Category: yoga

encouragement, yoga

Beginning: The Human Factor of Yoga

Christa Avampato

I’ve been known to have a fiery side of my personality. I’m a deeply passionate, committed person, I don’t take no for answer (or at least I don’t take it well), and I fully believe in the way of the will. Wherever I go, I go with all my heart. No one who has ever met me would describe me as passive. Couple this with a petite frame, and some people walk away from a first meeting with me completely perplexed, or if I’m lucky, intrigued. “How does so much fire live in one small body?” they might ask themselves. “And wait, she practices yoga? How can THAT be?” My answer, as it is so often: my yoga is the reason.

Too often yoga is equated with peace and love and butterflies. It is all of those things, and it’s something more, too. Yoga is about authenticity. Yoga is about feeling everything, even the things that don’t feel so great. As practitioners, and particularly as yoga teachers, we sit with a lot of suffering, anguish, fear, and anxiety. We feel envy, jealousy, anger, disappointment, sadness, loneliness, isolation, fear, and betrayal. All of the ugly emotions of life that we wish there were less of. Yoga doesn’t eradicate those emotions from our lives. If anything, it heightens them. We free them more profoundly than many other people.

And here’s the magic of it all: because we feel those emotions so profoundly, we learn lessons on the deepest of levels and then we can move on. Yoga doesn’t prevent discomfort; it gives us tool to confront discomfort head on and work through it with grace and strength. It helps us to hold our heads high during painful moments and appreciate joy, love, gratitude, and all the beautiful emotions of life all the more. Yoga helps us to carry on.

learning, yoga

Beginning: Practice Makes Better

Christa Avampato

“Practice is the best of all instructors.” ~ Publilius Syrus, Roman author, 1st century B.C.

I recently went to Paula Lynch’s class at Yoga Works. The class was beautifully sequenced and I learned so much about alignment in the process. She spent a good deal of time prepping our arms and backs because the class culminated in practicing our form in handstand and headstand, two asanas I very much need to practice and that few classes ever attempt. Some yogis can lift up into these postures with both legs at the same time. I cannot. I need to use one leg to gently kick into the postures, and my right leg is my dominant leg.

Paula asked us to practice with our non-dominant or vacation leg. This was very challenging for me. I could easily get into handstand with my right leg. When I used my left leg I struggled to even been in the posture for a moment. As Paula made her rounds through the class, I flagged her over and asked if she could help me figure out why I had so much trouble using my left leg to kick up.

“Do you practice with your vacation leg?” she asked me.

“Well, no, but I was just…,” I stuttered.

“Then go home and practice with that leg.”

“But I’m thinking maybe it’s my form with that leg…”

“No. You just don’t practice with it.”

“So I should practice with both legs equally?”

Now she was getting annoyed. “No. Practice with your vacation left every day until you get it. It’s kind of like driving a car. When you get in a car for the first time, you aren’t going to be able to drive. You need to practice. Yoga’s no different.“ And she promptly turned around and walked off to the next student.

I left the class a little annoyed with her. She didn’t have to be rude. I was just asking a question. There was a nicer way to say what she was saying, though the lesson was not lost on me. I heard it loud and clear, and it makes perfect sense.

We expect so much from ourselves. In Paula’s curt words, she was telling me to be kinder to myself, to understand that we never learn to do anything without practice. This is particularly important when we are just starting out on the road to a new skill, or in this case a new way of getting into an asana. It takes time, patience, and work. 

career, choices, yoga

Beginning: The Battle Between the Belly and the Eye

Christa Avampato
A quote from my favorite yogi

“The Sage considers the belly, not the eye.” ~ The Way and Its Power

In the past few weeks, I’ve been wrestling through a next step I’d like to take in my life and career. My interest is in building healthy systems, whether those systems are in healthcare settings, work environments, schools, and in the personal lives of people. My conflict has been whether to continue my training in yoga (NYC is home to a few of the top 500 hour training schools), pursue a different path of training through another graduate degree, or start a new adventure in a form of healing other than yoga. I’ve pro/coned and decision-treed my way to bleary eyes on more than one late evening. All these paths seem to be evenly matched.

I revisited my friend, Susan‘s, advice on careers – compare options to what you really want, not to each other. With this particular decision, I had a hard time making that distinction. It seemed that all of these paths could help me down the road toward turning my career toward building healthy systems. No one way seems surer than the others. On top of Susan’s brilliant advice, I had to grab another piece of her advice from her book The Right Job, Right Now: I had to consider my life values outside of just career in order to make this choice. In other words, I need to look in more than look out.

In my gut, I know:
1.) I am so happy to be nearing an end to my student loans. Being free of debt is very important to me.
2.) I truly relish my free time when I can use to pursue my own projects
3.) No matter what I’ve faced in my life, my yoga and my meditation practices have been there for me, available wherever I go. They are critically important to me.

Though all of these options are good options, in my belly, my gut, it seems like the right choice is to continue down the yoga path for now. I am always open to more information and additional insight. In the immediate future, more training in yoga that focuses on anatomy, alignment, and keeping students safe in class feels like the right place for me to be. And I couldn’t know that by looking out into the world. As The Way and Its Power so beautifully conveys, the way forward is in.  

student, teaching, yoga

Beginning: A Letter to My Yoga Students

Christa Avampato

Yesterday I wrote a post about the importance of figuring out whom your business or organization serves and why you’re the ideal person to fulfill that need for your stakeholders. In it, I partially described the type of yoga student whom we focus our efforts on at Compass Yoga. I got a few emails that asked me to elaborate on that topic so I decided to write an open letter to those students. Letters are a favorite form factor of mine in writing. They are powerful, personal, and heart-felt. Some say we’ve lost the art of letter writing in our society. If that’s the case, then I mean to bring it back. (On this blog, I’ve written letters to President Obama and My Younger Self.) 

Dear Students – past, present, and future,
      I’ve been working on gaining the skills to help you by examining my own life and focusing on my own healing. The healthier I am, the more I have to give to you. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, and for that I apologize. I wish I could have been available to help you sooner though healing happens on its own schedule and of its own accord. In this journey I learned that every moment unfolds exactly as it should, and in that revelation I have been able to find and feel real forgiveness, of myself and others.

      You are at the beginning of a brave and courageous journey that will lead you home to you, to your true essence. Congratulations on your quest for authenticity. Stop for a moment and celebrate that enormous step. It takes a lot of gumption to go in search of you; revel in the fact that you are embarking on a project that everyone should undertake and few ever do. You are to be celebrated for having the strength to even try.

      This road is not easily traveled. There are pitfalls and mountainous climbs. Some days will be smooth sailing, and others will be wrought with difficulty. I will be with you through all of it. I can’t tell you what to do or why or for how long; I can promise you that I will show up every day with everything I have. You will always have my focus and my compassion. We will walk this road together, and we will both be better off for it. I promise you that it will all be okay.  

      You may have some type of illness, mental or physical. You may be dealing with the heaviness of life in its many forms. You may need to find your way after a long period of wandering. Your age, physical or mental condition, race, religion, ethnicity, marital status, and socioeconomic circumstances do not define you in my eyes, nor in my heart. Come as you are and make yourself at home next to me. People have told you to try yoga or meditation or some other kind of mindful practice. You’ve decided it’s time to give it a shot and you are wondering where and how and with whom to begin. You have come to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. I am for you because I have been in your shoes and I know how it feels to begin this journey to healing.

       Take a comfortable seat, close your eyes, and breathe. This is where we begin and end, breathing in and breathing out, respectively. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here, just as you are.

Love,
Christa

dogs, Life, time, to-do lists, work, writing, yoga

Beginning: How I Find the Time

Christa Avampato

“You have to live your life spherically, in many directions.” ~ Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

A lot of people ask me how I can live such a varied life with so many interests that don’t necessarily fit together in a logical way. I like being a Renaissance woman; I love figuring just how all the pieces come together, even if on the surface they seem to have nothing to do with each other. I am a firm believer in connections and relationships.

I’ve struggled a bit to come up with a good answer for people who truly want to know how I fit it all in, how all these subjects and activities can live side-by-side in my brain. Part of it is my training – I’ve been on a vertical learning curve all my life, so much so that it’s where I’m most comfortable and engaged. I like having a challenge nip at me until I crack the code. For me, that’s play.

But people don’t like that answer. It’s not enough of a silver bullet. And then it dawned on me (in the lady’s room, if you must know!): most people don’t give a hoot how I fit it all in and maintain so many simultaneous interests. They want to know how THEY can do that. They want “the how” that they can replicate. Now I’ve got a bit of a better answer to their question.

Generally, this is how time works in my brain:
In the morning, I am in list mode. I jot down everything I need to do for the day, in no particular order. I add to it throughout the day, though most of my to-do’s strike right when I wake up.

Some time between 5:30am and 6:30am I head out for a walk with my pup, Phineas. You might think this is a time suck because I walk him for a full hour and I don’t multi-task when I walk him. Trust me, I need it as much as he does. It clears my head to walk Phin and I find that the whole rest of my day is much more productive after I get some exercise with him. I often return with a mental list full of writing ideas and people I need to contact later on.

After my favorite meal, breakfast (another time when I don’t multi-task – I just focus on chewing), I plow through as much individual work (at home or at the office) as I can before noon because I’m a morning person and a late night person. I’m not so much of an afternoon person. (I blame my European roots for this!) If I’m commuting to work, I use the subway ride to flip through emails and read the top news stories, again making notes in my to-do list as they arise from my reading.

Then lunch rolls around and I usually read through lunch. Again, I check the news, get through some of my to-do list, and invariably add more to my to-do list. (I’ve noticed recently that I have a tendency to mindless gulp my lunch – I need to focus a bit more on my chewing this meal.)

Afternoons are for listening and gathering information. I try to have all of my meetings and phone calls in the afternoon. I’m sure there’s a brain study here, just waiting to happen. (Now adding this research to my to-do list!)

Most of the time I have plans after work, whether I’m teaching a class, taking a class, or seeing friends. That’s down time for me and recharges me for the evening. If I don’t have plans, then I take the time for myself at home.

When I arrive home, I play with Phin for a bit and read the note from his dog walker to see how he did in the afternoon. Sometimes we take a little jaunt around the block, depending upon how we’re both feeling.

I do some yoga and an 18-minute meditation every night. No matter what. I set get out my mat and bolster, set my timer, and get it done. No compromises.

Then I write, usually with Phineas sitting next to me. The writing part of my brain kicks in when the sun goes down. I’m not sure why – perhaps because the distractions of the day have fallen away by then. I feel like way up on the 17th floor, I can be alone with my thoughts when it’s dark outside. All the listening and gathering I’ve done throughout the day has had time to gel.

Yoga, meditation, and all of the personal work I’ve done over the last two years have paid off by banishing my lifetime of insomnia. Occasionally I toss and turn, though most of the time sleep finds me pretty easily. I take Phin out for a last quick minute (literally) and then I try to shut off the lights just after I catch the top stories of the 11pm news.

That’s an average work day for me. So far, it’s working though I’m always open to changing it up as needed. How does your day map out? How do you get it all done?

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.

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.

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.

nonprofit, yoga

Beginning: Meet the Compass Yoga Board of Directors

Christa Avampato

Last Monday, Compass Yoga held its first Board of Directors meeting. I had been anticipating that moment, dreaming about it, for many months now. I am beyond lucky and exceedingly grateful to these talented people who have made the decision to walk this path with me and build something truly extraordinary. I could go on and on about their gifts and achievements, but I will let them speak for themselves through their bios. To learn more about why they joined Compass Yoga, please click here.

 

Rob Lorey
Rob has over 20 years of performance and business experience in the entertainment industry. He has exhibited extensive leadership as a director, producer, and union liaison. In addition to his artistic work, he has taught theatre to professionals and children for over 15 years developing workshops, seminars, and master classes. Rob received his Masters of Social Work from Hunter College School of Social Work in 2009. As a social worker, he has developed programs within the LGBT community for teens and seniors, worked in hospice for the past five years, and mentored at risk youth while connecting them to college opportunities within the CUNY system. His current career endeavors involve social policy and advocacy.


Amy Rebecca Marsico
Amy has spent 15 years as a stage manager, producer, assistant director, and writer in both non-profit and commercial theater.

She holds a master’s degree in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding with a concentration in trauma healing. Amy is interested in the convergence of the arts and conflict resolution fields. As a trainer and facilitator, she has designed workshops for youth that employ the arts to teach trauma awareness skills, encourage resilience, address root causes of conflict, and build capacity through dialogue and education. She has also designed workshops for women and girls that explore gender and power issues.

Amy is the co-author of Transforming Trauma: An Interactive Role Play for Community Leaders and Caregivers – a piece that was used by the STAR program (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) to train civil society leaders on how to recognize and address trauma in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. She also wrote and compiled an Arts Resource Guide on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

Amy’s experience as a volunteer for the International Rescue Committee, where she helped resettle refugees from Sierra Leone, inspired her to work with people who have survived war and conflict. She has traveled to Bosnia where she had the privilege to speak with refugees and internally displaced persons about their experiences, and she has conducted interviews with refugees from Lebanon, Palestine, and the DRC. She spent six months at the UNHCR, the refugee agency of the UN, where she helped to develop the Heightened Risk Identification Tool, managed an awareness-raising project on child participation and was a contributing writer for several manuals and information sheets, including the Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming Guide. Amy is a roster member for the United Nations Volunteer Programme.

 

Lorenzo E. (Lon) Tibbitts
Lon is the Manager of Strategic Operations Planning for American Express Global Payment Options and also serves as Chairman and Director for Rite Care of Utah, a non-profit provider of free speech and reading therapy for children with speech or reading disabilities aged 2-12 with offices in Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah. He has previously served as Director of Advertising for Copperfield Publishing, President of Shoreline Ltd. and LaMirada Inc., both small venture capital firms, SVP of Utah Printing and Group Manager of the Granite Mountain Records Vaults.

Lon was educated in Literature and Economics at the University of Maryland and Brigham Young University. He and wife Lana are the proud parents of three feminists and one son – all grown and doing great things.

Lon loves to chase little white balls around pristine green spaces, hike in the mountains of Utah with Lana, do anything on, in or by the sea, and spoil his grandchildren. His passion is creating a freer, more open and democratic world for his children, grandchildren and their peers all over the world.

 

Michael Vito
Michael is a strategy and operations professional combining traditional business and financial analysis with understanding of the needs of firms and government programs evaluating development of and investment in sustainability strategy. He monitors developments in renewable energy generation and efficiency technology, NGO activity, and environmental policy in the US and Asia.

Michael is a graduate of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, an accredited LEED Green Associate, Asia Society member, and active participant in Net Impact. He is currently pursuing ongoing studies of Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

government, politics, yoga

Beginning: Politicians Need More Yoga

Christa Avampato

Last weekend Bill Keller wrote an excellent piece in the New York Times Magazine about the virtues of poetry. He was taught the power of the poem during an executive program at Wharton. He was thoroughly impressed by how much his fellow classmates took to the subject and what a profound affect it had on them. In light of Washington’s latest antics, he called on Congress to take a cue from the Robert Frosts of the world in an attempt to become more enlightened.

I wonder if the same argument could be made for yoga in Congress. While it may be a bit far-fetched to imagine Congress being called to session with one great “OM”, I fully believe that every person, politician or not, is well-served by a healthy dose of self-reflection through yoga and meditation. I’ve never known anyone to take up yoga and deem it as anything less than enormously helpful. I never regret going to my mat, even if it’s just for 10 minutes. I always roll it up feeling better than when I rolled it out. Its ability to bring the mind and body together in one harmonious effort seems like just the type of action we need in Washington if we’re going to build a stronger, better country for all our citizens and residents.

Here is my plea to every politician: take a comfortable seat in your office, close your eyes, and breathe. Do a quick scan of the body and find areas where you feel stress or discomfort. Send the energy of your breath there. Set an intention. What will you do today to help the people you represent live extraordinary lives? What role will you play in their development, and in their health and welfare? How are you going to lead and collaborate with your colleagues to increase wellness in your communities? Throughout your campaigns in the upcoming year, drop the rhetoric and tell me how you’re going to build a healthier system. That will get my attention and my vote.