Author Archives: yoginiandthecity

About yoginiandthecity

After slogging through six winters (and three summers that felt like winters) - in Seattle, I gently uprooted my vrksasana (tree pose) and replanted it in Manhattan. yoginiandthecity is an exploration in finding balance in my personal practice, my teaching practice, and a new life in New York City.

on mirrors and mothers

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I strongly dislike mirrors.

This is probably because I grew up in ballet, staring at my imperfect reflection and spotting my own face in pirrouettes for hours every day. When I’m practicing yoga, I want to be in my body rather than experiencing it from the outside. I’d rather feel Warrior II than try to make the shape of Warrior II in the mirror. To me, yoga is less about making your body contort into a certain pose and more about making the pose work for you.

Not everyone shares my distaste for mirrors. While home for a wedding last week, I took a class at the beautiful Metta Yoga in Phoenix. I spent the first half of class like the kid who doesn’t want to be called on, avoiding eye contact (with myself) so that maybe I wouldn’t be noticed.

You can’t avoid eye contact forever though, and eventually I started to pay attention to my postures in reflection. Right hip, too high. Left ankle unsupported. Ribs in, ribs in, RIBS IN. Eagle is more balanced than I expected. Chair looks deeper than it feels. Sometimes my body still surprises me.

But not everything is obvious in the mirror. Just because my pose looks like the poster doesn’t mean it maintains the same integrity; I can be in a super-looking Parsvakonasana that hurts my hip like hell. A mirror can never tell me what I really need to know in a three-dimensional way. And there is so much I could never, ever see in reflection.

These are the things I think about in Phoenix – mirror images. My darling nephew has my sister’s eyes, and my sister has our mother’s eyes. Like when you face one mirror towards another and it just goes on forever.

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mom and I, 2005

I don’t really look like my mom, as evidenced above. I have her shape, and the same straight hair, but mostly I resemble my dad (this is also not to say that I don’t love my father dearly, too, but that post is for another day).

Instead, I inherited my mother’s love for books and fresh flowers, her love of chocolate and berries and citrus and baking. I hold babies in the same sure way, and I swear (loudly) when I get lost while driving. When I read storybooks aloud, I hear my mother’s voice, as she read them to me; I have inherited my mother’s intonation.

If I am ever so lucky though, I have inherited her goodness. If I am lucky, I have absorbed her compassion, her insistence on doing the right thing – without expectation and certainly without a need for acknowledgement (my mother likes to care for people in secret, so they don’t know who to thank).

with her grandson, 2010

with her grandson, 2010

I hope, I hope, I hope I grow to become just like my mother. I hope I remember to make chocolate chip cookies after every audition – so that there is a celebration for a job well done or a good try, either way. I hope I remember to buy a ticket to every show (not just the opening night) and sit through every single performance like I’m seeing it for the first time. When I am my mother, I hope I remember to take care of my children but also myself; I hope I remember what a beautiful example that sets. I hope I remember to let my children fail sometimes, but to celebrate their failure with pure maternal optimism.

When I am my mother, I hope I remember to enjoy all of the best little things – wine on the patio, fresh flowers, and a good hike in the mountains. I hope I remember that my partner is my ally. I hope I remember that when I bear the brunt of my daughters’ bad days, it’s not because they love me any less but because they trust in my love completely.

my parents, 2007

my parents, 2007

If I am the absolute luckiest, I will reflect my mother’s love. I will love my children in the same way my mother loves me -

fiercely, surely, confidently, and completely.

If I am lucky, I will always see my mother in my mirror.

In reflection,

yogini and the city

PS In New York, I am lucky to teach both children and their parents. Sometimes I’ll see a mother in class and remark that she makes the same faces as her daughter. I am lucky to see these mirrors. I am luckier to have the opportunity to see some of them together, next weekend, in our Mother and Daughter workshop. Join us if you can!

on impermanence, and failure

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The only thing constant is change.

Sometimes your life is going along swimmingly when suddenly, as if someone has swung a baseball bat across your chest, you are knocked flat on your back with the wind knocked out of you. And all you can do is clutch your stomach and gulp for air.

Mindy Kaling gets it

Mindy Kaling gets it

I have felt knocked down these last few days, after being let go from a beloved dance job. In some moments I feel that this is my failure, and in other moments, I feel this failure is someone else’s. In my kinder and more lucid moments I know that it doesn’t really matter either way. When I am at my most gracious, I know that it isn’t really failure at all.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Pada 2.5 begins “Ignorance is regarding the impermanent as permanent.” My favorite translation (by Reverend Jaganath Carrera) describes it as such:

Though we know that everything in nature changes due to passage of time and the influence of circumstances, we tend to feel that good situations will continue and that painful ones will never end. The boring lecture, the difficult financial times, or the budding romance can all seem as if they will last forever. When we catch ourselves with these thoughts, we know we have slipped into the grasp of ignorance. The impermanence of worldly experiences quietly waits to sting us, often when we least expect it.

To oversimplify: the good stuff feels really good and the bad stuff feels really bad because we depend on things staying the same.

We’re in the muck that is the edge of winter here. When the snow is no longer pretty but just thick city sludge, when another grey day makes you want to slide further underneath the covers, only reemerging for July. The kind of snow that necesitates wellies, that makes the trains run slow, that makes you run a heavy, thudded, rainboot kind of run in order to make it on time.

When I was running my thick heavy rainboot run on Friday, I ran past a very long flowerbed on Bleecker. It was covered in snow but the stems and buds of the crocuses had popped up. Maybe they have been there for some time now, but I think I needed the snow to notice.

Then Saturday morning appeared – snow melted – the kind of sunny, warm, “this might be kind of like spring?” sort of morning that makes you want to go on an adventure. To eat Lemon Ice in Corona, Queens and wander around Louis Armstrong’s house.

Because here is the thing: nothing is permanent. Nothing is forever. Not the weather, not a job, not your body and certainly not that feeling of having the wind knocked out of you.

My tiniest students will grow bigger and taller and wiser and perhaps they will even outgrow me; my prenatal students will deliver, and wrap their arms around their new lives, overwhelmed by how much you can really love another person. Our practices will deepen and change; Down Dog will start to feel a little different every day. We may find ourselves in some crazy bananas Hummingbird Pose – victorious – or we may find ourselves with a goose-egged forehead, defeated.  But we will all march on through March and into real, true Spring.

Life will sting us a little less if we are living in the moment. Our gratitude for life’s greatest moments is deeper when we understand it may be fleeting; our grief is lessened when we know that we won’t always feel this way.

It’s good to remember that crocuses come up in the snow.

In (maybe, hopefully, embracing) change,

yogini and the city

on Valentine’s Day

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At the risk of being trite, Pals… let’s do the Valentine’s Day thing, shall we?

I’m for sure teaching heart openers in class this week, because I am totally that yoga instructor.

I’m all for the cheesy, give-your-pals red lollipops kind of Valentine’s Day. I’m all for mushy cards and I am definitely, definitely all for delicious chocolate things. I am decidedly NOT for spending money, so tomorrow I’m simply making dinner with my guy.

I am lucky enough to be falling into something lately, something I recognize is special and few and far-between. I am lucky enough to find myself in those early stages of gooey-ness, and lucky enough to be making googly eyes and swoony faces at a very handsome man across the table.

At the risk of jinxing the whole thing, I will say that this man is different from anyone else I have dated. He is genuine and honest, he is funny and warm, he is unfailingly kind to those around him (a moral compass!) and he is always, always present. On days when I get jangled up about my life, he is constant, steady and grounded.

I try not to over think this part of my life (I spent too many hours on that in college) but I am very aware that something special is working with this person, and it’s not just because he is different. I am different, too.

swooning makes everything sunshiny

swooning makes everything sunshiny

In the three years prior to this (in which I went on a lot – A LOT – of terrible dates) I did a fair amount of self-reflection. Meditation is a frightening place to go after any break-up (yeuughhh, the self-loathing), but I’m grateful to my entire yoga practice and how it prepared me for this new relationship.

Lessons Learned?

-‘Aversion is ignorance.’ Years ago, I read this in Carrera’s Inside the Yoga Sutras the week my first boyfriend told me he probably wouldn’t ever love me (the morning after Valentine’s Day, to boot). Even after hearing that the feeling would never be mutual, I told myself “but it’s still so nice when we’re together.” Minus one for feminism until I read the Sutras – I highlighted that passage on aversion and re-scribbled it in the margins. Avoiding something – or someone – does not make the problem go away. The ability to broach a topic and have a rational discussion about it has been one of my best discoveries in adulthood.

-Ahimsa. Compassion and non-harming seem pretty obvious when we’re talking about relationships, but it took me a very long time to realize that compassion needs to be balanced; compassion for your partner should probably be in balance with compassion for yourself. I spent a very long time taking the blame for every little thing, every small event, if I felt it hadn’t gone perfectly. Putting someone else’s needs above my own, making sure my significant other was ‘right’ – 100% of the time – left me feeling wiped out and massively judgemental of myself. When you’re not kind to yourself, how can you ask someone else to be?

-Validation. This one goes hand in hand with compassion. I no longer need to search for validation from a partner, because through yoga I have found assuredness. I don’t need to go searching or fishing for someone else to tell me about my value, because I already know that my existence is valid. While it’s nice to hear someone tell me I’m beautiful, I don’t need to hear it the way I once did. It took a long time to not define myself by my relationship to another person – and that self-reliance feels really, really good (especially in a new partnership).

Yoga helps us find and become our truest selves, and when we are our truest selves, we can more genuinely and most truthfully connect with others.

I am lucky to be falling into something special with someone so wonderful. I am grateful for his support when I am feeling down, and I am grateful for his unwavering attention when I am yammering on. I am lucky that this man treats me and values me as his equal – but I am luckier because at this point in my life, I am aware of our parity.

I am also grateful this man tried yoga for the first time last week.

After all – if you are dating a Yogini – it’s kind of part of the package.

How has yoga helped your relationships, romantic and otherwise?

Swooning,

yogini and the city

Fresh Starts/Return to Saucha

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I’ve been thinking about fresh starts lately.

By lately, I mean the last 48 hours, during which I have been just barely surviving the stomach flu. There is truly nothing like being purged of everything within you to think about new beginnings. If I can peel myself out of this bed tomorrow, I will be doing all kinds of restarting: disinfecting the house, doing laundry, and maybe making simple soup.

my cat was not particularly helpful in this whole stomach flu thing

my cat was not particularly helpful in this whole stomach flu thing

January is a return to saucha (cleanliness/purity) for many of us. Last year’s Sugar-Free Yogini went so well that I’ve done it again this year (although I’m pretty sure this Gatorade has sugar in it, and I’m also pretty sure I don’t care at this point).

I’m hearing from many of you resolutions of cleanliness in all kinds of ways: cleaner language, cleaner eating, cleaner breathing, cleaner homes. There are so many ways to manifest saucha in our lives, and in many ways it’s easier to begin with the external.

But what if we started this year with an internal focus on cleanliness? I’m not talking about the stomach flu, or any diet at all. What if we started this year focused on cleaning out all the stuff that takes up space in our head?

All of the unnecessary, unhelpful crap that jams itself in-between the important stuff and eventually takes over. What could you do in your practice if you didn’t have a little voice telling you something was impossible? How much more productive could you be if you let go of the nagging voice that repeats your to-do list incessantly? How much more compassionate could you be – with yourself and others – if you were able to let go of judgement?

When I feel overwhelmed by nagging thoughts – when I wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about things I have to do – I first focus on my breath. Deepening our exhale helps us drop our blood pressure and prepares us to be more restful. And then in the morning, I do headstand. As hokey-pokey-weird as it sounds, I like to imagine in headstand all of the unnecessary thoughts spilling out, as if I am pouring out the unhelpful.

How might you clean out your mind this month? What do you do when you’re feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list?

in resolution,

yogini and the city

on saying grace

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It’s been awhile. Sorry, pals. Catching up from the Hurricane turned into catching up from going on tour turned into catching up from Thanksgiving turned into catching up from the worst flu ever. It almost turned into catching up from Christmas, except that now I am stuck in the purgatory that is LaGuardia Airport after your flight has been cancelled. So much time to write!!

So. There were nine people around my kitchen table on Thanksgiving this year. Well, it was the kitchen table plus my roommate’s desk, and I had to ask two of the guests to bring folding chairs, but still. As we sat down to eat at a table spilling over with food, it seemed only natural to express our gratitude, especially Post-Hurricane. “We should say grace, right?” We all looked around at one another.

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My friend Allie seemed like the obvious choice; she certainly seems like the most pious, and is the one who attends church most regularly. Allie, while a little baffled by her sudden leadership, led us in the Catholic grace:

Bless us O lord, and these, thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I know the prayer from many dinners at my neighbor’s house. I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear more than half the table chime in. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Since I don’t personally identify as religious, I sometimes (wrongly) assume that my friends don’t either. Everyone has their own personal spiritual history, and our religious identities and beliefs (or non-beliefs!) are as diverse as this City we live in.

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Saying grace made me uncomfortable for a very long time. Raised in a non-religious household, we were encouraged to show respect by participating in mealtime grace or prayer when invited. I always preferred when there was a script – as in the Catholic prayer – because that seemed much easier than the free-form version. The fear of being called on and not knowing what to say had me slumped in my seat, hiding, during many mealtime prayers.

It was a very slow transition into becoming comfortable with grace.  I grew up in a non-religious family where tolerance, kindness, and compassion were emphasized above all other things,and I found it really disheartening when it was implied by others that I was living my life wrong because I didn’t attend church or read the Bible. Irritated, I spent most of high school and college so averse to organized religion that I refused to read almost anything that made reference to God. It wasn’t until I was 21 that I read a translation of the word isvara in the Yoga Sutras: god, or how you understand god. The latter explanation meant so much to me, I cried. God, Buddha, Allah, Jesus, Hashem, Mother Earth, the Universe, the Divine, Light, Energy/Matter or Yourself Enlightened – these were ALL ways to understand.

abundance. and lots of carbs.

abundance. and lots of carbs.

It didn’t matter how we were saying ‘thank you’ before a meal – it mattered that we were saying it. There were memorized prayers with my Catholic neighbors and my Jewish best friend. There was free-form Christian prayer with my sister. And then there was the entirely non-denominational toast by my favorite uncle (hi, GOUR!).

I realized that no matter how gratitude is expressed, it is important, and necessary, and beautiful. There is nothing more meaningful than saying out loud just how grateful you are for the food on your plates and the people around your table. I am always moved when my brother-in-law, during grace, thanks god that I traveled safely to their table.

One of the things I love best about my newly adopted City is the religious diversity. On Election Day, I was so moved to see people of all faiths placing their votes and volunteering my polling place. From Orthodox Jews to elderly Haitian men to women wearing hijabs - everyone coexists in my neighborhood. I am so grateful that my students in NYC come from all walks of faith (or atheism! I didn’t forget you guys!) and that yoga can bring us all together.

So whatever it is you are – or have been – celebrating, I hope you realize just how many things you have to be grateful for, and how many ways you have to show and share your gratitude.

I hope for each of you that you are spending December

in warmth,

in grace,

and in love.

Peace to you and yours,

yogini and the city

one of the things I love best about this place (photo credit: Manhattan Mini Storage Facebook)

one of the things I love best about this place (photo credit: Manhattan Mini Storage Facebook)

on fear and bicycles (post-superstorm)

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Pardon my language, but let’s start with first things first:

New York is, in a word, unfuckwithable.

A few weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy (Superstorm, whatever, I don’t really care) rattled my windows and my front door and my poor cat and some ginormous trees on Eastern Parkway but otherwise left Prospect Heights alone.

It destroyed large portions of some beloved New York places: Staten Island, Coney Island, the Rockaways, Red Hook.  It left Lower Manhattan powerless for nearly a week.  The subway system – which serves 8.5 million people a day - is just now back to normal (the G!  the L train!  Rejoice!  Rejoice!!)

New York is a City with a Trial by Fire mentality.  On Halloween, with no public transit available, I borrowed a bike and gave myself two hours to get across the Manhattan Bridge.  I had not been on a bike in over a year (remember Ireland?) and was so petrified I was shouting to myself (“YOU CAN DO THIS”). There is something to be said for trial by fire; I believe “Ride or Die” was the first term thrown out. There was no other way to get to work, and there was no time, so my only option was to get on the damn bike and figure it out. And it’s funny how that saying goes – ‘it’s just like riding a bike’. Because I was absolutely petrified as I sped up Vanderbilt, and I definitely got lost trying to find the bike path onto the Manhattan Bridge. But at some point you find your stride – and for me that was all the way up Mulberry.

Riding across the Bridge

How bizarre to arrive in Manhattan and realize that really, truly, there was no power below 40th street. Sliding up Mulberry – normally packed with tables of tourists spilling onto the street in Little Italy – I found myself alone for more than fifteen blocks. It was at once eerie and beautiful, powerful and peaceful. It was in this moment that I actually said out loud, “I think… I think I am a New Yorker now.”

I arrived exhausted but victorious at the studio – texting those close to me “safe and sound at Sacred Sounds!” At the same time I arrived, emerging from the studio were some of my sweetest, warmest students. It was so lovely to gather with these souls by candlelight in the lobby, to learn what they were doing to stay warm, how they were entertaining their children, or where they were showering. Our students were so grateful for practice – regardless of the fact that there was no heat or electricity – and you could feel the energy of gratitude.

New York is a City that does not get knocked down.  Take away our subways, Sandy?  MTA will work around the clock, pumping water out of flooded tubes and fixing electric boxes and other things I don’t really understand.  They gave us weird shuttle buses to take across the East River, and the person I unintentionally kneed in the chest on this weird shuttle bus just nodded and smiled and waved their hand when I apologized, because New Yorkers are cool with crowds (eventually this turned into some type of Party Bus, with the driver asking, “Where we going?” and all 75 of us screaming “Brooklyn!”  ”No sleep til..?”  ”Brooklyn!”)  New Yorkers know that we are all in this together.

New York is a City that understands perspective.  I have been asking friends, students, and patients over the last week, “how did you fare during the storm?” and the answer has consistently been “meh, we lost power for a few days.  No big deal.  It could have been so, so much worse.”  Even my littlest students understood.  I should know by now not to underestimate my kiddos, but I will admit I was surprised when they told me, “and we got to take baths with candles!!  We were boiling water on the stove!!”  They have approached a difficult week with novelty. New Yorkers are pegged the world over as complainers, but not once, in the hours, days, and weeks following Sandy have I heard anyone complain. In fact, the most common refrain has been, “how can I help?” Every single person I know in NYC – without exception – contributed in some way to Hurricane Relief efforts. Many of my friends – and especially my superstar boss – have gone to Staten Island and the Rockaways to demo, wash out mud-soaked basements, or pass out food, water, and blankets. I stood in line for four hours to donate blood – and not once did anyone in that line complain.

I am prouder than ever to call this wacky and wonderful place home. Because New Yorkers know how to face their fears. Because New Yorkers have been through Hell and back before and again and still keep chugging along.

But I am especially, especially proud of the fact that New Yorkers know what it means to take care of our own, with what we have and in whatever way we can.

If you are in New York and still looking for ways to volunteer, check out www.nycservice.org.

If you are outside of the Tri-State area (like my West Coast friends), please consider donating to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York, the Red Cross, or check out NYC Service to make an in-kind donation.

Take care of yourselves, and each other,

yogini and the (best) city

on injury, burnout, and Sandy

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I can no longer do Pigeon Pose on the right side.

Other poses I have had to discard are Firelog Pose, Galavasana, and Lotus Pose.

About a year ago, I discovered I had a labral tear in my right acetabulum, which means that the cartilage that lines my hip socket is torn.  This makes very specific things very painful (namely, anything that includes external rotation and forward folding).  Attempting to adjust my practice around this ailment has been an exercise in prolonged patience.  Frankly, it has had me avoiding taking class all together.  My hip feels crunchy, and rather than breathing through the poses that are now difficult, I find myself irritated and checked out.

Couple this with the fact that I have been feeling burned out (and I’ll bet anything that you are, too; it’s all I’ve been hearing from all of my students for the last few weeks).

Burned out.  I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, and it’s hard to say “no” when everything headed your way seems like a great opportunity, and especially when you love what you do.

While building my life in New York over the last year, I’ve had a common refrain (please don’t kill me when you hear it): I’ll sleep when I’m 30.  I will take everything that comes my way and run with it, because that’s what you have to do when you’re building a freelance career in a really expensive city.  And beyond professional opportunities, I will apparently take every social opportunity as well.  Wine with friends after a 16-hour work day, when I have to be awake again and working and functioning in only six hours?  Sure!

I guess that’s all fine and good… until you hit a wall.

Without time to practice – let alone get a good night’s sleep – and riddled with this busted hip of mine, I have been feeling really disconnected.  It’s this bizarre push-pull between being super in-tune with your body (“I can really tell that the tissue around the labrum is inflamed when I rotate fifteen degrees externally”) and being absolutely out of it.  Kind of a zombie-like feeling.  I may or may not have spontaneously burst into tears out of sheer exhaustion on the subway last week (hint: I did).

In the midst of this run-down, burned-out mess of a few weeks, someone sent me this lovely essay, Burnout is Beautiful.  I love Melissa Gorzelanczyk’s ideas for creating – rather than surrendering – out of burnout.  Imagining a new life, igniting a passion, setting people free (because “your burnout is not their responsibility”) – all of these ideas are brilliant ways to rise out of burnout. But the one that resonated with me most was this:

Focus on tiny movements.

That’s all it takes to change your life. If you want to quit smoking, you can stop putting a cigarette in your mouth and lighting the end. Once you master the way you move, you can do anything. You can decide to write instead of go out to lunch. You can put away the beer and go to bed early. You can feel your feet on the ground for a run. Movements, no matter how small, shape your entire life. How you go through the motions is up to you. Ask yourself today: Is the way I move beautiful? Or destructive?

Mastering our movements… this is, of course, why I teach yoga.  Because our postures matter.  Because the way we actually, physically move through our lives is important.  And sometimes it takes getting totally burned out, burning into a total wisp of nothing, that allows you to discover this.

I am lucky enough to work in a place where people can sense this.  Last Wednesday, after teaching three back-to-back classes, my friend and fellow teacher Fergus Higgins offered to give me a private class.

What a gift Fergus gave to me!  I realized, part-way through, that I had never before had a private session as a student.  Ferg is a brilliant teacher; present but not overwhelming, funny but still respectful, lovely in his sequencing.  His alignment cues are gentle reminders that make it easy to find your way.  I was able to use tiny movements – pose by pose – to completely transform my energy level, and that busted hip of mine was the least annoying it had been in weeks.  Fergus also took several opportunities to repeat my own teacher-isms back to me, which is disarming in a way that makes you realize you really should be practicing what you preach. I got weepy at the end, out of gratitude.  The idea that another teacher would devote an hour of their own time for just me was so overwhelming.

Coming out of savasana felt like restarting, as if I had totally died and yoga practice had jumped my batteries. After giving Fergus a great big yoga bear hug (Ferg is incapable of giving anything but a great hug) I was able to approach the rest of my frenzied week with a clear head and open heart.

And now, Mother Nature has given me a built-in break.  Last year‘s Hurricane lesson was about patience; this year’s is about taking some time.  A day (or maybe two or three?) off is – hopefully – an opportunity to clean and organize and sleep while we ride out Sandy.  My roommates and I have already begun a movie marathon, made crepes, and reorganized the kitchen.  We may be reading books out loud to one another by candelight later today, we’ll see.

Hope for us that Sandy will be kind, and in the meantime, I will be using this opportunity to rest, restore, and recreate.

How are you riding out the storm, East Coast pals?

on nourishment

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It’s been a week.  It’s been a really rough week.

Something terrible happened; the kind of terrible awful that makes you question absolutely everything.  The kind of terrible that makes you ask “why? why? why?”  The kind of terrible that makes you say “I don’t know what to say” and the receiver of the terrible awful says “there is nothing you can say.”

And you realize, I cannot fix this.  I cannot make this better.  I cannot impart wisdom here.  I cannot make sense of the senseless.  I cannot do anything but stand here with you.

So you take the train home, and you cry and wipe your nose on your scarf.  And then your friend, who is a chef, says “come into the restaurant tonight.”

So, you change out of your funeral clothes and you put on something that speaks of life and warmth.  You sit at the corner of the bar at this madly popular restaurant, and you let your friends feed you.  You let them bring you peach bourbon and pole beans and clam pizza and more wine.

And when you are sufficiently full – of wine and pizza, yes, but also full of love from these wonderful friends – you will think about what it really means to be nourished.  To be fed with love.  To be supported.  To make you feel whole when you are empty.

You will head home to make bread.  Because making bread makes sense on days that are senseless.

You will tune out the noise, and you will tune out the thoughts of the terrible awful.  You will knead your way into meditation, clear and focused on smoothing dough.  Present and aware of your sadness, you will allow yourself to feel but not to be swept away.

 

At the end of your meditation, you will have made something that will nourish others in the way that you have been nourished today.

 

on silence and noise

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My friend Bree works in the Mayor’s Office for Environmental Remediation.  Last Wednesday, she attended a conference on Noise Pollution and was very excitedly describing it to a group of our friends.  After ribbing her for the implied dorkiness, I realized she had some really interesting points.

It goes without saying, but New Yorkers are surrounded by noise constantly.  Beyond the obvious (living near/above bars, traffic), our constant noise is coming in from AC units and fans, from the neighbors (everyone else can hear their neighbors sneeze too, right?  That’s not just me?), and from construction (god bless all of you who live on 2nd Avenue during this subway build).  There is always an underlying buzz.

Scientists are beginning to understand the adverse health effects that go along with noise pollution – not just sleep disturbances and hearing impairment, but cardiovascular and mental health disturbances.  Because we can’t see it, we don’t always necessarily correlate the consistent hum of our everyday lives to real disruption.  Even if we aren’t totally aware of it, I’m pretty sure this is part of why yoga is so popular in New York City (and in many other densely populated places).

I am, at the moment, curled into my bed with my headphones in and no music playing.  All the windows and doors are closed, curtains shut, and still the floors are shaking.  My neighborhood is home to the West Indian American Parade and Carnival, which seemed really cool in theory but was far too overwhelming for me to actually participate.  So now, to preserve my sanity, I have attempted to create my own little cave.  It’s… kind of working.

Which has me thinking about something else Bree shared from the Noise Conference.  She talked about a study done with teenagers in a low-income area of Bushwick.  I’m paraphrasing a paraphrase here, so forgive me, but the gist of the findings was this: when asked about a time they remembered silence, each of the kids talked about a time when they were in trouble or a time following a death in the family.  To these kids, silence was not associated with peace or restoration, or with good feelings at all.  Silence had to do with grief or punishment.

I think I might be a part of the iPod generation, or iGeneration, or whatever it is you want to call us.  So I understand the association of silence as a negative – when we are constantly inundated with noise, hums, vibrations, and music,then real, true silence can be jarring.  Quiet is hard for me.  I, too, can recall all of the times in my life that silence felt deafening.

So how do we refocus silence and noise?

Maybe it’s a matter of just being aware of it to begin with.  Maybe we start to notice the effects of silence on our bodies.  Maybe we start to unplug a little earlier in the day.  Maybe we pause a little before we speak (I’ve always known that one of my greatest challenges in life will be to take a vow of silence.  The opportunity has yet to present itself – since I teach for a living – but I have faith that one day I’ll get to practice this).

And as we roll right into September, I have to start thinking about how to remind and reframe silence into peacefulness for my Kid’s Classes.  How can I help the littlest New Yorkers feel that quiet can be less lonely and more rejuvenating?  More time in an opening, guided meditation.  More time in savasana, definitely (and if any one has any brilliant ideas, please send them my way).  Better yet, let’s translate that to adult classes, too.

How do silence and noise effect your practice?

One Year!

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One year ago this week…

I arrived in New York City.

I did not have a job.  I had a LOT of time on my hands.  A lot, you guys.

I started this blog.

A lot of things have changed in a year.  I’ve changed a lot this year.

As to where I spent my “NYC Anniversary”… that’s a little ironic.  This past weekend, I was lucky enough to camp and shoot a dance film in Harriman National Park (about an hour north of the City).  It was amazing to get out of the frenzy of NYC for a few days, breathe in some fresh air, hang out with a bunch of deer and make s’mores around a campfire.

And as I was sitting, roasting marshmallows with my fellow artists, I just kept marveling:  I did not know these people a year ago.  These people who have become my new family.

For a city of 8 million people… it was not nearly as hard to make friends and feel at home as I thought it might be.  Everywhere I turned, there was someone new offering support and kind words as I fumbled my way into a new life here.  As the Head and the Heart like to sing: “You’re already home where you feel loved.”

I feel grateful to have found a strong yoga community here as well; this is the first time in my teaching career that I feel as though I am close to other teachers, where we are sharing feedback and learning consistently from one another.  While it was much, much harder to get my foot in the door to teach in New York, it has been unbelievably gratifying.  I feel like my fellow teachers here are unified, and someone is always, always willing to help out when needed.

My best friend in Seattle once wrote that she wished for me “proof of the largeness of the world.  proof of the smallness of the world.”  This is often how I feel in New York.  There are days and moments and moments in days where I feel like I am being carried along with a current, that there is some underlying electric grid in this city that moves me around.  Sometimes that feeling is exhilarating, and other times it is exhausting.

And then there are many, many other moments where I realize just how small the world is (sangha!).

When I first moved here, I watched a father and his toddler son get on the 1 train and sit across from me.  The dad was clearly out of his element a little, and fumbling with all of the baby props.  His stroller started to roll as the train launched towards the next stop, but he didn’t notice.  Instead, the woman next to me – without lifting her eyes from her newspaper – reached her foot out and pressed the safety brake on the stroller.

A few months ago, I was leaving a party quite late at night in Brooklyn.  I got to the train station to find that the R was only going in one direction for a stretch, which meant about an extra half hour added to my already long trek.  I was fuming about it on the platform for a good long while until the train rolled into the station and the doors opened to reveal two of my closest friends in New York.  Proof of the smallness of the world.

So.  Seattle-ites, I miss you always.  Thanks for sending me off on this journey with well wishes and support.  New Yorkers, thank you for embracing me and for being so quick to offer your friendship and kind words.

I can’t wait to see where this journey takes me next.

Happy One Year Anniversary to Yogini and the City!

PS If you need further proof of the largeness and smallness of the world, look no further than this.