I tell wonder-filled stories about hope and healing
Author: Christa Avampato
The short of it:
Writer. Health, education, and art advocate. Theater and film producer. Visual artist. Product geek. Proud alumnae of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (MBA). Inspired by ancient wisdom & modern tech. Proliferator of goodness. Opener of doors. Friend to animals. Fan of creative work in all its wondrous forms. I use my business skills to create passion projects that build a better world. I’ve been called the happiest New Yorker, and I try hard to live up to that title every day.
The long of it:
My career has stretched across Capitol Hill, Broadway theatre, education, nonprofit fundraising, health and wellness, and Fortune 500 companies in retail, media, entertainment, technology, and financial services. I’ve been a product developer and product manager, theater manager, strategic consultant, marketer, voice over artist, , teacher, and fundraiser. I use my business and storytelling to support and sustain passion projects that build a better world. In every experience, I’ve used my sense of and respect for elegant design to develop meaningful products, services, programs, and events.
While building a business career, I also built a strong portfolio as a journalist, novelist, freelance writer, interviewer, presenter, and public speaker. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS.org, Boston.com, Royal Media Partners publications, and The Motley Fool on a wide range of topics including business, technology, science, health, education, culture, and lifestyle. I have also been an invited speaker at SXSW, Teach for America, Avon headquarters, Games for Change, NYU, Columbia University, Hunter College, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The first book in my young adult book series, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was acquired by a publisher and launched in November 2017. I’m currently working on the second book in the series.
A recovering multi-tasker, I’m equally at home in front of my Mac, on my yoga mat, walking my rescue dog, Phineas, traveling with a purpose, or practicing the high-art of people watching. I also cut up small bits of paper and put them back together as a collage artist.
My company:
I’m bringing together all of my business and creative career paths as the Founder of Double or Nothing Media:
• I craft products, programs, and projects that make a difference;
• I build the business plans that make what I craft financially sustainable;
• I tell the stories that matter about the people, places, and products that inspire me.
Follow my adventures on Twitter at https://twitter.com/christanyc and Instagram at https://instagram.com/christarosenyc.
“Transformation literally means going beyond your form.” ~ Wayne Dyer
We talk about transformation and change all the time. We want our luck to change; we want other people to be the way we want them to be; we want to lose weight; we want to get a job we love that doesn’t even feel like a job at all; we want to find our passion and purpose; we want to be in love. But what we often overlook is the idea that change doesn’t happen to us; it happens because of us. We cause change; we are its agents. If we want change, then we must change.
Give up old habits. Give up a grudge. Ditch fear. Stop waiting. Think differently. Recognize that time is precious and fleeting. Get out there and make it happen. Change.
My friend, Sol, posted this on his Facebook page. How about we make our health our priority, live in the present, and make the most of the time we have together?
Pam Slim offers up this advice for entrepreneurs, though I think we should all honor it since we are all working on something of real value – be ruthless with your time. There are people who will be careless with it; there are people who think they own it because you work for them; there are people who don’t respect their own talents, gifts, and time, and therefore it never occurs to them to respect those of others. You have to guard your energy, and your energy is carried on the rails of time.
Free time is a misnomer. Time is never, ever free. There is always a trade-off. Even if you are the most supreme multi-tasker on the planet, there is a limit to how much you can do in any one moment, and you never get a single moment back. It’s spent and gone, and your time is finite. We won’t go on forever.
Life is generous, but it’s not that generous.
Forget would, should, and could when it comes to your time. The only verb that time understands is “do”. And what you do is always up to you. Be ruthless with your time. Take it very seriously, and do something so valuable with it that it will be worth remembering when it’s gone.
The similarities between yoga and technology continue over at ISHTA.
Last week, I wrote about yoga as a form of spiritual technology. In our Saturday lecture, Alan Finger talked to us about the subtle body (the energy lines within us that connect us to a greater intelligence), and its linkages between our karma and our physical body. He spoke about these energy bodies as things waiting to be double-clicked. Once we open up these energy channels, we find they are able to pull in information that is beyond our own experience. By freeing these channels, we literally tap in to something greater than ourselves.
Sound too hippy dippy yoga for you? Steve Jobs didn’t think so.
Think about your computer, and specifically think about a Mac (just because Alan and I both love our Macs.) Think of its intelligence and the way it ladders information. We don’t have code cluttering our desktops, do we? Of course not. The code is contained in programs. We open programs and we’re able to tap into different capabilities and functionality available at different levels within the programs installed on the computer. Computers pull from different systems, guided by our physical directions, our double-clicks from the mouse or track pad.
Our yoga is the same way. Our physical actions, our asanas, allow us to link into the different layers of programs installed in our being. Some of them relate to our physical body, mind, spirit, or energy channels. How a computer works is based very much on how we work, and yet we are so much more intricate, so much more amazing, than any machine will ever be. Steve Jobs understood that fact to a frightening degree and it fueled his creativity. He made machines more human.
The technologies we love so much are a reflection of our fascination with things so complex that lie at the outer edges of our comprehension. We are our greatest experiment, our greatest tool for discovery. Go within and really wonder at what you find. We are amazing!
I’m what’s termed an over-preparer. My years as a Girl Scout could be to blame for this neurosis. It could also be that I have an enormous fear of people staring at me waiting for some kind of answer. Ever since I was a very young child, I’ve had horrible stage fright. I wouldn’t say I prepare for every event in my life – only the ones I care about. My yoga and meditation classes fall in that camp.
For the first few years that I taught yoga, I would prepare for hours. I would develop the sequences and then practice them over and over again until I was dreaming about them. No matter how much I prepared, I found myself having to change everything in every class. My students needed something different than what I had prepared, and in an effort to meet their needs, I’d completely adjust the sequences. It felt like all my preparation was worthless, and yet I couldn’t help myself. If I didn’t prepare, my anxiety went right through the roof.
Then about a year ago, Brian asked me what would happen if I didn’t prepare for a class at all. (Mind you, I used to prepare for my sessions with him by making a list of subjects to discuss. I think this annoyed and amused him in equal amounts.) What if I just showed up, surveyed the room, and taught from my heart?
“What if I fail?” I asked.
“What if you do?” Brian asked. “Would that be so bad?”
Against my better judgement, I gave it a whirl. It wasn’t great, but I didn’t crash and burn either. All my preparation over the years had given me tools I didn’t even know I had. I was a better improver than I thought I was. I was better able to connect with my students in real-time than I ever thought possible. My nerves were on a bit on edge at first because I didn’t have the crutch of my preparation, but it got much better in a very short period of time. I started to pay attention more closely, on and off the mat. The less I prepared, the more present I was forced to be. It was beautiful to learn to be spontaneous, more alive, and have the confidence to know I could make it work.
I’ve yet to give up my preparation habit altogether, but I do prepare a lot less than I did in my earliest years of teaching. And though I’m always a bit on edge at the start of a class, I find that preparation doesn’t help to calm my nerves. What does help is to simply and honestly look into the eyes of my students, to recognize their humanness, their vulnerability, and their courage. And I’d miss all those things if I taught from a script.
By all means, prepare until you feel like you’re ready to take the stage in your life. But also be prepared to toss it all out the window in favor of what’s needed in the moment.
Anne Lamott recently wrote a very personal piece in Reader’s Digest about the birth of her grandson to her teenage son and his girlfriend. Lamott is my favorite author because of her ability to be so raw, honest, and hilarious all in the same breath. Her voice is so unique and she doles out advice on writing and life with such generosity that sometimes I think she’s personally mentoring me through my own adventures on the page. This article about her grandson had all of her signature wit, charm, heartbreak, and hope.
Half way through the article she discusses the two slogans that kept her going in the anxious months leading up to the birth of her grandson – “Figure it out is not a good slogan” and “Ask, and allow – i.e., ask God, and allow grace in.” I love them both equally, though that second slogan rang so true for me at this moment.
A few days ago, I began reading the book The Wishing Yearon recommendation from my friend, Katherine. The Wishing Year recounts a year in the life of a woman who consciously and passionately wishes for three changes in her life – a man to love, a house, and deep spiritual healing. The book also explore the science and art behind wishing and intention. It’s inspired me so much that I’m taking up its example in my own life. Why not wish, and then do in equal amounts.
Lamott’s advice dovetails perfectly with The Wishing Year. In many ways, she is saying the same thing, but with a very poignant nuance. We can wish, ask, and work toward a goal and a dream, but if we don’t allow grace in, if we don’t allow ourselves to then realize the opportunity that is then laid down in front of us, then the question and the wish will do no good.
If we ask nature, the Universe, God, to be on our side, to work with us, then we have to allow that work to happen. We have to be open to possibility, to a change in course, to a new way of thinking and being. And if we can go that, if we can allow change to enter our lives with grace, then we will truly begin to see the magic unfold in our lives and in the lives of those around us. We will realize our own potential, and it will be greater than we ever imagined.
I spent the weekend with my friends Ken, Tom, and Amber in Bucks County, PA, just outside of Philadelphia. Ken and Tom recently purchased a home there that put me so at ease I thought of asking to become their live-in housekeeper / dog walker / cook. Some day soon, I’m sure they’ll be appearing on the House Proud segment of the Nate Berkus Show. The house is that beautiful.
I loved my time there so much that on the way home I wondered if a small home in Bucks County might some day be my reality. I went to school in Philadelphia and have long thought that my life may loop back in that direction some day. Looking out of the window of the train, I day dreamed about a place to get away from it all, to write, and to teach yoga and meditation. I began to wonder again about a possible move.
And then I remembered a small piece of art that was in the room where I was sleeping at Ken and Tom’s house. It said simply, “Grow where you’re planted.” Though I may be daydreaming of Bucks County, I realize that there is still so much for me to learn right here in New York, in my tiny studio way up above the bustle of the streets. This leg of the journey is not yet over; there’s still so much to do exactly where I am.
I live half of my life intensely studying modern and futuristic technology and the other half deeply engaged in the ancient practice of yoga. Constantly, I look for ways to bridge the two. I’m sure my life would be must simpler if I could choose one path, but a one-pronged approach to my career doesn’t feel right. The two will have to come together
I’m halfway through my Bridge program at ISHTA Yoga, and one of the greatest pieces of wisdom I’ve heard in our lectures is that yoga is a spiritual technology. I turned that phrase over in my mind for several weeks – in my meditations, during my personal practice, on my way to work, while doing my laundry, and walking Phineas. I like the phrase, but I wasn’t exactly sure of its meaning under the hood.
Then I put the phrase aside and just thought about science in its purest form. What do scientists do during their waking hours? They investigate; they search; they form hypotheses and test them. Scientists and yogis – we aren’t so very far apart after all.
We’re all searching for truth, for meaning, for understanding. We’re all searching for a way to be free. Scientists search from the outside in and yogis search from the inside out.
Last weekend I took a morning class with Sara Barron, comedian and author of People are Unappealing: Even Me. The moment she started to speak I knew this was the writing class for me. In my quest for a writing community, I’ve tried a few different genres of classes. None of the felt quite right until Sara’s class. I’ve wanted to bring more comedy into my essay writing for some time, but haven’t been sure how to do it.
Sara offered up a set of guidelines that helped me to begin to find my way in humor writing and they are certainly worthy of repeating:
1.) Comedy isn’t mysterious. It’s direct and snappy so set your reader up to laugh along with you by being crystal clear with every word. Tell them where you are, what you’re doing, and who you’re with.
2.) Circumstance is never as funny as character. The characters are the engine of humor writing.
3.) Cut the adverbs and adjectives. Sentences should be short and sharp. Leave lyrics to the song writers among us.
4.) Dialogue is funny.
5.) The key to the universal is through the specific. The more precisely we nail the details, the easier it will be for our audience to relate.
6.) “Seriously?” is not a funny response. To move you from observer to writer, you need a funny response to someone else’s actions and words or a funny analysis of a situation.
7.) Unlike fiction, more humor writing is done is the first person. You are the main object of your narrative.
8.) Open strong and remember that the most important word in your first sentence is the last one.
9.) Expand your definition of clichés, and then cut every single one of them.
10.) Comedy is tragedy plus distance. Most humor writing starts with some horrible experience and some horrible person. Something awesome happening is great, but it’s rarely funny.
Sara teaches many of the humor writing classes at Gotham Writers’ Workshop. I’m planning to take one in the not-so-distant future. I hope you’ll join me!
I’m thrilled to announce that this Saturday from 10:30am – 11:30am Compass Yoga is adding another free weekly class to our roster!
Newly-minted teachers Kim, Sara, and CJ will form a rotation to bring free weekly yoga to this beautiful location at 127 Amsterdam Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets, just west of Lincoln Center.The class is suitable for students of all levels. Please bring your own mat or towel, and any props that you wish to use.
We hope you’ll join us and spread the word. More information on all of our classes is available at http://compassyoga.com.
(Pssst…we’re adding another new class at the beginning of March, when we’ll be in 3 New York Public Library branches offering free yoga to the community we love so much. More details to come as the date for this new class draws closer!)
