Woman, Finally

Time warp. 
Highschool’s long over. 
Crows feet now decorate your smiling face.  You are dreaming of babies, babies, babies.  You are ‘over’ having to be that all-powerful-famous-rich person and have moved on to being honest, living with integrity, devoted to love-based values and loyal to your family. 
Loud music seems a lot louder than it used to.  Stilettos seem like an overall bad idea. 
You don’t cancel plans with friends any more because you intentionally make half as many plans. 
You’ve forgiven all the major criminals in your life. 
You’ve forgiven yourself. 
You’ve accepted yourself. 
You respect yourself. 
You still make mistakes, but they are no longer held up as evidence as to why you’re ‘not enough’. 
You don’t pounce on your ringing cell phone anymore. 
You canceled your ‘text’ plan. 
You schedule email ‘hours’ a couple times a week and hike, play, make love, work, relax, teach, cook and enjoy life in the moments between. 
You prefer reading to watching television. 
You have a sharp discerning eye. 
You’re not angry anymore. 
You don’t speed when you drive. 
You kindly let others into your lane.  Why not?  What’s the rush? 
You make time for your friends. 
You cook for your friends. 
You listen to your friends. 
You laugh a lot. 
You are relaxed and you help others relax. 
You stop eating long before you’re full. 
You mostly choose colorful fruits and vegetables... and dark chocolate, the expensive kind. 
You can afford a $5 chocolate bar - you’re all grown up now.  And though you rarely drink, you can tell the difference between a Shiraz and a Cabernet. 
Your husband loves you with a hug, not a cage. 
He admires who you are and how you are. 
He kisses you on the tip of your nose. 
He kisses you everywhere. 
Getting into bed with him is like landing softly in Love’s tender arms. 
He’s your best friend. 
Other women no longer scare you. 
You cheer on the hot-bodied 19 year-old who bubbles over with gleeful enthusiasm for every subject under the sun.  “You go girl,” you whisper to her.  (And you send her a silent prayer of protection as you watch her sexuality spill unconsciously onto every passer by.  She’ll learn.)
As for those women who glare with jealousy, who roll their eyes, who still gossip...your heart goes out to them. 
You’ve learned to meet female cruelty with indifference.  This was not easy.
You no longer strive to meet the demands of society or race to match society’s pace.
You take up yoga or move to another country to remember your natural cadence.
You discover space and quiet within you. 
You discover a deep Peace - a  Peace that words can not touch but that deeply touches those around you. 
You embody Love. 
People experience you as Love. 
And this is enough. 
You are Woman, finally.
           
      

Ethiopia

Thus far, Evan and my time in Ethiopia feels like swinging on a pendulum from
extreme wealth to extreme poverty and back again. We’re driving
through impoverished villages and desolate landscapes in a Toyota Land
Cruiser, which I believe cost more than my college education. We’re
staying in tidy hotels that neighbor urban slums. We’re feasting in restaurants outside of street children beg for food. This constant undulation (from wealth to poverty and
back again) has an effect similar to going from North Dakota to
Ecuador, back to North Dakota and back to the equator. The physical
body goes into relative shock and becomes slightly ill before finding
equilibrium (equilibrium, might I add, is not guaranteed and I am
still searching for mine).

Currently we are in Hawassa where I
feel very much like a princess protected from reality high up in her
tower. When said princess decides that said tower
is starting to feel like prison, she heads down to Hawassa’s main
street for some third world urban site seeing. There she is bombarded
by homeless peoples’ coo for “one birr” (equivalent to about $.08),
broken English catcalls and an ocean of harmless but lingering eyes
into which she attempts to look with loving compassion, “We are all
one…We are all one…We are all one, Namaste”. After some 2 hours said
princess is exhausted by black clouds of toxic diesel fumes, the site of emaciated
nursing beggars and weight of the unconscious barrier
she has now erected around her heart regardless of any loving mantras.

And so said princess retreats once again out of poverty’s sight, into said
tower until said tower begins to feel like a prison at which time she
descends upon Hawassa’s main street for some (more) urban third world
site seeing…. (It goes on like this for 48 hours.)

Clearly I am deeply grateful for my tower even though I am still making peace with the feeling that I am a spoiled clean-sheet-loving American who somehow (through dumb luck or good
karma or stellar celestial alignment) won the metaphorical lottery.

Every country in Africa has been, if not officially colonized at some
point, altered by Europe’s long reach. For some reason this used to
really piss me off. Why can’t the West just keep to its own business?
Why does the West insist on tasting everybody else’s honey? Or sugar
or oil or timber? Turns out in the late 1800’s Ethiopia was the first
African nation to defeat a European power. “Hip, hip, hurray”, I
silently cheered upon learning this fact throwing up a fist-pump for
the people of Ethiopia. And then I learned about the “Red Terror”, a
bloody era when Ethiopia’s own military government over threw the
Ethiopian king, killed all his ministers and then proceeded, in the likes of
Nazi Germany, to murder over 500,000 innocent Ethiopian civilians. Let me clarify, they didn't just murder 'innocent' people, they specifically murdered the best and brightest, the intellectuals and innovators. They wiped out anyone whose intelligence or inner power might threaten the military's standing. Whoa. Ethiopians killing Ethiopians on purpose without cause? Maybe
being under Italy’s control wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after
all. At least then they could have blamed someone else for their
current state. (I don’t sound much like a yoga teacher any more. Honestly, I don't even know what "yoga teacher" means anymore. This is only one of the many aspects of my former reality that hardly seem 'real' anymore. “We are all one…We are all one…We are all one,
Namaste.”)

Anyway, power has pretty much been a game of hot-potato for last 100
years in Ethiopia. This constant changing of the guard, in combination with
severe droughts, high inflation, the recent tragedy of the “Red Scare”
and a lack of education and medical resources, leave millions of rural
and urban Ethiopians out to dry in the unforgiving African sun.

But you guys probably know all this. I’m just sort of having my 31 year old
mind shattered as the reality of Ethiopia’s “situation” bulldozes the
china cabinet of my naiveté. This destruction of my previous model of
reality, by the way, is excruciatingly uncomfortable. Necessary, I
know, but uncomfortable as hell. Basically the tidy box I had
designated as “Real” is now but a pile of wood chips and bent nails.
And here, amidst this rubble, is where I stand. “Okey dokey,” I look
around with my hand on my hips. “So where shall I go from here? “

The Cave Behind the Waterfall

Rest yourself Inside
behind the veil of thoughts

Sit in the glow of the Cave
behind the waterfall

Dry and calm

Watch the descending current without judgment
Without taking pride in the water
Without scolding the water
Without wishing there was no water

Move within

Not easy
Nor is childbirth
Nor any process of Becoming

Most are closer to water than the Cave
Cold & drenched, hand scratching head

That’s okay

From beneath the water read the Sign Post:
"Move within. Now. Love you, Your Divinity."

Trust the moments of warmth
the glimpses of Light
the echoes of Silence
the hints of the Heart

Step out of the water

Some days very hard
Some days easier
Some days dry and warm
Some days wet all day

That's okay

Pratice watching the ‘lonely’, the ‘hurt’,
the ‘fear’, the ‘jealousy’,
the ‘right’, the ‘wrong’,
the ‘good’, the ‘bad’,
the ‘she’, the ‘he’,
the ‘I’, the ‘me’...

Endless drops

Watch and breathe...without judgment

...or maybe there is judgment...

That's okay

Practice again

Keep practicing
moving inwards
recede completely
into the Fire of the Heart

The Great Surrender

Upon returning from an 8 day "Raise Your Vibration" yoga journey with Desiree Rumbough at Kirpalu, this poem whispered itself to me.


softly landing
in my own skin
again tender

after so much clinging
gripping the bit
controlling
but not controlling

my breath
lays me to rest
in the openness
of my own heart

nothing to fight here
not even my own self

a smooth baby-body
asleep in mommy's arms
in daddy's hands

today i am baby
i am mommy
i am daddy

i lull myself sweetly
towards the great surrender
that precedes freedom

The Mind is Like a Dixie Cup

A young Krishna is playing with his friends, eating dirt, as boys will do. His mother catches him and insists that he spit out the rocks. When he opens his mouth wide she peers in and catches a glimpse of the entire universe...with in him! Stars, suns, moons, boundless space. At the sight of The Everything with in him, Krishna's mother momentarily passes out. The mind is like a Dixie cup. It can’t hold that ocean.

This is story paints such a delightful image of a foundational aspect of "Yoga". "Yoga" is the state being where nothing's missing. The state of yoga is a cellular recognition that every planet, every star, the building blocks of every living thing exist within each of us. Intricate systems work together inside our being. Water, electricity, waves, and powerful vibrations animate our every moment, our alive-ness. Nothing’s missing.

Of course, we will forget the grandeur, the twinkling of the stars inside, the multitudes of universes inside us. Part of the human experience is forgetting the miracle of The Everything of which we are composed.

That is why I practice yoga daily. The practice helps me move beyond the waxed paper border of my mind into the greater space within. Whether it's asana, mediation, pranayama...the practices help me touch the space my mind can't reach. In this way it brings me into a direct experience with The Everything...if even for just a moment.

Preaching to the Choir

Whenever possible I climb to the top of the nearest mountain or speed bump to declare my ecstatic love for this practice called ‘yoga’. Yoga brought me back to my own Self - like a shepherd to her sheep. In the style of ‘Amazing Grace’, I was lost and then I was found.

When yoga found me I had long intellectually understood that I was composed of divine intelligence - the same divine intelligence that makes waves in the oceans, brings about spring after winter and designs animals of every color, shape and size. I understood with my head the miracle of my being, but that didn’t stop me from making very poor, selfish, fearful, hurtful, self-defeating decisions over and over and over again. My understanding of my own Grace-nature had not integrated into my cells, my heart, my breath or my every waking moment. Not even close. Bridging that understanding from my head to my heart occurred (and occurs daily) via my yoga practice on and off the mat. Yoga integrates what we know with our brains with the boundless life-force energy of the heart.

It is for this reason that I will share this practice with others for as long as I live. The practice is a direct extension cord to the Love in our hearts, the Love in every living vibration on the planet. Plus it just feels so dang good to play and breathe and squirm and find stillness again on the mat. So I teach yoga as a means of giving back the greatest gifts I have been given by this practice - health, consciousness, self-reflection, calmness, peace, vibrancy, and, oh yeah, Universal Love.

I am madly in love with the human race. Many of my friends can not fathom this possibility. And, let’s face it, as a race we are not always so lovable. We do things that hurt each other. We say things that sting like daggers. We are fallible, angry, violent, cruel and selfish. But, somehow, the practice of yoga gives one X-ray vision of sorts. With this vision we are able to see through the fallible ‘ways’ of man and woman, right into the root of the root of the heart of the matter that gave birth to the anger, violence, cruelty and selfishness. It’s a radical gift to see through the hurt to the heart. And that is the gift that keeps on giving in the practice of yoga. Sure, your hamstrings will elongate, your backpain will go away, your self-doubt will finally step to the back of the stage - but even cooler - you will learn to see love where previously it was hidden. It’s a crazy, beautiful, thrilling, exhausting, liberating thing. It’s like going to the best optometrist on the planet. Dr. yoga, yo.

So from the top of every mountain let yoga ring.

The Sky is Waiting

Come fly.
Leave your left brain.
Bring your heart,
your trust,
your quite eyes and ears.
Leave your fear,
your no's,
your cant's,
your wont's.
Bring your wonder.
Bring your laughter.
Bring the wings of your breath.
Come fly.
The sky is waiting...