I tell wonder-filled stories about hope and healing
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ~Mahatma Gandhi
This quote helped me understand why it’s so important to love our work. If we’re going to be happy then our minds, our hearts, and our actions have to link together. We spend so many of our waking hours working. We deserve to have those hours be put toward something that matters to us and to the world. So let’s live, work, and be happy.
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” ~ Mary Oliver
Within every day, even the hardest, most awful days, there is something wonderful that happens. If anyone asks me what I’ve been up to lately, this is what I’m going to say: “I’ve been out looking for all the wonderful things that make me happy I’m alive.”
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” ~ Joseph Campbell
In the hot, hot city last week, it was tough to keep our spirits up when all we wanted to do was lie down. In all of my yoga classes last week, the teachers emphasized balance. With the heat outside, we needed to take our practice slowly and with ease. Conversely when it’s cold outside, we tend to have practices that are more heating. We show up on the mat offering the practice that helps us to be in harmony with our nature and the Nature around us.
This same principle applies off the mat as well. When we find ourselves in a lethargic state, best to listen for what’s going on, and then give ourselves whatever gift we need to feel re-energized. When we find ourselves anxious, nervous, or out-of-sorts, we need to provide ourselves with comfort and security.
And here’s the best part: whatever we need at any moment can be found in the breath. As long as we are breathing, we have the ability to come back to balance. Balance is not a far-off goal; it’s a choice and we make it in every moment.
Right now, we have everything we need.
During my last teaching session this weekend in my therapeutic yoga teacher training, I had a student, Rebecca, who was having a tough time getting comfortable on her side. I placed more padding under her hip and that didn’t help. I called Arturo over and rather than just telling me what to do, he asked me a question to help me find my way – the mark of an exceptional teacher. “Does she need space or support?” he asked me. The support under Rebecca’s hip didn’t help, so she what she needed was space so her hip could relax. “And how can you give her space?” Arturo asked me. “Prop under the rib cage and under the knee so the hip floats,” I replied. He smiled his big, beautiful smile, and moved on. It was the proudest moment of my weekend. Maybe even the proudest moment of my teaching.
After the class, Arturo told me he had learned this question of space and support from Judith Lasater, a brilliant P.T. and yoga teacher who is deeply associated with therapeutic yoga. Arturo took a number of anatomy workshops with her as part of his holistic wellness training. Arturo has deep and varied credential as a certified yoga therapist and anatomy instructor, and also has a Master’s degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine, is a certified Craniosacral Therapist, and earned a 4th degree black belt in Aikido, “the Way of harmonious spirit”. He’s been teaching and working with students in all of these areas for 30+ years, and his accumulated, assimilated, deep wisdom shows in his manner and in all of his instruction. I highly recommend taking a workshop, retreat, or class with him whenever you have the chance.
I’ve thought a lot about the quote above by Arturo over the past few days. The best parts of yoga I find are in their application way off the mat – as we’re walking through our day, interacting with others, and building lives and relationships. Whenever we see someone with any kind of need, whether that’s an adjustment in a yoga posture, a problem at work, a problem in a relationship, or in dealing with an emotion like anger, trauma, sadness, loss, frustration, or anxiety, there is always an answer to the question, “do they need support or space?” Does someone need a hug or do they need to be left alone? Do they need advice or do they just need someone to listen silently?
Every challenge we face needs either support or space – the key to transformative care, teaching, and healing that helps students on the deepest levels is to know which to apply when.
During my yoga teacher training, my teacher Tracy would talk a lot about focus. One of my classmates asked her when we would know that we had tamed our “monkey minds”. She replied, “when you can meditate at a bus stop in Delhi.” We laughed. She didn’t; she was quite serious.
In that moment I started to think about different groups of people who could benefit from yoga if only they had access to affordable, conveniently located classes. It became clear to me that I truly wanted to provide yoga to underserved populations.
I came to yoga after a particularly difficult struggle with insomnia and anxiety. It took quite some time to crack the code because I didn’t really have a guide in the process. I had to figure it out on my own. Now that I’m healed, I want to be the guide to others that I wish I had when I started my practice.
I only have one thing to teach, and it’s simple though not easy. Robert Presin captures it beautifully in the quote above. You have everything you need. All the answers. All the abilities. All the knowledge. It lives in your gut. You know what you need to be well and whole. You don’t need to go somewhere else. You don’t need a new job or a new relationship or a new home. You don’t need anything except what sits within you now, at this very moment. Allow it to be.
We desperately seek happiness, peace, and harmony. We scurry around looking for it in every far-reaching corner. Just stop and sit. Close the eyes, draw the breath in, and then release it. You don’t need some fancy techniques or even the vocabulary to describe what’s happening. Just sit, breath, and be. Don’t perform. Don’t try to make an impression. Just watch and feel the breath.
This is the only practice that matters. Once you master it, once you can be fully present, the peace and happiness you want so much is readily and plentifully available whenever you want it, wherever we are. On top of mountains and at over-crowded bus stops. Your peace travels with you.
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On the heels of yesterday’s post, I’ve been thinking a lot about heart and passion and why we show up when, where, and for whom. For a while, we can get away with putting in just enough effort and time, the minimum requirement. Things will crank along at an ok speed. The work will get done. Most people will think the result is just fine.
The problem is that working listlessly eventually takes a tremendous toll on our psyche and our spirit. It dulls our senses and our intellect. It makes us less of who we are, and that’s the last thing that the world needs, especially right now. What the world needs is all of us at our very best, bringing all of our gifts and talents and attention to bear. There’s no glory in spending our days in a holding pattern.
We need to show up every day, at home, at work, at play, with an open heart and an open mind. We don’t have time to phone it in. Really, life is precious and fleeting and we don’t get to choose how much of it we have. We only control the amount of joy we pack into it. And the world can’t wait for us. If need be, it will drag us kicking and screaming toward our better future.
I would rather just take the world by the hand, and go along smiling toward the bright, happy days ahead where I’m using my heart and my mind in equal measure. The only work we have to do is the world we’re meant to do. Everything else is just a distraction.
Yesterday, the fam and I headed out to New Smyrna Beach, Florida. We splashed around in the salty surf, hung out on the sand in our sun dome – so much better than an umbrella, collected seashells, and looked for jellies washed in by the waves (my niece, Lorelei’s, favorite beach activity). Perfect temperatures, both air and water, made for a relaxing, care-free afternoon.
My sister, Weez, snapped pictures of us and as I looked at those photos I was reminded of how special days and moments like these will be treasured for many years to come. My nieces are growing fast. I imagined how we’d think about these days when the girls are older, how we’d long for these very moments as life trolls on. I was glad and grateful to appreciate them in real-time, for what they are now and what they will mean in the days ahead.
That awareness is something I’m working to harness. We have special moments all the time; we just don’t always know they were special until they’ve passed. I’d like to catch them by the tail as they whiz by, in the hopes that I can hang on to them for just a little bit longer.
The image above is a picture of New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
“Just as cotton is swayed in the direction of the winds coming and going, so should one surrender oneself to one’s enthusiasm, and in this way one’s supernormal powers will thrive. ” ~ Shantideva ch. 7 v 75
Beth, one of the most supportive readers on the planet, sent me a comment with this quote a few days ago. I keep mulling it over in my mind. Life has to be filled with what gives us energy, what lifts us up, and as we rise we can take others with us. Enthusiasm is contagious, and if we let it guide our actions, if we let it choose the road we should be on, I’m convinced that our success will be inevitable.
We could spend a lot of time worrying and wondering what we should do, what others wants us to do. But when we’re on our dharma, when we’re on the road we are meant to be on, enthusiasm cannot help but bubble to the top. So do at Shantideva says. Let yourself be cotton and let yourself be swayed by the current of your own enthusiasm. I can’t wait to hear what superpowers you find within your own heart. Let me know how it goes so I can cheer you on.
And thank you, Beth, as always, for these words of wisdom.
The image above is not my own. It can be found here.
Tonight I spent 3 hours at Sonic Yoga – 1.5 hours practicing and 1.5 hours observing. At the start of my practice, my yoga teacher, Stacey, asked us to consider moments in our lives that were completely right, when we felt everything in our lives was working together in harmony. “I bet all your chakras were aligned and that you weren’t trying too hard. Right just happened,” she said.
I thought about a few long walks in the park when I couldn’t help but smile at how lucky I am to have the life I have. I thought about how my body literally flew down the stairs to get me out of my apartment building during the fire so that I wouldn’t be harmed. When I ran the Chicago marathon and saw the finish line up ahead after 26.2 long miles, I could feel myself running outside of my own body, every cell working together in harmony. The first time I held my niece, Lorelei, or when I sat on the steps of my apartment building with our dog, Sebastian, both of us feeling the wind in our ears, everything felt like it was as it should be. Most recently, I thought about a few moments during my birthday party last weekend when I looked around and saw so many faces I love, all together.
“A yoga practice is about helping us to have more right moments in our lives,” Stacey said as she closed the class. Now isn’t that a beautiful goal for a practice?
The image above is not my own. I can be found here.
I love to talk and on occasion someone says something to me that’s so striking that I cannot let it pass without writing about it. A friend of mine recently had her supervisor tell her that she creates a work environment that is too harmonious. I was so stunned by this comment that all I could do was laugh. And once that laughter subsided, I found the very core of this comment to be highly disturbing.
The American workplace right now, particularly in large corporations, is a tough place to be every day. Layoff rounds seem never ending and are referred to with a dizzying array of synonyms: “right-sizing”, “restructuring”, “displacement”, “down-scaling”, and the list goes on. At the end of the day a lot of very talented, bright, dedicated high performers are losing their jobs. Morale is low and bad behaviors abound as a result of fear, angst, and disappointment.
Layer all of these bad sentiments into my friend’s situation. Despite the fact that morale is very low at her company and the environment there is like a pressure cooker these days, she has found a way to bring some sense of harmony to her team and her projects. And the feedback to her is she creates too much harmony?! If she were ineffective at her job and unable to get anything done, I could possibly understand the feedback though that is not at all the case. She’s one of the highest performers in her department, due in large part to her ability to create winning strategies that are widely supported by others.
By saying please and thank you, and recognizing the hard work of her team she is being criticized by her boss who is unable to create any kind of good will due to his bad attitude and propensity for bullying. With all the anxiety in the world, we should welcome the contributions of people who can restore a sense of order and calm, particularly in the workplace. In the case of harmony, there can’t be too much of a good thing.
Christa Avampato 
