taking a sick day

WARNING: I'm plenty pissed off in this post, and when I have big (usually difficult) feelings, I swear. Proceed with caution and skip this post if the F-bomb isn't your thing.

Attending class is one of my favorite ways to study yoga. A good class takes me out of my head and into my body; it provides an opportunity for discovery of postures and sequences I'd never considered or practiced before. It gives me the chance to take a crack at another pose, and to stay humble and detached from whatever result; and it's a pretty powerful way to connect and commune with other seekers in my community.

But some days I can't go to class. Some days I'm too busy trying to get work done, or get ready for something that's happening. I have to work, or I'm sick, or exhausted, or overcommitted.

And some days, the yoga classroom doesn't feel like the easiest space. Sometimes I feel like I don't have it in me to be a part of all the energy that's zinging around in the room. Some days, I feel heavy hearted and furious, and what I need to do is sit and cry a little, and to want at once and the same time to remain nonviolent, to hold compassion for all of us, and to burn the motherfucker down.

Today was one of those days. Rather than experience a continuous level of seethe at my classmates who aren't wearing their dissatisfaction of our social systems on their sleeves like I can't help but do, I decided to stay home and practice alone.

One thing that the last year of training, and the first few months of teaching, have given me is a kind of discipline. The requirements set before me, coupled with the (often difficult) choice to prioritize my study, gave me the chance to spend a lot of time and energy on the physical practice of yoga, as well as to study philosophy, Sanskrit, Ayurveda, samyama and even a bit of what I would call theology. It was a great gift, and an enormous privilege, to be in such deep study; now I am required to continue the study with my own energy as a motor, with my own goals as requirements. 

It is not easy. I grew up believing what I was told about myself, that I was undisciplined, even lazy. It seemed true: I burned out easily; I got frustrated when I struggled; I overcommitted plenty, which would leave me rundown and irritable; and I often forgot the simple tasks that I was given. From the outside I must have looked scatterbrained and tetchy. 

But I look back and I wonder if that rumor of my un-disciplinedness was true. There's plenty in my life I wouldn't have accomplished without a fair amount of discipline at my disposal. This year, I learned that what some people call discipline really just meant doing what they wanted me to do in their own time frame. Not the same thing at all.

So there's a voice in my head that says staying home from asana class feels is bit of a cheat, but I know it's actually doing the hard thing. The structure of class makes it easier for me to practice, and feel less alone in it. I am buffeted by the collective energy, by considering the sequence, by how cute someone's outfit is. My brain will throw up anything to distract me, and I'll take it. Without the voice of my teacher and the willing bodies and hearts of my colleagues, it's just me, with my practice, on my mat. Whatever I'm feeling, there's no distraction from it; whatever I want to hide from comes into the room with me and stares me in the eye until I acknowledge it.

My friend Adam wrote on social media today, "... the work of peace is something different: work is not abstract, and must respond to conditions in which one is working. Those of us who aspire to peace need to practice social awareness -- what are the circumstances that allow me to enjoy peace, and to lead a life that feels peaceful? more directly: why don't I have to riot?..." I find myself wondering, when will enough be enough? I want to ask my friends in the majority culture, when will you be so done with the murder of unarmed Americans that turning off the news isn't enough, and you have to stand up and demonstrate? I consider my eyes in the mirror, and ask, When will I be in the streets with my fist in the air, and when will my friends be beside me, chanting Om Shanti Shanti Shantih with as much passion and vehemence as we'd chant Hands Up, Don't Shoot? 

This morning, I was alone with my confusion, my sadness, my rage, my solidarity. I thought it was best, given those attitudes, that I spend the day inside. In a short while I will travel to another part of my favorite city and humbly set a practice before my students. I will create space for them to wrestle with, or to ignore if they choose to, the feelings that are riding in the air from Baltimore, from Brooklyn, from Ferguson, even from the fucking West Side, into the city center. I will make space for breath and movement, and when we're done, I'll sit and chant, and I'll welcome anyone who wants to stay.

When I leave class, I'll draw on my discipline to remember that working and fighting for change in a corrupt, flawed, ruinous (economic and social) system that has destroyed millions of lives for centuries takes a compassionate heart, long-range vision, and unwavering pursuit of justice. I will be thoughtful and I will be vocal.

And I will keep returning to my mat.

Spring Round-up

I often am pretty serious, but from time to time, you can count on seeing some lighter fare here too. Here's hoping we've finally seen the last of snow! Spring has finally arrived in this part of the world, and in that spirit, I thought I'd collect a list of resources to look to prepare for the season. Here's your Spring Round-Up!

• one of my teachers, Karen Klutznick, has compiled this list of useful, Auyrveda-inspired choices to help cleanse for the spring. 
• This Spring, I did a five-day kitcheree monodiet. My teacher's recipe is my favorite, but this one looks pretty good too. Beware, it makes a ton, and it thickens something wicked when it cools.
• Some interesting tips from Chalkboard Magazine, and no juice diet!
• This page points out the importance of a tongue scraper. I use one every day, not just for detox seasons.
• From Everyday Ayurveda, a list of foods in season, and how to adjust your diet. 
• A Spring detox is a great time for a digital detox, not just a phyiscal one. Check out here and here for tips on how to unplug. (Oh, Popsugar... I mean, the name says it all, really. It sounds like something I should detox from. But still, every now and then there's something to what I find there.)

Tools of the Practice

Healing Justice-- a "framework that seeks to lift up resiliency and wellness practicess as a transformative response to generational violence and trauma in our communities."

You ever hear something like that come out of your yoga teacher at the gym or the studio?

Nah, me neither.

One of the places where I struggle with yoga is in its individuality. The rhetoric is often so personal and individual--at least it seems so from my eyes: what is my duty or responsibility; what are my established patterns that need reframing or uprooting; what karma (from this life or another) am I still dealing with.  I know the yamas can be externally focused, right? Don't steal from others, don't lie to others; but even then, there's an I/They duality hard at work. There's no We Space.

(I wonder how our current culture would be different if We was the only pronoun we had: we taught a class this morning at 6:15; we recently won (and also lost?) an election for Chicago mayor; we've been fired from our job after videotape surfaced proving we shot an unarmed black man. Some kind of clarity would need to evolve surely, to avoid confusion; but how would things feel different if We was really all we knew? There's some language about nonduality in the yoga zeitgeist, but what if it weren't just lipservice? What if it really dictated how we lived day-to-day?

(Also, I'm young. There's a lot I don't know. If you can point me toward a resource that will help untangle all this for me, I am all over it.)

One of the places where yoga fails me is in dealing with institutional and systemic trauma. I read a tweet recently at the Incite COV4 conference that quoted a keynote speaker: "I can't do enough yoga to combat patriarchy," they said. And my first instinct was to think, Oh, but Honey, doing yoga isn't about that, that isn't the point. All you can do is Do You.

But f*ck that. When the patriarchy wants to destroy you, when it wants to break you and grind you into dust, "Just Do You" is not enough, and it's a gross disservice to those who come after you, and don't have to be destroyed by the institution, if only you can rise up and dismantle it.

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

— Audre Lorde

I have never resurrected anyone with the power of my asana, and I have tried. And the people who need to be on the mat as much of the rest of us do, well they ain't there: they're at City Hall, behind the bench, in The Capitol, but not on the mat. So what do we do, we who do not make law but are subject to it? How do we care for ourselves in a space where we fight the system? Maybe it's not even worth it.

Why, then, did I offer my time and energy as a yoga teacher at the Incite Color of Violence Conference in Chicago? If I really believe that my asana practice will not subvert the patriarchy, why engage it in such a radical space? Why not be content to work on the length of my hamstrings and the openness of my hips and be done with it?

I guess because some part of me believes that it ain't that black and white. I recently sat beside this guy on the Red Line who was all manspread out (for more about what this means read this and this). He was a thin guy with a wide, wide kneespan. I couldn't see his face, but the energy he put out said that he couldn't be bothered to move his coat from the empty seat beside him to the other empty seat beside him where his bag was. When I asked him to move his coat, he heaved a great sigh, and moved it on top of his bag.

I wedged myself in beside him. It was clear from his body language that he didn't want to share space. I tried to press my shoulders back against the seat, and ran into resistance. I held my mat bag between my knees so that it wouldn't fall onto the floor, which put hips-width distance between my knees. I sat this way for about 30 seconds, penned in by this guy's privilege. I felt his shoulder expand into mine with his in-breath. Oh-ho, I thought, you think you're the only one who can swell up with your breath? I took a deep inhale, expanding my ribcage, and sat there, breathing deeply.

In a couple of breaths the commuter got up and crossed the train car to another seat where he could pile his jacket and bag around him like a fort, and not be intruded on by a yogini with a powerful inhale.

When I wrote about this on social media, I used the hashtag #yogadefeatsmisogyny. It felt kind of miraculous--okay, maybe an exaggeration. But my inhale had stood up for me; the power and strength of my breath had been a force for dealing with a guy who wasn't willing to share with me. So maybe a handstand or Urdhva Dhanurasana won't eradicate hundreds of years of institutional racism, sexism or homophobia. Maybe it won't even feed me or someone I love who is hungry. Nope, there's no maybe about it, it won't feed me or anyone I know who is hungry. But my physical practice might equip me with the patience I need to sit beside the manspreader on the train who refuses to move and who continues to pin me in. It might teach me how to be compassionate and also determined to seek justice. It will certainly teach me how to provide a space for healing and restoration for others who are in the street, who are fighting and who need a space of peace and of rest. I don't know. The shape of yoga in our culture has a lot of problems, and it doesn't always feel like a tool I can use as a solution to problems. But #HealingJustice exists because we need it. As a student and a teacher, if I can show up with a tool for dismantling and rebuilding, then maybe this practice can exist, and can be useful, in a radical context. 

Returning to Practice

I snuck a couple of postures from the Ashtanga primary series into my morning practice recently. I got to the seated section of my practice and I felt like I hadn't worked hard enough. Not in any kind of uptight, masochistic way--just that my body wanted to work harder. So after I'd done some backbending and forward folding, I doubled back to Paschimottanasana and worked all the way through a modified Marichyasana D. I also worked about with half and full Padmasana and experimented with Tolasana. 

In Savasana, I was exhilarated. My inner leg lines were singing, they were so awake. I felt so energized. I couldn't pull a bus down the street, but somehow the practice had lit me up from the inside. Not super-restful, but it was an unusual feeling.

It was the first time I'd done anything resembling Ashtanga in more than a year. 

In 2013, I had surgery. It was major, both personally and in scope, but also common enough, and in an analog (face-to-face) space I'd be happy to say more. Suffice to say, I went from a pretty active physical practice to a static one. After two months of resting, walking, and lots of yoga nidra, I found myself at my mat again.

I'm not sure what made me reach for Ashtanga at that point in my life, returning to my practice after weeks of being too tired to do more than walk around the block. Maybe it was all the David Swenson and Kino MacGregor videos on YouTube. Maybe it was that one of my first formative teachers was an Ashtangi, and for more than a year I attended her free community class, a led Half Primary Series. Maybe it was my Pitta personality that led me there: I just love order and organization, and I'd check out the print-outs and posters of all the poses and swoon.

Angela Jamison, an Ashtangi practicing and teaching in Ann Arbor, Michigan, writes that it's the most healing sequence she's ever encountered. All I know is, when I started working with that sequence, after I'd gotten the green light from my doc, I felt like a complete beginner. All of the strength, the balance, and any care I'd built up in my practice had evaporated. I was starting from scratch.

I spent about four months practicing consistently. It was a deeply healing practice, actually. One awkward salutation at a time, I began to regain some of the strength I'd lost, and I renewed my relationship to my body. It took lots of time and patience, a quality I don't get honest, but I began to build consistency, and after a time I returned to my physical practice feeling well-equipped to continue, and ready to begin teacher training in a few months--which I did.

I've since moved away from Ashtanga as a practice. I still love its order, and its ability to help a practitioner cultivate discipline and focus. I think the practice--as I was doing it, anyway--left me feeling unbalanced. I'd knock myself out for an hour or more trying to put my body into shapes, but when I reached the end, final rest, I had no direction on how long to stay. When I watched others in Mysore practice, they seemed to pop up after less than five minutes in Savasana. Also, I really wanted some kind of seated practice--some pranayama, some concentration technique--and I never got it. Some days I'd do a couple minutes of alternate nostril breathing, not really knowing if it was an appropriate fit; other days I'd try some slower Ujjayi, which felt totally wrong, but I didn't know what else to do. 

But the most important reason I departed the Ashtanga community was because I'm not sure it was the best practice for me. That series built up so much tapas that I'd leave the shala pissed off. Mad at the girl in my way as I was putting my shoes on; mad at the elevator for moving so slowly; mad that I'd bought too much parking, instead of just enough; mad at how hungry I was; mad at the songbirds for singing too sweetly: you get it. 

It's possible that this anger lives in me, and part of my life's work is to deal with it and let it go. It's possible that this practice aggravated my prakriti, with all of its tapas building, and sent me into hyperdrive. It's possible that I just didn't know how to modulate and release all the heat I was building. Maybe I needed more castor oil baths.

Most likely, the answer's D, all of the above.

I respect Ashtanga. I think it's a perfect practice when you're stuck and don't know what to do, or you're away from home and need something to corral your mind and body, or when you need to start from scratch and reset, as I did. It's nice to return to, like a friend who gets jokes no one else will, and you two can do the entire Miss You Much choreography you learned in 7th grade.

 I could definitely be seduced by the challenging, competitive side of Ashtanga, and wind up forcing, pushing, coveting. Injury. Suffering. Provocation. Once in a while it's perfect for some structure and power.But I'm glad that I've found a practice that suits me and helps me cultivate balance.

#HealingJustice

This weekend, I took part in the Incite Color Of Violence 4 Conference, which was held here in Chicago. It was a pretty powerful experience, and I'll be writing about it for a little while, I think, to process. But to give you an idea of the space and the work I was a part of, I wanted to include the Healing Justice Practice Space principles that were a guiding force and energy behind the work:

"We begin by listening.

"We are people of color, indigenous people, disabled people, and survivors of trauma, many genders, ages and classes of people, and we are committed to leading the work of building healing justice at the AMC (Allied Media Conference.)

"We do this work to lift up and politicize the role of health and healing in our movements as a critical part of the new world we are building.

"We honor individual and community agency, intuition, and innate wisdom, and therefor honor people's rights to make decisions about their own bodies.

"We understand that health and wellness should be determined by the individual or community receiving care, and for many of us this includes the reality of disability, illness, and harm reduction. We accept and encourage individuals and communities defining health, healing, and wellness for themselves, and not based on normative models of healing.

"We center the genius and leadership of disabled and chronically ill communities, for what we know about surviving and resisting the medical industrial complex and living with fierce beauty in our sick and disabled bodies. We say no to the medical industrial complex's model of 'cure or be useless,' instead of working from a place of belief int he wholeness of disability, interdependence and disabled people as inherently good as we are.

"We live in countries that deny health care access to people based on economic and identity status, and we must build alternative structures for giving and receiving care that are grounded in community and ancestral traditions and in the values of consent and equality. The Healing Justice Practice Space is a part of that work.

"We believe that medicine is media, and we work with the understanding that how we heal ourselves is directly related to how we see and interpret ourselves and the possibility for transformation.

"We are aware that the body does not live forever, and that we honor death as a part of the cycle of life."