2015: year of the mermaid

2015 is the year of the mermaid. I know that because I just decided so right now. It is my (belated) new year's resolution, before I become a woodland faerie next year (stay tuned for explanation).

The mermaid is gorgeous and wild. ruled by great mother ocean and aligned with the water element, mermaid seeks fluidity, harmony, and depth. 

Her emotions are her power. She hides not from pain and suffering, nor does she wane in the warm glow of ecstasy. She allows her experiences, internal and external, to wash over her like a wave - sweeping, all-encompassing, and then gone, silent and still.

Mermaid is a nomad and an creature-lover. Always exploring, adventuring, and meeting magical animal and plant friends along the way. She is totally present in the moment, not rushing to the next adventure before exploring the current one entirely, trying different angles and viewpoints to see from where she can get the best view (the best view to her is always the one that makes her heart sing with beauty!).

Drawn ever-seaward, mermaid is pulled here and there like the tide by the moon. To her, the ocean is freedom, purification, home. not grounded with feet on the earth, like the woodland faerie (whose year is 2016), the mermaid's centre is in her heart and speech.

Sound is her sensual pleasure, and it must be communicated from the wisdom of the heart. To close up, to hold back, is to deny life to the mermaid, who leads with her heart. she loves to sing, to create sound and rhythm, and to feel her body move with this sacred dance.

Mermaid is kind, sensitive, attentive, and a good listener. her intuition leads her to the best way to care for people, animals, and plant-friends. and care she must! Her empathy is as deep and as wide as the sea.

Mermaid's weakness is loneliness, brought about by long bouts away from home. She is non-dualistic, seeing other beings not only as her brother, but as another image of her self. She dissolves borders and membranes which appear to create separation. She is an expert at merging all of life. separation, or threats of separation, can feel wrenching for her, a threat to the unity and oneness she seeks. But mermaid, don't cry, remember relationships are eternal and separation is only illusion. There is a time for proximity and a time for space, just as the wave flows and ebbs.

Everything mermaid does is infused with a playful and light-hearted joy. Her work is done efficiently, but is often a means to an end, a mere formality so she can quickly return to the realms of play.

Her relationships are lightly-bound and forgiving. Laughter fills the space around her. 

Mermaid, this is your year. 

Be as gorgeous and boundless as you dare! 

Seek only joy within the glorious revelation of each moment! 

Swim, romp, and sing! 

Connect passionately and meaningfully, and let go with grace and ease. 

Let your hair be wild. 

Rx

what does yoga look like?

I often find myself reminding students “yoga isn’t about what you do or what the pose looks like, it’s about how you are in the pose, your state of mind and whether you are breathing. It's not WHAT you do, it's HOW you do it!”
  
Yet I find that, as someone who subscribes to a number of yoga-related media and who has many friends in the yoga community, I am constantly inundated with beautiful – utterly perfect – photos of someone or another effortlessly nailing an advanced posture. Numerous photos per day flood my ‘walls’ and ‘feeds’ alerting me simultaneously to both the stunning nature of this physical practice, as well as my decidedly inadequate status as a non-perfect, lumpy, and short-hamstringed individual.  

What gives? Are the only people out there in yoga-land made of rubber bands? Do they actually roll out of bed looking stunning before sunrise and get to the beach warmed up and ready to strike the pose just as a pod of pink dolphins begin to frolic in the background? 

What does yoga really look like?  

Your yoga. My yoga.  

The yoga that awaits me as I drag myself, half awake, to the mat each morning, with matted hair, and daggy gym shorts. The yoga that yawns my joints into motion through creaks and cracks. The yoga that still challenges me to accept where I am and not to ask for the moment to be anything more than what it is – perfect imperfection. 

The power of our practice is not always something that everyone can see through an instagram filter. 

More often, it is a slow and silent intimacy – that moment when the mind, the soul, and the body connect. Aha! HERE I am.

Here is my yoga tonight, in pictures – the fidgets, the fumbles, the falls, and the freedom. 

I want to see your yoga and share to inspire others. Do you dare to have your photo here? 

Does the so-called "yogic journey" necessitate an instagram account? a hashtag? a facebook page?

As i practice into the body of my yoga, does it need to be on display to be loved, to be true, and to be worthwhile? Why do I struggle with my ego each time I see a handstand photo online?

(How can I even write this? So many people who i love finding art in their asana. Do i betray them?)

Do i betray myself if i never shine as bright as them? If I never achieve asana-greatness will I never be a yogi? Am I not trying hard enough?

What does it mean to be a yogi?

Do I need to have long legs, supple hamstrings, and colourful eco-friendly tights?

Is that one rung on the ladder to G-d's golden treehouse? 

If I become a yogic body will i come closer to a yogic mind?

I can't find G-d in that.

But then these days I don't even want to try. I just want to practice being this.

This. Being.

How can I love it more?

I ask. I feel. I navigate emotions like captain ahab. From a pile of bones sitting on a floor. The rising and falling of waves.

I am the white whale.

This isn't even a yogic journey. Because, really, "yogic" doesn't mean anything. It's just a word. It's just the way I'm expressing coming back to myself. But it's nothing really. It's so simple, it's not even good or bad. It's just becoming more right where i am. 

I think on that journey everything becomes more and more like love. Each moment is of utmost importance. In each encounter i meet a soulmate. 

The journey is so vast it includes all of life, yet so simple it becomes narrowed to one task. The practice of peace. 

Asana robs me of peace when it stirs my ego. Asana draws me into peace when it shows me the ever-changing nature of feeling, breath, circumstances. 

When I practice with the intention of peace, Asana is just another way I love myself.

coming inside

you beg and you beg and once you are finally granted access to the whole world, you find that the very best part was the part you had access to all along.

you start as a baby. you can't move but to cry and flail. you are confined to your own little body. 

as you grow bigger and more capable, your world expands.

now the perimeter of your crib. now the soft blanket where your mother places you and you begin to crawl. now the coffee table where you prop yourself up for the first time.

the whole room. the whole house. and finally you go outside and play. you walk to school by yourself. you get older and you borrow your mother's car. 

you are free. you fly away to the other side of the world. you go where your impulses take you.

you try everything.

you taste foods, drugs, flesh. you send your mind through the expanse of books, of knowledge and learning.

you go where your imagination will allow you.

then you sit. alone. in a room.

you become very still and quiet. 

you wait for that treasured glimpse of the whole universe inside you.

proximity is also an illusion

In quantum physics, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that when two particles collide they are put off their original trajectory and forever affected by their brief encounter. Furthermore, by gathering information (on location or momentum) of one of the particles, we automatically know related information about the other particle. The impact of the encounter, however brief, is such that each particle is changed and neither are ever the same again.

And so it is with human relationships. 

Sometimes over many years, a lifetime, we grow with and through another - lifelines entwined like twisted tree trunks. But more often we are drawn into proximity with one another for the briefest of collisions. Seemingly insignificant are these moments, but somehow they are shaping, not only our days, but our lives.

We sit and have a coffee and one will tell a story about her child, for example. How the child might be struggling in school, or maybe how the child did something of wonderful significance. An emotion will arise in the woman telling the story - worry, pride. There is a moment of unveiling. Through the emotion there is resonance with the truth of being and you, the one listening, can feel that emotion in your body as well (empathy). 

It is the same as when you see people embracing at the arrivals gate. You experience their emotion through your body. 

That moment of emotional resonance is a portal into oneness.

Then you will pick up your respective handbags, pay the cheque and leave on your separate ways. 

But what has just happened here? Something has been shared. A chemical reaction has taken place in each of your bodies and even as you go about the rest of your day, that experience is touching everything you are doing in the most delicate and imperceptible way. 

 What happens when we love? That powerful feeling of connection and profound respect, appreciation, and unmasked regard for another's well-being - it is readily available to those who can open themselves to vulnerability. We can fall in love many times each day, in each of our interactions, with a stranger across the street, if we can sense that space inside of us that is the same as that in them.

I think that when we love we see and value each 'collision' with another (so to speak) as a sacred and monumental act. Sacred in its divinely encoded message, momentous in its power to expand [who we really are].

And this is why (coming back to specifics) I can't hate an ex-lover, for example. Those beautiful moments once shared are every bit a part of the now. Your light is part of the light that shines from me from now until forever. I can't thank you enough for that.

Our proximity will always be in relation to those with whom we've collided. We are never too far apart to erase love.

As if to confirm this principle to me in no uncertain terms, a man came and sat next to me in the cafe where I was writing this post today. We began to talk and the man told me a story about his days as a mathematician when he travelled to Germany and worked with Werner Heisenberg. I told him that it was crazy because I was just writing about Heisenberg and showed him the first lines of this blog. The man smiled and said, "see, this is what I'm trying to tell you. We may not understand the magic in life, but it is there for us to enjoy."

the life-giving power of corpse pose

Savasana is the time when we acknowledge the impermanence of our yoga practice. It is the transition between the end of the practice and the re-emergence into our worldly life. 

In Savasana we lay ourselves out like a corpse signifying the death of the practice. We keep the mind steady and the body still. We practice non-attachment. Non-attachment to our asana practice, non-attachment to our thoughts. We practice non-attachment to what has just happened and what is about to happen. We are still and centered and alert in this present moment. We let everything go, retaining only the breath.

The death of the practice.

We are not in mourning at this death. This death is energized with the power of our practice, the movements of the body, the intention of the breath. As we spread the mind and body onto the floor, that intention rises. It hums, it vibrates, the energy of that union with our higher selves.

And, like the corpse of an animal feeds the earth it lays on, in our false death we feed the earth with our energy.

When we send our intention outwards our Savasana becomes a powerful giver of life. It is, at one level, an important resting pose after a challenging practice, but on another level it is a powerful way to share the energy we've created within the room and beyond.

The subtle power of Savasana comes from the recognition that, like everything in existence, our power will fade, our bodies will pass away into the ground, we will receive energy, achieve goals, climb to the top. We will fall along the path, we will sometimes not get what we want, we will fail. 

There is a continuous sharing of energy that flows through us all and through the universe. We are always receiving energy or giving energy. 

In Savasana, we honor the recognition that there will be a time for us to shine, but there will also be a time for us to stand back, step down. When this time comes we give our strength and energy to others freely and openly. It is their turn to play, to acheive. It is our turn to wait in stillness.

My Savasana practice has taken on this significance. When I lie in Savasana I relax and gently fill the room with my energy, sending it to others in the room and in my life that may have use for it now. Then I begin again, fresh, with the acknowledgement of Namaste.

As I embrace the "death" that is crucial to giving life, at least symbolically/energetically in my yoga practice, I am reminded of the wise teaching of many who encourage us to live as though each moment could be our last. 

Wasn't it Robin Williams who said in Dead Poets Society "we are food for worms".

And Carlos Castenada who wrote, "Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power."

When we see the moments of our life through that lens we understand the precious precarious power in each drop of life. We don't fear death. We know all things pass away. It is all part of the cycle, giving life to the next and the next and the next.

I believe Leslie Kaminoff says it best:

“Every pose that you master you’re going to lose. Except one: Savasana.”


 

begone!: 3 ways to rid yourself of an energy vampire

An energy vampire is someone who feeds off other people's energy because they are feeling low and don't know how to bring themselves back up. In my experience, an energy vampire will not be able to drain you when you are at your highest, most happy, confident, and strong state. They will wait until you are weakened slightly by some negative event, or if you are just feeling a bit tired or lower than usual. 

You will know you've encountered an energy vampire when you find yourself left in a funk by someone who appears to have latched on to you and won't leave you alone until they've dumped all of their negativity and drama onto you.

You should never encourage this kind of conversation, but sometimes the energy vampire doesn't need to be encouraged to continue their tirade.

I should be clear here. I am not talking about a friend who has had a bad day and is coming to you for support. The energy vampire doesn't really have a purpose or particular problem in mind. They are just interested in spreading negativity.

I've been working with this quite a lot lately and have found a couple of things that really work to stop the drain of my own personal energy and restore it to it's higher level.

1. Sage. Sage burning has been used in many cultures as a method for purifying a space or a person. 

I was amazed just how completely this technique works in a space where the energy might be dark, negative or low, or where an energy vampire might have been hanging out. 

Simply light the sage and waft the smoke around the area in question. You can even do this to purify yourself after an attack. 

If you don't have sage, you can use incense also. It may not be as powerful, but the intention that you bring to the practice is the most important thing.

2. Water. Stand under a shower, dive into the ocean, make yourself a mineral bath. Close your eyes as you do and imagine the pure water glowing with healing light as it pours over you. 

Decide that when you emerge from the water you will be reborn, your energy restored.

3. Breath. This one you can do during the attack to protect yourself and even deter further attack. 

As you continue to look in the direction of the energy vampire, bring your awareness to your breathing. Feel the inhale and feel the exhale. Hear the breath and feel the breath and let the sound of the voice fade into the background. 

Let your vision turn inward and see the energy vampire as a child, crying out for help and attention. Continue to give no importance to what they are saying. 

Continue to feel the breath for as long as it takes for the energy vampire to go away. They may look at you for a response. Make sure you do not buy in. Smile lovingly or say something general like "is that so". Continue feeling the breath until you relax back into your own body.

These are just a few things that I have found work best for me. I hope you find them useful too and would love to hear your tips for things that you have found helpful.