These are posters for my public participation projects. In my quest to help people let go of things that are holding them back and take more chances to live the lives they want, the sole purpose of these projects is to celebrate participants and to have their stories inspire others. These are promotional posters that I’ll be hanging up around New York City though anyone anywhere in the world of any age can participate. And if you’re so inclined to print them out and hang them in your neighborhood, I would love that! Just contact me through a comment on this post and I’ll send you the PDFs.
Here’s how it works: Let. It. Go.
Let something go – it can be anything from a possession that is a painful reminder of something to an emotion like anger, greed, jealousy, disappointment – and then tell me about it at onefineyogi@gmail.com. You can let go of something very big, like an old, hurtful disappointment, or something very small, like forgiving the person who cut in line at the grocery store. This can be about something you just let go of or about something you let go of a long time ago.
Take a Chance
Take a Chance – it can be anything from saying hi to someone new to applying for a new job to changing anything about your life that you want to change – and then tell me about it at onefineyogi@gmail.com. You can take a big chance, like moving to a new city, or something very small, like having a healthy snack instead of an unhealthy one.
You can participate in either project (or both!) and email me as often as you’d like. Actually, I’d love it if you emailed me every single day with something you let go and a chance you took. The emails can be very short or they can include a story of any length. They can include photos, too. (I know this goes without saying – please keep all contributions clean.) I will respond to every email I receive. Your chances and things you let go will always be kept completely anonymous unless you specifically tell me that you want me to include your name or initials. I’ll use these contributions to populate a new online project I’m launching in the coming months. You’ll be notified as soon as the online site launches and when your contribution is live.
I hope you’ll join in these exciting new endeavors to celebrate and encourage you and your dreams.
This photo perfectly captures the serenity I’m feeling in Santa Monica. It’s my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean on Day 1 of my creative break. Pretty remarkable. I can barely process that I’ve come this far in my life, a place I never thought I’d be.
“Abundance is a process of letting go; that which is empty can receive.” ~ Bryant McGill
As I prepare to spend my summer re-thinking and re-shaping my future, I’m unpacking quite a bit of my life: my work, my time online, and the hustle and bustle of my everyday life. I’m taking very little with me in the hopes that de-cluttering my life will open the way for new beginnings.
We sometimes place an unfair connotation on the concept of emptiness. I think of emptiness as a blessing, as a state of being that helps us to re-imagine and re-invent. If every ounce of time and space we have is full, then we can’t be open to the many gifts that new experiences offer.
So I’m making room. I’m letting go. I’m giving myself the gift of fully experiencing life one moment at a time and the chance to celebrate the beauty that each small moment holds.
“Sometimes, history is destiny.” ~ Adrian Benepe, Senior Vice President and Director of City Park Development at Trust for Public Land
While Mr. Benepe is referring to the development of cities, his quote just as easily applies to our lives. What you do today matters, not only in this moment but in every moment that follows. As someone who spent a lot of time unsure of when I would actually try to create my dream career, I can promise you that time is of the essence. Waiting and talking about what you’re going to do someday gets you nowhere. Action starts the long, winding, sometimes-frustrating but always-interesting road. And that’s what we all need to do – we need to get started. Now.
Traversing this ground toward dreams is going to take time. You’re going to grind along in fits and starts. Some days it all comes so easily and some days you’ll feel like you’re chasing your own tail. This cycle of ups and downs and turnarounds happens to me all the time. Why is it so hard to move forward? And is it even worth trying?
It’s hard because we have to build the foundation, construct the frame, enclose it, smooth out the structure, and then, and only then, do we get to the fun stuff of aesthetics and decoration. But without that underlying organization, without all those incredibly unsexy but totally necessary pieces of infrastructure, the aesthetics don’t matter. Cover it up with spackle and paint all you want. It will crumble without a foundation.
As someone who is still very much in the foundation building phase, who is mired in unsexy structural details on a daily basis, I can tell you that I still find some small victory every single day. Some days, I’m waiting on that victory until the 11th hour. But it always shows up. I think about throwing in the towel and just then some small sign from the universe breaks through and that sign gives me the strength to keep going, to keep trying, to keep waking up and giving it my best shot.
I am certain there are lots of changes on the horizon. Changes I can’t even imagine, much less plan for. Some of them are going to knock me over. They’re going to overwhelm me and cause me to question everything. Well, almost everything. No matter what happens, I’m going to get right back up. I am certain of that. And I will be stronger for it. Destiny-building is strenuous work, but there is no greater joy that pulling it together bit by beautiful bit.
Just around the bend from our apartment, there’s a beautifully decorated piano – in Central Park. Phineas tried his paw at plunking out a few notes. Ultimately he felt he could better serve the cause by doing his best modelesque “look-away” pose in front of it. He’s really more of a vocalist than a piano player anyway – he has the most emotional, heartbreaking howl I’ve ever heard. (Seriously!)
So what’s a piano doing in Central Park? It’s out there in the open for anyone to play, courtesy of SingforHope.org – a nonprofit whose pianos-turned-public-art are eventually donated to under-served local schools, healthcare facilities, and community organizations, where Sing for Hope artists continue to bring the pianos to life year-round through classes, performances, and workshops. There are 88 pianos, all decorated by artists, scattered throughout the 5 boroughs. Check out this map to find one near you.
Phin’s piano was designed by Paolo Pecchi and it explores the dichotomy of our city – sometimes quiet, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, and sometimes strong. That is the amazing thing about art in any form – it can hold opposites, placing them side by side to show us how complex and rich life can be. Art shows us what we’re made of.
Too much of the media circus around yoga leads people to believe that it is a practice exclusively for super models and contortionists. Nothing could be further from the truth. U.S. News & World Report ran a story about Sarah Shaffer, a high school student who practices yoga to relax and improve her running.
The full story is below but the last line is the one that got me choked up. It perfectly illustrates why we focus Compass Yoga‘s mission on getting yoga to people who wouldn’t otherwise practice it. The reporter asked her if she had any advice for people new to yoga. Sarah says, “Keep doing yoga, even if it’s hard. It gets better the more you work at it. And you will feel so good after you’re done.”
Have you ever tried yoga? It’s not just for the thin, fit and athletically-built. Just about anyone who can breathe can practice yoga to some extent and reap its many benefits. We’ll prove it. In this series, U.S. News talks with people who are changing the face of yoga.
Sarah Schaffer is a senior at Free State High School in Lawrence, Kan. When she’s not playing the cymbals and triangle in the concert band, she’s sprinting and shot-putting on the school’s green and silver Firebirds track team. Sarah is a fan of country music – especially songs by Blake Shelton – and she also has Down syndrome.
Sarah is one of more than 400,000 people in the United States living with Down syndrome, according to the National Down Syndrome Society. Individuals with the condition have an extra full or partial copy of chromosome 21, which alters development and can result in mild to moderate cognitive delays. While every person with Down syndrome has unique traits and degrees of abilities, a few of the condition’s common physical characteristics include smaller stature, slightly upward-slanting eyes and low muscle tone, according to NDSS.
This low muscle tone is part of what prompted Sarah’s mom, Rose, a nurse with a degree in exercise science, to introduce her daughter to yoga. Rose felt yoga would help develop core strength, which would in turn boost Sarah’s coordination and ability to breathe deeply – a practice that would circulate more oxygen to her brain, Rose says. She soon discovered that yoga before bedtime also helped Sarah relax and sleep better.
Now, Sarah practices yoga regularly – even the “sculpting” variety with hand weights. She practices at after-school classes and at home with DVDs. (Her favorite DVDs are those hosted by fitness instructor Denise Austin because they’re fun, calm and relaxing, her mother says.) Sarah tells U.S. News more about her yoga practice. Her responses have been edited.
What’s your favorite part about yoga?
I like the music in the background, and I like the stretching because it’s fun, and it feels relaxing. The stretching helps with my running because I’m more stretched out.
Do you have a favorite stretch?
I like the bridge, and I like doing child’s pose at the end.
What’s been your biggest challenge with yoga?
I have a hard time balancing on one leg sometimes, but I’ve gotten better.
Do you have any advice for people new to yoga?
Do the same video every day until you get good at it. Keep doing yoga, even if it’s hard. It gets better the more you work at it. And you will feel so good after you’re done.
I love Anne Lamott. She is among my favorite writers because of her raw, honest turn of phrase and her fearlessness that allows her to cut right to the chase. In her efforts to thoroughly understand herself, she is a mirror for her readers.
In 2009, she wrote this gorgeous article in O, The Oprah Magazine, about how to be who you are meant to be. Her advice is this: stop. Figure out what to stop doing, who to stop pleasing, and where you don’t need to be. It’s akin to the advice that learning what not to do gets us closer to figuring out what to do. And then I would also add that you meditate because while you may be able to stop physically, you need to also give your brain a break from its tireless whirr of thoughts.
Enjoy this article and then tuck it away in your folder labeled “inspiring writing to read when I’m feeling down on my luck.” You are not alone in the pursuit of your own greatness; we’re all here with you, doing exactly the same thing.
“We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be. The only problem is that there is also so much other stuff, typically fixations with how people perceive us, how to get more of the things that we think will make us happy, and with keeping our weight down. So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren’t? How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?
Here’s how I became myself: mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with my best women friends; the loss of people without whom I could not live, the loss of pets that left me reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty, and overall, choosing as my motto William Blake’s line that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love.
Oh, yeah, and whenever I could, for as long as I could, I threw away the scales and the sugar.
When I was a young writer, I was talking to an old painter one day about how he came to paint his canvases. He said that he never knew what the completed picture would look like, but he could usually see one quadrant. So he’d make a stab at capturing what he saw on the canvas of his mind, and when it turned out not to be even remotely what he’d imagined, he’d paint it over with white. And each time he figured out what the painting wasn’t, he was one step closer to finding out what it was.
You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don’t think your way into becoming yourself.
I can’t tell you what your next action will be, but mine involved a full stop. I had to stop living unconsciously, as if I had all the time in the world. The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. So one day I did stop. I began consciously to break the rules I learned in childhood: I wasted more time, as a radical act. I stared off into space more, into the middle distance, like a cat. This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights. I wasted more paper, printing out instead of reading things on the computer screen. (Then I sent off more small checks to the Sierra Club.)
Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do. You get to change your mind—your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you. I cross one thing off the list of projects I mean to get done that day. I don’t know all that many things that are positively true, but I do know two things for sure: first of all, that no woman over the age of 40 should ever help anyone move, ever again, under any circumstances. You have helped enough. You can say no. No is a complete sentence. Or you might say, “I can’t help you move because of certain promises I have made to myself, but I would be glad to bring sandwiches and soda to everyone on your crew at noon.” Obviously, it is in many people’s best interest for you not to find yourself, but it only matters that it is in yours—and your back’s—and the whole world’s, to proceed.
And, secondly, you are probably going to have to deal with whatever fugitive anger still needs to be examined—it may not look like anger; it may look like compulsive dieting or bingeing or exercising or shopping. But you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger. It will not be a Hallmark card. It is not the yellow brick road, with lovely trees on both sides, constant sunshine, birdsong, friends. It is going to be unbelievably hard some days—like the rawness of birth, all that blood and those fluids and shouting horrible terrible things—but then there will be that wonderful child right in the middle. And that wonderful child is you, with your exact mind and butt and thighs and goofy greatness.
Dealing with your rage and grief will give you life. That is both the good news and the bad news: The solution is at hand. Wherever the great dilemma exists is where the great growth is, too. It would be very nice for nervous types like me if things were black-and-white, and you could tell where one thing ended and the next thing began, but as Einstein taught us, everything in the future and the past is right here now. There’s always something ending and something beginning. Yet in the very center is the truth of your spiritual identity: is you. Fabulous, hilarious, darling, screwed-up you. Beloved of God and of your truest deepest self, the self that is revealed when tears wash off the makeup and grime. The self that is revealed when dealing with your anger blows through all the calcification in your soul’s pipes. The self that is reflected in the love of your very best friends’ eyes. The self that is revealed in divine feminine energy, your own, Bette Midler’s, Hillary Clinton’s, Tina Fey’s, Michelle Obama’s, Mary Oliver’s. I mean, you can see that they are divine, right? Well, you are, too. I absolutely promise. I hope you have gotten sufficiently tired of hitting the snooze button; I know that what you need or need to activate in yourself will appear; I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard. To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are.”
“Beauty is whatever gives joy.” ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
They say beauty is the eye of the beholder. I say it’s all around us in the form of joy and happiness.
A smile on any face is beautiful.
A laugh or a giggle from anyone of any age is beautiful.
Sunshine, dancing, singing, art, and music of any variety are all forms of beauty because they give joy.
In our family and friends, furry and otherwise, there is an immeasurable amount of beauty.
I find beauty in even the smallest acts of kindness, grace, generosity, and gratitude. These are all paths to joy and we would do well to take them as often as possible.
Joy – it’s all I ever wish for. Beauty – it’s all I ever seek.
“Nothing in life is trivial. Life is whole wherever and whenever we touch it, and one moment or event is not less sacred than another. it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.” ~ Vimala Thakar
It all matters. The simple and the complex. The difficult and the easy. The joyful and the heartbreaking. Each moment comes to our door to teach us something – about ourselves, about others, and about the world and our place in it.
I’ve been wrestling with this idea a bit this week, trying to make sense of why things go haywire, why they fall apart, and what we do with the pieces that remain. As best I can tell, we pick them up one at a time and help others do the same. They don’t fit together neatly as they did before. But what they create is stronger, more unique, and reflects what we learned in the process of putting it all back together.
Difficult circumstances are hard to live. They’re hard to examine. They’re hard to release. But the process of getting through them, reflecting on what they taught us, and figuring out a way to move forward is an act of sacred healing in and of itself. We can be whole again.
“We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy of beauty and life for future generations.” ~ David Brower
After a long day of cleaning my apartment and packing up the last of my boxes, Phin and I took advantage of the late afternoon sunshine to stroll along the banks of the Hudson River. I was reminded of this quote by David Brower as I took in the scene. Rivers welcome everyone to relax and enjoy the view. They offer time for reflection. They give us the opportunity to take a deep breath, and then let it go.
That’s what we’re attempting to do with Compass Yoga. We are an organization that builds space for everyone to just be, a place where people can sit with their joy and their sorrow and recognize the wonder and beauty in all of it. We will hold a space for them to be safe, to let their minds power down for a while so that they can step out into the world fully revived. Like a river that flows and flows, we will be here for our students no matter what life has in store for them.
Christa Avampato 