Yogic Musing on Change.

Hi, Yogic Muse Reader!

Thank you for YOU! I appreciate all readers.

...Even if there has been a bump or some kind of difficulty in our relationship: I'm glad you're here (even if you don't like me, and of course I like it when you like me.).

Changes are here! I believe them to be the kind of changes that I explained in this video about my reading of The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann—changes that slowly ripen over time...

I am a changing being—no joke. I believe it because I am living it.

I've heard people say oh such-and-such, they are always this way... And there seems to be assumptions about people not changing, well, I am changing.

And I don't mean that I reject my old self (or selves): I love her dearly. She is my precious one.

I've had some insight from a recent makeup consultation—I'm not kidding! At some point I would have thought that to be so superficial, but I really valued the experience and results (which you can see in the above image).

It was about bringing this one (the person I am now) out more vividly into the world.

I saw something in my eyes that I'd never seen before.

It's someone who has secrets (in a good way).

In the past I have felt raw, open and unprotected. I seemed to require approval from everyone I met, which is (of course) not possible. Even worse, I think that I wanted everyone to forgive my sins, which is something that nobody else can do for me... What was so bad about me doesn't really make sense for this woman in an adult body. It had something to do with childhood wounds which I had zero control over.

The makeup brought out my eyes in a more vivid way, while offering a boundary—a mask if you want... I'm thinking that I want to present myself vividly to the world while maintaining a safe and nurturing interior space for the images and memories from my past. And only sharing what I want.

It seems very feminine (another concept that I've had some difficulty with) to maintain safety in a protected internal space while sharing what I want. Offering what I choose to as a gift to my friends (instead of desperately looking for their approval or love to fill my old wound) seems like a really awesome way to be.

In the past I see or remember myself almost compulsively over-sharing to just about any friend who offered a generous ear, or I was completely shut off from them. This was due to my unattended to internal pain—it really seemed too much to bear on many occasions. And so I needed others to save me, yet nobody else could. Only I can.

And I can.

I like her, too:

The above picture is good old me without makeup, early in the morning at the Willis Tower Skydeck.

In Defense of Marketplace Yoga

In the society I live in, it might seem like there is no reason to defend marketplace yoga — the marketplace of yoga seems just fine, actually, but there are those among us who are concerned about what is actually getting translated into this marketplace. Are we just telling ourselves nice stories about yoga, or are we really "getting" the yoga?

I have my own experience of yoga education located in this very marketplace to offer up as an example:

In fact, the part I'll talk about now happened in the upscale Gold Coast neighborhood in Chicago. It was the year 2000 at an ashtanga yoga studio that has since closed: Priya Yoga that was at 1 East Oak Street, located above a pizza shop. When walking up the stairs to yoga, the nose was greeted with the smells of pizzas baking.

It was when I was pushing my way up the flights of stairs to Priya Yoga after work that a pungent voice of inner-judgment would often assault me: Who the hell do you think you are, doing this Gold Coast yoga?

But somehow I made it up those stairs, again and again through the barrage of insulting thoughts. It helped that the studio was warm and friendly, and it also helped me that the teachers and other people seemed to like my being there. I loved being there. I loved the yoga. It became like another home for me.

After one Friday-night ashtanga yoga class here my life would be changed invisibly yet indelibly. When this particular yoga class was over, I was on the way out when I stopped to thank the yoga teacher. I was looking into the eyes of this instructor, when what appeared like golden rain began falling down, yet somewhat suspended, like glinty-gold bits in a snow-globe slowly and lightly falling down toward me and all around me — shining bits of light. I had a sense that everything around me was permeated with love: my body, the teacher's body, the air between us and all around me, the other people, the desk behind the teacher, the walls, the carpet, the ceiling, the next room, the door, the hallway and stairs, absolutely everything seemed to be permeated with this love as integrated into the fabric of all things and non-things. Yeah, I was high after that yoga session. Was this experience a figment of my body chemistry? Was it somehow a delusion caused by dehydration, exhaustion or toxicity?

What scientifically happened to me is a little less important than what spiritually happened to me. I actually thought for the first time in my life that the fabric of our world might be good. I had felt it to be absolutely and irrefutably good from a song in my cells. Love had spoken from every particle I was aware of in that moment.

I think that our realizations in yoga are more about our dedication as individual practitioners than about the marketplace of yoga, but this economy does support the houses of yoga and teachers of yoga that create a situation where amazing and previously-unimaginable things can happen for people.

I am grateful that I have been able to have this and many other beautiful, meaningful, and life-enhancing yoga experiences — that I don't think are over by any means. But there was a money-based background that made it possible to experience the yoga that I have. So the marketplace is not separate from our yoga, it actually makes yoga more accessible than ever before because it is a part of our economy.

* also posted at Elephant Journal.