Happiness (!?)

Happiness! What a topic... hmm, I have so much to say... where to start?

I think people generally view me as a very happy person. I know this because they tell me so all the time. One of my favorite teachers was just commenting today that she really likes how I am always smiling during practice. This isn't necessarily like a big cheesy grin (which would be creepy), but she says I always at least have a really pleasant expression on my face.

Now, the yoga smile is completely genuine, because I am ALWAYS really happy to be at yoga! But I also know that I am really good at faking it. When I was waitressing, I usually had at LEAST one customer a day who commented, "wow, you are the happiest waitress we've ever seen, that's great!"... but half the time, I was totally miserable or pissed off and just REALLY good at covering it up. It is a skill that I developed deliberately, actually.

My point here is that I usually seem very happy, and in certain situations it IS genuine, but there's usually been SOME level of worry or unhappiness hiding underneath. It's easy to be happy while something good is happening (like a yoga class!), but the real test is when you're by yourself, making dinner, riding the subway, watching TV... what's on your mind then?

For as long as I can remember, I've always been waiting for SOMETHING to come along to make my life complete. Oh, life is good now, but it's REALLY going to be great once I get into college. Then college is okay, but I REALLY need to figure out what I'm going to do with my ballet career and what I'm going to do with my life. Then ballet is okay, but the money is non-existant and the hours really sucks, so what am I going to do NEXT? Then waitressing is ok, but I NEED to get into grad school. Then grad school is great, but I still NEED to become a Bikram yoga instructor! Always waiting for that NEXT thing that will REALLY make life great...

A couple weeks ago, I started to suspect that something was changing. I was out camping with my roommate in the desert, and I saw a shooting star. She told me to wish for something, and I wished for... nothing. There was nothing at that moment that I wanted to change, nothing to fix.

Now that little inkling has developed into a true certainty: I am happy NOW, here. Of course there are still a million things that I plan to do in my future, but I don't NEED to do any of them now. Right now, there is nowhere to go, nothing to fix. I can be genuinely happy, all the time, for no reason. This is brilliant. This is a total game-changer. I'm driving around the California coast with my music on and my windows down, and I couldn't be happier. I'm at a party and I'm totally thrilled to be meeting all these interesting people. I'm at yoga with my heart pounding and my face on fire and I'm just delighted to be there. I'm in lecture at 10am on Monday morning trying not to fall asleep, and it's boring as heck, but I am still HAPPY because I am in the right place at the right time. That's something my favorite yoga teacher wrote to me in an email last week when i told her I couldn't go to teacher training this year: "you know you are always going to be in the right place at the right time." And wow - what a great surprise - I actually DO know that!

That's all for now... :-)

Resurrections

It's never too bad, it's never too late, and you're never too old or too sick to do yoga and start from scratch once again, to be born once again...

Advanced Seminar: WANT!!!

So I get home this morning from a really great 7am practice to shower, eat breakfast, and get ready to go to class... but of course, since I am ADD like this, I have to check my facebook while I am eating my cereal. And when I get on facebook, the first thing I see is an announcement of the DATES for the BIKRAM YOGA ADVANCED SEMINAR in June!!

For those of you who don't know, this is a week-long seminar with Bikram and Emmy and all the crazy advanced pros. Two classes a day, one beginners series and one advanced. They haven't had it in like two years - last summer it got cancelled. Apparently it's pretty brutal, and awesome.

I WANT!!

I mean, I don't need, I just want... but I REALLY want! So fuck it, I'm going!!!

The awesome thing is that it's going to be in Palm Springs, CA (as opposed to where they had the last one, which was Hawaii), so I can just drive there for the price of a tank of gas!

One thing nearly threw a snag in this plan: the seminar dates are June 28 - July 4. My Dad's WEDDING is June 28th. In Masachusetts. Uh oh. But the yoga part doesn't really start until the 29th (which is a Monday), so my plan is just to be on a plane at 6am that Monday, the time difference will work in my favor, and I can be in Palm Springs by Monday afternoon. I'll miss the first couple classes, which IS a total bummer, but I think it will DEFINITELY still be worth it!

And actually... the timing is kind of the icing on the cake... because I had ALREADY planned to be gone from school that week because of my trip to the east coast. So I will just cut the east coast trip short by a couple days, and extend the vacation by a couple days, and all I have to say to my advisor is "yeah, my Dad's getting married this weekend in Massachusetts and I'm going to be away for the week." No mention of twisting myself up into a pretzel at a luxury resort in the desert. :)

I AM SO EXCITED!

You get what you need...

I had a great class tonight. Strong, precise, and relaxed. After class, I told my friend who had been teaching that tonight I finally got the yoga class that I had been NEEDING.

I have been obsessing listening to the Rolling Stones for MONTHS now. Just that one song: "you can't always get what you want... but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need." I think this more or less sums up a great yoga practice. You CAN'T always get what you want. But if you just try and try and try, you eventually do get what you need.

Some examples: what I WANT sometimes is to have these great rock-star postures. What I NEED is to take a step back, get back to basics, accept my practice for whatever it is, and appreciate the benefits that it gives my body. What I WANT is to go running down to LA all the time to practice advanced series with Emmy and get crazy new skills. What I NEED is to focus on consistency and maintenance and be happy with the times that I DO get to go see Bikram or Raj or Emmy. What I WANT sometimes is to drop out of grad school, go to Bikram teacher training immediately, and move back to my friends and my home studio. What I NEED to do is practice PATIENCE and commit to the present moment, do the things that I've come here to do, and believe that I will always be in the right place at the right time.

This is actually very, very encouraging to me, because I feel like as soon as you realize that you CAN'T always get what you want, it becomes OKAY to not get what you want. Yeah, so I want this to happen, and it's probably NOT going to happen now. That's ok. I'm still going to get what I need.

It finally occurred to me - TONIGHT - that this is one of the things that Bikram talks about all. the. time! He says that one of the most important things in all of human life is knowing the difference between "want" and "need." This is the basis for what he refers to as Self-Control, one of the five elements of a strong mind. YES - I am that slow!!! I managed to obsess over this idea for months before consciously connecting it with what Bikram has been saying all along. (Side note: I have these revelations about his comments more and more. I hear or read his words, they seem really straight-forward or simple, I store them in my memory, and then months or YEARS later I hear a great idea, or have one myself, and realize, oh my GOD, that is EXACTLY what Bikram said. Uncanny. I think he's on to something. Or a lot of somethings.)

Here are some of Bikram's words on "want" and "need": "Life can be heaven or it can be hell; it all hangs on those two words. If you can judge and make a decision between what you want and what you need, then you can have the best life."

IN CONCLUSION... I WANT to stay up late gabbing on the internet, but I NEED to get a good night's sleep, and the Rolling Stones are an excellent band. The end.

Morning Glory

So I am making a big effort to start practicing in the morning more! Right now, my schedule requires me to be at school at 10am on Mon/Wed/Fri, so the 7am Mon/Wed/Fri classes are perfect. When I started practicing, I basically worked nights, so I ALWAYS practiced in the "morning." And by morning, I mean noon. But those were the days when I ate dinner at 1am, so whatever.

Now "morning" means morning, as in getting up by 6am. It has been a long time since I did this!!

Schedule-wise, it is totally worth it, because I don't have to spend the whole afternoon stressing over whether I'll finish working in time to get to yoga class.

Practice-wise... ummm, I am just waiting for my internal clock to adjust. This morning was hilarious, because even 45 minutes into class, my body was just SO convinced that it was supposed to still be ASLEEP! Forget about balancing on one leg - I nearly fell over sideways out of TRIANGLE! Awesome. I also pretty much feel asleep DURING standing head to knee... I was in the middle of bringing my forehead down onto my knee and I saw the whole room kinda shift, like in a dizzy, falling-asleep way. Abort! Abort!

Yoga is still my favorite way to wake up. I just gotta start going to bed earlier...

On Patience

I love Bikram (the person) and I love his books. He makes me happy. So here is a comment from one of his books that made me laugh out loud the other day. (Emphasis is mine.)

"Suppose you have developed faith, self-control, determination, and concentration, but you still don't have the metal peace you seek. Why? You are lacking the fifth quality of mind. Your journey to Self-Realization will be a long one; it's not an overnight thing, like they FedEx it to you or something. This is a lifelong process you've just started; you are going to need patience."

This is so relevant to me, AND it is funny as hell. I can only imagine the headaches that Bikram's editor must have had when he was publishing this book... the man writes the same way he talks... I love it...

30 Days and Challenges

I guess the "30-day challenge" - 30 classes in 30 days - is a big part of the Bikram world.  Every studio has one.  The studio I'm at now started its Spring challenge last Wednesday.  I signed up because that's what I do.  I've never missed a studio challenge since I started really practicing.

I did my first 30 day challenge in September 2007.  Loved it.  Loved the yoga, loved the discipline, love the ritual of going to class every day.  My body felt great.  My mind was calmer.  So I kept going.  Went to (by my count) 380 classes over the course of the next 365 days.  Wasn't trying to prove anything, wasn't making a point,, wasn't doing it as a challenge.  I just like the yoga.  It's my practice.

Have had a LOT of major life changes since that Fall.  Started grad school the following year... moved across the country... left my studio... friends... family... my entire life, basically.  When I got to my new town, at the end of a cross-country drive, I went to the Bikram yoga studio and took class before going to my new apartment.  Got there just in time to jump into the beginning of a 60-day challenge.  Super.  The white-board sign-in for challengers keeps me honest.  I like it.

Finished 2008 strong, practicing like a lunatic.  Was back at my home studio over winter break, took maybe 13 classes there during the first week I was back, felt a little bit tired but mostly happy to be there.  Soaking it up.

These past couple months... grad school finally caught up with me and kicked my butt.  Lots of things happened in my head, good things and bad things.  But my practice... oh... I've felt like it was slipping away from me.  I haven't been working on crazy fun advanced postures like I used to do.  I've been running as hard as I can just to stay in one place, like someone turned up the treadmill too high and I'm about to go flying off the back.  I still miss my old teachers.  I miss my advanced classes.  I miss my balance.

This brings me to my point.  Over a 30-day period in March, I only practiced maybe 20 times.  Not enough.  That was a HUGE CHALLENGE.  It pretty much did me in.  My body felt terrible.  My sleeping patterns were all fucked up.  Some nights I couldn't sleep, some days I couldn't get out of bed.  I almost felt FAT, that dreaded f-word that I deliberately banished from my vocabulary a few years ago after being its slave for too long.  I missed the yoga like homesickness.

Last Wednesday, April 1st, the 30-day challenge at my studio started and of course I signed up.  It's only been going for 7 days now, which seems like a tiny blip after a year and a half of essentially daily practice.  I feel SO. MUCH. BETTER. Already.  Above all else, I feel this overwhelming sensation of relief.  Thank god.  I'm safe.  I'm back.  My practice is still here.  My yoga body is already re-emerging, so willingly.  It was all here the whole time.  I was here this whole time.  

I have so many thoughts and beautiful ideas and questions that are all tangled up together.  Not sure how to grab just one thread by itself.  Not sure how to talk about the yoga without talking about the things that are most personal to me, since they seem to have merged at some point when I wasn't watching.  

I wasn't really expecting this post to be so pensive.  I'm not exactly an "emo" kind of person.

To lighten the mood I will finish with an awesome comment taken verbatim from one of my favorite people: "If we could improved our postures every class, we became super yoga person too fast, it is boring. one step foward and two steps back, how am I feeling inside of me from yoga? WOW!"  :)