Accept

"The easiest way to relax is to stop trying to make things different."
--Joseph Goldstein

I've never been a women who yearned for her wedding day, or to have a bunch of children and devote my life to raising them.  I love to work.  I love to be productive. As a young girl my mother tells me I was always 'busy and important'..... I love to explore the human body and uncover it's layers until you hit emotions, energy, spirit. I love to teach and be of service to my students.  I love to practice Yoga, surf and hike until my legs want to fall off. This I know.

A few days after Thanksgiving past, I had been sleeping for about ten to twelve hour nights and had frequent indigestion.  I kept acting out in strange ways.  Buying baby clothes and pillows for our home.  Ted was getting worried.  I thought maybe I had just hit some sort of nesting phase of my mid thirties.  After breakfast I made a decision to buy a pregnancy test even though I was not "late," yet.

Now over six months pregnant I am starting to gain a little perspective.  My past struggles have become close friends.  It is as though they were preparing me for five months of sickness as my body adjusted to growing a little boy.  To be totally truthful, I have struggled with not having my body for my own anymore.  It is not mine.  It is now simply a tool.  I am a mammal that is hosting another life.  The intense sickness brought me to me knees, I stopped all physical practice and spent day after day plastered to my couch or my bed.  I felt useless. Who am I without my work, without my vibrant body, without my purpose?  I began to fight my reality with all my will.  As we all know fighting reality is a sad and fruitless fight.  The harder I wrestled the sicker I became.  I wanted desperately to change my current state.  I definitely couldn't run away. Just looking at my Yoga mat made me sick, and surfing was an altogether terrible idea.  I had to drop my agenda, I had to either accept that I am changing, my life is changing, I am having a baby and it is hard work to create him, or I was going to slide into some seriousness darkness.  It was up to me, as usual!

With the encouragement of my brave partner Ted,  I have started the process of accepting what is here and now.  I have been given a massive opportunity to share my life with a child.  My body will come back to me eventually and most importantly I am so very productive, it is just on the inside as I grow a human life.  This kind of creating is different for me.  It's internal, it's not about putting my energy out into the world but pulling in, reserving my strength for the creation of life.  It is so powerful that I have had to redefine my daily practice completely.  I see over and over again how situations can feel intolerable, but is often my own resistance that makes them so.

I realize more and more that this pregnancy has been the greatest teacher I have ever had. It has been the most awakening Yoga practice my body has ever endured.  I am still practicing to be present with it, to accept my strange new shape and quiet energy levels.  It is my new classroom.

This by far has been the longest break I have ever taken not only from writing but from my physical practice. I am now a little over six months pregnant and feeling so many new things (the baby kicking is by the far the most rewarding and bizarre).  I look forward to sharing some of my journey that has humbled me and overall kicked my ass in the past 6 months.  Funny that right after I wrote about creating space for new experiences I get pregnant!

For those of you who attend HOM Yoga and my classes at Yogaworks I will be back in September teaching group classes.  I have missed it so very much.

Going outside and then in.

After a few days in the desert with Ted a couple of weeks back, and several rock climbs later I began to feel a personal shift. It had become clear to me I needed to trim down my daily life, simplify, clean out so that come Spring new seeds could be planted.

I was ready to create space in my life. Without space I can't grow.

Maybe it was my terror up on the rock walls. Heights have their way of waking me up. It was possibly the simplicity of camping in open space, reminding me of what it's like to focus on the commonplace: cooking, cleaning, hiking, climbing on rocks, sleeping. Maybe it was all of it.

Whatever the case, my quick getaway was the perfect reminder of nature's genius. Each season brings in a new flavor, asks for a certain respect. I could hear what this season said to me.

"Go inward so you can go outward."

Yes, I needed more time for my own practice, no excuses. I am a better person when I'm taking care of myself. It is amazing that I still require these yearly reminders!

I find fall to have a more subtle temperament. It's transitional and introspective. I have found transitions to be the perfect instances for letting go, working with the concept of impermanence. It's nature's way of leaning out spring and summer's fat. Leaves fall, the air becomes cooler, and my desire to pull inward feels so natural. I always tend to shed a layer come late fall. The complications and heat that might have been accumulated over summer's party begin to dissolve.

So very simply I will start by saying goodbye to Facebook. I am going to open a book. I will be alternating a rigorous Yoga practice with work in my subtle body and a deeper pranayama practice. I am trying out a new Yoga studio that is more aligned with my practice! Shedding feels good.

The music moves through him

You don't have to practice yoga to have body awareness.
Enjoy.

Explore!

In Greek, "soma," means "body," and "nautes" means "sailor." So a "somanaut" navigates hi/r body, sailing upon the waves of the human sea. Like the astronaut who navigates outer space, the somanaut explores inner space. Somanauts are a courageous lot. The rich treasures lurking in the wild blue self make the real risks of looking and feeling inward deeply compelling, and enormously rewarding. --Gil Hedley

Grounding in the Elements Part 2: Water, My Reflection

I had never really been alone.  I grew up in a family of ten people, a few dogs and cats, horses to care for and plenty of friends that at any given time were escaping some kind of teenage hell at their own home.  Life growing up was loud.  Even on eight acres, space was limited.  The kitchen table with ten Reeses and a few stray friends was always a bit chaotic. Noisy. Busy. My normal.  My early childhood conditioning allowed me to feel comfortable and safe as long as I was extremely busy and distracted.   It was natural for me to get lost in the shuffle of life.

In Greece Barbara and I did a lot of reminiscing about our time in New York together as young dancers and how drastically our lives shifted once we found Yoga and meditation.  Our dusty memories started to bubble up as we spent hours on the beach sleeping, talking, and swimming.

When people ask me what New York was like I find myself talking about how it was so loud that I finally woke up.  I began a new life and uncovered myself.  Between dance class and rehearsals I dove into Yoga and spent four hours a day in the studio listening to my breath, and the other students' breath.  Throughout my entire life noise seemed quiet, and the quiet felt unnerving, my racing mind and taxed body was afraid to stop. I didn't know how to stop. My time in the Yoga studio slowed this relentless pace inside of me. I began to crave the sound of Ujjiyi breathing, the energy of a Yoga classroom, the gentle sound of my teachers voice. I began to feel sensitive, that is, I could feel my own nervous system respond to my external environment.

Outside the Yoga classroom was the insanity and beauty of New York.  As a dancer, the pace of my life was fast.  My auditory sense was constantly overwhelmed by the nonstop life of the city. Intitialy New York's pace soothed me and held me in a constant state of peaceful anxiety.  It was all I knew, it was safe, it was like home.  Although the city provided unlimited growth both intellectually and artistically, eventually my body had had enough tight spaces and fast paced schedules.  As my Yoga practice grew I slowly began to crave balance in my schedule.  I wanted to sleep more.  I wanted to meditate and read in my room.  I craved healthy foods. I started to love silence.  This began to freak me out.  I moved to New York to create art, to never sleep and never feel tired.  How was this happening? Each day that I practiced on my mat my physical constitution went through a shift.  My mind body started to come down from twenty five years of crazy. Noisy no longer felt quiet, and the quiet began to sooth my nervous system.  I felt a bit like I was free falling.  At times it was so liberating and at other times it was terrifying trying to  recalibrate normal.

Sitting on the beach of Megali Petra off of Kefalonia, Greece, I began to reflect and looked into a depth that is new to me.  Eight years after New York City I find myself still detoxing from daily chaos and the noise I didn't even notice before.  Beyond the listening and unpeeling that unraveled my nervous system in New York City I can safely say that this unveiling, this space I feel here on this island is so vast.  My mind feels like a canyon and anxiety has tried several times to creep in because I have nothing to do but rest, eat, sleep, meditate, practice. I have sat quietly for many days now.  No teaching, no phone, no boyfriend, no Mom. My life preservers are in California.

The translucent minty blue water surrounded me. The sea was like nothing I had ever seen or heard.  Its limpid waters lapped rhythmically on the hot sand over and over.  As I sat and looked out at the water I could feel another layer of craziness lift.  My anxiety fades. I feel exposed.  I feel.

Grounding in the Elements (Part 1) Co-written with Barbara Stamis

 

Disembarking from the airplane upon our arrival in Athens, we felt a deep craving to take off our shoes and let our puffy, swollen feet hit the earth. After flying for over 13 hours and running around several airports our bodies felt as if they had been through a time warp… deeply dehydrated, exhausted and experiencing a sensation of floating a few feet above the ground. Our senses were numb, our minds foggy and our energy scattered...

Out of Balance…

In Chinese medicine, astrology and various Vedic traditions, the general philosophy is to support the natural flux of the body as it ebbs and flows towards hoemeostasis. This can be accomplished using the qualities of fire, air, earth and water, because these four elements have attributes that can characterize our personal natures.

Air - Movement, Change, Communication, Ideas, Dispersion, Objectiveness, Expansion

Earth - Stability, Consistency, Rigidity, Practicality, Persistence, Caution

Water - Conformity, Personal, Sensitivity, Emotion, Nurturing, Depth

Fire - Heat, Assertion, Confrontation, Motivation, Speed, Strength, Boldness, Leadership

Surely, during and after our 13 hour flight, we were intoxicated with an over-abundance of the qualities of air. The imbalance was clear and we deeply craved stable ground to walk on and a consistent REM sleep cycle.

In Athens we determinedly planned our mission to overcome jetlag as quickly and smoothly as possible. Digging into our own tool boxes and relying on our mutual advice, we decided to keep moving rather than give in to the lethargy. We soldiered on for over an hour, connecting to the cobblestoned sidewalks and then treated ourselves to a nourishing meal. Our evening culminated with calming meditation, the goal being an uninterrupted eight hour sleep.

Pleasantly surprised, we awoke eight hours later quite refreshed. We continued to settle in by removing our shoes and climbing up the Acropolis to the Parthenon. Our bare feet trod the cool, smooth, marble steps of this cornerstone of civilization. Following in the footsteps of the ancients before us was an authentic and spiritual welcome into the old city. As we pressed firmly into all four corners of our feet, spreading our metatarsals with deliberate awareness to prevent us from falling, our fog began to lift. Gravity assisted the weight of our bodies and downward push into our legs and feet. The earth element began to balance our over-abundance of air… The antiquity of the Acropolis combined with the simple proprioception of the various temperate surfaces created the support we needed to move us closer to homeostasis.

After just one day in Athens, we are now nestled into the beautiful island of Kefalonia where we are able to easily embrace the quality of water by floating in the salty, warm, serene sea.