Daily Allowance

I just made a killer homemade, sugar-free, dirty chai latte with almond milk (okay, so maybe it was actually with heavy cream because I was out of almond milk.  Sue me. It was delicious).

If it didn't have so much to do today, I'd consider cashing it in on this and calling today a "win."  But as I'm wont to do, I used Yogi tea for the chai portion and, of course, have to consider the snapple-like wisp of wisdom on the little tea bag tab.  In the old days, I had a bunch of those taped everywhere.  Unlike Wendy the Snapple Lady, the Yogi tea wisdoms actually do make me think.

As I sipped on my beautiful, hand-spun latte (this sound so precious...it wasn't...I dunked a tea bag in a cup of coffee...still I was so proud I didn't spend $4) I reflected on:

If you let yourself be successful, you shall be successful.

 I was so ready to write this off.  "Yeah, sure," I could hear my little snarly inner voice growl, "it sounds so easy."  But the truth of it, I think, is that it might be that easy.

There's something very compelling to me personally about "the struggle."  I do value work a lot, so a struggle is awesome because it makes the work visible.  If I'm struggling to do something, I'm not giving up on it: I'm wrestling, sparring, climbing, trekking, slogging.  There's effort there.  And effort, in my book, is always noble.  And I know I'm not alone there.  Many, many of our everyday systems reward effort.  That's the very foundation on which the idea of success, careers, the American Dream, and just any old meritocracy are based.  It's Amurica.

If I go down even further, toward my own person and body in the success-driven place, I know I've internalized the idea of struggle as noble.  I do crazy diets, I've gone on nutso fitness binges, and maybe even sometimes I've OD'd on the idea of a journey to happiness.  (For a while I tried to be chipper.  It was no good.  I'm not built for that).  If I'm walking away from something sweaty and out of breath, chances are I'm a happy camper.

When the belief that the only road to success is struggle to the point it becomes a paradigm for everything, the idea that you might be your own impediment to success can blow. your. mind. I just because I used the fashionable three-word-punctuated-to-sound-like-Oprah-talking shouldn't detract from how uncomfortable that is.  When everything you've done in your life tells you struggle is right, the suggestion that, in fact, allowance can get you to the same ends sounds like complete anarchy.

The problem is, a quick review of the high level goals of my life tells me there could've been another way.  I do believe in some things, the hard road is the right road: becoming compassionate (especially towards oneself), the road to tolerance (true empathy and not just the agreement that in public we'll say something because we'll look really bad if we say something else), love are all very hard.  There will be challenge.  But I guess the question is "Where is the line between challenge and struggle?"  At what point does the effort begin to edge out the challenge as the focus?

Whenever I've been confronted with the idea of allowance and I allow myself to sit with it and truly contemplate it and imagine exactly what it would feel like in my skin, I become very humbled.  In those moments, I can begin to see how my struggle has been perpetrated by me.  In many cases, more than I'd like to admit, I myself  have been the reason I couldn't find what I desired.  I sabotaged, I threw up barriers, I caved in a moment of weakness, I was stubborn and/or stupid and/or not compassionate.  All of these, of course, are born of fear.

So the idea that I hold the key to my success and that I've been the obstacle to that for myself creates so much guilt.  In some senses, I've doomed myself to whatever fate I have that doesn't please me at the moment.  On the other hand, the power I have to exact the changes I hope for myself is overwhelming.  All I need, we need, to find the change we seek is to be able to honestly ask these questions of ourselves.

Do I want happiness?  What does that look like?  Do I want [insert  your dream here]?  What does that look like?  

When those answers are simply "yes," our biggest challenge is to be brave on the path to that.  There will always be challenge and the fruit of stepping up to that will always be worthwhile.  But I'm coming to grips with the fact that struggle need not be necessary.  Simply allowing may be just enough.

Compassionate Warrior

When I was in kindergarten, the fire chief came to school one day to teach us "Stop, Drop, and Roll."  I remember I was wearing brown corduroys and a yellow t-shirt (it was 1980...) and he picked me (ME!) to be the demonstrator.  I did possibly one of the best "stop, drop, and rolls" ever done.  I had technique.  I had fire in my belly.

I'll never forget that he called me "tiger."  And I loved that. From that day forth, I thought of myself as a tiger.  It felt like a little tap into all of the qualities that I see in myself and I want to see that I admire.

There have been periods of my life that have been not so tiger-ish.  But for the most part, I think I have some kind of incredible inner strength...I always consider that part of myself the tiger.  In fact, I think it's located in my abs...in the center of me.  When every other thing has gone wrong and I have to return to my very core, I find the tiger there: that same tiger that stopped, dropped, and rolled like a champ.  As I got a little older, I started also truly believing I have the heart of a lion.  Since then, probably in my early teens, I've got these two magnificent creatures governing the central parts of myself.  Sometimes, they're napping.  Sometimes I cage them inadvertently.  But I think they're always there.

It's nice to know the steadiness of that tiger.  It's one of the few things that has proven itself to be essential to me and who I am.

But as I've matured, grown wiser (but perhaps never wise which is as it should be, I think), and evolved through a lot of reflection on what I am and what I hope to be, yoga has given me a wonderful image that pops up every now and then, very clearly, when I'm headed on the right track.

The compassionate warrior.

I met this warrior in yoga practice, as Warrior II pose or Virabhadrasana. It's so easy to write off as a pretty simple pose.  The bottom half is in something of a revolved lunge.  Front knee forward and bent at a 90-degree angle; back leg straight as possible with toes pointing out to a 45-degree angle from your mid-line.  Torso revolved so that your shoulders are in line with your front and back legs leaving you facing the side of your mat.  Arms, supported by your mid- and upper-back muscles radiate outward strongly, extending directly from your shoulders in a straight line, also following the line of your legs.  Shoulders fully engaged, fingers together and straight, chest open, back straight and not arched.  Head facing either to the side (nice) or to the front (at which point you do actually become a badass warrior of life).

As far as poses go, Warrior II is easy to get into and so it's a really basic feature of most every yoga practice.  But, it's not simple.  Powerful on the bottom, the goal is to sink into your lunge as far as you can to 90-degree knee bend.  Powerful up top, the goal is to extend your arms purposefully and with strength to the sides as far as they'll go.  If you really want to know what's killer, your pelvis should not tilt in this pose, meaning you're pulling a bit forward with your lower back, strenching your hip flexors like CRAZY while still engaging and opening your outer hip muscles.  Powerful in your alignment, your goal in your head it to lift the crown upwards while everything else is going on.

This is not just a lunge with fancy arms.

It was in learning how to really get into this pose that I found the compassionate warrior.  Everything about this pose is powerful and fully engaged.  But it's designed to fully expose the center of everything.  If truly working at it, your heart is completely open as are your hips and pelvis.  The core of you is wide, wide open and stretching even futher open.  It's as if it's presented to the world who is looking at your from the side.  Keeping your head in line with the shoulders is a stare-down with the world: here's what I've got.  Turning that head to look forward over your front arm is some bad-assery: here world, here's what I've got, do with it what you will.  It is a powerful, active surrender.

What a paradox.  Turning that head in such an open pose is compassion. And now that I'm thinking about it, compassion feels like it can be a huge paradox, especially in our 21st century world.  It's allowing that open, central core to lead you.  It's asking you to powerfully, with vigor, open and interact dynamically with what's there while surrendering that core to the outside. It's a praying to God that someone won't shoot you in the heart with an arrow while at the same time trusting (and knowing) they won't...but if they do, you're down with that too.

 That is the work of the compassionate warrior.  It requires the heart of a lion and the might of a tiger.  Corduroy pants optional.

Reflecting on it now, today, it seems so easy to explain why this pose has spoken to me so intimately for so long.  It combines those parts of myself that I feel are really my best qualities and it asks them to do what they love: use their power to effect things.  Love with the heart of a lion and tackle it with the might of a tiger.  But instead of using it to aggressive ends, use it to compassionate ends.  The latter is so much more of a complex challenge.

At this point, today, yesterday, a couple weeks ago, I've felt that building this compassionate warrior is exactly the work I should be doing.  It has nothing to do with money or status.  I will not reap material rewards, necessarily.  It may be a big endeavor.  But it will be without fear.

And I do think it's the next major step in my quest that I continue to uncover a little more every time I dare to look further down a road that I, myself, will build brick by brick.

Detaching

No, I still have done no yoga this week yet.  Well, not asanas.  I've been deep into reflection this week for sure. And I can feel the usual rise of guilt mixed with a little exhilaration at the fact that I'm breaking a rule.

Sidebar: When did that love of thumbing it to the rules kick in?  As a kid, I was the best rule lover, the most ardent rule follower of all time.  I loved me a rule.  Alright, if I'm being very deeply self-reflective, I still love rules and I know this because when other people break them it drives me insane.  Yet, somehow, I love the temptation of breaking a rule.  Maybe now I'm just a rule lover with a deep core of not following rules.  I think the day you realize rules are created by idiots just like you, the less it seems imperative to bend to them. Sidebar done.

Despite not physically practicing, what has surprised me is how much past yoga clings if you let it.  Though I've been resisting the physical practice (I'll need to dig more into that later...I'm still not so sure why that's such a problem for me), I'm noticing that I'm still practicing yoga in other ways.

Which brings me to detachment.

This is one of those ideals in Buddhism (and probably not something you'll find in your local Core Power class) that I find, at the same time, to be inspiring and perplexing with an ever so faint aroma of sadness.  We can all understand that detachment is ideal when you have to figure out how to not hold on to negative things in life.  "Like water off a duck's back," we might be inclined to say and that's truly what it is.  Don't engage it and if engaged in it, let it go.

I found myself reflexively practicing this this morning as I was making my way through a package of clothes I had ordered from that once great store, The Gap.  Shit was just not fitting.  In the past, this experience has completely wrecked my outlook on life for days (or maybe weeks) at a time.  "THE SIZES ARE ALL THE SAME AS THE ONES I OWN!!! HOW CAN I NOT GET THESE PANTS EVEN PAST MY KNEES???" I have wailed to myself in anguish right before doing a landscape scan of all the places I could get a donut I could consult about this horror.  Not good for mental (or physical) health.  So this morning, as the same goddamn thing was happening, I had to remind myself of what a huge win it was that my first reaction to the situation was almost neutral.  These don't fit.  They have to go back. No pain, no anguish, no derailing.  It was what it was and that was neither good nor bad...it just was. 

A win prior to 9am.  Always a win for me.

We can easily see how this practice is desirable.  It keeps us nimble, it allows us to truly flow with whatever life will send your way.  Even though it's an over-used word, I think this is awesome in it's literal sense.  The ability to move with life and not always in a counterpuntal reaction to it is an incredible gift.  Where I find myself challenged and maybe saddened by it a little is when it applies to things almost overly positive in life.  This same idea of detachment should apply to those moments when you feel most splendidly in love, satisfied, fulfilled, content.  Just as we can't hold on the the negative too closely, allowing it space in order to engage with it appropriately, we cannot become too enamored with the positive.  We need space there too.

I found myself struggling with this in the past week.  In my life I've had incredibly close friends for periods of time.  In those, there have been wonderful moments I would never trade.  But inevitably, these do not last and when things seem to come crashing down, I am devastated by them.  We might consider this a normal pattern but "normal" and "healthy" are not the same thing. Nor are "normal" and "ideal."  In each of these cases, I now see in hindsight, a little detachment would've gone a long way.

So, this past week, I caught myself gripping so hard at one of my friendships.  It was almost an actually destructive gripping.  It turned me inside out, making myself miserable (and I'm sure I was awesome to deal with as a result...see, bad use of "awesome" right there).  Finally, some tiny, breathy little voice from deep within me said, exhausted, "Katie, just let go of it.  It's not going to play out as you want it to.  Change the perspective.  Change the approach.  Do something other than you're doing now...which is slowly killing you." I grudgingly re-routed my approach (and I'm serious on the grudging...I was very unhappy about having to be the one who bent).  It was the right thing to do.  It made me see that my anger, frustration, and hurt really had nothing to do with my friend and everything to do with my own little orphan taking over (see my last post about yoga and hip opening...my orphan lives in my hips, I swear).

I needed to detach before I could see the forest for the trees.  It wasn't easy.  It never gets easier.

Detachment is one of those things that I'll always chase after (and I'm certainly not the only one).  I do think it's a worthwhile chase, though.  Even if I never master it (and I probably won't), the process of trying can only be valuable.

30 Days is a Long Time, Especially on Day Seven

In typical fashion, I've attacked my 30 days of yoga with gusto and I'm about ready to flame out.  It's been a week.  There are so many learnings there, of course. Here are the biggest and best so far.

1. 30 days is a long time. 
At some point in my life, I stopped being able to commit.  Actually, I take that back.  I'm not sure I ever learned.  I have grown up on a "project basis."  So now I'm faced with the question of what to do when I don't have an explicit project.  There are crickets there.  That is all.  I think this is why humanity has kids.  Kids are the ultimate project and only until they leave does that become apparent.  So I'm basically having an "empty nester" experience.  I am not yet 40 and I don't have children.

It's bizarre.  Not much of a peer network there, it seems.

2. Yoga will bring massive shit to the surface.
I hesitated to pick yoga as a project for this very reason. My commitment to restart a practice can be 30 days but yoga itself will bring up a lifetime of turmoil that you've unwittingly stored in the great void that, apparently, are your hips.  So, after about 4 days of a pretty light practice, I was a wreck: anxious, agitated, distracted, uncomfortable, sometimes inconsolable.  All because of yoga.  Not a bad thing; I see it as a "flushing out the crud" exercise but, geez.  I should've built in breathers (ironically) which I ended up taking as some days I just didn't want to couldn't seem to fit it in.

3. Amazing things can happen.
Where's there's massive shit, there's also the potential for great, great opening.  For the first time in a long time, coincidences or serendipitous things started happening again.  I think those things are a kind of manifestation of hope.  When you lift a little weight off or change things up, the world around you flexes to accommodate that in sometimes the most unexpected but spectacular ways.  It really can be a seeing with new eyes.  If you're keeping track, this paired with the last learning amounts to what could be seen as significant mood swings.  Ah well, can't win 'em all.

4. I thrive on novelty.
I think this is the key to my commitment hesitation.  I'm definitely a "when the newness wears off..." kinda girl.  I've not really ever seen myself this way but even this project makes it an unavoidable truth.  I was beyond enthusiastic about this for the first 4 days and then I started getting bored.  I haven't given up on it but I do have to acknowledge my growing "meh-ness" toward the whole thing.

5. Sense memory is everything.
I have always known about myself that I live in my brain's world.  I can outthink just about anything and come around to the rational conclusion that I want to come to if given enough time.  Commitment like this requires a quieting of that stupid, chattering "monkey mind" and a subtle but sound resolve stemming somewhere from the core area that, "No, we're going to do this today because the sun rises and sets with complete regularity every day and not just when it feels like it." What I've noticed more particularly now than ever is that the motivation for that gradual "slow and steady" approach has to come from something other than reason (which is where my motivation for literally everything else comes from).

In this case, I think that's sense memory.  I have to tuck away the exact feelings that I have at the end of the practice and go back to those to find motivation.  It's not what I think about it but how it feels in the process.  Somehow, I always get into the middle of a practice and think, "It's absurd that I fight doing this so hard every day."  It's that moment I have to return to.  It's the feeling from the core that has to drive it.  Because if it's up to my mind, I'd rather lay on the couch.

I say all of this with trepidation because I haven't even cracked two weeks on this thing yet and I can already feel the urge to just toss the whole plan.  Maybe that's part of a sort of detox in a way.  It's retraining what is ultimately impulsivity into a balance with longevity.  Both are good but impulsive is definitely winning right now.

Well, the urge and not the practice.

All There Is

My least favorite moment is the one in which I realize that I want something to happen one way and it's not going to.  Especially when I've tried really hard to bend in the direction I know is right.  It's actually a manipulative thing to do.  And always a hard lesson to learn that, regardless of what I think will happen, once I've put it out there, I cannot control what comes next.

But the movies always tell me I can.
They lie.

This is one area for growth that has so much potential (in that I'm not very far in my growth at all...).  Kindness will not always be met with kindness.  Generosity can feel overwhelming.  Love can befuddle.  And because all of these are true, I can't write the script on how I want them to be received.  Because with all of these, it's not really about me.  It's about these things.  In this case, intention is mostly everything.  But it comes with no guarantees.

Sometimes I want people to react in ways they never will.  I want to be validated for the good I've done.  I want to feel like it was worth it to me.  But in those moments, I always have to re-learn, I'm actually much farther away from where I need to be.   If I'm going to love, then I have to do it.  If I'm going to be generous, then that moment of generosity is everything.

And that will be all there is.

And that's the way it should be.

30 Day Yoga Commitment

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to a unique friend about feeling a longing for the next big project.  She asked me a question that kinda stopped me in my tracks: "Have you asked God to help you find it?"

Um, no, no I had not.

But the notion wasn't bad.  In fact, I feel like I talk to the Universe all the time.  Funny that I somehow left out that I was looking for something new that maybe, you know, the Universe could help with.  A little.  So I did.  I point blank asked the Universe to show me something that would be true and good for me.

Aaand, I landed back at yoga by way of a re-commitment of sorts to...committing.

Admittedly, I have been adrift in a sea of new possibility.  Not adrift in the romantic, castaway sense.  Adrift like tattered, freezing, and my raft is coming apart with each second.  This feels like gritty, nasty adrift.  It's unsettling.

[Sidebar: what's going on with the dogs recently?  I've never heard barking like I have the past couple days....is it a full moon?  Seriously...I love dogs but there's a limit.  End of sidebar].

Alright, the other problem with being adrift is that you're working only on survival.  Stress is high for no apparent reason.  Fear rules the day.  There is no plan.  There is only chaos.  And scattered thoughts while you grasp at straws.

So, right after making my grand request to the Universe, an add for a pen-and-paper calendar/planner popped up that appealed so much to me it almost made me cry.  It's built around the idea of 30 day projects.  Now, one might say, "Katie, that's...a calendar."  Right, yes, I know.  30 days does a month make.  But this felt revolutionary to me in two distinct ways.  First, I hadn't thought much about it up until that point but writing words on paper feels much more real than writing things on a calendar in my phone.  That's fake planning.  I can change that it 2 seconds with a swipe of the delete key.  Pen, though, requires scratching out and a permanent reminder that a different plan than "lay on my couch all day playing games" once existed.  And it was better than the couch plan.  Second, it's taken those convenient pre-existing 30-day months and made them into distinct containers for finite projects.  This is one of those things that appeals solely because the last project I took on was a seemingly never ending 6 year nightmare.  You forget that you can do practically anything for 30 days and that's the only expectation out there.  

So, the calendar showed up at my door today and I picked it up on my way out this morning.  Since then, I've been thinking about it.  And it reignited my question to the Universe: "So now that I've got 9 months worth of 30-day projects, what should I do?" I then proceeded to have not such a great day and, frankly, felt pretty terrible upon arriving home tonight.  In search of something that made me feel better, I casually asked the Universe, "What should I do that would make me feel better?"  

Lo and behold, the answer was yoga.  And I did a practice that was way too hard (ironically or not called perseverance).  I did persevere which is all I needed to worry about there. Job done.  And of course, I feel so much better [EXCEPT FOR THIS EFFING DOG BARKING]. And it made the think while I was lying in savasana, "Why not make this your first 30 day project?"  

Done.

So I'm gong to do yoga and then I'm going to write about whatever comes up.  I'm committing to it for 30 days.  Let's see what happens.

No excuses.