opportunity, passion, patience, yoga

Beginning: Progress Requires Patience

Christa Avampato

“The most amazing thing about biz dev work: the more you do, the more you realize that opportunity is under every stone. Turn ’em over!” ~ ME

For the past two weeks I have been sending an insane amount of emails and making an equally insane amount of phone class related to Compass Yoga. I’m getting down all of the steps in the hopes that some day I will have the time to reflect back on all of this work and on all of the amazing, talented, incredible people who helped me through their own kindness, talents, and generosity.

Business development work is what I’ve been trained to do. By nature, I’m relentless, and this natural tendency and endurance was only further bolstered by my undergraduate and graduate school education. Once I really believe in an idea and have dedicated myself to it, I will work and work and work until I make progress. I’ll experiment, take a new approach, or try something completely off-the-wall if I think it will make a difference.

Business development is a long-term bet
I’m making progress. On June 19th I’ll be giving a presentation on the benefits of yoga for veterans, at Jehrico Project, an organization that serves homeless veterans in New York City, and I’ve started the long paperwork process to teach yoga at the Manhattan VA Hospital for the medical staff. These are two developments that I’m incredibly grateful for, and I think it’s important to share that I didn’t just waltz in and have these wonderful opportunities handed to me. Of the hundreds of contacts I’ve tried to make, most were never returned, a few kindly declined my offer, and these two took some convincing – first by me and then by people at these organizations who believed in the power of this work.

When you don’t know what to do, keep going
I’m sharing this truth because there’s an important lesson in this for you and me. You might be working on a project at this very moment and you may feel like all of your efforts are yielding a blessed thing. You might feel like you’re beating your head against the wall, wringing your hands, and wasting your time. The truth is that you are laying a foundation, and foundation building takes a lot of effort. We want to jump to the decorating, “the fun stuff”, of a project as soon as possible, but trust me, that won’t work. You have to make sure your base is solid and build from that. It’s slow in the beginning but if you training properly and do the appropriate groundwork, you’ll be so much better off in the long run. Cultivate patience as you pursue progress.

choices, courage, design, determination, dreams

Beginning: Be an Invisionary

Christa Avampato

“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.” ~ Jonathan Swift

“My favorite place is my imagination.” ~ ME

Every once in a while, I get a real fire under me. I’m not sure where it comes from, though it’s almost always linked to something I read like this quote by Jonathan Swift. And when this fire gets going, I feel the need to crack open my laptop and get this all down because I’m certain that the words I’m about to think are the words that someone somewhere needs to hear, right now at this very moment.

It’s easy to see what is right in front of us. What’s more difficult, though ultimately more rewarding, is to imagine what could be and bring it into being. There’s much talk in the business world about leaders of companies who are “visionaries”, and in business that has largely meant people who see the current situation with a slight twist that vastly improves value. Minimal work for a lot of pay off. There’s nothing wrong with that at all – masters of the 80 / 20 rule, they have been able to steer the companies they run through our economic storms of late.

Though I appreciate the work of visionaries, the people who really inspire me, who really impress me and motivate me, are invisionaries – people who see a whole new way of being to improve their own lot and that of others. They see things that have never even been thought of, much less acted upon. They attack challenges that most people run from. They look at big problems in the world and rather than turning a blind eye, stand firmly rooted into the ground and say, “I can make this better.” They are people of action, people who don’t hesitate. They don’t need all the answers, they just need the next step. They’ll gladly pave the road as they travel it. In actuality, they prefer it that way.

This is who I’m trying to be with the mission of Compass Yoga – an invisionary – and it’s what I want for all of you, too. I don’t want us to be limited by what’s here in front of us. I want us to tear down the walls we see in our lives. Climb over them, plow through them, dig your way underneath if you have to. Need a boost? Let me know, and I’ll gladly offer it up. Just get out there, and live the life you really want.

I know this work isn’t easy. I’m asking a lot of myself, and I’m asking a lot of you, too. And here’s why – there a lot of people who are going to tell you, “You must do X because long ago you decided to do Y.” These people will tell you that no matter what you want to do, you just can’t. Maybe these people are your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, or your boss. I want you to thank them for their opinions and then turn the volume on them off. I’m here to be the voice that tells you to roll the dice; the only thing you have to lose is regret for not living the life you want.

It’s tough to get people to see the world through your mind’s eye; don’t blame them. Many people are not invisionaries, and have no desire to be. They will plod along and be just fine. The people who do something really extraordinary with their lives, who make a difference, are the ones who are in this game every day courageously weaving the fabric of their own lives and the lives of those they want to help. Hold that as your ideal, your model.

Don’t take no for an answer. Open every window, swing open every door, and when all else fails get out your chisel and hammer and make your own way out of the box and into the light. If we can live like this, then we can live lives by our own designs. And what could be more gratifying than that?!

discovery, dreams, story, teaching, writing, yoga

Beginning: Thinking Your Dreams Into Being

Christa Avampato

“You are what you think.” ~ Dr. Lu

I saw this image yesterday when I went searching for information on the image I posted yesterday about how to live your life by your own design. This poem by Frank Outlaw reminded me of this quote from Dr. Lu, a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Who we become begins with our thoughts on our purpose. You can think the life you want into being. Frank Outlaw just handed us a map of 31 words.

As a writer, the second step of the journey – turning thoughts into words – is where I spend a considerable amount of time. Our words are the first pathways to our personal transformation. As a yoga teacher and yoga therapist, I help students find their own words by working through their own barriers in the body. Our past challenges, mental and physical, store physically in different parts of the body. Through yoga, we can remove the blocks in our bodies that then allow us to articulate our stories.

Once we can articulate our stories, we begin to heal and we become the rulers of our thoughts rather than our thoughts ruling us. It’s this combination of writing and yoga that is so powerful for me as a student and as a teacher. This is where it all comes together. I’m not here to impart any wisdom; I’m here to guide others to their own wisdom that they already have within them.

Uncategorized

Beginning: Live By Your Own Design

Christa Avampato

My friend, Amanda, posted this up on her Facebook page and I love it so much that I wanted to share it as today’s post. It gets at all of my beliefs about passion, finding our life’s work, love, travel, and the passing of time.

This week on vacation, I’m spending loads of time with my nieces, Lorelei and Aubree. I try to visit them every 3 to 4 months. At 3 years old and 1 year old, I am conscious of how different they are every time I see them. People always say kids grow up so fast, though I never knew how fast until these two little ones came along. They are two more reminders of just how important it is to live the lives we want, by our own design and on our own terms. Life is just too fleeting to do anything else.

Too many people I meet are content to be just where they are, even if it’s nowhere they’d like to be. I used to envy how content they could be as I would drive myself close to the brink with my striving. Now that I see all of the benefits I’m creating in my own life, thanks in large part to my striving for so many years, I’m so grateful that I can only settle for what I really want rather than settling for what just seems readily available.

Many years ago I had a conversation with my friend, Amy, about our dreams to build our own roads, not just take the well-traveled ones. We agreed that it was as much fun to carve our own paths with our own hands as it was to get to the destinations we wanted to reach.

It’s in the doing that we really learn who we are and just who we’re meant to be.

free, government, gratitude, thankful

Beginning: Find Your Ideal to Honor the Legacy of Your Freedom

Christa Avampato

Photo credit: Alison Grippo
“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” ~ Albert Einstein

Holidays like July 4th are a good time for reflection. On your way to the beach, the barbecue, and the fireworks today, it’s well worth a moment of our time to think about why we even have this holiday: a group of people got together and decided that they needed to live free or die trying. It’s a powerful ideal, and not one that should in any way dampen out spirits but rather buoy them up.

Today my mind, heart, and gratitude are with the many people who are overseas making so many sacrifices on our behalf so that we may live free. In their honor, I’m spending some time today to consider what one principle I would stake my life on. What ideal makes me feel so alive that I’d be willing to lay down my life for it? Once we can answer that question, then so much of our life comes in to focus. We know where to spend our time and energy. We know which kinds of people to surround ourselves with. Our legacy becomes clear.

On the 4th of July I’m thankful that my freedom was so important to so many people whom I will never have the pleasure to meet. Making the most of my freedom is the best way to honor them. Our lives are their legacy. Happy 4th!

change, childhood, choices, commitment, goals

Beginning: Striving By Settling for Change

Christa Avampato

<a “Something has always come along to shake things up just when I am feeling settled. Maybe this is the fate of a striver, someone always trying to be ‘twice as good’.” ~ Condoleezza Rice

A few months ago I read the book Extraordinary, Ordinary People by Condoleezza Rice. It tells her own personal story prior to her very public life by paying tribute to her parents. Despite the fact that I was confused by nearly every foreign policy call she made while servicing in President Bush’s administration, I was enormously impressed by her personal story and the candor with which she told it. She’s also an incredibly likeable person.

Shake it up, baby
Of all the sound bites in the book, this one about the life of a striver has stuck with me. I regularly go through this same roller coaster. Just when I think I’m settled and I’ve got it all figured out, my reality gets turned on its head. This has happened to me enough times that I have learned to just roll with changes, big and small. And while this constant change may appear unsettling on the surface in actuality it’s made me so grateful. Because I know that everything will change, I appreciate each moment, good or bad, more fully. I’m reminded of my mother’s mantra, “This too shall pass.” Everything passes.

On disappointment
Another happy side effect of the acceptance of change is that disappointment has less of a sting. My friend, Sara, recently asked me how I manage to work on so many projects at once. For better or worse, I was raised to be productive. My father’s one ask of us is that we never do anything to embarrass him; ironic given all the times he embarrassed us. Still, that stuck with me and to me meant that if I attempted to do anything it had better be done well. It was made very clear to us that we are here on borrowed time and that we were expected to make a contribution to humanity.

My father’s life was tragically cut short at age 61 with most of his life’s work left unfinished. The lesson of how fleeting life is sticks with me; I think about it every day. The most enlightened point-of-view of this lesson is that I have very little time to feel badly about disappointment. I have to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again. In many ways, to keep going is the only way I know to deal with disappointment.

A belief in karma
I’m a walking contradiction, and truth be told I like it that way. A big believer in free will, I’m also just as passionate about the concept of destiny, karma, and a predetermined path. One of my favorite quotes came from Steve Jobs when he told a group of graduates that life could only be understood in reverse because it’s only in reverse that all of the seemingly disparate pieces of our lives fit together. As I work on the direction of Compass Yoga, I realize why I need all of my life experiences, good and bad, big and small.

Welcome, Change!
In an effort to make all of these experiences worthwhile, to make them mean something in the grand scheme of life, I’m glad to put myself in the camp of strivers. In the end I want to be able to look back on my long life and realize that it was twice as good as I ever thought it would be. This is a tall order given that I have very high expectations. And if change is the linchpin that makes that dream possible, then I welcome it with open arms and often.

health, healthcare, meditation, science, self-help, yoga

Beginning: The Road Back to Balance is Paved by the Breath

Christa Avampato

“The path from imbalance back to balance is a labyrinth.” ~ Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

I arrived in Florida yesterday after a too-long flight and after too many months without a vacation. I didn’t realize just how tired I was until I was on the bus to the airport. I felt out of balance; the past few months have been emotional and my schedule has been packed to the gills. It’s time to decompress and release.

The long and winding road
The labyrinth back to balance that Dr. Bhaswati speaks about hit me full force once we were airborne. My thoughts were jumbled, and I could feel my body racing despite the fact that I was sitting down. Since my therapeutic yoga teacher training, I’ve been very aware of the effects of the stress response, aka fight or flight, on my body. Stress triggers a number of changes in the body that we can actually feel if we tune into them: our muscles tense, our blood pressure rises, and our digestive system slows down.

In the last few months when I feel these changes kicking in, I stop and breathe as deeply as possible into my belly. It’s been a conscious, constant effort, though entirely worth it. I feel more in tune with the changes my body makes involuntarily in response to stress and I voluntarily make changes to counteract these responses. It is give and take, a long and winding labyrinth.

Stress doesn’t discriminate
We can’t control the initial reactions of our bodies to stress. Much of it is regulated by our sympathetic (involuntary) nervous system and there is a good reason for that. The fight or flight response is meant to keep us safe; however, it’s not meant to be turned on all the time as happens with today’s society of constant stress and so with constant stress we run into big trouble. Our body has only one set of responses to stress – whether our stress is caused by a deadline at work, a traffic jam, or a tiger who’s on our tail. What I’m learning through yoga and meditation is that we have the ability to talk our bodies down off the ledge. We can tell ourselves, “Look, I know you’re freaking out right now, but it really is going to be okay. Just breathe.” That breath – deep into the belly, even inhales and exhales – is our guide, our guru. It takes us up and away from where we feel trapped and scared into a space that feels open and safe.

All I really have to do is breathe?
It sounds so simple, and it really is. When everything else falls away, our breath is always with us. So get some bright-colored paper, grab a sharpy, and write out the simple word “BREATHE” in big, bold letters. Post it around your home, your office, in your wallet, and in your car. Type it up as a to-do in your calendar on your phone and set a reminder every hour or two. Breathe, and find your way back to balance. Let me know how it goes.

choices, happiness, opportunity

Beginning: Choosing Light

Christa Avampato

“Turn your face toward the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.” – Maori Proverb via Tiny Buddha

Yesterday I expounded upon my love for Daily Good’s daily email that inspires me on a regular basis. Another site that I love for its flat-out joy and love of life is Tiny Buddha. I found my way to Tiny Buddha via MJ, a tremendously loyal and helpful member of the Christa in New York community. Lori Deschene, the creator of Tiny Buddha, is another one of those sources who delivers tidbits of delightfulness to my inbox and always seems to find exactly the right words exactly when I need to hear them. The quote above is an example of that.

The light is closer than we think
This Maori Proverb made me think of a picture of someone looking down at the ground, searching for some positive sign, searching for some kind of light and hope, never realizing that all the light they could ever want is just above them. If only they would take their gaze up, they would be able to find all the signs they could ever ask for. I have a friend like this. She is someone who has been blessed with so many riches, material and otherwise, and yet is never happy. She often says, “I really just need something to go right in my life soon.” What she doesn’t realize is that she has the ability and the power to take her life in the direction she wants to go. Great things aren’t going to happen TO her; they are going to happen when she brings them into being.

A life of light or darkness is often a matter of choice
And this is true for us, too. We can choose to live in the shadows – goodness knows there are enough of them in the world and in our own pasts. We can also choose to acknowledge the shadows for what they have to offer us, take their learnings, and then turn toward the light. Those shadows will stay with us as reminders, as teachers, but they don’t need to hold so much power over us. We can take another road. Once we change our minds, we change everything.

adventure, choices, goals, yoga

Beginning: The Long and Short of Achievement

Christa Avampato

sciencedaily.com
“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi via Daily Good

By nature, I am a goal driven person. I put a big, audacious, ambitious goal out into the universe and then I work like heck to bring it to life. I love nothing better than progress and the feeling of spending my time on a worthy achievement. I fiercely maintain my abilities to be self-sufficient and independent – it’s why the mindset of veterans makes so much sense to me and why I seek to work with them in my yoga teaching.

Daily Good’s post is a part of my every day regiment. The fine folks who run the site put together a poignant, inspiring post every day. It always resonates with me. Their recent post inspired by Rumi’s quote made me start to think differently of how I work to achieve my goals. Is my focus on the goal itself misplaced? Could I actually be more efficient (which I love to be!) if I focused not on the goal itself, but on the barriers that I need to hurdle over to get to the goal.

The 2-inch picture frame
In college, one of my roommates gave me a 2-inch dual picture frame. One one side, I have a picture of a row-boat – it reminds me of the importance of embarking on new journeys. On the other side, I have a picture of a park bench that has two sitting spots clearly worn through the paint – it reminds me of the importance of having companionship along our journeys.

Whenever I have a very large task ahead of me, that 2-inch picture frame reminds me to break the task apart into small pieces. I just need to work on the masterpiece of my life one 2-inch portion at a time, just as a painter or sculptor does. Each piece feeds into the whole, bit by bit.

Playing pool
A number of years ago I dated a guy who was a master pool player. I liked to play pool though I was pretty bad at it. I focused on the cue ball, and not the ball I was trying to send into a pocket of the table. Once he helped me shift my focus to the long-term ball I wanted to sink, my pool playing improved dramatically. In this case it wasn’t the task at hand (hitting the cue ball) that mattered most, but rather what I hoped that task helped to do for me in the long-run (sinking the ball in the pocket.)

Equal amount of attention on the details and on the grand vision
For a long time I thought the focus on short-term and long-term was an either / or decision, and for the most part I focused on the long-term. I don’t think this was a bad choice; it helped me to make some serious short-term trade-offs so that I could reach goals like putting myself through college and through graduate school, both of which yielded huge benefits on my life overall.

The quote by Rumi reminded me that as I take on bigger life goals, such as working on Compass Yoga full-time, making peace with my dad, and finding the guy who is going to be my partner in life, seeking to remove the barriers to my success is a viable and fruitful way to travel down the path.

family, feelings, forgiveness, growth

Beginning: A 19-year Old Lesson of Forgiveness and Healing Finds Its Way Home

Christa Avampato

“When you feel pain, question it. Why is it there and how can we heal it? The body wants to heal.” ~ Cheri Clampett

In the last few weeks, there has been an opening. A pain that’s been hidden, so deep for so long, refused to lay down any longer. It had to bubble up in me so that finally after far too long it could release. The pain asked to be looked at, considered, appreciated, and then, finally forgiven.

This reminded me of something Cheri Clampett said a few weeks ago in the therapeutic yoga teacher training at Integral Yoga Institute. Pain is our friend. It may not feel like it at first brush, but it is there to teach us. You can ignore it, medicate it, and try like heck to forget about it. It will not be dissuaded. Loyally, it will wait for you to be ready, to have the strength to meet it, sit with it, and understand it. That moment has finally arrived for me and my dad. We are ready to forgive, release, and move on.

I have known this pain a long time. In some odd and uncomfortable way, it has become a friend. It’s been my fallback and my excuse for certain circumstances in my life. “I can’t do this because my dad was like that.” And for a while that was true; it’s just not true anymore. I am healed. I am whole. And I can do anything, even if I my dad didn’t he could.

Yesterday, I wrote about my regret that I didn’t go say goodbye to my dad when he was dying. What I didn’t mention is that I was 16 at the time. I didn’t have the tools to look so much pain in the face and not crumble. I needed to grow up before that was possible, and at 16 I wasn’t grown up, not by a long shot, and I couldn’t possibly have been expected to be. It was my dad’s time to go but it wasn’t yet my time to let go. Sometimes life is like that. Sometimes our timing is just off, and in those moments we do the best we can with what we’ve got. We operate with imperfect information all the time.

In the post yesterday I spoke about yesterday lessons, the lessons that our past teaches us so that we can improve going forward. Another yesterday lesson that my father’s passing taught me had to do with forgiveness. That lesson appeared more slowly, over a very long period of time, and in fits and starts: if we’re truly sorry, then pure, true forgiveness will find us. The “I’m sorry” moment starts us down the road to healing of every kind. All we have to do is ask for it. Forgiveness is a life force in and of itself. It changes everything. And if we believe in learning, in growing, in constantly evolving, then we must believe in forgiveness, of others and even more importantly, of ourselves.

In Buddhism there is a belief that every moment provides the exact teaching we need exactly when we need it. There’s no way at 16 that I could have known how deeply it would affect me to not say goodbye to my father. And in some strange, cosmically-correct way, I think the moment came and went exactly as it was supposed to be. I know so deeply that every moment comes to pass this way, and because of this belief, I have to forgive my dad and I have to forgive myself. We were two people who were doing the best we could with what we had. And even though we didn’t get a chance to meet in the middle this time around, in our own ways, in our own now separate worlds, we are both finding our way to forgiveness – of ourselves and of one another.