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.
career, work, yoga

Beginning: Knowing When to Walk

Christa Avampato

By Miruna Uzdris
I’ve been speaking with a number of potential partners for Compass Yoga as I explore the possibility of offering on-site yoga classes. Classes begin at the Manhattan VA Hospital on October 7th. The VA development came about so quickly because one of the clinical directors has practiced yoga for quite a few years and believes in its power. She is a kindred spirit and so we’re giving this a try to see how it goes. We’re partners and collaborators.

Another organization I’ve been speaking to has not been able to mirror the experience I’ve had the VA. The Executive Director, a social worker, was on the defensive the moment I met her. I know I can help the people in her program through a yoga and meditation class. I know they will benefit greatly from my personal and professional experience. All she had to do was have an open mind and provide an space for a trial class. She would have seen the low-cost, high-quality impact immediately.

Instead her haunches were up and her aggression was released. “All that woman wants is to come in here and do her little program so she can get some PR for her website.” And worst of all, she asked one of her staff members to deliver that message rather than contacting me herself. The board and I put together Compass Yoga with a lot of heart. No one’s going to spit on our efforts on my watch. Rather than taking the second-hand abuse, I consulted with the board and walked away from the opportunity, much to the shock of the social worker.

Several hours later I got a call from the social worker, and somehow the Executive Director has completely changed her tune and is interested in having me present at a community meeting. I guess he thought I’d be honored by the invitation. Instead, I turned it down in favor of focusing our efforts on other partners who want to be true collaborators.

Here’s what I learned from this situation:

1.) We have to focus our efforts if we’re going to make this practice available to all who are open to it. There is tremendous need for wellness programming among populations like returning veterans who have specific healthcare issues that yoga and meditation can address. We don’t have time to get bogged down by naysayers and people who are trying to defeat our efforts just as we’re beginning to lift off.

2.) A fish rots from the head down, especially in the nonprofit world. If there’s a surly Executive Director in place, the chances of break-through innovation and partnership are slim to non-existent. The organization can have the greatest mission in the world, but if the leadership in place isn’t qualified to actually manage and lead then the mission, and it’s recipients, lose. Management matters.

3.) We have to be well ourselves before we can help others be well. This Executive Director is a therapist. She is trained to help others heal and transcend their own grief, and yet she is not a healthy person. I understand the scarring that can occur from being burned one too many times and the trauma that ensues. I get that on a very personal level. Before I could be a teacher, I needed to be whole and healthy. I needed to deal with my own issues so they didn’t become anyone else’s. It took great courage to face up to my issues and I’m exceedingly proud of that personal work. Many people pass one without taking this road. I hope this Executive Director takes up the challenge and heals her own grief before it’s too late for her and for the people who need her help.

4.) People will treat you the way you let them treat you. If I had let that Executive Director run over me, she would have without thinking twice. Had I gone to that community meeting under those pretenses, I would have set a dangerous precedent with her. The right and professional action to take was to walk away and focus on the partners who want to be well. We have very little time on this Earth – we have to make the most of it.

career, happiness

Beginning: The 10 Commandments of Steve Jobs

Christa Avampato

My friend, Lon, sent this infographic to me. I immediately printed it out and hung it up at my desk. I’m working on my own version of the 10 commandments – how I work and live, what I believe to be the blocks that help to build a life to a happy, fulfilling life. I’ll share them as soon as I’ve completed. Do you have a Until then, here’s Steve’s. Do you have a version you’d like to share?

death, dying, Life

Beginning: Beauty and Funerals

Christa Avampato

“Beauty once seemed to me to be an accident of nature. But now that I can see my life on my face, I realize we earn the way we end up looking. Time, it seems, gives us all a chance to really be beautiful.” ~ Ann Curry

“Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve.” ~ Coco Chanel

My Uncle John passed away last week. A kind, generous man, we was one of the people who figured prominently into many of my childhood memories. He was one of those people whom I always felt so lucky to know and love. He lived into his 90’s despite an abundance of health problems for many years. He was a miracle man, a real-life version of the comeback kid.

His funeral served as yet another reminder to me that everything that surrounds us is temporary, that this is all changeable. It reminded me of what Brian and I talked about last week – that a life just spent out on the ledge isn’t really living at all. You need to have the existence you want, and no one can define that for you except you. People will try – they will tell you where and when to go, who to go with, and what you should do when you get there. During Uncle John’s services I couldn’t help but think about the idea that in the end our legacies are about the choices we make, and the ripple effects we cause in the wake of those choices.

There was a poster board of photos at John’s wake. Some of them I’d never seen and some of them I hadn’t seen in many years. I was a tiny baby in the ones I was in. My grandparents were there, as was my dad, looking many years younger than I remember them and with wide, wide smiles. I loved seeing those images and yet it was hard for me to see them, too. Particularly with my dad, I was reminded of all the lost potential, the lost opportunity that he could have had, that my whole family could have had, and in particular that I could have had if only he had gotten the right help at the right time.

I think losing people like my Uncle John is easier than losing people like my dad. John lived a full, loving life. He was grateful for his days and was able to overcome extraordinary hardships. (I found out at his funeral that he had served in the U.S. Army’s First Armored Division during World War II, the first Americans in WWII to go into armed battle.) My dad, by nature, was not grateful and there wasn’t anyone in his life who asked him to be more accountable and responsible for the life we lived. In his eyes, life happened to him. In my Uncle John’s eyes, life happened and no matter what, he chose to love life again and again. My Uncle John took full advantage of all opportunities at his doorstep, and lived a wonderful, long life as a result. My dad did not.

So we have a choice – not necessarily of when it’s our time to move on from this lifetime, but certainly how we spend each of our days in this lifetime. We can choose what we stand for, how we spend our time, and with whom. We either choose to make and take opportunities, or just react to life as it happens. Given the very stark contrast of the lives and passings of my Uncle John and my dad, I know which way I’m going. Do you?

death, health, Life

Beginning: My First Mammogram

Christa Avampato

My mother is a breast cancer survivor. Even prior to her diagnosis and healing, I was constantly on my soapbox about how mammograms should be provided to young women. Because of my strong family history, my insurance covers regular mammograms starting at 35. Recently I got a prescription from my doctor and off I went to Lenox Hill Hospital.

Upon scheduling the exam, I had a feeling of real gravity. I knew I was okay; I just felt the weight of this kind of test. After all, it is an exam that is checking for cancer, a potentially lethal disease, and to go through with one we must look squarely in the face of our own mortality. What I felt was most certainly the feeling of “dis-ease” brought on by looking for a “disease”. The synchronicity of these words is no accident. Disease, and the potential of it, is uncomfortable to say the least.

So in I went to the hospital. They had to take several rounds of scans because the doctor felt that the first set had something out of the ordinary. Due to my strong family history, they take no chances. When the doctor came back into the examination room a second time to ask me to take an immediate ultrasound, the gravity of the tests grew a bit heavier on my shoulders. My only thought was perhaps my mind-body connection is not as a strong as I think it is.

I went into the ultrasound room, and the exam took a solid 20 minutes. As I was lying there, I thought about what I might do if indeed the abnormality was something of concern. What would I do if I was asked to have a biopsy? How would I deal with a diagnosis of cancer at age 35? Sadly, it has become more common in my generation than in those generations who have come before us. My mind was blank. I had no idea what I do, and so I waited and breathed.

The doctor read the ultrasound with a sigh of relief. He saw that the abnormality was not cause for alarm. He said he would review with his attending and then send the report to my gynecologist. He also noted that mammograms among young women are very difficult to read because the younger we are, the more dense our tissue is. Reading abnormalities in dense tissue can be deceiving and this is made still more difficult by my petite and mostly lean body type. What was supposed to be a 20 minute baseline exam turned into a 2 and a half hour event in which I felt fine, then felt worried, and then felt fine again.

I walked out of the hospital and took in a full breath in the sunlit air. I exhaled with a big sigh, though the lesson was not lost on me. My mortality is a very real thing, and I must live accordingly. Most people spend a lot of years, particularly their early ones, not looking at or thinking about death. Because of the deaths in my family at a young age, I have never had that luxury. The moment I could contemplate life, I began to contemplate death in equal measure. After all, we cannot have one without the other.

creative process, creativity, determination, imagination

Beginning: Thinking Into Being

Christa Avampato

“Our thoughts are forming the world.” ~ Yogi tea bag

Our inner confidence and conviction is more important than we realize. If we see a situation that we want to improve, we do actually have the ability to create the change we wish to see. Our thoughts form companies and organizations; they build programs, products, and services. Everything we touch, see, and experience is the creation of nature or someone’s imagination. Why shouldn’t the world have the gift of your vision, the gift of living up to your expectations?

 

health, wellness

Beginning: You as Healer

Christa Avampato

“Your identity is not equivalent to your biography. There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility.” ~ John O’Donohue via Daily Good

Healing is seen as a miracle, in stark contrast to the events that cause a need for healing. I’ve always liked the idea of healing being a result of our own doing, something that we can attain just as quickly as we attain injury. I think that the miracle of healing comes from tapping the part of us that John O’Donohue talks about in the quote above. We tend to focus so much on our wounds, and for good reason – they have much to teach us. The well of healing and safety that resides in us, side by side with the wounds, is just as important and often overlooked.

Real healing, lasting and plentiful, requires that we recognize both the wounds and the place in us that cannot be harmed. That latter piece is the one we access in a mindful practice – yoga, meditation, running, writing, service. It is the place where our light resides, the light we recognize in ourselves and honor in others. It is the place that we can retreat to regardless of the outside conditions. It’s our connection to the Universe’s wisdom, to everything sacred, to our own divinity. Go there.

weather

Beginning: Us and Irene

Christa Avampato
Phineas: "Wake me when Irene leaves."

Phineas and I hunkered down in our apartment in New York to ride out Hurricane Irene. We were not asked to evacuate (though if we had been, we certainly would have complied). We stocked up on water and food, filled pots, pans, and bowls with water in case our plumbing went out. We stayed away from the windows as we’re up on the 17th floor of our apartment building. Phone and computer fully charged, movies and books at the ready. The girl scout in me was at her preparedness best.

Irene didn’t pack the punch near us that many feared, though Phin is never happy about any amount of rain. I keep telling him we should be grateful it wasn’t worse; he’s not having it. He just toddles off to his bed and flops down with a dramatic “hmph!” (See photo above.)

Pictures on TV from Long Island look awful – downed trees and flooding – though electricity for most seemed to be on. The storm went a bit further Eats which saved us in New York City. I am still glad that the alerts were sent out for all of us. I’d always prefer to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. With these unpredictable types of storms, you never know what can happen.

Truth be told, I mind the rain and gray weather far less than most. I like the feeling of being insulated. I used the bad weather as a time of introspection and I’ve been able to stay productive. Lots of reading and writing, planning for Compass Yoga, and catching up with people via phone and online. It was a good reminder to me of how important it is to take time out and hunker down once in a while, and it shouldn’t take a hurricane warning to do so.

creative process, creativity, yoga

Beginning: A Creative Update On Compass Yoga

Christa Avampato
From http://www.zastavki.com

Despite the rainy weather over the weekend, I was able to focus a lot of my creative energies toward Compass Yoga. The site has been updated and the service and product ideas are flowing! The Board and I have been talking through some new ideas to spread our efforts to a wider audience. Here’s a brief update of how we’re doing:

Board:
The Compass Yoga Board of Directors is in place and in a constant dialogue on how to shape the organization going forward. Check out their bios and personal mission statements here.

Partnerships:
We’re moving ahead on the partnership front with classes. Beginning October 7th, there will be a weekly yoga and mediation class at the VA Hospital in Manhattan for the medical staff. We’re in talks with several other potential partners where we hope to offer classes and programs by the end of the year.

Incorporation:
We are grateful for legal counsel and support from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the incredible probono attorneys who have volunteered to help us. We will be working closely with them in the coming months on our nonprofit incorporation and tax-exempt status.

Online resources:
In the coming months, Compass Yoga will be releasing a set of online multi-media resources that help to fulfill our mission to “provide yoga to populations who have a specific healthcare need for the therapeutic healing that a yoga practice offers.” There is no shortage to the ways in which we can offer up our teachings, unencumbered by geography and language.

New York Public Library classes:
I am thrilled to announce that Compass Yoga‘s members of Karmi’s Angels are taking over the classes at the Bloomingdale branch of the New York Public Library. As my work on administrative work on Compass ramps up and I turn a good deal of my attention toward our Veteran Program, Sarah and Suzanne offered to divide up the classes at the NYPL. In September, the classes will shift to Thursday evenings from 6:00pm – 6:55pm and will continue to be free and open to all.

Other areas under development:
Compass is currently working on securing PR representation to spread the good word on our good works. We’re also putting together a few potential workshop ideas, scouting out funding resources, and continuing work on the book project for yoga and finance.

Want to get involved?
Join us! Check out the “Get Involved” section of our website and connect with us on Facebook.

apple, inspiration, technology

Beginning: What Steve Jobs Taught Me

Christa Avampato

There are plenty of people out there playing pundit about the fate of Apple now that Steve Jobs has stepped down. When I heard about his resignation, I at first felt a real sadness and then my attention quickly turned to gratitude for what he gave to all of us. While Apple and its team have drawn so much benefit from his leadership, I also realized that just by watching and studying him and interacting with the products and staff of his company we have gained so much. We owe him so many thank yous.

Here is a start:

Never give up; rely on your intuition – After his board sent him packing, it would have been very easy for Jobs to slunk off into obscurity. Instead, he started another company and invested in this little start-up called Pixar. Jobs trusts his gut above all else, and that authenticity that “knowing beyond knowing” has paid off in spades for me, albeit spades that have been hard-won.

Be unreasonable – There are several business legends about how infamously unreasonable Steve Jobs is. He is a relentless, restless seeker of quality and he demands of everyone else what he demands of himself – excellence.

People don’t know what they want and we can’t expect them to – If Apple got bogged down in consumer product testing and consumer product research, it’s unlikely that we’d have any of the magic Apple has built its brand on. In a time of user-generated content / input craze, Apple took a completely different approach – its products shaped the desires of consumers rather than the other way around.

Invent by alleviating pain – Apple has always paid close attention to what gives consumers pain, and then invented products and services to alleviate it. It is a brilliant point-of-view from which to invent, and it has won them consumer loyalty by the boatload.

Everything is possible; you can make something out of nothing – Jobs took his interest in personal technology, got out a white piece of paper and built Apple from nothing but a handful of computer components. For any entrepreneur with little more than a dream, Steve Jobs shows us what’s possible with passion.

Our future really is in our hands – I suppose Steve Jobs could have played it safe as a young man and gotten a job working for someone else. Instead, he paved his own road from the very beginning and never looked back. He knew his future was actually safer (and more fun!) in his own hands rather than in anyone else’s. His story will be one that’s told and emulated for many generations to come. I can’t wait to see all of the new Steves that spring from his inspiring path.

celebration, change, grateful, gratitude, growth, yoga

Beginning: Curative Energy

Christa Avampato

“You can channel your pain into helping others and spread a tide of curative energy throughout the world.” ~ Daily Good

I wrote earlier this week about the desire to be grateful for my hardships, to become so thankful for them that I would never think of trading them for any different history. Shortly after that post, I watched the PBS series This Emotional Life, and as if by some stroke of synchronicity learned that there is a growing body of research that points to gratitude for hardships as the potential silver bullet for a lifetime of happiness. Can our pain be the source of what breaks us down and what completes us?

Compass Yoga is taking a cue from Daily Good. We are generating a tide of good will and compassion. We’re attempting not to help our students escape, but to help them use what they’ve got, everything they’ve got, to help them heal themselves from the inside out. I’ve heard the saying that every difficulty contains its own answer. I am beginning to see just how much value our pain has, and the recognition of that value is what begins to help us make meaning of the hurdles in our lives.

I would never wish trauma on anyone, though slowly I’m also beginning to realize that I may be getting to a point where I would never wish mine away because it’s too valuable for me and now through Compass Yoga, too valuable to others. Acceptance and healing don’t have to be elusive goals. We can draw them to us and embrace them. They are ours for the taking.