Opportunity Knocks

I meditate in the morning often, and will sometimes use this practice to calm myself when I’m freaking out about something in my daily life. So last weekend, when I was part of a work-in-progress performance of a play I’ve been co-writing for the past six months, I meditated a lot. Just sitting quietly for a few minutes can really make the difference for me between being totally scared shitless and being terrified but functional. On opening night, I pulled into the parking lot behind the theater a little early. My heart was thumping out of my chest. It was raining and dark. I decided to meditate.

I locked the car doors, pushed the driver’s seat all the way back, took off my boots, and pulled my legs up into a cross-legged seat. I set the timer on my phone for 7 minutes, put my hands on my thighs, and closed my eyes. I breathed, inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale, watching it flow in and out, like I instruct you to do at the beginning of class, like Tara Brach instructs me to do via podcast once a week. A few minutes elapsed. My breathing continued, smooth and steady. My mind drifted to the events of the evening. I noticed my wandering, and came back to the breath. Inhale. Exhale.

Out of nowhere came KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

I jumped out of my skin and screamed that short, ridiculous scream I sometimes do when a car scares me on my bike. Outside the window was a stranger, bedraggled and forlorn, asking for spare change. I was so startled and reactive that I just shouted “NO!!!”, and the man backed slowly away from the car and walked off down the sidewalk.

Immediately I felt remorse. As a full-time cyclist, I rarely get panhandled on my bike. But anytime I drive a car, I make a point to always give money or food to anyone who asks. I figure that anyone who is spending their day that way likely needs that dollar or that apple or that LaraBar or that half a king cake (true story, I did recently pass one out the window to a grinning man under the I-10 overpass) way more than I do.

I don’t give to feel superior, or to absolve myself of the guilt of living in a system that willfully lifts some of us up while holding others of us down. I give to practice kindness (my New Year’s resolution), and to practice offering freely, without stipulations or requirements or reciprocation.

I have been looking for, and asking for, more opportunities to practice kindness. And yet, when the opportunity arose for me to give, I panicked. I fell back into my old habit of reacting instead of responding. I said no, when to say yes would have been just as easy.

Side note: If you think I shouldn’t have opened my car door to a strange man in a dark parking lot regardless of my well-meaning and woo-woo intentions, you might be right. But for now, let’s forget about practicalities and let the metaphor stand, okay?

We don’t want to be asked for money and be startled when we’re meditating in the car before a show. We have lots of ideas about how we want to help someone in need, what we want to offer them, what they will then do with it. We want for the opportunity to be perfect, to be just how we’d like it, or just how we planned it. 

Opportunity knocks. Sometimes literally. Will you open the door?

Much love,

Bear

Challenge, Growth, and Always Belonging {New LEAPS+BOUNDS Wednesdays}

Hello dear ones,

I want to tell you about an important change I’m making, and more importantly, why I'm making it. Beginning in March, my Wednesday night class will switch from being a drop-in class to a LEAPS+BOUNDS class. This class will be a six-week series that requires registration in advance, similar to the Monday night class. The difference is that Monday is an advanced-level class, and Wednesday will be an all-levels class.

For more than two years I taught my Monday night class as a drop-in, advanced-level class. And for most of that time, I felt frustrated by the feeling that I wasn’t making progress, and that my students weren’t making progress, at the rate I knew we could. This was for a variety of reasons, namely that the students attending each week varied, so it was hard to build from week to week, and that the levels of the students also varied, so some students in this advanced class had been practicing for many years, and others had just a few months of practice under their belts, so what I was able to safely teach was quite limited.

I polled other yoga teachers for suggestions. “Have prerequisites for attending,” they said, such as requiring that students be able to perform certain poses (like Handstand or Wheel Pose) before attending. That didn’t seem to solve the problem. “Require instructor permission to attend.” How would I even enforce that?

None of these suggestions, well-meaning as they were, felt right to me, and here’s why: I try so hard to make my yoga classes warm and welcoming. It’s my first priority to make sure that when you walk in the door, you feel like you belong here. Whether you have 10 years or 10 minutes of experience with yoga, you’re in the right place. If you’re wearing Lululemon pants you bought at the mall or shredded leggings you got from a free pile, come on in! Whether you can pick your nose while doing a one-armed handstand, or can barely take a breath in downward dog, I want you here.

So to suddenly start requiring a certain level of physical prowess to attend a class was out of alignment with who I am, and who I’m trying to be as a teacher. Making people prove themselves worthy of advanced asana practice was directly antithetical to my entire approach to yoga. I just couldn’t do it, and I felt more frustrated than ever.

When the idea (finally) occurred to me for LEAPS+BOUNDS, I knew I had landed on something good. Here was a chance to encourage commitment, to deepen our community, and still remain open and welcoming to all who were interested. I love all my classes, but Monday nights have become a source of satisfaction beyond what I could have imagined. It’s so fulfilling--and SO FUN--to watch people grow into poses and thus, into themselves.

I’m so excited to make the switch for Wednesday nights as well. Stay tuned next week for all the details, including a syllabus and full course description for both Monday and Wednesday classes for the spring!

Here’s to challenge, growth, and always belonging.

Much love, Bear

Getting Comfortable with Discomfort {Yoga and Vulnerability}

It has been an intense start to this new year. Two weekends ago I hosted my first ever yoga and life coaching workshop, called Heartspark. It had some bumpy parts but generally was well-received and I felt pretty good about it.

But it was also tremendously scary thing to do. It was only six months ago that I started coaching, and I had this inkling that pairing coaching and yoga could have profound effects. So this is new territory for me, and I was terrified. What if no one signs up? Or worse, what if only three people sign up? Awkward! What if they don’t like it? What if it doesn’t work?

This past weekend I put up a work-in-progress sharing of a play that I’ve been writing for the last six months. Also awesome. Also terrifying. Really scary to be putting out a piece of art that isn’t even finished into the community for consumption. Like, I already know and see the ways that it’s not working and needs improvement, and yet, here it is for you, world! Yikes.

And so again the questions. What if no one shows up? What if lots of people show up and they hate it? What if I offend someone with what I’ve written? What if I’m not a real artist?

I called my friend (amazing artist Nicole Garneau) for a pep talk the night that the show opened. She told me, “The level of your terror is not inversely related to the quality of your work. In fact, the two have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. Putting your art into the world is always a scary thing to do, whether it’s awesome or awful, whether it’s brand new or totally finished. It’s scary because it’s vulnerable.”

Ah, so. Vulnerability. Yoga is a practice of making us comfortable with being uncomfortable. Comfortable, in this context, could be defined as complacent. Static. Stagnant. And so uncomfortable then, would mean moving. Growing. Blooming.

I woke up this morning feeling tired, tired of being exposed, of putting myself out there. And grateful that it was, for now, over. And then I remembered that tonight I have to have a talk with my long-term private clients about the fact that I’m raising my rates. I’ve had the same rates for private classes since I started teaching six years ago. And again with the questions: What if they say no? What if I’m not worth the money I’m asking them for? I feel good about the rate change, but whew, definitely a vulnerable space to put myself into again.

So what this points to, though, is the fact that I’m changing. Growing my teaching, my art, my business. My practice helps me to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and in this way, yoga is a catalyst for growth. Growing can only happen when we step out of our comfort zone, and into the unknown, the space in which we’re not sure what will happen, how they’ll react, if we’ll be okay. We practice being uncomfortable so that we can keep stepping into that space. And we step into that space so that we can grow.

Much love,

Bear

Changing The Oil {Yoga As Deep Self-Care}

You might be surprised to learn that I don’t take showers. Before you pinch your nose and slowly back away, you should know that I do take baths. We have a lovely clawfoot tub in my house, but getting one of those special oval shower curtain rods installed into the 12-foot ceilings has been at the bottom of the list of house projects since we moved in. So I just take baths. Often they’re bird baths, five minutes of scrubbing with a couple inches of water in the tub.

But every now and then, I take a proper bath. I fill the tub up halfway with just-slightly-less-than-scalding water, dissolve some Epsom salts (because, yes, I am that much of a gramps), pour in a few drops of essential oils (vetiver and cypress are my current favorites). Sometimes I listen to a meditation podcast (Tara Brach is my jam), and sometimes I read a book, and sometimes I drink a tiny tumbler of red wine. I might even light a candle.  I get out feeling renewed, literally washed clean. It is so nice.

This is self-care, but it’s self-care on the surface. It’s useful, it’s pleasant, and I like it. It’s like washing the car. It makes it look nice on the outside, maybe stops the bird shit from eating away the paint, but a clean car doesn’t mean a car that runs well. It still needs gas in the tank and oil in the engine.  

We need deeper practices to keep us at our best. Yoga is one of those practices. Rather than letting us tune out, yoga asks us to tune in, to go deep into what is really happening, right now, in this moment. It cleans out the muck in your engine block, keeps the pistons firing, and now I’ve run out of automobile  metaphors. I don’t even own a car.

Figure out what some of those deeper practices are for you. Yoga is likely one of them, if you’re reading this blog. What else helps you feel like yourself again? What gets you back in your body and out of your ever-spinning brain? What helps you to feel small on the scale of the universe and large on the scale of your life? Here’s a list of mine:

• Aimless walking in Couturie Forest in City Park
• Going to the beach. Any beach.
• Sitting in meditation in the morning
• Sitting next to Lake Pontchartrain
• Cooking and eating a delicious and complicated meal (must have at least 3 components to qualify)
• Going to my secret spot on the Mississippi River batture
• Singing with a group of people
• Talking on the phone to my mom (Sometimes. Sometimes not!!! :))
• Sorting my art supplies in my studio (This one seems silly, but separating fine-tip from  chisel-tip markers really restores an inherent sense of order in the world.)

The workshop I taught this weekend, Heartspark, is one too. We took a dive into the deep end of vulnerability, and bravely, came out on the other side. This workshop just scratched the surface of what we delve into through life coaching. Looking each other in the eye, holding space for the pain and the pretty, seeing one another fully, and truly being seen: this is the deep work of self-care.

We need these practices for self-care at all levels, not just an online shopping binge or a beer after work. We require maintenance of a higher degree to keep running on all cylinders. (Ha! I thought of one more!)

Tell me, dear ones, what are yours? Leave a comment on the blog to let me know.

Much love,

Bear

On Telling The Difference {Sutra 1.20 Prajna}

Many mornings I struggle to get out of bed. I often get up at 6:30 am to attend class with my teacher, Heide, in her morning intensives, which meet from 7:30-9:30 (and are highly recommended--she’ll kick your ass and change your life!) I love going to class with Heide, and I know that the struggle to get up is part of the practice, but I am really not a morning person.  

So when the alarm goes off, all hell breaks loose inside me. Sometimes I’m quick enough to turn off the alarm, throw back the covers, and leap out of bed. Any less and I’m liable to a) snooze three times so I’m panting and stressed when I arrive to class  ten minutes late, b) snooze five times so when I finally rouse myself, it’s too late to even try to go, or c) turn the alarm off in defeat and wake up at 9:30 or 10:00, my preferred hours to get up. (I’m a night owl, tried and true.)

Often the argument inside is simple, a battle of wills between my inner insolent child and my loving but firm adult self.

“I’m exhausted,” says  the voice that sounds a little like Kid Me.

“You’ll feel better once you’re up and moving,” says  the maybe Grown Me.

“I don’t wanna go. I don’t even like yoga,” Kid says.

“You’re absurd. That’s not true. Now get your tush out of this bed,” Grown replies.

And I get up, and dress myself, and go to class, and lo and behold, I feel better. And I like yoga. But sometimes the conversation is harder to discern what’s going on, who is the adult, who is the child, and which voice to listen to. It goes like this:

“I’m EXHAUSTED,” says Kid Me.

“You’ll feel better once you’re up and moving?,” says Grown Me.

“But maybe I just need to rest. I’ve been working so hard. Sleeping in would be good for me. Sometimes the yoga practice means doing less, you know?” says Kid Me. “Also maybe my throat hurts.”

“Probably you should get up?,” says Grown.

"Really??" whines Kid. 

“Shit, I don’t know," Grown sighs. "Do whatever you want.”

And on and on it goes. In the background Kid Me snickers and turns the alarm clock off. I wake up three hours later feeling heavy, groggy, and disappointed.

And here is where the yogic concept of Prajna comes into play. Prajna is translated as clear understanding, intuitive knowing, and most simply, as discernment. Prajna is the ability to tell the difference between the voice that says, “I don’t feel like going to class,” and the voice that says, “Rest would be the most compassionate choice.”

Prajna tells you the difference between a teacher who truly gets you and one who is not a good fit. Prajna points out the difference between the uncomfortable sensations that you must endure to progress in your practice, and the type of pain that will injure or harm you. We work to cultivate this discernment as a quality of practice. Otherwise, we might injure a shoulder or pull a hamstring, or never even make it to class in the first place.

Much love, 

Bear

Resolved

True Confession: I didn’t keep my New Year’s resolutions.

In January of 2015 I declared publicly (to all of you, in class) that this year would be the year that I would finally get serious about learning to speak French and finally actually learn to play the guitar that’s been gathering dust in the corner for three five years. I want to converse with my grandmother in her native tongue. I want to start a band with my boo, who’s also a proud Louisianian and a proficient Cajun fiddler. But I didn’t do any of those things.

I planned to write this to tell you all the things I accomplished this year instead of learning to speak French and play guitar. I did A LOT of things this year. So many things, very few of which that were music or language related. I thought I would give you all the reasons and excuses that I didn’t meet my goals. I imagined you reading this list of accomplishments and forgiving me for not also becoming D.L. Menard this year. I imagined you accepting me despite not reaching my goals (yet). I imagined you smiling and thinking, “Well, she’s only human.”

But when I sat down to type all those things out, and I imagined you being sweet and understanding towards me, I realized that I didn’t feel that way about myself. I still feel bad about not living up to my own expectations, even though the reasons I didn’t are all perfectly reasonable and totally valid. I have been quietly berating myself for all the ways I continue to see myself as a failure, a fuck-up, and an impostor. Despite knowing better intellectually, emotionally I still hold fast to these two crippling thoughts (via Brene Brown): “You’re never good enough” and “Who do you think you are?”

It pains me to write this. It feels scary and vulnerable and exposed. I want to imagine that I’ve evolved beyond this, that somehow all the years of yoga and meditation and inquiry and therapy have healed me, that I’m done with this work, or at least, done enough to pretend. But I’m not, and truthfully, I don’t think any of us ever are.

So my resolution for 2016 is simple: Be kind to myself. Be kind when I succeed. Be kind when I fail. Be kind when I fail again. And again. And again. Be kind to myself when I’m kicking butt and taking names, and when it’s all I can do to get dressed and head out into the world. Kindness when I’m put together, and kindness when I’m falling apart. Kindness in English et en Francais. Kindness regardless. Kindness unconditionally. Kindness without reservation.

Much love in this New Year,

Bear

P.S. Want more compassion for yourself in all your pursuits this year? There are still a few spots left for Heartspark, but registration is closing soon, so sign up now! I guarantee a vulnerability hangover at least as good as the one I’ll have from writing this post.

A Quiet Mind {Sutra 1.20 Samadhi}

Samadhi, the fourth quality of practice (according to Yoga Sutra 1.20), is variously translated as contemplation, stillness of mind, all-consuming focus, and absorption. The first three qualities of practice are related to Samadhi. You must have faith that getting quiet takes you somewhere you want to go (sraddha). You must exert the necessary effort to find it (virya). And you must remember that quietness is always there (smriti), that in fact, it is your essence.

Samadhi is also the eighth limb in the eight-limbed path of yoga. So we can think of Samadhi as both the result we are seeking and the means to the end. We end up with a quiet mind by regularly quieting the mind.

And so we strive to cultivate this stillness of mind not just in formal mediation but all the time, in the midst of the quick pace of daily life. Find those moments of stillness in the day to day, drinking tea in the morning, on your commute, while washing the dishes after dinner.

I hopscotched around South Louisiana last week, visiting various members of my family over the holidays. Along with being a whole lot of fun, it was hectic, and chaotic, and noisy, and tiring. But on the drives between each stop, I spent at least five minutes just breathing, being present, looking at the sky out the windshield, letting go of thoughts. Donna Farhi describes the quiet mind as the blank background on a strip of film. We see the images going by at warp speed, but if we slow down, we can see that each frame lays on a background that is neutral, spacious, and open. 

Connecting to that space is Samadhi.

Much love,

Bear

Presence In The Presents

The holidays are, for me, complicated. I love my family, but we drive each other crazy. I hate consumerism, but--Ooooh, look how cute that is! I’m grateful to live close enough to visit family, but it means I spend a lot of my holiday driving from place to place and cutting one visit short to see someone else.

Maybe you can relate. There’s a cultural norm about how the holidays are supposed to be, and if yours don’t look like the shiny, happy, snowy(???), Currier and Ives version, you might end up feeling confused, frustrated, and inadequate. And if yours do look like that, you might still feel pressure to perform, or live up to some standard you don’t actually ascribe to.

The work of the yoga practice is to be present, in each moment, with whatever is happening. Whether you like the Care Bear jammies your grandma bought you, or wish you’d stayed at home in your snuggie, you can always come back to the breath.

As you move through this week, remind yourself that the breath is always there. Focus inward, even if only for a moment, even in the chaos or the loneliness. Let go of the story. Let go of the expectations. Take a breath. And another one. And one more, just for good measure.

Repeat as often as needed.

Wishing you peace and presence.

Much love,

Bear

Forgetting To Remember {Sutra 1.20 Smriti}

My very first yoga teacher (shout out to Laura Jarrait) described yoga as a practice of remembering who we really are. I had one of those a-ha kind of moments the first time she said that in a class I was in. I had that moment of familiarity with what she was saying, even though I’d never explicitly thought that myself. She put words to something I intuitively knew.

Smriti is variously translated as memory, recollection, remembering. It’s the power to tap back into our true nature, even when we’re distracted and forgetting.

We are radiant beings, reflections of the glory of the divinity of the Universe. Does this sound too woo for you?  This might sound lofty, but it’s supported by yogic texts, not to mention the texts of many other faiths. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, know that I too sometimes struggle to reconcile the analytical-academic-critical-thinking side of my brain, with the wide-open-sunlight-pouring-through-the-trees side of my brain. That might not even be a part of my brain. Maybe that’s someplace else entirely. Heart, soul, spirit, who knows, etc? But for the purposes of this post, let’s just roll with the idea: We are burning orbs of light, shining bright the power of the capital-U Universe.

Somehow, we forget this fact. We get so crusted over with the mud of thoughts, ideas, attachments, aversions, tasks, and desires that we completely lose sight of the truth of who we are. We stumble through our days thinking WE ARE all of those thoughts and ideas. Sometimes we grapple through weeks or months without ever looking up to see ourselves clearly. Some of us spend years, lifetimes even, without remembering the truth of our wholeness and connectedness.

Think about how lonely that sounds, spending every day believing that you are alone, separate from, incomplete, not enough. Think about the suffering that might cause you. Think about all the destructive things you might do to yourself or others to cope with that pain. Think about the act of forgetting.

Now imagine seeing yourself clearly. Imagine that sense of separation dissolving. Imagine the muck dissolving. Imagine the light of your own true nature piercing through. This is what yoga offers us, a glimpse of who we truly are, a look at our own radiance.

My current teacher (mad love to Heide Grace) describes it this way: When we first practice yoga,  the path isn’t clear. We’re walking through a field of tall grass, and we don’t know where the path is. We must look down and step carefully in order to find our way. But over time, with repeated practice, the path becomes well-trodden. The way becomes easy to find. We have been here before, and we remember the way.

So when we step off the mat or leave the meditation cushion, we can recall that we are not our exterior. We are not the thoughts and feelings gurgling inside. We are wider, deeper, and brighter. We forget, and smriti helps us remember.

Much love,

Bear

P.S. Want more practices to banish your amnesia in daily life? Heartspark shows you how! Register here: http://bearteachesyoga.org/new-events/heartspark.

Crying In Public

Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

My mom cries at the drop of a hat. Really, she cries at everything. Commercials, songs on the radio, a sweet story about my five-year-old niece, looking at old photographs, you name it. Her nickname in the family is “The Old Waterworks.” It used to drive me bonkers. Like, Mom, seriously?

When I was younger, I was perpetually disengaged and unaffected. I wore callousness like a badge. Talk about my feelings? Scoff. (Can you see my teenage eyes rolling?)

But really, this was a coping strategy.

There were many big, difficult feelings clanging around inside me that I didn’t know how to deal with, and avoidance was a way of not feeling. There wasn’t a magical day in which I decided, okay, now I’m going to let myself feel my feelings. But somehow, slowly and over time, my heart started to soften.

I blame all the yoga.

It opened me, melted me, unfurled all those tightly wound parts. It’s still working on me, and my hardened, closed-off parts are slowly letting go. My feelings live a little closer to the surface these days, and my edges are more permeable, so while I’m not as weepy as my mama, I am much more prone to tears.

If it’s making you squirm a little to read about all this, I feel you. Some part inside me too still resists this, still wants to keep the walls up, still sees how weird and vulnerable it is to be open in this way. But some other part of me (and of you, I bet)  knows that this life, the sharing life, the open life, and yes, the crying life, is my life, and yours.

IT IS LIFE. And the rest is just hiding out and hoping that life won’t find us.

So if you’ve been thinking about signing up for coaching with me, but hesitate because you’re scared that you might cry, well, you might. And if you’re worried because you’re “not a sharer” and you think I’ll ask you to talk about your feelings, I definitely will. I’ll bring tissues.

Don’t get the wrong idea, though, the point of this work isn’t to make you deal with all your past trauma and wallow in your sadness and shame. (I’m not qualified to deal with that, but I can recommend a great therapist!)

Coaching asks you to look closely yourself and your life, your dreams and desires. You’ll address the ways your thoughts and habits get in the way of you living your best life. This is difficult work; I can’t pretend that it’s not. But it’s vitally important work, and I know you’re up for the task.

Much love, 

Bear