change, home

Step 106: Away We Go or Do We Stay?

Christa Avampato

This week I’ve been thinking about home. Not just the physical place where we live, but the place that becomes part of our identity. The place where we belong and the place that belongs to us.

I watched the movie Away We Go on my friend, Rob’s, recommendation. It was his favorite movie of 2009 so I dropped it into my Netflix queue. It’s a sweet story about two people who are about to start a family and want to find the perfect place to live. They trek across the country and up to Montreal. Eventually they end up in a place that neither of them ever imagined being the perfect place because they’d been there before. And there it was. Perfect, and so easy.

This week was the series finale of Ugly Betty. I became a fan late in the series, and really ended up loving the kitschy, wink-wink-nudge-nudge humor. What I really loved was Betty’s desire to try to do the right thing, work hard, and follow her heart. In the end of the series, her heart lead her to a tough decision to make a new home, even when staying where she’d always been was a good deal, too.

In Real Simple Magazine this month, I read a story about a couple whose newly renovated home caught fire. They considered moving to Bali, rebuilding the house they had lost, and everything in-between. Eventually, they stayed on their property and developed a very unique new home from two structures that they had never considered turning into a house. It was in the same place, but an entirely new idea of home.

I guess sometimes we can go home again, sometimes we’re better off making our own way, far away, and other times, we can stay where we are and make it new again. I traveled a lot in my 20’s and moved around all the time. Now I’m nearly 3 years in to my 3rd return to New York. I haven’t lived in any one city for this long since I was 18 years old. I’m glad to be making a little nest of my own, and I have to admit that from time to time I wonder if there will be another home chapter after NYC or if I’m really here to stay.

I’d love to hear your perspectives on the idea home.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

luck, work

Step 105: Making Luck

Christa Avampato

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

When my mother was in her mid-20’s, she and a girlfriend went to New Orleans on vacation. The way she describes the city over 40 years later sounds very similar to the way it is today. Lots of jazz music everywhere, amazing food, voodoo, history around every corner. (My friend, Dan, and I are planning a little trip down there in the Fall. Neither of us have ever been so we figured it would be fun for our next vacation adventure together.) My mom and her friend were walking down the street when they passed by a fortune-teller who asked if they’d like to have their fortunes read. And so the story goes that my mother said, without missing a beat, “No thanks. We’ll make our own fortune.”

That kernel of my mom’s truth got buried deep inside me. I don’t pray for things to happen in my life. I don’t wish for things, or throw up my arms asking for help. There are many incredible things that have happened to me because I was in the right place with the right people at the right time. It’s not that luck didn’t play a role at all. It’s just that luck is far below the title of my life. First, I had to be prepared, and that meant I have always had to work very hard in order to recognize and take a chance on a lucky break when it came my way. Without the preparation and the hard work, luck wouldn’t have helped me along at all.

I definitely feel that lucky wind on my back these days. I’m getting my arms around my career and my career shifts. I’m picking up freelance writing work. I’ve happened into wonderful, loving groups of new friends. I live in a lovely little apartment and have the luxury to really enjoy my life in New York. But this didn’t come about by accident or wishing or luck. It happened because I worked my tail off, especially when I didn’t have too many signs that I was working on the right things. A lot of this wonderful life of mine came about by going with my gut and taking a chance and having confidence to believe that if I really put my heart into something, I could get it to go.

I’m with my mom and Thomas Jefferson on this one. Luck is made, not born. I’d love to hear about your “lucky” breaks and how you made them happen!

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

meditation, yoga

Step 104: The Obstacles We Need

Christa Avampato

I’ve been thinking a lot about obstacles this week. Mostly because my bum and legs are sore from all of the yoga this past weekend, and my body is requiring an unusual amount of sleep to recover. This need for more sleep is slowing down the progress on my too-long to-do list this week. I’ve been focusing on Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, in my meditations. I really needed Ganesha to get some stuff out of my way. I needed to need less sleep, work faster on all of my projects at work, and get up and down the stairs without thinking about my sore bum and legs. He’s not helping. Or at least I didn’t think he was helping me.

About a month ago I went to the kirtan at Sonic Yoga and one of the song we did was a chant to Ganesha. One of the cantors talked about Ganesha as the remover of obstacles, or the one who carefully places obstacles in our way when we need them. I didn’t understand this explanation at the time so naturally I ignored it. But it’s been nagging at the back of my mind. What obstacles could I possibly need, and why would I need them? What good does another obstacles do? I have enough, thank you, Ganesha. Take your obstacles elsewhere. What about the path of the least resistance? How about opening up that way for me?

Then yesterday in my session with Brian, I got it. And it was such a simple explanation that I felt silly for not seeing it sooner. My biggest obstacles have nothing to do with anyone else, anywhere else. They don’t even reside in my own body. They aren’t put upon me; I put my biggest obstacles on myself. My biggest obstacles lie in my mind and my heart and my spirit, and I like to avoid them at all costs. So Ganesha, in his wisdom, forces me to deal with my obstacles by placing other obstacles in my way that I must respond to, ones that I cannot turn away from. I need to slow down, to learn how to make and stick to boundaries, to find my edge and live there – mentally and physically – so he handed me a sore bum and the need for more sleep. I have to slow down this week and deal with that obstacle. I don’t have a choice.

Simple. Wise. Effective. Exactly what I would expect from an enlightened elephant.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

care, children, community

Step 103: Ella’s Community Lemonade

Christa Avampato

On Sunday, my yoga teacher training class had a long lunch break to give us time to get down to the Lower East Side to practice with yoga teacher, Shiva Rea. I was walking with a few of my friends from the class toward the subway. We passed a little girl with a lemonade stand right on West 54th Street and 7th Avenue. We all started to take out our wallets when she said, “No money. It’s free. Community lemonade.” She handed each of us a cup and on each cup she has printed her name, Ella. She was about 4 years old. “She’s branding herself,” her dad said with a laugh. “I don’t know how she came up with this, but she really wanted to do it.”

A few months ago, I read an article in the New York Times about kids being hard-wired to give. Ella is living proof of that hypothesis. It was a nice day out, she made some lemonade, and decided to give it away. I learned a lot from Ella. We all have something to give, and the smallest kindnesses make a big difference. Ella’s lemonade was some of the sweetest I’ve ever had, not because of the sugar in it, but because of the sweetness behind it.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

education, teaching

Step 102: Teaching as Curation

Christa Avampato

I had dinner with my friend, Allan, on Saturday night. As we munched on the delicious Vietnamese food at one of my favorite restaurants in the neighborhood, I told Allan about my yoga teacher training (which I’m happy to report is now half-way finished!) and my continued interest in the field of education as a whole. “Do you think teaching is difficult?” Allan asked me. “Can’t you eventually just teach the material on auto-pilot?”

I thought about my teaching experience – teaching yoga at UVA, middle school economics for Junior Achievement in the South Bronx, high school business ethics for Junior Achievement in Lower Manhattan, and guest lecturing at Hunter College on the subject of social media and politics. I’ve never been able to, nor would I want to, go on auto-pilot. Going on auto-pilot isn’t teaching. It’s presenting, badly and blindly.

When I teach, I think of it as service. It’s not about me. It’s about the students. What do they need? How can I help them and what can I learn from them? Teaching is a curated dialogue, and it’s an act that needs commitment. Ever have a conversation with someone on auto-pilot? As soon as I see that auto-pilot light go on, I turn tail and run in the opposite direction. Students with teachers on auto-pilot should do the same. Presenting material is a breeze; doing it in a way that turns on a light for students and makes them see the world differently is a stunning event to witness and must be earned.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on amazing teachers who made a lasting impression on you and how they did it!

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

art, creativity, yoga

Step 101: The People’s Republic of Vinyasa

Christa Avampato

When I signed up for my yoga teacher training at Sonic, one of the requirements they told us about was a trance dance. I had no idea what this was. Johanna, one of my teachers, told us “you will love it.” I wasn’t sure about it – the description reminded me of a rave minus any of the substances normally associated with that kind of party. But hey, this training is all about getting out of our comfort zone and being open to new experiences so I decided to go along quietly.

Today I had the extreme pleasure of getting to practice and trance dance with Shiva Rea, the guru whom many of my teachers have practiced with for many years. Everyone within the sound of her voice feels her glow. Her only instruction for the trance dance was to “let it all go.” There’s no right way or wrong way to dance – we just had to let the music move through us spontaneously. No plans, no regrets, no patterns. “All our lives we struggle and struggle and struggle, when all we really need to do is let go,” Shiva said. And let go we did. All of us.

Being in the presence of over 100 people moving to their own rhythm, I got swept away in their current. In the process of being swept away, I was able to release and just be, in a way that I never have before. There we all were, twisting, turning, chanting, breathing. All on our own and all together, all at once. It felt like for a moment we weren’t on the lower east side of Manhattan. We had entered another realm where the energy we created could actually be held in the palms of our hands. That energy was a living, breathing entity that belonged to all of us. We were individuals, and yet we were all clearly citizens of the People’s Republic of Vinyasa. Born and raised.

experience, yoga

Step 100: Open the Heart

Christa Avampato

“Enlightenment means opening the chest, and thereby opening the heart. That’s a worthy goal.” ~ Keith, my yoga teacher

Keith is my anatomy teacher for my yoga teacher training program. Despite his modesty, he has an insane amount of knowledge about the body, about moving someone else’s body, and about the body’s positioning to the world around it. He’s also a little sarcastic and contrarian so that makes me like him even more.

In our class today, he emphasized the need to focus on opening. “Forget about what a manual tells you to do or what a teacher tells you to do or what some guru tells you do. Just minimize pain,” he told us. “If your knee hurts when you have a certain alignment, then change the alignment or end up with bad knees.” Straight-forward. No nonsense. Exactly my kind of teacher.

Keith really made us get under the hood of our practice and consider what it is we’re all really trying to do. Put aside all those textbook answers of improve our health, increase flexibility, etc. “Enlightenment means opening the chest, and thereby opening the heart. That’s a worthy goal,” he told us.

So now imagine if every asana we ever took, every meditation practice we ever did, every breath we ever took had that same goal. Open the heart. What if that becomes the only thing we ever tell ourselves we have to do? What doors begin to open and what doors do we choose to close? What opportunities do w seek out and take and what opportunities do we just let pass on by? With that kind of clear direction, open the heart, we now have a lens to look through for our every action and every day. Open the heart, and that’s enough.

choices, decision-making

Step 99: Planning for the Future

Christa Avampato

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

The future is a funny thing – we do our best to shape it, even when we know it has a mind and a plan of its own. I don’t think our planning efforts are a waste. I just think we have to be prepared to change direction, and even to change our convictions, when presented with new, compelling information. We were meant, as a species, to evolve.

I’ve found that a lot of prep work that I thought I was doing for a certain path has served me well as I took a completely different direction, often one I never imagined. My theatre work lead me to yoga and gave me the best business training of my life. My time living in Florida gave me an amazing mentor and taught me the art of fundraising. That fundraising work led me to join a nonprofit board once I had crossed back over to the for-profit world with a bank (go figure!) My unique childhood lead me to become a writer. Groundwork is laid when we’re not looking. After all, we need to put down the tracks before the train can arrive.

Often the plans we’re making don’t turn out to be for the result we assumed. And that doesn’t matter. Plant that tree. Go on that trip. Take that class. Meet that person who showed up in your life when you least expected it, and smile. There’s no telling where this all will lead, and truthfully where it’s leading is none of your concern. Just show up, heart open, awareness heightened, and just commit to bear witness to what unfolds.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

meditation, yoga

Step 98: 18 Minutes of Nothing

Christa Avampato

“Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.” ~ Orison Swett Marden, American author

Tracy is my favorite yoga teacher. She exudes this amazing feeling into every one of her students that lets us all know “I get you.” She’s undeniably, beautifully herself at every moment, and so she gives us the space to be who we are at our very core. She asked us how our training and teaching is going. One of my classmates mentioned that the meditation practice is a little rough. “Is it mind junk?” Tracy asked. “Yes,” said my friend. “Lots of mind junk.”

Tracy thought for a moment and then offered us all this advice. “Sit for 18 minutes a day.” Just sit there and tell yourself that there is no way you’re getting up until that 18 minutes is over. Your mind will reel for a bit. That’s okay. Let it reel. Let it tell you that this is a waste of time, that you have a million other things to do. And then just keep sitting there. The mind will think up excuse after excuse until it finally just calms down and accepts that it is going to have to wait.

Our greatest obstacles are not “out there.” They aren’t our jobs or our friends or family or relationships or neighbors or finances. Our greatest obstacles, the great big ones that get in the way and prevent us from radiating our beauty out into the world, are inside. We house those obstacles inside our own hearts. We can’t think our way out of them. The only way to remove them is to stare them down, and we stare them down by just getting quiet and sitting and being.

It will take some time. These obstacles have been a long time in the making. We have years of mind junk layered on top of them. We need to strip away that junk, let the obstacles lie bare in our hearts, pick them up, and move them out of the way. It’s a long haul. So just start. One layer at a time. One half of a layer at a time. Whatever you can do. Sit there for 18 minutes and just see what you find. It may turn out to be the 18 best minutes of your day.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

choices, decision-making

Step 97: Keep it Together or Take it Apart?

Christa Avampato

In a number of areas of my life, I’ve been thinking about whether to keep it together or take it apart:

Online – do I set up a new blog or twitter feed to explore some new topics or do I keep it all centralized here on this blog?

Entrepreneurship – do I just choose one idea for a new company I’d like to start or do I try to whip up a combination of a few of the ideas?

Vacations – do I link a few together for an extended break or take smaller trips that give me more frequent, albeit shorter, breaks throughout the year?

Work-life balance – do I seek to have a schedule that’s more fluid between work time and me time or do I want a line when work ends and me time begins?

There are valid arguments for keeping it together or taking it apart. What I’m wrestling with is which option in which areas of my life generate the most happiness. Which is more efficient? Do I want a life that’s jumbled and fragmented because I like to mix it up? Or would I be happier, and maybe even a little bit more sane, if I took on the mantras of simplicity and consolidation?

Lately I’ve found in my life that I have many more questions that answers. “I don’t know,” is a recurring reply that keeps bubbling up to the surface. In Sanskrit there is a wonderful phrase that is often used when a student asks her guru a question: “neti, neti” (“not this, not this”). The connotation of the phrase has come to be “maybe, maybe not” or “it depends…”

When I consider these questions about keeping parts of my life together or taking them apart, I often feel myself shaking my head slightly and silently repeating, “neti, neti.” I’m wondering now if we should just test it out without worries that we may have to fold and walk away if our new experiments don’t work out the way we want them to. Keep some of it together, take some of it apart, and see how it goes. The prana will point the way.