Hey, wow.

I wish for everyone to have moments, or even a moment of seeing a difficulty in life and witnessing it as having a healing effect. It's a moment where you feel a bit softened and sweet, in awe of how a situation--that just happened--really changed you into who you are today. Wow...

Yesterday, I joked about seeing a cosmic prank in some events and symbols I saw repeated and set against one another in my life: being a tall woman v/s wanting to be small, and from dust bunnies to real bunnies! Wow.

I believe that our stories of how we have suffered do offer opportunities to heal and grow--yielding a better result in the end. What is the lesson learned? How can lives be made better based on what you have learned through your having directly experienced suffering up close and personal? How do you understand others better because you have been there, too? How is life just a friggin' creative miracle in how in unfolds? Wow.


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Me with the Dust Bunnies

It is this height of mine that has revealed what is quite possibly a cosmic joke. I always wanted to win or disappear when I was a kid. When I won a game I would dance a flamboyant happy dance. And when I lost I wanted to get lost with the dust bunnies in the darkest, most unseen places. I felt so ashamed. (And I wasn't very good at games like board games or cards.)

I think it had to do with proving my worthiness in the household. When my mom became too ill to care for me, my family didn't know where I should live. Even though I was small and couldn't understand it the way they did, I had my own way of understanding it.

By any means necessary, I had to prove to whoever I was with that I was loveable. I would identify who I needed to please in any given situation and do absolutely anything to win them so they would keep me or love me. So when I saw evidence to the contrary: like loosing a game, I wanted to hide that evidence as soon as I could. This just wouldn't do!

Pretty soon, it seemed like my own physical body was evidence of my own unworthiness of love--so needy I was. So I learned, as best as I could, to disappear, to hide.

But this kind of hiding is like when a small child thinks that they have disappeared when they cover their own eyes with their hands--it is only the child's vision that is blocked, nobody else's. People were always dressing me in cute outfits, and teaching me that my appearance was important. I just learned to be quiet.

So if I appeared to not be noticed by others I thought I was safe--it was all about how the world appeared to me. And then I step into a room, super-tall and needy... Hard to miss me! Thank God! I'm so glad I'm here (Now I am!)!

So that's the cosmic joke! And now I have bunnies which is quite possibly another cosmic zinger. (Thanks, Fawn for your cute face! She's in the above photo.) And now I am also called to be louder as I tell my story, and teach yoga--kinda' funny. My creator has a sense of humor.

---
Thank you for one.
Thank you for all.
Thank you for my interpretations of experiences that made me feel small.
And thank you for my height: 5 feet 10 inches that made me not small at all.


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Thank you

Thank you for all I have.
Thank you for the blessing of sight.
Thank you for the power of cognition.
Thank you for the fortification of breath.
Thank you for my knees to fall on.
Thank you for loving eyes to look into.
Thank you for sunshine.
Thank you for rain.
Thank you for healing.
Thank you for pain.
Thank you for wellness.
Thank you for disease.
Thank you for the hand that covers my sneeze.
Thank you for birth.
Thank you for death.
Thank you for revelation.
Thank you for things I don't understand.
Thank you for work.
Thank you for play.
Thank you for the people who say, "Have a nice day."
Thank you for the ordinary moments.
Thank you for specialness.
Thank you for those who say, "Fuck you!"
Thank you for the people who have held me when I cried.
Thank you for the vast range of experiences.
Thank you for aging.
Thank you for youth.
Thank you for lying.
Thank you for truth.
Thank you for purity.
Thank you for profanity.
Thank you for children.
Thank you for lovers.
Thank you for fathers.
Thank you for brothers.
Thank you for sisters.
Thank you for mothers.
Thank you for sex.
Thank you for chastity.
Thank you for lips.
Thank you for words.
Thank you for yoga.
Thank you for sound.
Thank you for art.
Thank you for cigarettes.
Thank you for quitting smoking.
Thank you for dancing.
Thank you for quiet.
Thank you for anger.
Thank you for peace.
Thank you for nature.
Thank you for trees.


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Glowing Floating Being of Pure Love

I humbly accept the gracious and karmically significant award from Dr. Jay of Yoga for Cynics. It seems to represent what we can be for one another through the internet connection: Floating Glowing Beings of Pure Love. We are not bound by the ordinary rules of gravity or social convention here! And since Dr. Jay has described himself a bit, I imagine that he is a Floating Glowing Big Bear of Infinite Compassion and Pure Love. Thanks, Dr. Jay!


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Pink Powder

City skyline caressed in a pink powdery haze reminds me to be gentle with myself.


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But, talks!

In yoga there is a lot of languaging about the butt. In seated forward folds the buttock flesh can be kind of stuck towards the midline, so often students are instructed to use their hands to move the flesh wide and/or back to clear the way for the position to move without obstruction and go deep. (In the picture above, wall ropes are showing my top thighs what to do in dog pose.)

Here is some of the language I've encountered:

Place a hand on the inner thigh, and a hand on the outer thigh. Lift up that sitting bone and push the inner thigh down and lift the outer thigh up to roll the flesh around the bone, widening the back thigh. Put the sitting bone down to hold the flesh out, and repeat on the other side.

Move the butt flaps back.

Create the action of the "blooming" or "blossoming" buttocks.

Make the gaping maw.

And just this past weekend I heard the following instruction:
Grab your assets to open up backstage.

So remember to widen the butt to fold forward.

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What the Buttocks Think

Don't tell me that nothing can be done.
The tongue says, "I know I can change things."
The toe says, "I have my ways."
The heart is weeping and remembering Eden.

Legs think that a good run will do it.
Tongue has free tickets; he'll fly to heaven.
But the buttocks see everything upside down:
They want you to put your head down there,

Remind the heart it was upside down
In the womb, so that when your mother,
Knowing exactly where she was going,
Walked upstairs, you weren't going anywhere.

-by Robert Bly, Morning Poems



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Personal Revelation in Yoga

I experienced a personal revelation during the Saturday morning session of the Rusty Wells workshop at Moksha Yoga last weekend. Rusty suggested that we dedicate our yoga practice to an individual person that we love. I chose my Dad.

My soul story came out of my parent's, just like my body was built based on their DNA. By the words "soul story" I just mean all the things that make me me. Things like my personality, my emotions, and the stories that create the background for what I am able to express today. I realized on Saturday that I honor their souls or spirits with my life path, even though I can't please their egos or minds. They both have seemed to want things from me that are fantasies.

Just looking at their life-stories and their challenges in the broadest sense gave me some insight. My dad is physically disabled with cerebral palsy and my mom has schizophrenia and depression. Seeing this in the way I did helped me make sense of things for the first time in my life somewhere around savasana at the end of the yoga session on Saturday morning. I seemed to see things from a vantage point that was a bit further than my own suffering. I was seeing my life from a distance that allowed me to see how different forces guided me gently to be who I am today. With my life I have devoted myself to understanding the processes of my mind, honoring my mother's path. And my dedication to the physical aspects of yoga honors my father by pursuing my physical potential. So I am truly related and connected to them even though we are far apart in many ways. I am grateful for this sense of connectedness. It's what I have been wanting. I can live my life dedicated to what they sacrificed for me in a way that is healing for me, and helps me to have something to offer other people who suffer with their minds and bodies.

And just seeing that really seemed to take a burden off of me. I deduce that some of my "not good enough" feelings have been based in a desire to be embraced by my family, and for some complicated reasons that I don't think I fully understand this just hasn't been possible on this earth so far. But now I have the sense that spiritually I am doing the right thing, and fulfilling my mission as the daughter of these people by doing what I am doing with my life.


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