling, listening to the lawn mower, and I had a flash forward where I was an old woman and my daughter was saying, “Come on mom, get up and dressed. It’s time for breakfast!”

I was listening to myself parenting this last week, and I became aware of how many times I told my kids to hurry up. It’s like I’m infecting them with this “not enough time” virus. We live in a culture of time scarcity. Everyone constantly talks about their busy schedules. We make long to-do lists and produce self-help books about time management. Is it possible that we are all just trying to do too much? Is this really what we want to teach our kids, being scheduled from 8am to 8pm? I don’t think so.

My mom is like Yoda when it comes to time. She has great quotes for me like, “Be realistic about what you can get done in a day. Then you’ll be happier.” When I was in high school, I remember she had an epiphany about time. My dad and I came back from somewhere, and we found my mother sitting out in the lawn under the sprinkler. She was in a lawn chair, and she had on her bathing suit. There was a glass of wine in her hand. When dad asked what she was doing out there, she replied, “I’m on strike.” She was taking her time back, and we were going to have to deal with it.

My brother and I, along with dad, had to clean and cook and do all the laundry until such time she decided that the strike was over. It took about a week, if my memory serves me. She was obviously tired of doing an unfair amount of cooking and chores, but the strike was also about her lack of time – even when we did help her. A few weeks after the strike ended, I was sitting at the dining room table finishing up my homework, and I heard her say to my dad, “Well there are only so many hours in the day.” She had finally given into the truth about time. You can’t stop it, and you only have so much of it. Letting yourself get all stressed out about it isn’t going to change anything.

So when I make my to do list in the morning, I try to be realistic about the fact that I have kids, and that I will undoubtedly be interrupted numerous times about such topics as: Christmas (yes, even in August), birthday party plans, hunger, boredom, play dates, computer user errors, power cords for Nintendos, various lost items, and my personal favorite, “Hey mom, I’ve got an itchy weird spot on my leg.” It’s true, I do have the answers to all these questions, but it takes up a damn lot of time answering them.

My kids are growing and time is passing quickly, and yesterday I enrolled my oldest in high school. I can’t help but begin to think about what my life will be like when they are grown. At the same time, I want to take that sometimes hard to take advice from my elders, “enjoy them while you can, they’ll be gone before you know it!” Although I really wanted to work on my website yesterday, I took my youngest (blog nicknamed Taz) to the pool. Usually I go and read while she swims with friends, but no one was around, so I got in and started swimming laps with her. Turns out, a lot of yoga doesn’t help much with swimming stamina. I was pathetically slow and soon tired. Taz met me at the side of the pool with some flippers.

“You need some flippers mom, then you’ll be able to keep up.”

“Aren’t flippers cheating, or are they like props in yoga?”

“Oh mom, enough with the yoga, just put on the flippers!”

We both put on flippers and jumped back into the pool. I hadn’t swum with flippers since I was a kid, and it was a joy to revisit. My stroke felt so smooth, and I didn’t have to work so hard to keep up with her. As I was doing the crawl across the pool, I looked down under the water and I saw my daughter swimming upside down, belly up, 3 feet below me with a grin on her face. Then she shot past me out of sight like a little sunfish. When I managed to get to the other side, she was enthusiastically waiting for me. “Aren’t flippers awesome mom? You can swim the whole pool in half the time!”


*Halloween Head –a Ryan Adams Song from the album, Easy Tiger