retaining yourself

Its not my first time writing on this subject, I have a hard time saying no. I'm a natural pleaser, a caretaker. Of late I've been working on being more careful with how I go about putting those efforts out into the world. I've realized I don't want to change who I am, I love taking care of the people around me, I just don't want to get taken advantage of by people who don't care for me back. I want to retain who I am by surrounding myself with people who get it.

Yesterday I got a text from someone who hasn't treated my particularly well asking me for a favor. It was so in my nature to just do the favor for them that I had to stop myself from responding right away and think it through. How would I feel after I did the favor? Like garbage was the answer. I would resent that I had taken my time to do something for someone who would never appreciate it or thank me. It was hard for me but I referred them to someone who would be able to help them and stepped out of the situation.

 

 

 

Now obviously that didn't work perfectly because here I am writing about it the next day. There is a part of me that is still worried that I might have been too harsh or that I should have just done the favor because it wasn't that hard for me to do. The stronger part of me knows that had I done the favor I would be upset with myself. Its a growing pain for me.

A few weeks ago I traveled with a friend to the middle of Florida for a race she was competing in. Not to sugar coat it, it was a pain in the ass to deal with. I had to sub my classes, board my dog, and spend my weekend in a podunk town. And I loved every second of it.

So what's the difference? A tiny favor for someone vs. an entire weekend away - on the surface the weekend away seems like the greater effort. The entire weekend I knew how much my friend appreciated me being there. I didn't feel for a second like I was "doing a favor" I was just hanging out with my buddy and I couldn't help but feel all the love she was sending my way.

My work is surrounding myself with people for whom giving my love and effort to, doesn't feel like work, or a favor, or an effort. I'm working on curating relationships where I can just be myself and trust that the people I have surrounded myself with are there with all the right intentions.

I hope you find the same.

Namaste, Rachel

yogi friends

I'm not exactly the friendliest looking girl you've ever run into. My friends (I swear some people have managed to get over the first impression) lovingly tell me I have "resting bitch face." I see people come in and out of the yoga studio and everyone seems to know each other, they're all buds. No one talks to me.

One of my favorite parts about traveling is popping into little yoga studios along the way, seeing what different city's yoga are like: what kind of music do they listen to, what cool moves are they doing that I don't know yet. When I'm in one of these out of towner studios I can always manage to strike up a convo with the people at the front desk or with the instructor after class. I don't as easily make conversation with the other people practicing; I'm trying to get a feel for what the studio is like. Does everyone come in quietly and lay on their mats? Is music playing and are people chatting? By the time I've figured all this out people seem to be into their routines and I have a hard time breaking in.

At my own home studio I have my buds that I come to class with and I get pretty absorbed talking to them. Or if I come alone I don't strike up conversations with people. I see it happening around me so I've started to think about why that is. I've always told myself that practicing in the studio I teach in is a little weird. People look at me, a teacher, and expect things from me. They expect me to do advanced asana, not take child's pose, not drink water, not get tired. It makes me all strange and uncomfortable. Now, I have no idea if any of this is true, but that's my inner monologue.

I think the fact of the matter is I'm a little shy. Striking up a conversation with random people isn't easy for me. I'm the kind of girl who works with my office door closed. I prefer a dinner party to going to a club. I like tight intimate relationships.

As I've watched all these people around me chatting and laying out their yoga accouterments, I started to think about whether yoga is the place that I want to be making friends. The answer was a quick and obvious yes. These yogis are totally my kind of people, after work they want to sweat, on the weekends they schedule going out around class, they spend their money on weekend retreats and juice cleanses.

So I did something uncomfortable. I sat down in class a few weeks ago and asked the girl next to me about the shirt she was wearing. We talked for 10 minutes before class started and after class exchanged a hug and numbers with a promise to grab coffee soon. Painless. I've been having those experiences almost every class now for weeks. And you know what? I'm having more fun at yoga (as if I even believed that was possible), feeling less like I have a role to fulfill as a teacher, and growing my circle of yogi friends. Pretty dope.


namaste,
Rachel 

awestruck

I had an amazing opportunity this weekend to practice with some of my yoga heroes Briohny Smyth and her husband Dice Ilda-Klein at, where else but, Green Monkey.  They were two of the sweetest people I have ever met, and I loved every second of their class even when sweat was dripping in my eyes and up my nose. Yes, I was upside down enough that sweat had the opportunity to drip up my nose. This was a special class, not just because of how much time we spent on our hands instead of our feet but because of the level of the people practicing next to me. 

People were doing some cirque du soleil freaky stuff that mere mortals don't can't do. I won't even tell you what Dice and Briohny (who by the way is 5 months pregnant, gorgeous, and still doing handstands) were doing because it was the stuff that yoga deities are made of, but watch their videos and you'll have a good idea. Their version of giving variations sounded something like this: So, you're going to float into a handstand (I'M GOING TO WHAT?), you could then come down into a one legged crow, maybe you want to come back into handstand, and switch sides, maybe a one handed handstand, maybe you want to levitate, OK yogis get to it! Watching my fellow yogis float into poses with ease that I can only hope to one day shove myself into was inspiring.  

Its easy to look up at the beautiful people around you with contempt from your sweaty blob on the floor, but instead I looked up with wonder. These peeps were doing AMAZING things, and one day I'm going to do those amazing things. I had the perspective of a beginner again. I remembered what it feels like not to be able to do most things, to look around at everyone else, and feel that pang of jealousy that what comes so easily to them is the biggest challenge you have ever faced. 

I am incredibly guilty of not wanting to do things that I'm not good at. I was reminded of this the other day when my girlfriend asked me to guess what something was and I flat out refused. I had no idea, so I was bound to be wrong. Why bother to try if you are sure to fail? 

And yet I've never had this perspective with my yoga, I fall all the time in yoga. I tell my classes stories all the time of my yoga failures and I have no shame in them at all. I’ve talked before about how who you are on the mat is who you are in the world, but maybe for me that isn’t true. I think I’m might be a better version of myself on the mat than anywhere else. I am able to practice all of the qualities I most admire true effort, compassion, truth, grace, gratitude and surrender, with ease on the mat, not so much in life. Perhaps a little perspective shift is in order. Rather than let my day-to-day life choices be dictated by a fear of failure, I could take my yoga perspective off the mat and into the rest of my world. 

What if this week you challenged yourself to be a little more like your yoga (or running, cycling, zumba-ing, kickboxing, meditating, or whatever else you do) self and less fearful? 

Namaste,

Rachel 

apathy: the most un-yogic trait you can possess

Friday is usually my morning to sleep in late, take a nice long run, go to the dog park, and hang out. But this morning my alarm went off early and I jumped out of bed, put on real pants (ones not made out of spandex) and went to city hall to vote! This was my very first presidential election voting in person and after waiting for an hour and a half in line at 7am, I finally got to vote. And it was awesome.

waiting an hour and a half was not so awesome, but this view while waiting was

I headed to the dog park, still wearing my "I voted" sticker, smiling my "I just acted as a concerned citizen smile." Where someone remarked that he wasn't voting because "it doesn't matter" and "[I'm] retarded if [I] think [my] vote counts"  My head spun around and flew off of my body. Literally. A good Samaritan had to go retrieve it. Don't worry I've put some arnica and tea tree oil on it, its fine.

So, beyond the fact that its 2012 and this man used the word retarded, which is completely and utterly unacceptable, this man doesn't believe in voting. It is taking all of my effort to not go into a rant about how incredibly blessed we all are to have the right to vote, which remember is not a right in many places. Until recently women and people of color couldn't vote. But, I won't go there right now.

Let's talk about voting from a perspective of just being a person who is alive in the world. Forget about your political affiliations, the issues that press your buttons, just think about being a citizen who walks around in the world every day. You have to care about what is happening around you. You breathe air, you drive on roads, you see people jobless and homeless on the street, a crazy hurricane just hit New York. How can you not care?

Maybe this is a result of having the mother that I do. A mother that made it clear that the problems of the community were my personal problems. A mother that made it clear that it was my responsibility, as a person who was educated and lucky enough to have rights and privileges that other do not enjoy, to make sure the world was a fair place.

What's my point here you might ask, and how does it relate to yoga? OK I'm getting there, hang on.

Apathy. That is my point. Not only is apathy just about the most unsexy quality a person can possess, it is also makes you a terrible citizen and person. Yea, that was kinda harsh, but I also think its very true.  I don't know when people thought this became cool, but evidently there are people that think not caring is cool. It isn't.  It is extraordinarily lame. As lame as using the word retarded as a slur.

In yoga we dedicate our practices to bigger ideas and things that need our energy, we as teachers dedicate our time through karma yoga, we as yogis go to charity class after charity class donating our time and money, we care. So I recognize that I'm preaching to the choir, but you the choir are out in the world with these apathetic people, they roam amongst us, dressed like regular citizens.

If you are apathetic to the world around you, you are barely a part of the world around you. We say it in yoga about the breath, if you aren't connecting with your breath you haven't even walked into the studio yet. So I'm saying this, if you don't care about what is happening to the other humans roaming the earth with you, you haven't even walked into the world yet.

Yoga is all about caring for the rest of the world around us. Sure we care for our own bodies and minds, but we also care so deeply for our fellow humans.  It's the whole meaning of namaste, we look into the eyes of any other person and see the higher power within them.  We can't just say namaste at the end of class, we have to live namaste. If you look someone in the eye and say "I see the higher power in you and I love you for it," you must care for that person.

Namaste,
Rachel


ps- A special happy birthday to one of my most loyal readers, my sister-in-law Jill, who has always taught her kids to care about the world around them and stand up for what they believe in.  Jill gave me my very first yoga job and I did my first teacher training in her studio! I love you!

balancing act

Today is my last first day of school. Weird.  It is an extreme bittersweet feeling, I have literally been working towards this goal for as long as I can remember, but I feel a little bit of emptiness. What do I do now? I think I have to be an adult. Not so interested in that part. But that's a few months off, and today I'm just going to deal with today.

Today I have to go back to my balancing act. I don't get to be the sweaty yogini that I've been for the last month.  I have to put on real clothes.  That don't involve spandex.  Add that to the list of things I'm not so interested in.  But alas, here I am in my first day of school outfit (yes, I laid it out last night), backpack packed and ready to go.

This morning as I got ready and ran a few errands I really meditated (or "thought about" for you non-sweaty people) on how to keep a nice balance between all that I do.  I am often told that I take too much onto my plate, that I'm doing too much.  This may be true, but balancing it what I do, when I only have one thing to focus on I go a little crazy. So today I'm taking one more thing onto my plate, filling up on not just yoga but now a healthy helping of tax law.

As sad and weird as it feels to be near the end of my life as a student, I'm amazed at how my track has changed from my "plan". Yes, I've always wanted to to go to law school and now that's almost over, but I've picked up some extra little things along my path. The empty feeling of being so close to the end of law school really has been filled by the extras that I've picked up.

Yoga is one of those extras, even though I've been practicing for much longer than I've been a law student, my practice has deepened significantly while in law school.  Not what one might expect, but thats just how it worked out.  So, as I make my schedule (yes, I write out my schedule a week in advance) it includes studying and class, but it also includes my own practice and time to teach others.

Its all about balance, we don't all have law school and yoga but we all have careers, family, gym, partner, friends, and ourselves.  Maybe writing out your schedule a week in advance is crazy, but maybe if it lets you get a little more onto your plate with ease it's worth it.

Namaste,
Rachel