“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” ~ Albert Einstein
I spend time with my nieces, Lorelei and Aubree, because I love them. I also spend time with them because I am incredibly selfish. They are a constant reminder to me that life is filled with the exciting, the unexpected, and the unprecedented. There are millions of surprises just waiting for us. The world wants to astound us, to make us wonder and wander. It wants us to be free and open to its magic, to follow its lead into the miraculous and previously unimagined. My nieces remind me of all of that whenever they see something I have seen a million times before and regard it with amazement.
Show up with a full heart, open eyes, and perked up ears. You won’t be disappointed. You’ll be inspired.
“Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen
No matter what’s happening to us, we have the opportunity to learn. Good times teach us gratitude and generosity. Tough times teach us about perseverance and dedication. Confusing times teach us about our priorities. Moments of clarity teach us that life doesn’t have to be as difficult as we make it.
Around every corner, there is a chance to meet wisdom, to take her into our lives, and make her feel at home. Just let it happen.
I am by nature an efficiency hound. I hate wasting time, I love to be productive, and I feel an outsized sense of pride as I check off items on my to-do list. Yoga and meditation have taught me a subtle truth about efficiency that I didn’t know for a long time: sometimes what looks inefficient in the short-term is the most efficient thing to do in the name of long-term productivity.
At the suggestion of Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, I started reading God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine. The book chronicles the 20+ year career of Dr. Victoria Sweet at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, the last almshouse in the country. Low-tech and human-paced the work of Laguna Honda is a far cry from any hospital I’ve ever been to or read about. Early on in the book, Dr. Sweet gives samples of surface inefficiencies that proved to be tremendously helpful when viewed with the gift of time.
There was a nurse who dedicated a good chunk of her work time to hand-knitting blankets for each patient. Efficiency consultants were aghast and put a stop to it. However, those blankets were tangible symbols of how personally vested the entire staff at the hospital was to all patients. It let the patients, many of whom were so ill that no other hospital would admit them, and their family members know how much care and attention was being paid to their health.
Another example of inefficiency was the process of giving Christmas gifts. Collected and wrapped every year, the nursing staff would dole out the gifts randomly and then a day of festive trading between the patients would ensue. It made for a lively atmosphere with plenty of interaction throughout the entire hospital community. Again, the efficiency consultants saw all of this festivity as a terrible waste.
Rather than collect random gifts and wrap them up without any indication of what was inside, the nurses were instructed to ask each patient what they wanted, including size and color, and then that is exactly the gift they would receive. Though the gifts were still lovely, the loss of the trading process deflated the celebration. Christmas at Laguna Honda lost its sparkle when it lost the activity of swapping. And with the loss of celebration, they lost some of the spirit of deep, true healing.
These examples made me think about the efficiency of my own life – my to-do list, the structure of my days, and my constant pursuit of more productivity in less time. These things have their purpose and they’ve served me well but perhaps there’s a bit more wiggle room than I typically allow.
Maybe it’s okay to spend part of my afternoon at a museum today rather than spending that time on business development. Going to the museum probably won’t yield a client contract, but what it may give me in terms of inspiration may be just what the doctor would order and exactly what I need to be at my best tomorrow.
“I subscribed to the notion that to be able to express yourself in an artistic form in life, you have to live in perpetual pain. It’s nonsense…you don’t have to live it to represent it.” ~ Colin Farrell
The actor Colin Farrell gave this quote in an interview with Ellen earlier this year. As someone who used to work in entertainment, I sympathized with his former perspective. I used to share it and as I got older I realized that empathy went a long toward telling a story with honesty and integrity. Living a life based on method acting was tremendously flawed, less fun, and ultimately less productive than living life from a healthy, balanced perspective.
As a yoga and meditation teacher, I sit with a lot of suffering and pain. It is possible to feel empathy and compassion, without sending ourselves down into a dark spiral. There’s no sense in diving onto a sinking ship. We can’t help people who are drowning from that perspective. It’s far better for us to be on solid ground and offer a hand up and out of the water to those who need us. It’s actually the only thing that does any good.
This photo was taken by my yoga teacher, Arturo Peal
“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” ~ Wendell Berry
It feels good to have direction, to feel confident in the decisions that lie in our past, the choices of our present, and the road of our future.
But what about the fork in the road? We stare for a long time down the path to the left, then pivot to stare an equally long time down the path to the right, and don’t know which to choose. We are keenly aware that with a single step, we are changing our future. We don’t know how it will unfold, but we know that there is no going back. With certain decisions, there’s no way to retrace our steps and make another choice. Things will be forever different.
When the going gets tough, we find that in that moment we actually get going. The Hero’s (or Heroine’s) Journey lies not in choosing between good options and bad options but good options and equally good options. That choice will allow us to clearly see our own priorities. We will finally know what’s most important to us, and very often it will surprise us and those around us.
Surprise and realization keep life interesting. They keep us engaged. They keep us growing and evolving. Confusion is a good sign that we are getting down to the real work of life – to decide what truly matters and why.
As I think more about my potential move to a new city in the coming year, I realize how much freedom social media provides. I’m able to connect with friends and friends of friends to ask questions about potential new homes. And when I do make a decision of where to move, I don’t need to feel like I’m leaving behind my friends in NYC. I won’t see them as often in person but we will still be close with the lines of social networks drawn between us. I also remember that a number of people whom I consider good friends are people I know through this blog and other channels. I talk to many of them daily in one way or another.
This ability to make and keep connections over long distances makes moving easier than it’s ever been before. Moving to a new city doesn’t need to feel isolating or lonely, even while we are in the process of reestablishing our physical social lives. These reflections make a move from New York a less scary proposition, an exciting new possibility, and they open the way for options that I never would have considered before. As the world gets smaller, individual opportunities expand.
Okay, so they actually said, “We are pleased to inform you that upon review of your application for tax exempt status we have determined that you are exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions to you aredeductible under section 170 of the Code. You are also qualified to receivetax-deductible bequests, devises, transfers or gifts under section 2055, 2106or 2522 of the Code.” But doesn’t my title for this post sound much more celebratory, aptly reflecting this enormous milestone?!
I couldn’t be happier with this recent turn of events for Compass Yoga. Actually, the moment I got the email from our attorneys I started doing a little victory dance to the song “Everybody Talks” by Neon Trees. How fitting!
This tax-exempt status sets in motion our opportunity to get the healing benefits of yoga to more people in more places. Great things are happening, and I can’t wait to share the progress with you. Now, the work really begins. If you want to be involved in this journey in any way, please contact me. We’d love to have you climb aboard our ship. There’s room for everyone who wants to be a warrior of wellness.
“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.” ~ Khalil Gibran
Dreams tell us a lot about someone because dreams process the past, accept the present, and create the future. The narrative of a life grows from dreams and is fueled by actions taken to animate them.
Dreams tell us what someone values above all else because they are wishes of an ideal. When someone tells me they have big dreams, I pay attention because our dreams house the very best version of ourselves.
When I meet someone, I immediately want to know who they are at their best. That best self is pure potential and I’m in the business of helping people harness that potential and transform it into their truth.
I recently saw The Way, a movie that records the trek of a grieving father, played by Martin Sheen, along the Camino de Santiago through the Pyrenees from France to Spain taken in honor of his son, played by Emilio Estevez, who died along the trail. It’s a beautiful story of love and loss, misunderstanding and faith, harm and healing. It made me think about the motivations behind pilgrimage and the importance of a purposeful journey. A pilgrimage provides a bridge that carries us from the life we live to the life we choose.
In a way, my trip to India was a bit of a pilgrimage in that I went there with a purpose – to better understand the practice of yoga by seeing its roots. I didn’t have a specific place I was trying to go, just a feeling I was trying to capture, a thread I was trying to find and weave into my living.
I would like to take an actual pilgrimage as illustrated in The Way, some kind of trek through the natural world that leads to a specific destination for a specific purpose. I’ve got some loose ideas but I’m taking suggestions, too. In this time of great change in my life, a true pilgrimage seems apropos.
I finished up the last of my requirements for my 300 hour teacher training program at ISHTA Yoga. In the aftermath of the intense number of hours, I feel relieved but not in the way you might think. It’s nice to have more time back on my calendar. It’s nice to feel such a sense of pride and accomplishment in completing a program I spent years thinking about. My relief doesn’t come from either of those sources.
I am relieved that there is a little space on East 11th Street that feels like a spiritual home. A place I can go that always makes me feel better no matter what kind of day I’ve had, no matter what pressures or stresses weigh on me. A place where I can go to heal, where there’s always a friendly face, where I always feel like the very best version of myself.
This certificate means much more to me than the completion of a set of training hours. It’s a map. In that handful of words on a page, I found a way forward even when I’m not exactly sure where I’m trying to go. In that tiny space on East 11th Street there is a bit of magic sprinkled in every corner that welcomes every guest who wishes to sit and learn and be. I am proud to be among them.
Christa Avampato 