Month: May 2010

Africa, art, film

Step 131: Meet Kate Ofwono, Documentary Film Maker from Uganda

Christa Avampato

My friend, Amy, has been staying with me for the week. She is an exceptionally talented production stage manager (currently on the Phantom of the Opera tour) and a trained trauma counselor. Amy and I worked together many years ago as young theater managers and we’ve stayed close pals ever since. She has an incredible heart and has spent much of her free time abroad doing international volunteer projects. Last year she spent 6 months at the UNHCR in Geneva working on refugee issues.

In graduate school, Amy met Paulette Moore, a documentary filmmaker. Paulette’s blog, Story Doula, chronicles her film work and one aspect of her work involves making films about social justice and peace building. Paulette was able to find a way to premiere the work of Kate Ofwono, a 22-year old filmmaker from Uganda who currently resides in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, in Geneva in March. Kate filmed her daily life with the help of FilmAid International’s participatory video program.

Kate’s film is exquisite. She is so honest, strong, and articulate. Her courage inspired me. Watch her film clips here.

learning, work, yoga

Step 130: Climbing and Coasting

Christa Avampato

The downhill path is easy, but there’s no turning back.” ~ Christina Georgina Rossetti, British poet

We have all types of negative connotations that refer to climbing uphill: ‘an uphill battle’, ‘a vertical learning curve’, ‘moving up the corporate ladder’, ‘getting to hump day in the work week’. Last week my yoga teacher, Jeffrey, talked to us about the joy that’s found in the uphill climb. If the different kramas (stages) of an asana (a yoga posture) are akin to how a mountain climber ascends up a slope, he encouraged us to be at whatever stage we are and enjoy the view. If we can only do headstand prep and not full free-standing headstand, then he asked us to consider how powerful that prep posture is and the benefits we are receiving from it. It works in yoga, and it works in life.

While coasting requires very little effort, whether we’re talking about yoga, careers, relationships, or any other part of our lives, it’s tough to turn back and take advantage of the views that we had the opportunity to see on the upside of the climb. They go whizzing down the mountain too quickly. As we head downhill, there’s less time for learning.

It’s not that the downhill offers no value at all. It does provide us with the opportunity to reflect upon everything we learned on the climb. On the downhill, we can bask in the glory of all the work we did in the ascent. We get to feel proud of our accomplishments, and the joy we find and exhibit is an inspiration to others to start their own climbs.

The key to happiness may just be to enjoy wherever we are, knowing that it’s all temporary, that we’ll have many uphills and downhills, and that each has something magnificent to offer us on the journey.

Uncategorized

Step 129: Yoga Practicum

Christa Avampato

Today my group had our yoga practicum. We had to collectively sequence a 1 hour and 15 minute class and then teach it. Because I’ve had stage fright for most of my adult life, I found those familiar little butterflies soaring around my stomach right before it was my turn to teach. My heart beat grew a little bit faster. My body temperature started rising. Always, the anticipation of an exam is worse than the exam itself.

I took a great big breath and began. As it turned out, this teaching, all teaching, has nothing to do with the teacher and everything to do with the student. I looked around the room to see what they needed, what they would find helpful in the moment. If they needed a break, I wanted to give that to them. If they needed to release a specific part of their bodies, I wanted to provide a way for them to release. Teaching, and particularly yoga teaching, is service of the most beautiful kind. My job was just to support the members of the class on their own paths to wellness.

As the class wound down, I was overcome with gratitude. I could feel the love and support pulsating in the room. Despite my initial nervousness, I didn’t want the class to end. I wanted that feeling to go on forever. I have been so fortunate to be a part of this program, to share these days with the other students and my teachers, to discover parts of my own soul that I never even knew existed. There are no words to express how moving it is to provide relaxation and peace and joy to another person. The best tribute I can pay to the great benefits I’ve received from this training, and to all of the people who made it possible, is simply to go out into the world and teach what I practice. Perhaps I’m closer to my golden compass than I realized.

future, home

Step 128: Finding Home

Christa Avampato

“We are born into this world and all we’re really trying to do is find our way home.” ~ Lauren, my yoga teacher

This weekend has been another set of hours in yoga teacher training that has provided me with a lifetime of learning. The idea of finding home that my teacher, Lauren, said struck me so deeply. We struggle to find the right job, relationship, place to live, friends, purpose, and what it boils down to is very simply wanting to be at home in our lives.

Certainly, the idea of the purpose of our lives being to find home could take on a religious bent, though it could just as easily mean just finding our way. Not someone else’s way. Our way. We’ve got this life full of days and we’re all trying to sort out what the heck to do with our time here. How can we be most useful? How should we connect and with whom? Where are we needed and wanted and loved? Simple questions that can be so tough to answer.

Sometimes, I really wish life was a game of hot and cold: as we move closer to where we should be we hear a tiny whisper that says “warmer” and when we move too far away from our true purpose we should hear a tiny whisper that says “colder”. And maybe we can make that happen. I’d like to believe that as I move closer to where I should be in any given moment that I’ll feel a warmth from knowing that says “yes, this is exactly where I needed to be right now.” On occasion that’s happened; I just wish I felt it with more regularity. I wish I had a giant compass that always pointed to home.

In class with Lauren, I started to think about how I might do this, tune my inner compass. Here’s what I came up with:

1.) Check in. Often. I sit in meditation for 18 minutes a day. I make myself do it, even if I’m tired and busy. Afterward I am always able to think a little more clearly.

2.) Record powerful dreams. It sounds cliche, but our minds do make connections when we are sleeping that our conscious minds cannot make. There are a number of scientific studies that support this idea. So I’m taking notes and seeing where that leads.

3.) Use past experience. There are definitely times in my life when I feel I’m on to something, that I am in the flow, and that everything is swimming along perfectly. I try to find the patterns that are common among those times. I’ve found that when I stop worrying about money and trust myself implicitly, somehow the world catches me when I leap. I don’t know how this happens; it just does. So I’m trying to look around for just a moment, make a decision from my gut, and leap more often.

I’d love to hear the ways you’re finding home, wherever that may be.

career, Inc. Magaine, technology, work

Step 127: A Job You Like

Christa Avampato

“Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.” ~ H. Jackson Brown Jr., American author

I thought about this quote as I read the profile of Tim O’Reilly in Inc Magazine this month. Tim is known as the Oracle of Silicon Valley and for good reason. He has a way of seeing what’s coming next about 5 years before other really smart people begin to put the pieces together. His road has been unconventional. He’s not a trained businessman, nor is he a trained engineer or tech expert. Trend identification is his specialty. And so is happiness. He’s a keen people watcher and listener. And he’s got an important message for us: work should support what’s important to us in life, not be the axis around which we build every other moment of our days.

“Sure, sure,” we might say. “Get a job we like. Of course everyone wants to do that. But what if I can’t pay my bills by doing what I love? What then?” I’m not sure what Tim would say to that. Maybe he’d just smile. My response would be: “find something else you can really love. Don’t do something you don’t like just to make money. There’s too much fun stuff out there to learn to waste your time doing something you hate.”

I’m not telling you to go out and quit your job tomorrow. Maybe you should do that – actually, you should definitely do that if you absolutely loathe every waking moment at your current job. But if it’s bearable, find a way to make it useful. A project you can start or help out with, a contact who you can cultivate, a skill you can learn. Or switch roles within your company to something that’s of more interest. Or use that energy to actively seek out a new job, quickly.

Truly, I hated the last role I had at work. Starting around October of 2009, I woke up every morning and groaned; that’s when I knew I just couldn’t physically stay where I was. So it was either on to a new adventure in another role, or out into the world to a new company. And once I shared that sentiment with enough people, I found my way to a new role very quickly. Finding the new job wasn’t hard; deciding that it was time for me to get on with it was the tough part.

Once we admit to ourselves that we just can’t keep going down the road we’re on, there’s no turning back. And that can be scary. But if we’re willing to really seek out happiness and satisfaction in our careers, if we’re willing to say “I can do better than this”, then the world has a funny habit of opening the way forward.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

adventure, books, change, yoga

Step 126: Reflection on The Bhagavad Gita

Christa Avampato

“As a man adorns worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.” ~ 2:22, The Bhagavad Gita

“The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise…have abandoned all external supports.” ~ 3:19, The Bhagavad Gita

For my yoga teacher training class, we needed to read The Bhagavad Gita, the most famous poem in Hindu literature. It was powerful read for me. While many of our readings in the class focus on calm and steadiness, The Bhagavad Gita is a guide to action, authentic action.

On Labor Day weekend in 2009, my apartment building caught fire. I was almost trapped inside and only by following my intuition was I able to get out in time. Most of my belongings were lost to extensive smoke damage. September 5, 2009 was a kind of death date for me; a date when stripped of almost all my material possessions (my “worn-out clothes”), I realized that none of it mattered at all. I stood outside in a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, holding nothing but my keys (which were now useless), watching my apartment building burn. Looking back, I think of that day as a day when I stepped out of my old, worn-out Self, and into a new frame. I still don’t know what the art inside this new frame will look like just yet. I’m a work-in-progress.

Verse 2:22 in The Bhagavad Gita resonated with me, as does that image of Shiva the Destroyer dancing in a ring of fire. Sometimes we get in the way of our own personal development. We get bogged down with belongings, material and emotional. We need not stand on a burning platform, literally nor figuratively, to recognize that change is needed. Yoga can be the practice that helps us recognize our truth, our purpose, our dharma.

Verse 3:19 speaks directly to the danger that surfaces when we get lost in the demands of our society, demands that others put upon us that do not align with our own personal truths. After my fire and after studying these simple words laid down in The Bhagavad Gita, I’ve come to believe that being “results-oriented” and “goal-driven” cause us to miss so much of life. To be shooting for the result, while remaining blind to each step leading to that result, denies us the beauty of practicing the yama asteya, nonstealing. Yes, where we’re going is important, and it is equally, if not more important, to be mindful of how we’re getting there. If we miss the journey, we deny ourselves the wonder and joy of the act of discovery.

Bearing this sentiment in mind, I read The Bhagavad Gita as if it were a map, laying out a method of living whose goal is boundless freedom. And from that freedom all good things come – kindness toward others because we no longer see them as competitors but partners; justice because we recognize in realizing our own freedom that all people everywhere have the right to be free; peace because all we’re really fighting for is our own self-discovery which doesn’t involve any type of harm to another being.

Several years ago, I read a book called Women Who Run with the Wolves. Although the actual words and anecdotes are different, the message is the same as the one delivered to us by The Bhagavad Gita around the question “How do we acquire freedom and mastery of the mind?” The answer in Women Who Run with the Wolves: “crawl through the window of a dream.” The window may be small. Undoubtedly, we will have to leave things behind in order to continue our journey through it. We may wonder why on earth we have to struggle so much, why we should even try at all when the big room full of our belongings that we currently live in is really just fine.

No matter how much we love our current room, that window will not be ignored. It will continue to stare at us until we take up the challenge of crossing over. Through that tiny little frame, lies Samadhi, enlightenment. The only thing stopping us from getting there is our courage, our own belief in our abilities to make the journey at all. Arjuna struggled with this same quest, just as we struggle with it. We’re all in this together, across the globe, across the centuries. The struggle does not change; we have to change. The only way forward is through.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

yoga

Step 125: Ease on Down the Road

Christa Avampato

The word vinyasa means “to place in a special way.” My yoga teacher, Will, encourages us to conduct our yoga practice, and life in general, with ease. Even, and especially, when we’re in an uncomfortable posture or situation. No matter what, can we find ease in difficulty, peace amidst conflict, calm while stressed? It’s a tall order, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week as I grind through a series of tough days with looming deadlines, piles of work, and a packed schedule.

My yoga teacher, Stacey, has been encouraging us to slow down and notice how changing our speed in class changes what we find in each breath. The goal isn’t to jump to the front of the mat or crank into a deep twist. It’s to float and to glide in the way that our minds want our bodies to do. And it requires placing our hands and feet in a special, intentional, slow way. And if we can’t do the posture with some sense of ease, then right now it’s not the right posture for us.

So I’ve started exploring ease on the mat, challenging my body while also thanking it for all of the tremendous work it’s doing. If the mat is a microcosm of the rest of my life, then finding ease on the mat should translate into finding ease in life. When my wrists hurt, I pull up in my core. When I twist, I also focusing on lengthening. When I flip myself upside down, I search for the new point of view I find by standing on my head. It feels good to know that in my life I’m heading down the right road. Now I want to find a way to ease through the inevitable obstacles that are cropping up.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

career, change, work

Step 124: Biding Time Wisely

Christa Avampato

I’ve recently had some conversations with friends who are considering making career jumps. Some to a new industry, some to a new company, and some into their own ventures. A few are actively out there looking and some are wondering if they should hang around where they are until they see some more improvement in the economy.

One of my friends has taken a new position within her company that is going to help her transition out to another company when the time is right. She’s interested in tech venture capital. Her former role was tech heavy, and her new role is in business development. While getting this second piece of the puzzle in place, she’s also started a tech venture capital club as part of her business school’s alumni network. She’s biding her time while gaining incredibly valuable experience in segments and making contacts that will serve her well in her career.

This is what it’s all about – gathering the bits and pieces we can find to help us build a brighter future. Even if we’re in jobs that aren’t perfect, there are activities, role, and projects we can take on inside and outside of the office that will keep us moving forward, even while we look before we leap. I’m all for taking the plunge, but while I’m up here on the cliff, I’m also a fan of making sure I’ve squeezed every last drop of value from my current view.

I’d love to hear about how you’re biding your time in support of your long-term goals!

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

blog, writing

Step 123: Blogathon 2010

Christa Avampato

Thanks to a post by my friend, Amanda, author of the fantastically creative blog Tastee Pudding, I learned about the WordCount 2010 blogathon. Started by Michelle Rafter, this year’s edition is a commitment by 111 bloggers to write every day for the month of May. The blogs span a wide variety of subjects, from skincare to gardening to travel to life as a teenager. In a single year, the number of participants has more than doubled.

From Michelle’s site:

“In spring 2008, I was a still a blogging newbie and looking for motivation to post more consistently. I challenged myself to blog every day during the month of May. Since misery loves company, I invited other writers to join me. The WordCount Blogathon was born. Some two dozen of us posted about work, life, love, food, travel, kids and a lot of other things. We wrote a lot, learned a lot, and a good time was had by all.

Flash forward to 2009. Magazines are folding. Newspapers are getting skinnier by the week. Freelancers who once made their living writing for print publications are looking to expand their repertoire to include podcasting, multimedia reporting – and blogging.

So once again, we challenged ourselves to blog every day. We also held a guest post exchange day where we spent one day writing on someone else’s blog, and vice versa. We also tracked our activity on Twitter, using the hashtag #MayBlog2.

We wound things up on June 1 with a Blogathon wrap party, chatting about what worked, what didn’t, what we learned and what we’d do differently next time.”

Michelle’s efforts to increase her own writing motivation, and take others with her, is a cause I support and admire. Have a look at everything that’s cookin’ for the 2010 WordCount Blogathon and discover some kindred writing spirits.

courage, fear, yoga

Step 122: Facing Fears

Christa Avampato

Since my fire in September, I haven’t been able to walk down the street where it occurred. I’ve taken a few steps, and then I quickly cross the street, averting my gaze and avoiding any chance of looking through that door. To look at the building now, you’d never know that a fire happened there. It’s been reconstructed with new brick, repainted, doors and windows replaced. Everything covered over. For me, that street has a smoky covering, an eerie, uncomfortable feeling. Yesterday, I finally needed to stare it in the face.

I got out of the subway and made the turn I’ve been avoiding for almost 8 months. Since it was the Beltane yesterday, a day that celebrates life in all its glory, it felt like an appropriate time to face fear. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I didn’t cry. I didn’t really feel anything until I got right up to the building, and saw to my right a giant statue of Ganesha above a psychic reading place. Ganesha is the Hindu deity who removes obstacles to our spiritual development. On occasion, he will place obstacles in our path for us to deal with so that we grow and evolve. He gives us what we need, even when we don’t know exactly what we need at the time.

In that moment, seeing Ganesha juxtaposed to that building where the fire happened, I realized how much I needed that fire. In the three years that I’ve lived in this neighborhood, I’ve passed that statue many times. I just didn’t know who he was until my yoga teacher training. Now, it has a special significance to me. Now, I understand what I’d been seeing all along. I guess life is like that: we look and we look and we look, and then one day, the clarity that has been staring at us all along finally comes in to focus. I wish it didn’t take us so long to really understand what’s in our line of our vision, but then again, if we understood everything on Day 1, what would we have to look forward to? Here’s to seeing more clearly and facing more fears in the days ahead.

The photo above is of the Ganesha statue next to my old apartment building.