Everything You've Ever Wanted To Know About Yoga But Were Afraid To Ask...

Hello dear ones,

I’ve been teaching for the past few weeks at a residential treatment facility. My students are women who are in a court-ordered rehab program. The program offers yoga classes twice a week which, like everything else in the program, are mandatory.

Class happens in the cafeteria, with all the tables and chairs folded up and stacked outside the doors. The women roll out their donated aqua mats onto the grimy floor. About half of the women lie on their mats through the whole class, waiting for the hour to end so they can go outside for one of their four scheduled smoke breaks. They all keep their socks on. Doors open and close; heads poke in during class. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and the constant murmur from the front office is occasionally punctuated by wild laughter or shouting.

This is no ashram.

Last week as we were settling in one of the students asked me,

“What’s the point of yoga?”

I was slightly startled but also a little tickled. She was so straightforward in the way she asked, and also completely neutral. We talked some about what “the point” of yoga might be, with me laying out some basic philosophy and them adding in their own interpretations. It quickly evolved into a conversation. Other questions started bubbling up.

“Is yoga good for back pain?”

“What about the chakras? What are they, exactly?”

“Does yoga help to balance the chakras?”

“I feel so frustrated in the poses. Is that normal?”

Most of the students have no experience with yoga, have never been to a yoga class, don’t know the protocol. They approach with such genuine curiosity. They have beginner’s mind. And it is so refreshing.

Most of you reading this have likely had years of exposure to yoga. There are “rules” about what happens in a yoga class. You know them, and most of the time, you follow them: Sit quietly until class starts. Practice in bare feet. Do the poses that the teacher is calling out. Don’t lay around on the floor until Savasana.

But this can limit us, because we’ll start to behave in the way we think is expected of us instead of the way that might help us grow.

What are the questions that have been rattling around in your brain about yoga that you’ve never asked? Is there some basic piece of information that you missed that you’ve been too embarrassed to admit? What IS the point of yoga?

I’d love to hear them! And I’ll try my best to answer them. Comment with the questions you’ve never asked and I’ll address them in future blog posts. With a beginner’s mind!

Much love,

Bear

Fail Again, Fail Better

OOF. OUCH. OOPS. 

I failed. I had an idea that I thought was a really good idea, but it turns out that it was not a really good idea. Or at least, it wasn’t a good enough idea. It wasn’t an idea that I actually loved, even though I tried to convince myself that I loved it. The story goes like this:

I teach 3 classes a week that are drop-in format. Two of them are always full of people and energy and life. The other one is erratic; attendance fluctuates wildly; energy levels dip and enthusiasm flags.

Meanwhile, my no-drop-ins, must-register-in-advance class is thriving. Students are interested and engaged. I love teaching this class! Why not switch the wonky Wednesday class to the same format, only modified for beginners? We’ll do six weeks of standing balance poses, I decide.

I think this is a great idea! I promote my heart out, make flyers, write blog posts, send emails! Surely everyone will love it!

*crickets chirping*

No one signs up. (That’s actually not true. One person signed up right away. Thanks, Irene!)

I ask in one of my other classes if anyone was thinking of signing up for Wednesday but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Not a single hand raised. I ask why not.

“It doesn’t fit with my schedule. I don’t get off work until after 6 pm.”  “ My schedule fluctuates, so I can’t commit to six weeks  in a row.” “I just don’t like standing balance poses.”

The last one makes me laugh. I ruefully think to myself, “I don’t really like standing balance poses either.”

One week out from the first class and only two people have signed up. I am panicked. I am dejected. Reluctantly I cancel the class.

WHEW. WOW.

I’ve certainly failed before, in all kinds of weird and spectacular ways (remind me to tell you about the time I got my car inextricably wedged between a telephone pole and another car in my own driveway...)

Maybe you’re thinking to yourself: It’s just a yoga class; this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal?! You’re right, and it’s not, but when I was in the middle of it, it felt huge and magnified. My classes tend to stay pretty full, and y’all (my students) are generally interested in whatever I have to offer, so this felt like a bruise to the ego.

When I look closer though, this is also an opportunity to dig deeper and get clearer about what I really want, and what will truly best enable us all to grow. Why did I try so hard to get people to sign up for a thing I’m not super interested in practicing or teaching? I got a little lazy in my thinking, a little formulaic perhaps, and no one signed up for the class. I stepped outside what is truly true for me, and somehow, you could all see that. A good friend reflected to me,

What a blessing that you don’t have to teach a class on something that you don’t even really like.

Yoga teaches me that it’s okay to flail and fumble and fall and be awkward and not have everything all figured out. It shows me how to get clear about my purpose, and to find clarity about what is most in alignment with who I’m trying to be in this life.  

 It reminds me that perfection is an illusion. 

For now Wednesday night class is on hiatus while I finalize what’s next! Look out for more details next week about the future of Wednesday night classes. 

Much love,

Bear

Being Tired {Or Why I Don't Always Teach To A Theme}

Every week I plan the theme for my yoga classes for the following week, and most of the time, I feel deeply inspired and have a lot to give. I love sharing in conversation with y’all about stuff going on in my own life and hearing about what’s going on in yours. I love to make connections between the yogic teachings and real-life happenings.

But sometimes, the well runs dry. Temporarily, of course, but dry nonetheless. I feel empty, without a ton to offer. I reach in but come up empty.

This used to make me feel really bad. About myself, and my teaching. If I couldn’t come up with something compelling to talk about each week from the front of the room, what was I doing up there? Who do I think I am?

November marked the end of my sixth year of teaching yoga, and while that’s a short time in the big scheme of things, it’s a long time relative to my life. And what I’ve come to six years in, when the well runs dry, is that the practice still holds me. It holds you all, my students, and the space we create when we come together to practice with intention.

I don’t have to say anything powerful or poignant or funny. I don’t have to perform the role of “yoga teacher.” You don’t need fancy poses or name brand pants. This practice is potent enough that simply being reminded to be still, to get quiet, and to breathe is all that we need, in the fertile times and the dry spells, now and always.

I’ll hold the container, you show up with sincerity, and the yoga will do the rest.

Much love,

Bear

What Happens When? {Letting Go Of Right And Wrong}

A few months ago my mom was in town for a visit. It was the end of the day, and we were in the bathroom together getting ready for bed. I washed my hands, took my contacts out, and then got out the floss. Meanwhile my mom was washing her face and brushing her teeth. I finished flossing and put toothpaste on my toothbrush just as my mom put down her toothbrush and opened up the box of floss.

“Wait, Mom, you floss AFTER you brush?”

“Of course. Is that weird?”

The fact that her dental hygiene routine happens to be the opposite of mine is not a big deal, and yet I found it hard not to react. I paused for a long second.

“No, it’s not weird. It’s just....different.”

For most of my life I have tended towards thinking of things as either right or wrong, with no grey area. I like to know right way to do things because then I can do things the right way. Doing it the right way feels good, secure, fixed, in control. I feel accomplished and righteous, even about something as simple and stupid as which order to brush and floss. Opening to the possibility that there might be a different way is a little scary because it’s inherently mutable and moving, the opposite of stable and secure.

There is often not one right way to do things. Most of the time, there are many approaches to a single task. One of the most profound things practicing yoga has taught me is to look at things as different but not necessarily wrong. And to let go of thinking that the way I approach something as being somehow more right than the way someone else does.

My yoga teacher, when asked about the right way to put your hands in a given pose, for instance, will answer, 

“Let go of that question. Ask instead: What happens when? What happens when I place my hands one way? What happens when I put them the other way?”

This other way of questioning opens space. Thinking of things as right or wrong is a hard stop, period, end of sentence. But asking “What happens when.....?” opens us up to possibility, allows for curiosity, leaves room for exploration. In your practice and in life, notice when you default to right/wrong thinking. and when you do, explore instead “What happens when.....?”

The poet Rumi says,

“Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

I’ll meet you there!

Much love,

Bea

Flossing My Way Out Of The Spiral Of Shame

I learned more about myself and my habits from becoming a person who flosses than you might think. Notice the difference there. I didn’t say from flossing itself, but from becoming a person who flosses. Some fundamental things changed for me when I made this new habit and was able to keep it. One thing I realized was that I (and most of us!) need containers to make ourselves do good things.

I’m not talking Tupperware and mason jars. When I say containers, what I mean is boundaries. It feels impossibly daunting to me to say to myself, “I will floss my teeth every day forever starting today.” I can already foresee the ways that I will likely fall short, and that makes me want to throw in the towel before I begin. And in fact, that’s what I did. For years I tried to become a flosser by setting a New Year’s Resolution on January 1 that I abandoned before the month was over.

And of course, for me, just like for you and most of the rest of us, when I fail at something, even something as ridiculously simple and stupid as flossing, I feel bad about myself. The slope towards self-loathing is steep and quick and it’s not long before I end up in the “You never accomplish anything you worthless lump of a human” abyss.

You know this feeling too, I’m pretty sure. “I set an intention to meditate daily but I can’t seem to make myself just sit down and breathe.”   “I always say I’m going to go to yoga twice a week but I never do.”  “I want to have healthier sleep habits, or become a vegan, or talk to my grandmother more, or ride my bike on the weekends, or get out in nature once a month. But I don’t.” And then down into the shame spiral you slide.

However, if I give myself essentially the same directive but create a clear boundary for when the expectation will begin and end, I am much more likely to be able to follow through. I said I would floss every day for the forty days of Lent. At the beginning, when I was still in the ohmygodthisisterriblydisgusting phase, I would think to myself “I only have to do this for 36 more days.” Or 33. Or 25. That fact alone made it so much easier for me to stick with it.

I created the LEAPS+BOUNDS classes to make this clear boundary for your practice. These six week courses create a container for you to commit to yourself and your practice within. I know how impossible it can seem to commit to big change forever without end. But you don’t have to commit to being a superstar yogi who practices three hours every day forever and ever amen. You only have to commit to 75 minutes once a week for six weeks. This is infinitely more doable.

But here’s the trick--when we stick with it for forty days, or six weeks or whatever, we are so much more likely to stick with it forever. When we change our habits, we change ourselves. And when we change, we find a more solid footing to stay firmly grounded here in the place of self-acceptance and self-love.

Want the slope to your shame spiral to get a little less steep? The new session of LEAPS+BOUNDS starts the first week of March. Monday night’s class (for more experienced practitioners, we’ll work towards Full Split (Hanumanasana). On Wednesday, we’ll explore Standing Balance Poses (suitable for all levels, including brand new beginners).

Register now for LEAPS+BOUNDS! Click the buttons below for more information and to register. 

Much love, 

Bear

What I Learned From Learning To Floss {On Not Comparing Myself To Other People}

I’m not Catholic, but I love Lent. (I love Mardi Gras more, of course.) I don’t take a strictly traditional sacrificial approach to Lent. Instead I use Lent as a time to give up an unsavory habit and add in a new one. We could call these Mardi Gras Resolutions? It began a few years ago when I gave up Facebook and started flossing. Unfortunately, I didn’t quit Facebook permanently, but I have managed to become a daily flosser in the years since that first Lent.

I had never been a flosser. I don’t remember if my parents made me floss when I was a kid, but I certainly never had a habit of it in my adult life. For several years prior to the flossing Lent, I had made it my New Year’s Resolution to floss daily, and had failed each year. But with my Lenten resolution, I didn’t have to commit to a lifelong love of dental hygiene. I only had to floss for 40 days. This smaller timeframe, along with the encouragement of my very clean-teethed housemates, created the conditions for success.

At first flossing was hard, like, I found it difficult to do. It was awkward to get the floss to go between my teeth, and it cut the circulation off in my fingers. And it was GROSS. Have you seen the kind of stuff that comes out of there? And it smells like swamp death. Plus it hurt and made my gums bleed relentlessly. I hated it. But I persisted.

My roommate would floss with me, aimlessly pacing in the bathroom as she effortlessly glided the minty thread between her gleaming teeth. I couldn’t understand how was it so easy for her. Her gums didn’t bleed. Her fingers didn’t turn purple. She didn’t even have to look in the mirror to figure out where to put the floss.

I was reminded of when I first started practicing yoga, and I would look around a class full of people whose hands lay flat on the floor in Standing Forward Fold, or heels touched the mat in Downward Dog, or who could find effortless balance in Tree Pose. I felt frustrated with how easy it seemed for them to do these poses that were, for me, challenging at best and annihilating at worst.

You can’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.

It’s a recipe for frustration, failure, and defeat. LEAPS+BOUNDS classes are designed to help you practice one pose (or set of poses) consistently enough to feel like you’re making progress. That way if you must compare, you can compare yourself now to yourself in the past, your own beginning to your own middle. Rather than feeling inadequate and defeated, you’ll be able to celebrate the diligence of your efforts and all your small victories along the way.

Anything worth pursuing, be that a yoga practice or a flossing habit, requires a consistent effort over time (remember Abhyasa?). And with that consistency comes an ease that seems unimaginable at the outset. I can balance in Tree Pose now, and my heels long ago found the floor in Down Dog. My gums stopped bleeding. I don’t have to look in the mirror to find the space between my teeth. I floss like a champ.

Much love,

Bear

P.S. For Lent this year I’m giving up lying and making a commitment to meditate every single day. How about you?

Register now for LEAPS+BOUNDS! 

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