“This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past.” ~ Agathon
My sister, Weez, pinned this picture on one of her Pinterest boards last week. I love it because I love the story of The Lion King and I also love it because it is so damn true. I know you’ve had really crummy things happen to you. I have, too. Unless you have access to a time machine, you can’t undo what has been done. (And even if you do have access to a time machine, I wouldn’t recommend monkeying around with the past – history is a chancy business.)
What we can do is carry the lessons of our past, and the pasts of others, forward into our own future choices and decision-making. We can run from the past but we will never outrun it. It has a sneaky way of coming back to haunt us if we don’t honor its power to profoundly affect our future.
I know sitting with the past and accepting our own wrong-doing and the wrong-doing of others is unpleasant. But if we don’t do the work to excavate and understand what happened and why, then a) it was all for naught and b) we are bound to repeat those same mistakes again. What’s worse, repeat mistakes are more painful than they were the first time around.
None of us are alone in this process. Even the person with the perfect life on the outside has things in their past that made them crumble on the inside. We’re all scared to death to have our hearts broken, our dreams dashed, and our spirits crushed. That’s a journey we all take together every day. We all have a past. We all have baggage. And all of us wish it had been different, but it wasn’t. Our past went down the way it went down. The only story we can affect is the one moving forward.
Take those painful, heard-earned lessons and make them mean something. Take them into your own life and share your story so that other people can take these same lessons into their own lives. The only way any of us are going to advance and evolve is if we get together, share, and learn. Don’t let this learning go to waste. It all happened for one simple reason – we needed it.
“The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?” ~ Arabian Proverb
As a teacher I spend a lot of time thinking about language and how I communicate the material I want students to learn. The teachers whom I admire most are those who not only communicate clearly and succinctly but also eloquently and poetically. These are the lessons that stay with me long after the class is over.
So how do we know what to say? How do we figure out exactly the right words at exactly the right time? This quote that suggests using truth, kindness, and necessity as filters gives us three clear lenses through which to filter our words so that they have impact and resonance. Words are gifts we give to everyone who hears them. Words are tools; make them tools for goodness.
“My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.” ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson via DailyGood.org
Are you annoyed? Be thankful for the object of your irritation.
Having a naturally constitution that some describe as “spicy” and “fire-y”, I often find my annoyance barometer rising. At least as my initial reaction. New York presents some hefty challenges in every day living. From just trying to get coffee to getting on the subway to get to work during rush hour, New York can be a relentless button-pusher.It can also be an incredible partner on the path to transformation. This city is Darwin’s perfect test case for his theory of evolution – in this place, we have the grim choice to “change or die”, at least metaphorically. In reality, it’s closer to the idea “adjust or be constantly irritated”. I choose to adjust, and it’s been a blessing to master that skill.
Contrary to some recent research, I don’t believe we can change our natural reactions. It’s a much more efficient use of our energy to change our actions that are caused by our reactions. Recently I’ve deployed a new way of dealing with my initial reactions of irritation. I take the SBNRR train – stop, breathe, notice, reflect, and respond. And though that process seems like it may take more than a split second to execute, we can actually do this in the moment once we consciously and consistently practice it for a short period of time. I’ve found my recent responses to obstacles to be much more graceful and thoughtful than ever before thanks to SBNRR.
The Universe has a lot of knowledge to offer and some of the deepest lessons are served up in moments of great risk and change. Risk and change can feel unsettling at the outset but don’t back down. Soak it up, let it sink in, and then take it for what it’s worth – a great chance to learn and grow.
“Variation is great, but make sure you’re grounded in the basics first.” ~ Wendy Newton, ISHTA Yoga Senior Teacher
On Sunday, I went to a session on meditation techniques at ISHTA Yoga as part of my advanced yoga teacher training. Wendy, one of our teachers, fielded questions from us about the basic meditation techniques we’re learning. One of my classmates asked about using and teaching modifications to meditation techniques as we’re learning them.
Wendy encouraged us to get grounded in the basics. She used the analogy of learning to play music. All musicians want to play complex, complicated pieces right off the bat but in order to find the richness in those compositions, they need to start with the scales. There’s no way around that. We build a house on top of a foundation rather than trying to squeeze the foundation underneath a constructed house. We learn to create grands meals by first learning to make toast, boil an egg, and chop vegetables.
Learning meditation is no different. We would do ourselves a favor to know the basics, get grounded, and grow from there in everything that we do. Of course it’s entirely possible to move through this beginning phase very quickly, but everyone moves through it in some fashion. Have patience and diligence in equal amounts and everything becomes possible.
A picture I took on my first day of my "a picture a day" - daffodils in Union Square, low contrast color setting
For Christmas, my family gave me cash and Amazon gift certificates so that I could put that money toward getting a new digital camera. My old one started to develop its quirks and had been put to goo use for many years. Because I know India will be filled with gorgeous photo opportunities, I wanted to make sure I had a camera that was up to the challenge.
After much research I settled on a Nikon S9100. It’s a bit more camera than I know how to use, but I got such a good deal that I went for it. Though I’ve read the manual, I’ve been reluctant to use anything but the auto mode. The multitude of options served as a great big hurdle and for some reason I was afraid to jump. Irrational, but truthful.
I was recanting this story to my friend, Amy, when she gave me one simple piece of advice. “Take one picture a day, every day. It’s small so you can carry with you everywhere. Take a picture without being concerned with how it turns out. Just choose a setting, snap, and see how it goes.” It’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard about photography. It’s also a wonderful guiding principle for life.
Take a big goal and break it down, day by day, frame by frame. Take it, watch, and learn. Practice is for its own sake.
I arrived at my community yoga class 30 minutes early. An older gentleman was waiting outside of the door. Seeing he walked with a cane, I wondered if he might be in the wrong place.
“Are you here for yoga?” I asked brightly.
“What else would I be here for? Are you the instructor? I’m Bob.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He just walked into the room. He reminded me of Mr. Fredricksen in the movie Up and I was about to be his Russell.
I went down the hall to the ladies room to change and began to panic. You may think yoga teachers are not allowed to panic because we are just supposed to let the teaching flow through us from the mystical universe. Think again. I’ve had an extraordinarily stressful couple of weeks, and my head had been throbbing since lunch. And now I had to figure out how to manage a class with a man who has a cane, and who I think may be triple my age?
“I can’t do this,” I sighed to myself in the mirror.
And then my usually tiny intuition strongly rose up out of my gut, “Stop whining and teach.”
My intuition has grown tired of my self-doubt. I listened. I picked up my bag and went down the hall to our classroom, chucking my entire plan for class right out the window.
My endlessly supportive friend, Tre, had arrived and another regular student would join us a few moments later. As Bob set up his mat I asked him if he had any health issues I should know about.
“None,” he said smiling. “I’m really healthy.”
“Are you sure, Bob?” I asked. “High blood pressure, high cholesterol?”
“Nope. I just want to do what everyone else in the class does.”
“I see you walk with a cane,” I said, letting my voice go up as if it were a question.
“Well, yeah, I had a hip replacement about 15 years ago. I’m probably due for another one soon. But at my age, 92, I can’t complain.”
92. 92? 92! Bob is certainly the oldest ambulatory student I’ve ever taught, particularly in a mixed level community class. For a time I taught on the Geriatric Psych floor at New York Methodist Hospital, but it was a chair yoga class, I had nurses and therapists to assist the patients, and most patients were quite far along their journey with dementia. Teaching with Bob, alongside healthy young women, was a new experience entirely.
I was nervous so I started asking questions to find a way in, to relate. We learned Bob was born in Brooklyn and has lived in New York City all his life except for his years in the Navy during World War II. He now lives just a few blocks away in a rent-controlled walk-up. His 94-year-old brother doesn’t do yoga – not hard enough for him – and goes to the YMCA 3 days a week to swim and bike.“He’s in even better physical shape than me,” he said with a bit of surprise in his voice.
I wish I could tell you I went on to give a brilliant class. I didn’t. I was nervous for Bob the whole time. I rarely give hands on adjustments in these community classes but Bob needed me and I had to be there for him. I struggled to figure out how to honor each of the students and their time in class, giving them the practice they each needed while taking care that Bob didn’t have something terrible happen to him while in my care.Additionally, I wanted to honor and respect Bob’s desire to be independent.
I take the health and protection of my students very seriously, and with this curve ball I found myself improvising all over the place. This place didn’t feel good. I was failing badly.
Towards the end of the class, and I mean the bitter end, I began to find my groove. Better late than never I guess. As we wrapped up and everyone got their belongings together, Bob gave us a tip of his hat as he walked out of the room, cane in hand.
“See you next time,” he called over his shoulder.
No one was more surprised than me. And maybe that’s the lesson I needed to learn from Bob – if you hang in there, especially when you feel yourself failing, and if you rise up and continually try to offer your very best, no matter how good or not good you think it may be, you’ll get through just fine. And you can bring others right along with you.
Jeremy Gleick. Photo by Peter DaSilva for The New York Times.
I’d never heard of Jeremy Gleick until this weekend. On a snowy Saturday, the first snowy day of the year, Phineas and I were snuggled up in our apartment. He in his bed with his favorite squeaky toy and me on the couch with the New York Times. There was a special education section in the paper and Jeremy Gleick was featured in an article appropriately titled “Renaissance Man.”
Several years ago, Jeremy instituted the Learning Hour in his life. Every day for 4 years he has set aside an hour every single day, no matter where he is or what’s happening in his life, to learn something new and completely unrelated to his school work. (Jeremy is a sophomore at UCLA.) He has just crossed the 1000th hour mark.
I read this article astounded at his dedication and foresight at such a young age. I found myself thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great to have that extra time?” And then I remembered my post from just a few days ago on finding time. I do have the time; what makes the difference is how I choose to use it. I write every day. I do yoga every day. I take care of my dog, teach yoga and meditation, run a nonprofit, and maintain a fulfilling social life. Is there another hour in there for something totally unrelated to all of my current projects? And if there is, wouldn’t it be better spent working on one of the projects I already have going on?
I settled in to my meditation to think about this idea, and from deep within I could feel an answer rise – “Christa, you can’t work on your business all the time.” Sometimes that little voice has a point so good I can’t ignore it. It was right – I need to give myself more of a break. And it doesn’t make me lazy and it doesn’t mean I lack commitment. It just means I’m human.
As we maintain a full-time job and try to build a side business at the same time, it’s tempting to use all our free time for work. This isn’t healthy or wise. We need to maintain a balance. We need time away, learning things that have absolutely nothing to do with any of our current work. Our bodies need rest; so do our brains and our imaginations.
Buddhists believe that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
Native Americans believe that when a soul comes into our lives it is because it has something to teach us and when we lose someone close to us it is a signal we learned all we could from them.
I believe in both philosophies.
A year ago, my dog, Phineas, came into my life unexpectedly. He was found in the woods, abandoned by his owner and starving. He is perfectly trained in every way except one – he has horrible separation anxiety. He isn’t destructive in any physical way – he just cries a lot when I leave the apartment. He will go long stretches of time without making a peep when I leave, but then goes through terrible spurts of discomfort and stress.
On Saturday, I enlisted the help of a trainer through the company Barkbusters. Though pricier than other trainers, I chose them because they specialize in separation anxiety and they come with a lifetime guarantee. Yes, you read that correctly. A lifetime guarantee – they will return as often as I need them to for the remainder of Phineas’s life and help with any behavior challenge we may have wherever we may live. And my trainer is available at any time, day or night, by email or phone. A worthwhile investment. My only wish is that I had found them sooner, though finding them now, at this point in my own healing journey, brought home a very important realization that only now can I understand and appreciate.
I thought Phineas’s anxiety was from the fear that once I left I may never come back. And while that’s the base fear, here’s the nuance that our trainer taught me: Phineas isn’t worried for himself; he’s worried for me.
He’s on security detail and as such, he feels that he needs to protect me and keep me safe so that way I can continue to take care of him. When I go out into the big, scary world, he’s worried I will be harmed because he isn’t there to protect me. He has no way to control the situation and that lack of control mixed with fear is causing his anxiety. He’s taken on the job of being my body-guard and it’s not a role he is equipped for, nor a burden he should be responsible to bear. He hates this job, but he thinks it’s the only way he can assure that he won’t be abandoned again.
Isn’t that wild?!
Not really. I understand that feeling all too well. Dogs and children process information in such a similar way.
When I was a very young child, I was very aware that my father would never be able to take care of me. I knew that my mother was the only one in our household equipped to take care of me until I got big enough to take of myself. I worried constantly that something terrible would happen to my mother and that I’d be left with my father, which effectively meant I’d be on my own to take care of myself before I was ready.
It was a horrible burden to bear – I developed insomnia, headaches, and intense stress. I did my very best to compensate and cope, but as a young child there was no way for me to logically process my fears. I didn’t have the skills to do that. So I worked very hard in school because I linked doing well in school with getting a good job that would give me the income to provide for myself. I fought very hard to become as independent as possible as soon as I could. And while to the outside world I was a wonderfully adapted and well-adjusted child, I would argue that this adaptation and adjustment came at a very dear price. A price I still pay though am now able to articulate, understand, and repay as I heal. My yoga and meditation practices went a long toward than end. They still do.
Phineas and I are in the same boat – different cause, same effect. And if I can help him heal, really heal on a very deep level, then that will go a very long way toward healing my own inner child who still worries that she’ll be abandoned and still struggles to believe that I will always be able to take care of myself. Truly believing this last piece is the key to the confidence it takes to leap into entrepreneurship. Phineas was part of the Universe’s great plan for me and my work.
I thought by adopting Phineas that I was changing his life, and I certainly am doing just that. But he’s also changing mine, far more than he knows. As I watch him at this very moment sleeping peacefully in his bed, I’m even more determined to help him if for no other reason than to thank him for his soul’s incredible sacrifice for the sake of my soul’s healing.
Cesar Millan is famous for saying that he rehabilitates dogs and he trains people. This is certainly the case for me and for Phin. The calmer and more confident I can become through my own yoga and mediation practice, the more I can help him. And his healing will speed my healing. It’s a virtuous cycle that I am finally ready to begin.
We pack up fear; we push it away. We focus our efforts on beating fear, and when we can’t beat it we try our best to ignore it. What if we could embrace it? What if we could make it our mission to do exactly the thing that scares us most?
I’ve been thinking a lot about fear and how to hold it close. Compass Yoga scares me on a daily basis, not because I’m worried that we can’t live up to the mission but because what we’re taking on is such an enormous, gangly, unwieldy mess.
We want to greatly alter the healthcare system. We want yoga and meditation to stop being “alternative therapies” and fully integrate them into traditional treatment plans. As accepting as society may be of yoga and meditation for the well, it’s still quite new to think that yoga teachers could and should be on par with medical doctors and therapists when it comes to assessment and treatment of those who have serious health challenges. And yet, in spite of the fear, I know this is the right direction for our healthcare system from a moral, scientific, and financial perspective. This thinking is new, and scary.
Fear is not remarkable. Everyone, every day has fears of varying degrees. It always interests me to know what keeps others going, especially when they’re petrified of what they’re doing. I used to think that we could move ahead once we got rid of fear, and so I set about looking for ways to banish it from my system. I have always met a bit of frustration in this area because my fears never seem to fully dissipate. They stick with me – sometimes as just a little nagging voice in the back of my mind and sometimes as the star on center stage with a big ass microphone. Fear and I hang out on a very regular basis.
There are two people who keep me moving forward: my dad and his story and the too-soon ending of his life, and Richard Nixon. When I saw the play Frost/Nixon, I began to understand how disappointment can take someone down, how enough shame and embarrassment about our circumstances and choices can fundamentally warp our view of the world and the people around us. In that moment, I also began to forgive my dad. The play contains a very dark scene where Richard Nixon, played brilliantly by Frank Langella, calls David Frost and explains a part of his back story that helps us to understand how pride, when taken too far, can move us into a dangerous state of unsupported arrogance that consumes us.
I hate to say this, but I actually felt a great deal of sympathy for Richard Nixon as a result of that scene. Me, a liberal through and through, felt badly for Richard Nixon. I understand now that the sympathy I felt for Richard Nixon in that moment is the same sympathy that has allowed me to understand my dad.
Like Richard Nixon, my dad was an incredibly insecure, embarrassed, and disappointed man. He lived most of his life that way and he died that way His fear of never living a worthwhile life eventually consumed him. Beneath that thin veil of arrogance, there was a man who feared his life would never amount to wait he wanted it to be. And he couldn’t take in that fear. Eventually it overwhelmed him.
The irony in the midst of this sad and unfortunate story is that my dad’s example has saved my life, and continues to save it every day. I keep moving forward with Compass Yoga, my writing, and my teaching because I have seen what becomes of someone who can’t embrace fear, who looks in the mirror and sees too much time gone by without doing what he really wanted to do with his life. When I look in the mirror, I see him in my eyes staring back at me. We are not so different; all that separates us are our choices about fear: to keep moving or become paralyzed.
We could all be my dad. We could all be Richard Nixon. Every day, we all come to a fork in the road, “two roads diverged in a yellow wood“. And at each junction, there’s one common underlying choice: do we embrace fear or do we vow to wait it out? If we embrace it, live the very thing that frightens us, then we can keep moving. Choose to wait it out and the world will eventually pass us by.
“We seek not rest, but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways.” ~Marge Piercy
A funny thing happens to me around 5pm every day. I can have a very tough day around the office, so tough that I feel like just curling up in a ball and hiding until tomorrow. And then I take the elevator down to the ground floor, push open the door, and suddenly the lightness returns, the fatigue lifts, and I’m ready for hours of working on my personal projects, seeing friends, and being out and about in this wild city. I don’t need rest after a tough day in cube-ville. I need a change of scene that inspires a transformation of self.
You might be looking at the screen right now and considering a pity party on my behalf. “Poor Christa. She really needs to quit her job and just work for herself.” Yes, eventually I will have to work for myself and those wheels are greased and in motion. These things take time and planning, particularly in this tricky economy. Every day I am taking one more step toward that big new beginning. I have a feeling it’s going to happen far sooner than my long-term plan suggests, though I am learning great lessons along the journey that I know will be invaluable down the line.
The people we meet, the places we go, and the experiences we have are doorways to something new – sometimes a whole new beginning, sometimes just a slight realization that causes us to take in the world with a different perspective. We do not immediately know the impact of these learnings. We wonder why we have to be put through firestorms and discomfort, why we have to wrestle with uncertainty and dissatisfaction and disappointment. And here’s why: it is the learning we need now.
It can all be valuable if we take the time to assign the value. And yes, we assign the value to our trials. We are responsible for our own learning; we are responsible for our own transformation.
Christa Avampato 