Month: September 2011

books

Beginning: My First Literary Agent Rejection

Christa Avampato

The hunt for a literary agent begins! I am currently working on a book project that focuses on financial wellness, bridging my MBA and corporate work experience with my work as a yoga teacher and practitioner. With this project, I decided to take a look around for an agent. I read blog and books by writers on the craft of writing and I’m always surprised that they only talk about their triumph in finding an agent and not the long journey they took to find one. It’s important to write in the moment, to share stumbles and wrong turns, to write in midst of action. We learn so much  in the middle of it all and that learning should be shared.

I purchased  copy of The Writer’s Guide to Queries, Pitches & Proposals by Moira Allen. It’s loaded with examples, practical advice, and action plans. It doesn’t romanticize writing or the search for an agent. Allen shoots straight from the hip and makes no apologies. Just the kind of advice I’m looking for.

Then I took myself to my bookshelf and started to note down books that I love in my same genre. I flipped to the acknowledgements sections and looked up their agents. Luckily most agents now have full websites where you can query right through the site after researching the genres that agents represent. Many agent bios also state if they’re looking for new clients and if they accept queries from new authors.

I put together the body of my query letter specific to my genre, personalized for each agent who interested me, and began to send off the emails. 12 hours later, I received my first rejection from a large agency. It read simply, “Thank you for your query. I’m afraid your project is not right for my list, but I do wish you the best of luck. It’s a wonderful idea.” I was overjoyed.

In my book that is a win for several reasons:

1.) Most of the agents I researched clearly state on their websites that you will only hear from them if they’re interested.This agent wrote back even though she wasn’t interested and was encouraging of the project.

2.) If they’re going to respond to you, they give you a specific time frame in which you should hear from them. Usually it’s 4-12 weeks. Even though the response was no, I heard back in 12 hours.

3.) Writing this first set of query letters got me over the fear of writing queries. I discovered that it’s actually a fun process in and of itself, regardless of the outcome. And I’ve got the body of the letter ready to go for round 2. It took me 6 months to get over the fear of writing them and it feels good to release the fear.

So here we go, off on this new adventure. If you’ve got additional pointers and advice, I’m all ears!

business, leader, leadership

Beginning: Leading from the Middle

Christa Avampato

Middle Management is a dreaded term in the business world. It’s taken on a connotation of someone trapped in the middle executing a lot of actions that were defined by some Senior Leader. I am one of those people in the middle but here’s what I’m learning: being in the middle can be a curse or a blessing depending upon our attitudes.

In the middle, everything is happening. It’s where products and services get built and also where the big decisions are communicated. Someone in the middle has the unique position of translating between strategic objectives and tactical actions. To be effective in the middle, someone needs a wide variety of skills sets and the ability to build relationships up and down the corporate ladder. Middle management must have the ability to dream big and act upon small details. It’s art and science in equal proportion.

And while it is a position in which everyone could blame you for something going wrong, it’s also a position in which everyone can also celebrate you for things going well. And that celebration or blame has a lot to do with you. Can you trust your gut and drive a team forward with a vision while working side-by-side with them at all levels?

I believe you can.

education, learning, teaching, yoga

Beginning: Is It Time for Yoga University?

Christa Avampato

New York is blessed with a lot of wonderful yoga teacher training programs. It’s also home to some yoga teacher training programs that are put in place with the intention of helping studio owners pay the rent. The trouble is that it can be difficult to discern between these two groups. In the past, I’ve posted some advice on how to choose a yoga teacher training program and I think that advice is valid now more than ever.

A hunting we will go…
As I’ve gone hunting for programs to complete my 500-hour certification, I’ve become even more skeptical about the claims made on fancy brochures and websites. I start asking questions of some studio owners and I can literally feel their nervousness rise into their faces. I’m sure that they’d just prefer I choose to pay the fee (or not) and just go with it. This is yoga, right? Aren’t we training to go with the flow and the best of a situation? Well, yes, but this next phase of my teacher training situation is going to cost me something to the tune of $4K. That’s a lot of money and I want to make sure I’m getting as much value as I can and the right value for me. I’m asking as many questions as I’d like to ask. I’ve found two programs that were overjoyed with the number of questions I’ve asked and they’re extremely responsive so they are the ones I’m considering: ISHTA and Yoga Sutra.

What training do I really want?
In the last couple of weeks I’ve been tossing around some ideas of the kind of teacher training program I really want rather than just comparing the options to one another. Truthfully, what I really want is a masters degree in yoga, particularly because my interest is in using yoga in the medical field. I’m not trying to teach at my fancy neighborhood studio; I’m focused on getting yoga to people who aren’t going to walk into studios, people with critical illnesses. And to top it off, I want to be part of a team of healthcare professionals who collaborate and provide a patient / student with a holistic plan that includes yoga. I’m not sure a 500-hour teacher training program can completely prepare me for that kind of work.

LYT (Licensed Yoga Teacher)?
A few years ago there was a push in New York State to license all yoga teachers and studios. Right now, all we have are fairly flimsy certifications from the Yoga Alliance which basically amounts to us sending in a check, Yoga Alliance sending us a cardboard card with our name on it, and then making sure they have our address right so they can mail us a renewal notice a year later. In other words, if you can pay, you can play. (See Yogadork’s excellent article entitled, “Make Up or Break up: Yoga Alliance What Have You Done for Us Lately?” for more info on this subject.)

For the yoga instructor who wants to teach students who are in relatively good mental and physical health and who go to traditional shiny studios, licensing seems a bit excessive. Does NYS license sports coaches or personal trainers? No. The State’s argument is that yoga borders on physical therapy and physical therapists are most certainly licensed. I sort of understand that argument, but I question their ability to put true standards in place at shiny yoga studios. The state can barely attend to the workload they have now. And to be honest, I think it was just a play by the state to get more tax money rather than a real concern for people practicing yoga.

The State Has a Case In Me
Here’s where I think the state has a very strong case for licensing: instructors like me who want to be part of the healthcare network of providers. I would be more than happy, thrilled actually, to sit for a licensing exam if it meant that my students’ yoga classes would be covered by their insurance. I’ll prepare reports, stay in touch with their PCP, and secure their personal info in my systems. That’s the trade-off I’m willing to make. Give my students a way to be covered and I’ll do whatever I have to do on my end to make that coverage possible.

Insurance Is Going to Have Its Say
This leads me to my next conundrum – now insurance companies are going to weigh in on the kind of training that a teacher needs to have to legitimately qualify as a healthcare provider just as they do with therapists, acupuncturists, etc. Now things get really interesting. They don’t cover doctors, nurse practitioners, therapists, or social workers who get a few months of training and a flimsy certification. Licenses are the result of rigorous, multi-year study at accredited schools and then the students sit for licensing exams (often a series of them). If yoga teachers like me want to play in the healthcare space, why would they let us lower those standards? And if they did lower the standards for us, why would medical professionals see us as equals?

MY (Masters of Yoga)?
Maybe what some brave university needs to do is create a yoga curriculum within their existing graduate school structure. Some of you might cringe reading that. There’s been a lot of talk about the traditional education system going by the wayside in favor of more innovative forms of learning made possible by better technology. I don’t agree with that line of argument for medical professionals. I can’t yet imagine a world where a doctor does all of his or her learning remotely from an iPad. I feel the same way about learning to be a yoga instructor. It’s important to be in a class and working with students face-to-face because so much of yoga teaching is about a one-on-one connection. It can’t be engineered; it needs to be fully experienced.

There are so many pros and cons of this formal education in yoga; many times they’re one and the same. The oversight from a university could be both a blessing and a curse. Yoga programs may become even more expensive at a university, though there would be the opportunity of financial aid. A university could put the muscle behind more robust yoga research, perhaps heightening the controversy over its benefits and perhaps legitimizing it as a viable form of treatment.

Still, I think this idea has potential for teachers like me. I’m going to kick the tires a bit and reach out to my own alma maters to see if there’s interest in exploring the topic. The time and effort it would take would be  worth it if I could be a part of building the kind of program I’d like to have and if more people (teachers and students) would benefit.

animals, dogs

Beginning: Phineas and I Share Our Adoption Story with “From Alone to Home”

Christa Avampato

My mom snapped this picture of Phin & I about 10 minutes after we met. It was our first picture together.
From Alone to Home is a site lovingly curated by Kate Antoniades that promote pet adoption. Kate reached out to me last week after reading about Phineas and asked if I’d share our adoption story. Of course I jumped at the chance and the post is now up on Kate’s site. Click here to read our story.

Also, if you have adopted a pet and would like to share your story on From Alone to Home, please email Kate.

encouragement, yoga

Beginning: The Human Factor of Yoga

Christa Avampato

I’ve been known to have a fiery side of my personality. I’m a deeply passionate, committed person, I don’t take no for answer (or at least I don’t take it well), and I fully believe in the way of the will. Wherever I go, I go with all my heart. No one who has ever met me would describe me as passive. Couple this with a petite frame, and some people walk away from a first meeting with me completely perplexed, or if I’m lucky, intrigued. “How does so much fire live in one small body?” they might ask themselves. “And wait, she practices yoga? How can THAT be?” My answer, as it is so often: my yoga is the reason.

Too often yoga is equated with peace and love and butterflies. It is all of those things, and it’s something more, too. Yoga is about authenticity. Yoga is about feeling everything, even the things that don’t feel so great. As practitioners, and particularly as yoga teachers, we sit with a lot of suffering, anguish, fear, and anxiety. We feel envy, jealousy, anger, disappointment, sadness, loneliness, isolation, fear, and betrayal. All of the ugly emotions of life that we wish there were less of. Yoga doesn’t eradicate those emotions from our lives. If anything, it heightens them. We free them more profoundly than many other people.

And here’s the magic of it all: because we feel those emotions so profoundly, we learn lessons on the deepest of levels and then we can move on. Yoga doesn’t prevent discomfort; it gives us tool to confront discomfort head on and work through it with grace and strength. It helps us to hold our heads high during painful moments and appreciate joy, love, gratitude, and all the beautiful emotions of life all the more. Yoga helps us to carry on.

learning, yoga

Beginning: Practice Makes Better

Christa Avampato

“Practice is the best of all instructors.” ~ Publilius Syrus, Roman author, 1st century B.C.

I recently went to Paula Lynch’s class at Yoga Works. The class was beautifully sequenced and I learned so much about alignment in the process. She spent a good deal of time prepping our arms and backs because the class culminated in practicing our form in handstand and headstand, two asanas I very much need to practice and that few classes ever attempt. Some yogis can lift up into these postures with both legs at the same time. I cannot. I need to use one leg to gently kick into the postures, and my right leg is my dominant leg.

Paula asked us to practice with our non-dominant or vacation leg. This was very challenging for me. I could easily get into handstand with my right leg. When I used my left leg I struggled to even been in the posture for a moment. As Paula made her rounds through the class, I flagged her over and asked if she could help me figure out why I had so much trouble using my left leg to kick up.

“Do you practice with your vacation leg?” she asked me.

“Well, no, but I was just…,” I stuttered.

“Then go home and practice with that leg.”

“But I’m thinking maybe it’s my form with that leg…”

“No. You just don’t practice with it.”

“So I should practice with both legs equally?”

Now she was getting annoyed. “No. Practice with your vacation left every day until you get it. It’s kind of like driving a car. When you get in a car for the first time, you aren’t going to be able to drive. You need to practice. Yoga’s no different.“ And she promptly turned around and walked off to the next student.

I left the class a little annoyed with her. She didn’t have to be rude. I was just asking a question. There was a nicer way to say what she was saying, though the lesson was not lost on me. I heard it loud and clear, and it makes perfect sense.

We expect so much from ourselves. In Paula’s curt words, she was telling me to be kinder to myself, to understand that we never learn to do anything without practice. This is particularly important when we are just starting out on the road to a new skill, or in this case a new way of getting into an asana. It takes time, patience, and work. 

career, choices, yoga

Beginning: The Battle Between the Belly and the Eye

Christa Avampato
A quote from my favorite yogi

“The Sage considers the belly, not the eye.” ~ The Way and Its Power

In the past few weeks, I’ve been wrestling through a next step I’d like to take in my life and career. My interest is in building healthy systems, whether those systems are in healthcare settings, work environments, schools, and in the personal lives of people. My conflict has been whether to continue my training in yoga (NYC is home to a few of the top 500 hour training schools), pursue a different path of training through another graduate degree, or start a new adventure in a form of healing other than yoga. I’ve pro/coned and decision-treed my way to bleary eyes on more than one late evening. All these paths seem to be evenly matched.

I revisited my friend, Susan‘s, advice on careers – compare options to what you really want, not to each other. With this particular decision, I had a hard time making that distinction. It seemed that all of these paths could help me down the road toward turning my career toward building healthy systems. No one way seems surer than the others. On top of Susan’s brilliant advice, I had to grab another piece of her advice from her book The Right Job, Right Now: I had to consider my life values outside of just career in order to make this choice. In other words, I need to look in more than look out.

In my gut, I know:
1.) I am so happy to be nearing an end to my student loans. Being free of debt is very important to me.
2.) I truly relish my free time when I can use to pursue my own projects
3.) No matter what I’ve faced in my life, my yoga and my meditation practices have been there for me, available wherever I go. They are critically important to me.

Though all of these options are good options, in my belly, my gut, it seems like the right choice is to continue down the yoga path for now. I am always open to more information and additional insight. In the immediate future, more training in yoga that focuses on anatomy, alignment, and keeping students safe in class feels like the right place for me to be. And I couldn’t know that by looking out into the world. As The Way and Its Power so beautifully conveys, the way forward is in.  

change

Beginning: Rethinking Fire

Christa Avampato

Yesterday Brian coached me to think differently about fire. Yes, it burns things away. It can destroy and can spur beginnings, good and bad. As always, Brian took it one step further. “Why don’t we think about your inner fire, Christa, as something that keeps you in check?”

I looked at him with a puzzled and furrowed brow. He continued, “If your gut, where your fire lives, is getting angry, vindictive, or upset, don’t chide it. Don’t tell it that it needs to calm down. Maybe it’s telling you that the situation that seems intolerable should no longer be tolerated.” This doesn’t mean we should set everything on fire on our way out the door. It just means we need to begin to earnestly seek the direction of the door.

Now I see where he was going. Yes, sometimes our temper needs to be softened and smoothed around the edges, pacified in the way that water pacifies fire. Sometimes, we need to use it as a catalyst for change and movement, two very scary actions. If our body tells us we need to flee, its message at least deserves our consideration. When we can’t free ourselves form our own ways of thinking, that proverbial inner fire can carve the way forward. It gives you a way to walk.

learning, risk, television

Beginning: Finding Comfort Outside Your Comfort Zone

Christa Avampato
From http://gosmellthecoffee.com/

“Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers.” – Unknown via MJ, one of this blog’s readers

MJ, a reader of this blog and constant source of inspiration and ideas for me, sent through this quote in a recent comment on my post about negotiating the balance between fear and boredom as we take on new projects. New beginnings can be frightening; many times we must let go of old conceptions of ourselves, our lives, and the world around us so that we can try something new. This release is a death of sorts that allows for new life.

A few years ago I was recounting the story of my NBC job interview to my friend, Brooke. Many of the people I interviewed with were horrified that I didn’t have any TV experience. I was feeling pretty down about the interview until Brooke said to me, “Well have they known about TV since birth? We all start out not knowing anything!” That idea pops into my head every time I start a new project and have any moments of self-doubt.

We all start somewhere. At some point, everything we now know was uncharted territory. Your new beginnings today are no less scary and no more certain that those you experienced yesterday. Just begin. Life is a lottery – you’ve got to be in it to win it so do the things that light you up!

student, teaching, yoga

Beginning: A Letter to My Yoga Students

Christa Avampato

Yesterday I wrote a post about the importance of figuring out whom your business or organization serves and why you’re the ideal person to fulfill that need for your stakeholders. In it, I partially described the type of yoga student whom we focus our efforts on at Compass Yoga. I got a few emails that asked me to elaborate on that topic so I decided to write an open letter to those students. Letters are a favorite form factor of mine in writing. They are powerful, personal, and heart-felt. Some say we’ve lost the art of letter writing in our society. If that’s the case, then I mean to bring it back. (On this blog, I’ve written letters to President Obama and My Younger Self.) 

Dear Students – past, present, and future,
      I’ve been working on gaining the skills to help you by examining my own life and focusing on my own healing. The healthier I am, the more I have to give to you. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, and for that I apologize. I wish I could have been available to help you sooner though healing happens on its own schedule and of its own accord. In this journey I learned that every moment unfolds exactly as it should, and in that revelation I have been able to find and feel real forgiveness, of myself and others.

      You are at the beginning of a brave and courageous journey that will lead you home to you, to your true essence. Congratulations on your quest for authenticity. Stop for a moment and celebrate that enormous step. It takes a lot of gumption to go in search of you; revel in the fact that you are embarking on a project that everyone should undertake and few ever do. You are to be celebrated for having the strength to even try.

      This road is not easily traveled. There are pitfalls and mountainous climbs. Some days will be smooth sailing, and others will be wrought with difficulty. I will be with you through all of it. I can’t tell you what to do or why or for how long; I can promise you that I will show up every day with everything I have. You will always have my focus and my compassion. We will walk this road together, and we will both be better off for it. I promise you that it will all be okay.  

      You may have some type of illness, mental or physical. You may be dealing with the heaviness of life in its many forms. You may need to find your way after a long period of wandering. Your age, physical or mental condition, race, religion, ethnicity, marital status, and socioeconomic circumstances do not define you in my eyes, nor in my heart. Come as you are and make yourself at home next to me. People have told you to try yoga or meditation or some other kind of mindful practice. You’ve decided it’s time to give it a shot and you are wondering where and how and with whom to begin. You have come to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. I am for you because I have been in your shoes and I know how it feels to begin this journey to healing.

       Take a comfortable seat, close your eyes, and breathe. This is where we begin and end, breathing in and breathing out, respectively. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here, just as you are.

Love,
Christa