The R.A.I.N. of Self-Compassion

Dealing with someone else’s big feelings is challenging for any of us. (See last week's post for a reminder.) But dealing with our own big feelings can feel downright impossible. Most of us have a variety of coping mechanisms we use to distract ourselves from emotions we find uncomfortable. On the healthy end of the spectrum, we might go for a walk, or call a friend, or eat a nourishing snack. On the other end, we pour a drink, or smoke a bowl, or binge Netflix. (I buy shoes on the Internet. It’s my only true vice.)

If you don’t want to opt out, is there a mechanism for being present with your own unpleasant emotions? How, actually, do you FEEL YOUR FEELINGS?  What can you do when you’re overwhelmed and there’s no way out? Here’s a story to illustrate. Last year during the holidays I brought my partner Nick home with me to meet my father. I’ve had many serious relationships in the past decade, and I’ve brought all of my partners home to meet my mom’s side of the family, but thus far, none had met my dad.

My relationship with my father is complicated at best. He and my mom split up when I was 4, and he was only present intermittently after that. Nowadays I visit him for a few hours on Christmas Day every year, and that is generally the extent of our interaction. Having Nick there was validating in that it affirmed for me how dysfunctional my interactions with my dad really are, and you might think that validation would feel good, but in fact, when we left my dad’s house on Christmas night last year, I felt horrible.

Nothing particularly bad had transpired, but still I cried in the Exxon parking lot as we filled the gas tanks, preparing to drive three hours back to New Orleans. In trying to manage seeing all of our families, we had arrived in two cars, so I was driving back alone. I was still crying as we merged onto the interstate in our separate vehicles, and it was then I realized that the car I was driving didn’t even have a working stereo. There were literally no distractions. Oh shit, I thought.

There’s a practice called RAIN that I used that night that I learned from the teachings of Tara Brach. It’s sometimes called the RAIN of Self-Compassion, and it’s a technique for being present with your big feelings. RAIN is an acronym which stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Non-Attachment.

So there I am, just me and my feelings, careening down the dark highway at 75 miles an hour. First I RECOGNIZE what is happening. I’m feeling shame. There’s some anger in there, and sadness too. The pain of not having a relationship with someone I'm supposed to have a relationship with. But mostly shame at having someone witness my family’s particular brand of crazy.

Then ALLOW those feelings to be. Don’t fight with them. Don’t try to make them go away. Don’t distract yourself from them. Just let them happen. I cried and shouted for about 50 miles and tried not to drive off the road.

INVESTIGATE what’s really going on. Anchor your emotions in physical sensation. What does shame feel like? Where does anger live? What are the sensations associated with sadness? I found shame sitting like a ton of bricks in my stomach, sadness crashing like waves in my chest, anger clenching hot in my fists. Don’t run away from what you’re feeling. Go towards it. Explore.

The final step is to meet this experience with NON-ATTACHMENT. Can you have big emotions and know that they will pass? I felt shame, sadness, and anger, but I am not those feelings. After an hour or so on the road, the waves got smaller and eventually subsided. I knew they might return, but I also knew they didn’t define who I am. I felt them, let them move through me, and then let them go.

Our lived experiences are vast and not limited to the emotions we find pleasant and desirable. RAIN can be so useful in allowing us to experience the fullness of life. Learning to be present with the discomfort of being human gives us access to a richer, deeper emotional life. To recap: 

R   Recognize what is happening

A   Allow life to be just as it is

I   Investigate inner experience

N   Non-Identification

Want to explore RAIN some more? Head over to Tara Brach's website for a podcast and meditation that explores the topic. {https://www.tarabrach.com/the-rain-of-self-compassion/}

Much love, 

Bear

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P.P.S. Have you missed some recent posts? Read about yoga and: 

• EMPATHY
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Sympathy, Empathy, and How To Feel Your Feelings

Today I want to tell a story about a child who taught me something really valuable about the difference between sympathy and empathy. She's six years old. Let’s call her Maya (name and identifying details changed for privacy). She’s the youngest daughter of a woman I met this year at the Alternate ROOTS annual meeting.

{Alternate ROOTS is a 40-year-old organization of artists and activists from the South who are working to undo all forms of oppression. It is the most grounded and inspiring community I am ever part of. ROOTS is truly diverse in all ways, and it’s far from perfect, but we aspire over and over again to get our hands dirty and do the work of living in community with each other.}

On the first night I was standing in the lobby of the main building talking to a dear friend who I hadn’t seen since last year’s ROOTS meeting when Maya, a child I’d never met before, walked up to me and took my hands. I paused my conversation and knelt down to talk to her.

“Hi, I’m Bear. What’s your name?” and she introduced herself to me. We hugged and then she kissed my cheek. She met my friend too, then Maya turned to leave. We resumed our adult conversation, but quickly she came back to us. Unprompted, she stroked the end of my nose and said, “I miss you!” We were fast friends.

Over the week I interacted with her in the dining hall and in between activities in the Youth Village. She was clearly having a great week, playing with the dozen other kids who were there. On the final night Maya arrived at the closing dance party for the meeting. It was early and there were just a dozen or so of us on the dance floor. Maya was clearly upset. Eventually she made her way around the dance floor to me. She raised her arms to me in the universal child gesture of “Pick me up!” so I did.

I said, “Are you feeling sad? What’s wrong?” and she cried, “I. Don’t. Want. It to be the. L-a-a-a-aast niiiiiiiiight!!!!!” and I said, “It’s okay Maya, you’ll see them again next year! You’ll come back, and you’ll see them again.” And she said, “But Alabama is a lo-o-o-o-ong way away!!!!!” And I laughed a little bit at her drama and I said, “It’s not so far, Maya. You’ll come back and see all your friends. It’s okay!” And she just cried harder. “Come on, don’t you want to dance with me? Dance! I bet you’ll feel better if you dance!” I cajoled. She would not be consoled.  

I was feeling sympathetic, but then I had a moment of true empathy. I looked at her and I felt her pain. Even though I don’t usually have a total meltdown as I’m leaving ROOTS, I too know the pain of loving and losing that she was feeling. I have cried on the last day before, and I have certainly felt the pain of losing someone I love more permanently, through a move, a breakup or a death. I understood that this child with the open and loving heart, the one who had come up to me and kissed my cheek without knowing me, who told me she missed me moments after meeting me, was hurting.

I felt empathy and I felt compassion. Sympathy, as described by researcher-storyteller Brene Brown, is “Ooh! It’s bad…huh? You want a sandwich?” {Have you seen that cute video of her describing the difference between sympathy and empathy? It's pretty great and it has a bear in it!} Compassion, on the other hand, means ‘to suffer with.’ Having empathy doesn’t have anything to do with trying to fix anyone else’s problems, or showing them how it’s not so bad, or distracting them, or even to trying to make them feel better. Empathy simply asks us to be with the pain of our fellow human. So I tried a different approach. I said,

“Maya, are you sad that you have to leave your friends?” and she said,

“Yeeeeeeaaaasssssss.”

“Your heart hurts because you’re going to miss them, doesn’t it?” She nodded. I continued, “Yeah, it’s really hard to leave the people that we love and care about. It’s hard to be apart from them when we love them so much.” And she said,

“I feeeeeeel saa-a-a-a-a-a-d.”

“It’s okay to feel sad,” I said. Do you want me to keep holding you while you feel sad?” She nodded. So I did, dancing with her in my arms.

How often do we try to fix the problems of the people around us rather than simply be with them? We try to get the other person to see that it’s not so bad, to look at the bright side. We think we are being helpful. It is so hard to simply be with another person in their pain because it reminds us of our own pain, our own vulnerability, our own capacity for hurt and trauma. It makes us feel how close our own discomfort always is.

How often do we do that to ourselves as well?  Instead of sitting with the pain, instead of being present to our own uncomfortable sensations, we want out as quickly as possible. (It’s worth noting here that if you are dealing with active trauma or are in crisis, distraction can be a very important and useful tool, and you shouldn’t push yourself to be present with your pain when it feels like too much. Be kind and patient with yourself and consider seeking the help of a therapist or other qualified professional.)

I have spent so much time trying to distract myself from my own suffering. When I feel sad or hurt or angry or afraid, I pour myself a drink or I shop for shoes on the internet or I eat a lot of cookies. Maybe for you it’s smoking cigarettes or watching Netflix. Pay attention this week as you go about your life. Notice when you are distracting yourself from your suffering. See if you can pause and meet yourself with empathy instead. Watch what happens when you do.

After a few minutes Maya popped her head up and said, “I’m ready to get down now.” So I put her down and she ran off to find her sister and some of the other kids. The sadness had moved through her and so she moved on. I watched her from across the room, both of us dancing.

Much love, 

Bear

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How To Keep Up Your Yoga Practice (Or Any Practice At All)

How do you create a habit? How do you keep up a practice? Whether it’s yoga or meditation or playing an instrument, sticking with a practice is often impossibly difficult. When faced with your own wishy-washy approach, coupled with the nasty lies your inner judge likes to spout off, you might just throw in the towel before you’ve even gotten started. In this post I address some of the mental patterns that make creating a new habit so hard, and give you one fun yet concrete tool to use to dismantle that crippling mindset and get out of your own way.

Previously I wrote about why it’s so hard for so many of us to cross things off our to do list. The TL;DR version is that we often write things down on our lists that are projects (like redesigning a website) not tasks (like scheduling an appointment for new headshots for the aforementioned website). Even when you’ve made a bunch of progress (scheduled the appointment), you haven’t actually completed the whole project (redesigned the website) and thus, you can’t cross it off the list. This sets you up to feel inadequate, unproductive, and like you can never finish what you start. (Sound familiar? Read the whole thing over here.)

How is a practice different from a project different from a task? A project is big, complex, and impossible to finish in one sitting. A task is its polar opposite: small, discrete, and finished in one go. A practice, on the other hand, is a little of both. Playing an instrument, for instance. It's something that happens in one sitting, but it's never quite done. And if you're used to hearing a whole lot of talk from your own inner critic about how terrible and lazy you are, trying to build a meaningful, sustained practice over time might feel like an uphill battle. In short, even though you work hard, you might still end up feeling shitty about yourself.

What I'm not saying here is that you're only as good as the work you produce. While I’m all for doing the deep digging work of figuring out how to extract myself from that kind of capitalist thinking, sometimes I just want to get things done. When you practice anything, you start to feel pride and a sense of accomplishment. You feel like less of a useless sloth and more like a functional human (or maybe that's just me?) More importantly, you have momentum to keep going on whatever you're working on or practicing. Like the laws of physics, you move and thus you are more easily able to keep moving. As poet Kay Ryan says "Action creates a taste for itself."

In 2008 I had just graduated from college (six and half years and one hurricane later), and for the next couple of years, I struggled tO make art. I had just come from the cozy nest of art school where there were weekly assignments and critiques, teachers who were invested in my work, and a community of fellow students who were also making art. Suddenly I was without structure, without deadlines, and frankly, without motivation. I fell into a slump.

This was my cycle: I wasn’t making art, so I felt bad about myself. I felt bad about myself, so I didn’t feel inspired to make art. I didn’t make art, so I felt bad. And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. "Who do you think you are?," my inner critic taunted, "Why do you even call yourself an artist anyway? You never make any art." The voices in my head relentlessly told me I was a failure, a fraud, and a fuck-up, and though I felt sad and beaten down, some part of me didn't totally believe my self-defeating story. I needed some factual information to fight back with. This is where the Gold Star Chart came in.

Remember the Gold Star Chart? Like when you were a little kid? You, excellent six year old that you were, completed some small task and got a gold star.  Did you share your toys? Gold star! You brushed your teeth? Gold star! Learned your vocabulary words? Good job! Gold star.

I thought if I started tracking how I was spending my time, it might make me feel better about myself, (plus I happen to love tracking information and charts and graphs--ask my former roommates about my epic grocery money pie charts!) So I made my own grown-up Gold Star Chart. I even bought those old school foil star stickers at Walgreen’s. The categories needed an update, though; Instead of cleaning my room or using the potty, I started tracking how often I engaged in creative pursuits and dealt with things that we might assign to the realm of “adulting.” My first Gold Star Chart had five categories across the top: Art, Yoga, Gardening, Friends, and Money.

When I went to a yoga class or rolled out my mat for 10 Sun Salutations at home, I got a yoga star. I pulled weeds for an hour on my way home from work: gardening star. I cooked dinner with my bestie: friend star. I worked a double waiting tables and made bank: money star. And yes, when I got out my camera or sat at my sewing machine or laid on the floor to with charcoal and paper, I got an art star.

As the weeks went on, I realized I had a powerful tool in my hands. When my inner judge started to talk its predictable shit, I looked at the chart. All those gold stars so clearly contradicted the narrative the inner judge wanted me to believe. How could I be an impostor, not a real artist, not a real yogi, when I had been making art and practicing yoga almost every day for weeks? How could the inner judge argue with the facts?

Slowly I started to come out of the funk I’d been in and find ways to keep up with all of the things I wanted to practice. The things that weren’t projects with an end date, but things that I wanted to keep up with in an ongoing, infinite way. I was doing it, and I had the stars to prove it. And I felt SO MUCH BETTER inside.

I want this for you too, because I know that you are way more awesome than the little twerp that lives inside your brain would have you believe. Here’s your homework (should you choose to accept it.)

1. Dream about what practices would go at the top of your gold star chart. Narrow your list to 4-6 categories of daily/weekly activities that you want to keep track of. Possible things to track are morning rituals, exercise, being creative/writing, friends/social time, cooking, etc. no more than six.

2. Make a gold star chart by writing them vertically at the top of a page. Then write the dates down the left side in a column. Draw a grid to track each activity for each day. Make it as cute or big or small or glittery as you want. Get stickers. {Some of my coaching clients like to make their chart inside their journal or calendar where it’s always with them, while others prefer to have a visual reminder on the wall to help keep them encouraged.}

3. And then, start tracking! Be easy on yourself here about what "counts." This is not the time to create more exacting standards for yourself. Five minutes of meditation is definitely worth a star. Ten sun salutations? Gold star! (Of course, if you happen to do 90 minutes of sweaty flow yoga, yay! But don't make it a requirement.) We're going for small actions together over time. Remember the verse from the Bhagavad Gita that says, "On the path of yoga there is no failure and nothing goes to waste. Even the smallest effort towards spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest sorrow."

Let me know how this is works for you! And please be in touch if you have questions or need other support. Leave me a comment or send me an email! And if you like what I write, sign up for weekly updates below.

Much love,

Bear

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Why Your To-Do List Doesn't Get Done

Hello dear ones,

Is your to-do list dysfunctional? In my work as a life coach, I see some of the same issues over and over again. The people I work with have lots of projects going at once and nearly every one of them struggles to make progress on their to-do lists. These are hard working people, mind you. Sure, they procrastinate, but no more than the rest of us, and yet no matter how many hours they put in, the list still looms. What gives?

The most common gaffe I see people make is that they don’t differentiate between tasks and projects, so they add items to their to-do list that seemingly never get done, despite the fact that they are working hard. Let me give a definition here: A task is a discrete action, something that can be accomplished in one sitting. A project is multifaceted and by definition requires coordination of multiple parts. For example, “Write text for new About page” is a task. “Website Redesign” is a project.

Imagine this: it’s the end of your workday, and you’ve been at your desk (or your kitchen table) for hours diligently working. You only took the allotted number of Facebook breaks, and you even remembered to stretch your shoulders a couple of times. (Garudasana/Eagle arms are my favorite for releasing computer neck.) But when you look at the to-do list you started your day with, you’ve only completed a couple of things on it, even though you’ve been working for a looooooong time.

Here’s the problem: If you write a project on your to-do List, even if you complete multiple tasks related to it, you don’t get to cross it off your list until the whole project is done. And if your projects are complex or dependent on other people, you may not finish it for weeks or months.  You know the feelings that follow: frustration, irritation, and that anxiety of feeling like you haven’t done enough. You might even keep working later and longer hours because you haven’t done everything you know you needed to do.

How do you shift this approach? Be very judicious when adding things to your to-do list. When you’re tempted to write “website redesign” on your list, take a minute and break it down into smaller, more doable chunks. List out all the steps it will take you to get from here to there. Put them in order and work on one at a time.

The satisfaction of crossing tasks off your list is huge! It keeps you from falling into inertia, and that momentum may even give you concrete evidence to use when the voice of your inner judge starts yapping. “You never accomplish anything,” it says. “It’s impossible for you to finish what you start. You have no follow through.” (Or at least, this is what my inner judge likes to caw about.) But when you only put tasks on the list, you have concrete factual information to clap back with. When you can honestly cross things off your list, you feel better about your work and you might end up feeling better about yourself.

Bonus: You might also glean some useful information about how long certain projects actually take. When I was working on the lead up to a big crowdfunding campaign, I was amazed at how many hours every task would take me. My expectations of what I could accomplish in a day were vastly out of touch with what was actually possible. We ended up adjusting our timeline accordingly, and everyone was much happier.

So tell me, will this be useful for you? Can you implement this shift in thinking? What else keeps you from finishing what you start? Are there other obstacles to reaching your goals? I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment or send me an email.

Much love,

Bear

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You might also like to read about yoga and...EMPATHY,  BEING AN ADULT and SOCIAL JUSTICE. 

Three Things Yoga and Activism Have in Common

Hello dear ones,

It has been a very heavy few weeks. I had written a list here of the places where there’s been recent violence when I started this essay a week and a half ago, but the list just keeps growing. Can you hear the world groaning under the weight of all the turmoil?

Have you, like me, felt overwhelmed in the past weeks, pinned down by our seeming impotence against the systems and forces that are literally killing human beings among us simply for the color of their skin? Did you want to pull up the covers and hide? I know I did. Did you feel scared to push back for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing? Me too.

Simultaneously I have been heartened by the responses of people around me. Led by the efforts of black and brown people, white friends and family are coming to consciousness about the grave consequences of being black in America, and it seems to me that we are speaking out and showing up for racial justice as never before.

I want to mention that amidst all the good work I’ve been witnessing, I’ve also been disturbed by a sentiment that I’ve been hearing from some in the yoga world, namely that we are “all one”, a unified human race, and that the idea of "other" is an illusion. While I agree with this on a fundamental level, avoiding racial injustices in the name of “spirituality” invisibilizes the very very different experiences we have based on our skin color. I long for a world in which we are not separated by race, gender, class, sexuality, or any other social marker, but we have work to do before we will actually live in that world, and pretending that we don’t is a perilous proposition.

The question I keep hearing from my white friends is “What can I do?”. I know this question comes from a place of love and frustration and of wanting to help, but often this question is tangled in fear, too, of not wanting to mess up or say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. I should note here that what follows is a call to my fellow white people who see the horror of the world and know we have to do something about it. 

It’s true that we (white people) definitely can’t assume we know what’s best for black people, and we always need to move with intention and accountability. But now is not the time for hesitation, platitudes and hand-wringing. Now is a time to do whatever is in your power to change the situation. Here are three mental shifts and skills derived from the yoga practice to help you come out from under the duvet and hit the streets (literally or not.)

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1. Listen deeply.

One major skill I’ve gained from practicing yoga is mindfulness: the ability to stay present and listen deeply, to breathe one breath and then another without shying away from your feelings, no matter how unpleasant. Use this skill now. Listen deeply to the many people of color have been writing and talking for years, decades and centuries about the role that white people can play in moving towards justice.

Read their books and blogs. Listen to their podcasts. Educate yourself. Do your own work. Continue to listen even and especially when you feel uncomfortable. Ask white friends who have been doing this work for help when you need it. Listen deeply to the voices of people of color who have already spoken out about how we can all work to undo racism.

For a long time I felt like I needed people of color to instruct me in what to do about systemic racism. Let’s all do our best not to take up the time or energy of our black friends and loved ones with questions or pleas for instruction, not because we shouldn’t listen to them (because we should!), but because many black and brown people have already stated what white people can do to help.

postcard from Gutwrench Press

2. You have all the tools you need.

Yoga has taught me that we have everything we need inside us. You don’t have to add anything to who you fundamentally are in order to do the work of furthering justice (or being human, for that matter). I want to repeat that: YOU HAVE ALL THE TOOLS YOU NEED. I don’t mean that you do not have learning or growing to do, because we all do. I mean that you already have the necessary skills to begin to undo racism and dismantle systemic white supremacy.  We can’t do everything but we must do something.

So ask yourself, what do I already know how to do that might be of use to the movement? Can you think of organizations that you might be able to offer your skills to? The movement needs protestors, but it also needs lawyers and nurses and massage therapists (it realllly needs some massage therapists.) Can you cook food for protesters? Maybe you’re a whiz at social media. Use the skills you already have to get involved.

Maybe you don’t have a specialized skill to offer but you have a car that you could use to give people rides to meetings. Maybe you can volunteer a few hours a month to make phone calls or do childcare. Maybe you can give your money monthly to organizations doing the work with the communities most affected.

Perhaps you have a platform to talk about racial justice with a wider audience (*ahem* like how I’m using this newsletter to talk to all 300 of you). It could be your email list, your co-workers, your boo or your family. Anytime you have the opportunity, use the tools you’ve already got: your voice, your brain, and your heart.

3. It’s a lifelong practice.

There is a frenzy of activity happening in this moment around racial justice and it’s easy to get swept up in the social media wave, or the adrenaline of protesting. But it’s equally important to think about what we can do on a regular basis. It has taken us centuries to build and bolster the system of white supremacy. It won’t be dismantled overnight.

Similarly, if we practice yoga only intermittently, change comes slowly. When we commit to practicing regularly, there begins to be an urgency built into our practice that propels us along. Use this principle in your approach to activism. Consider what you can do regularly and what you can sustain long-term. Think about how you can show up for justice even when there’s no march or rally.  What can you commit to doing in the long-term?

In addition, this approach relieves some of the pressure you might feel to need to do your activism perfectly. In the asana practice we may fall many times when learning a particular pose, but we keep practicing! If you think of each action you take towards justice as simply one point on a timeline of many actions you have taken and will take, then you’ll be better able to take in stride any stumbles or missteps.

Ultimately we’ll be more empowered to take useful, measured risks. Ask yourself: What can I do that is risky? What can I do that makes me uncomfortable? It might be showing up to a march or a rally. It might be initiating a difficult conversation with your parents. It might be simply sitting with your own discomfort around these issues.

Black people and people of color have been doing this work for centuries, and there have been white people there all along, though it’s often been concealed. (<--- Ask yourself why this might be.) We have access to power and privilege and influence that quite often black people simply don’t have, so while it’s dangerous and harmful to make ourselves the center of the story, we must become a part of the narrative.

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So listen well, apply what you’ve already got, and commit to the work of justice for the long-term. Our voices, skills, and resources are needed in this moment, and it’s time for us to rise to the occasion. Every small action counts. We cannot lose.

Want to talk more about any of this? Got feedback about something I’ve written? Need more resources? Don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d love to hear from you!

Much love,

Bear

Taking My Inner Judge Rock-Climbing

I went rock climbing on Saturday for the first time ever and it was awesome and I totally recommend it and I’m going back tomorrow! There are no ropes or harnesses at the New Orleans Boulder Lounge; Instead you free-climb up their 15 foot walls (with a padded floor underneath) along routes of hand- and foot-holds. The routes are color coded by difficulty, and so I chose the easiest routes because it was my first time ever and I’m no fool.

My first dozen times up the wall, I’d get about 8 or 10 feet off the floor and panic. My brain would start up the alarm bells and I’d freeze on the wall. I’m not particularly afraid of heights, but I felt paralyzed, unable to lift my hand away from its hold to find the next one up. But I persisted, and finally managed to get to the top of the wall. I climbed for a couple of hours until I was too tuckered out to do any more.

It was exhilarating! My arms and legs were sore for days afterwards, and my face was too from smiling. I was amazed at how happy climbing made me, and how free I felt from my own self-criticisms. So much of the time I feel stuck like I was halfway up the wall, incapacitated by the fear of failure, or maybe fear of my own ascent.

As I sat and watched other more experienced climbers do their thing, one of the employees came from behind the desk and put on her climbing shoes. She approached the wall at an easy route, one I had attempted, repeatedly failed at, and finally successfully climbed. She stood quietly, assessing her route. She took a breath, walked to the wall, and with more grace than I could have imagined, she climbed to the top. There was an effortlessness to her movements that amazed me. It was like she had danced up the wall.

I’ve spent a whole lot of my life comparing myself to other people. This is a destructive force. It was so freeing to go to the climbing gym, where I have no stakes in the game, nothing to prove. It didn’t matter to me how good I was at what I was doing. It was fun and fulfilling and I didn’t need it to be anything else.

But in so many other areas of my life (art-making, relationships, appearance, finances, etc) I find myself comparing myself to other people. These comparisons are so often without context, and without knowing it, we compare our own beginning to someone else’s middle. This route that had been insurmountable to me was automatic to her. I don’t know the graceful climber’s story, her background, or her prior athletic experience, so to compare myself to her is utterly without basis.

Even when I manage to escape the trap of comparing myself to other people, I still often end up comparing myself to some idealized version of myself that, surprise surprise, I never seem to live up to. The inner judge doesn’t give a shit about context. Its only function is to criticize, to condemn, to keep us small.

Look at the ways that you compare yourself to other people. What expectations do you have of yourself? Do they harm you when you don’t live up to them? How much freer would you feel if you let go of those comparisons? If you didn’t have a predetermined ideal to live up to, who could you be? What could you do?

I love hearing from you. Don’t hesitate to comment, email, or otherwise be in touch. And if you like what I write, sign up for weekly blog posts direct to your inbox by clicking here or filling in the form below!

Much love,

Bear

"This Monstrous Machine That Chews Up Beauty and Spits Out Money"

THE SCALE IS BROKEN

I have been teaching yoga for almost seven years now, and in that time, I’ve been lucky to be able to offer all of my public classes on a sliding scale. Sliding scale is a means of making yoga more affordable, by making it cheaper for those who need it to be, while those who can afford to pay more do so, with the folks at the top of the scale subsidizing the folks at the bottom. No one is ever turned away for lack of funds, and I’m always open to trade or barter (with agreements made in advance). Students generally pay anonymously on the honor system.

I believe in sliding scale pricing models because they can help to remove one barrier of access to practice. Certainly we can all practice on our own (for free!) but there is something special about being in a class together with other people that those with less financial means should not be excluded from. Sliding scale economies offer an autonomous alternative to capitalism (albeit still existing within capitalism).

A functional sliding scale means that the average payment is about the middle of the scale. The scale for my classes has been $5-15 for as long as I’ve been teaching, so a healthy average would be around $10/student. Instead the average per student has never consistently exceeded $6 or $7, which means that the vast majority of students pay on the lower end of the sliding scale.

It makes sense that people who are attracted to a lower-cost yoga class might be lower-income; by contrast, most students at a $20 drop-in class are probably financially stable.  I have little statistical information about the average of my students’ salaries or their monthly expenses, though what I observe can give us a place to start from. Many of my students are artists, writers, and musicians. A few are lawyers, doctors, and engineers. Most are white, in their 20s and 30s, and have no children. Most of my students (though certainly not all) are well off enough to buy coffee at a coffee shop, or go out to eat with friends, or take a vacation.

Yet the numbers show that some of these financially comfortable folks must be paying at the bottom of the sliding scale. A healthy sliding scale system assures that students can afford classes, teachers make a living wage, and the studio stays afloat. If most folks pay at the minimum, the system isn’t serving its purpose. Our scale is currently broken.

 

TRAILER PARK CHILDHOOD

I’m a white, college educated, able-bodied person, with a whole lot more earning potential than I’m currently utilizing, but/and I grew up working-class/working-poor. I spent my early childhood in trailer parks and cheap apartments. Though we were far from the worst off, especially on a global scale, I’m familiar with the experience of not-enough. My mom was single with three kids. She never had fewer than 2 jobs. My brothers and I wore hand-me-downs and garage sale clothes. We always had food on the table because we were on food stamps. We picked cans on the weekends to get a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.  

My first memory of class-based shame was in Kindergarten: I was so angry that my older brother got to carry a backpack like all the other kids, but I had to carry my school supplies in the blue nylon duffel bag that came in the $5 two-pack from Wal-Mart. We simply couldn’t afford a second backpack. As I got older, I desperately wanted to take dance classes, but we couldn’t afford it. I went to a magnet middle school, so my friends lived all over town, many in ritzy neighborhoods. I was startled to learn I had friends who had a maid; my mom was more likely to be the maid.

Our financial situation improved when my mom married my step-dad, but still money was tight. My parents worked nights in addition to their day jobs so we could have braces and eye glasses. They could afford for me to go on the class trip, or to be a cheerleader, but not both. I went to college on a TOPS scholarship, and waited tables to pay my bills. When TOPS ran out, I put my tuition on a credit card. I’m the first person in my extended family to get a college degree.

A NICKEL TO MY NAME

I have identified as “broke” for most of my life. My experience of scarcity in childhood didn’t just go away as I became an adult. I lived on the edge of major financial trouble from age 18-28. I have paid thousands of dollars in overdraft fees on my checking account. I carried ten thousand dollars of credit card debt for about five years. I borrowed money to cover my rent half a dozen times over ten years. I laughed ruefully once when I got a receipt from an ATM that stated my bank balance as 5 cents. I literally had a nickel to my name. I posted it on my fridge for years as a reminder that it could always be, had already been worse.

There were sleepless nights pinned down by the weight of my debts, countless fits of tears about overdraft fees, hours of stress-ridden shifts at work, smiling just a little broader in the hopes of a good tip, the thrum of low-grade anxiety ever present in the background. The emotional toll of living at the edge of scarcity is hard to ignore.

But despite all my money woes, I mostly lived comfortably. I often had to scrimp and save, but I never worried about going hungry.  I still managed to pinch pennies enough to travel a little most years, even internationally a few times. I did not have to care for children or elderly parents. I did not have ongoing medical expenses. My waitressing jobs always paid me well above the minimum wage.

And yet, I applied for a scholarship, subsidized rate, or payment plan for every yoga training I took in my first years of teaching. I ALWAYS paid at the bottom of the sliding scale or just above for every massage I got, every herbal medicine workshop I took, every conference I attended. I just never felt like I could afford to pay more. I identified as broke, even when I wasn’t.  I’m the epitome of the $6 student.  

Over the years of teaching, I have considered abandoning the sliding scale model, instead teaching $15 classes like every other studio, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it. I feel deeply that this is an important thing to offer. You all, my students, are SO INCREDIBLE. You constantly amaze me. Would you stop coming if class cost more? I believe that the gesture of sliding scale is important, even if none of you ever utilized it. So here we are, seven years in, and we’re all the $6 student.

“WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THIS MONSTROUS MACHINE THAT CHEWS UP BEAUTY AND SPITS OUT MONEY?” --Charles Eisenstein

It’s a basic tenet of capitalism that the market must always grow. Constant growth is fundamental to a successful capitalist system. More money, more product, more profit. Bigger is better. More is more. The inverse, then, is that THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH. This is evidenced in our gluttonous consumer culture, and few of us are immune. I live pretty simply for the most part, but I own two dozen pairs of shoes, and I just ordered another pair of sandals on Amazon this week.

It’s not hard to imagine how that might translate into a sense of never having enough as individuals. If more growth is always required, there can be no contentment. In many punk/artist communities that I’ve been part of, being broke is worn as a badge of honor. We laugh at and disparage those who have lots of money as shills, cogs in the capitalist machine. But if we buy into the idea that we’re always, will always be, broke, aren’t we just enacting the other side of the same coin?

Financial blogger Hadassah Damien says, “You don’t have to like, love, or even understand capitalism to get to survive it. I mean survive it like all the single moms and working families and folks at joyless gigs to pay student loans and hustling artists and everyone working a black market job and everyone in the service industry and freelancers and roommates and collective houses and coops and and and. ...You. Deserve. A. Future. And so, you can choose to put energy towards that future....That future needs you, wherever you are today.”

All of this intersects with white supremacy and misogyny. The racism and colonization that make up much of yoga’s journey to the West are worth noting here, though they’re beyond the scope of this essay. However, I think it’s worth exploring briefly who benefits from yoga being sold as an aspirational pursuit. The messages we get via mainstream yoga marketing (the yoga industrial complex?) are the same as in any other sphere: Yoga, divorced from its Hindu origins and wrapped up in some New Age platitudes, is an exercise routine for skinny rich white ladies. Who stands to gain from us, the consumer, buying into that? What do we lose when we operate under the belief that self-care in general is indulgent or selfish? Though we are all affected differently by living within oppressive systems (capitalism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, et al), we are all affected. Radical Black feminist Audre Lorde famously said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” 

SCARCITY AND FEAR

It bears repeating that there is a difference between living in actual scarcity and living in the fear of it. Here’s an example (via Ride Free). Sacrifice and hardship are not the same. If paying $15 instead of $5 for yoga class would mean that you can’t buy yourself a juice from Satsuma after class, that’s a sacrifice. It’s trading one non-essential purchase for another. If on the other hand, paying $15 for yoga class would mean that you can’t put gas in your car to get to work the next day, that is a hardship.

Many of us conflate the two and inadvertently treat our sacrifices as hardships. We live paralyzed by the fear of not having enough, because we know that in this system, there can never be enough. What’s more, capitalism encourages us to always try to get the most gain for the smallest output. It’s the essence of the system. Employers pay workers the minimum wage in order to maximize their own profits. “In a pure financial transaction we are all identical: we all want to get the best deal” (Eisenstein).

How does this shake down in a sliding scale economy?  We, as purchasers, get to decide the value of the product, and we simply aren’t experienced at assigning value. In most other cases, our choice is simply whether or not to make the purchase at the price determined by the seller: I decide my weekend workshop costs $250, and you decide whether or not the workshop is worth that price to you. With sliding scale the roles are reversed, and the choice is much more complex: we have to decide how much the good or service is worth to us.

We are woefully unprepared to make this decision. It can be difficult to justify paying more than the lowest amount simply because we have the option to pay less, and paying less now guarantees more for later. All of us living under capitalism have the experience of either actual scarcity, perceived scarcity, or fear of future scarcity. I continue to oscillate through all of them. When we approach the sliding scale system with a capitalist mindset, it’s no wonder we’re all the $6 student. We’ve had a lifetime of practice at it.  

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

My own financial situation has shifted a lot in the past five years, as has my perspective. I am finally out of debt, but I actually make less money now than I did in many years prior, namely because I quit the restaurant industry entirely to focus on teaching yoga and making art. By some standards I live very simply: I don’t own a car, or have a smartphone, and very rarely buy new clothes, instead preferring my bike, my flip phone, and thrift store shopping. But by many other standards I am incredibly wealthy, and I live more abundantly than I ever have.

I have lots of caveats around abundance, which is often privilege masquerading as “shifting your mindset,” but my life is different now than it ever has been. Some of that certainly comes from the reality of my financial situation shifting, but much of it comes from a shift in my understanding of my own position in a system in which there can never be enough. I can’t keep pretending that I don’t have what I need right now because I’m afraid I won’t have it in the future.

So I’ve started paying at the higher end of the sliding scale. This is not comfortable for me to do. It pushes alllllll of my buttons, but I’m giving it a try anyway. I went to a donation-based meditation retreat in May, and I asked myself how much I could comfortably pay, and then I paid $50 more than that. I’m unlearning my own habits, and trying to get my mind out from under a system that wants to keep us all scared and small and broke(n), both financially and otherwise. Sociologist Brene Brown says, “For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It's enough. I'm enough.”

I don’t mean any of this as a finger-wagging admonishment to give me a raise, or as an indictment of anyone's personal spending habits. Some among us are actually struggling financially, and if that’s you, please keep being the $5 student, or the student who pays in fresh herbs from the garden, or the student who says “I’m broke right now. Can I pay you next week?”. I’m thrilled and honored to have you there regardless of your ability to pay. But for the rest of us, I believe it’s worth looking at the intersection of our past experiences, our present privilege, and the way we’ve been inculcated into scarcity simply by being alive in capitalism.

How much money would you need to make for it to be ENOUGH? How would your life be different if you believed you had enough? How would your spending habits change? Would you be able to sleep at night instead of lying awake worrying about money? Could you stop obsessively monitoring your expenses or avoiding looking at your bank account? Would you give to charities more, or support other organizations who do work you believe in? Would you be a $15 student instead of a $6 student? Who would you become?

Leave a comment to share your ideas about these issues. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Much love,

Bear

P.S. Want more resources? Hadassah Damien's blog Ride Free: Fearless Money Management has a wealth of information. Charles Eisenstein's book Sacred Economics is a worthy read on creating new systems for exchange, and you can read it for free over here. Both of these are quoted in the post.

P.P.S. If you like what I write, sign up for weekly blog posts direct to your inbox by clicking here or filling in the form below! Or connect with me on FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM.

You might also like to read about yoga and...EMPATHY,  BEING AN ADULT, GETTING SHIT DONE, and SOCIAL JUSTICE. 

Fighting the Yogi Robots {or Why I Teach Body Positive Yoga}

Valerie Sagun of Big Gal Yoga

Hello dear ones,

I think by now you know that I teach consent based, body positive, sliding scale yoga. Or at least, I try to. These are the values that I try to uphold in my practice and in my teaching. I’m writing over the next couple weeks about why and how I enact these values. Last week’s post about consent in yoga culture is over here. Stay tuned for thoughts on MONEY and why I teach sliding scale classes.

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The yoga world (and the world in general) tells us that only one kind of body is okay. Look at any mainstream yoga publication and you’ll see scores of skinny bendy white ladies. Body and beauty norms are harmful to everyone! If you don’t measure up to these impossible standards (and who among us ever will?), media relentlessly shows us, tells us, and sells us an unending barrage of ways to make ourselves fit, if only we lose weight or change our diet or whatever, often under the auspices of “detoxing” or “getting healthy.”

But what if we reject those norms?  As a skinny bendy white lady-ish person myself, I see it as my work to utilize my intersecting privilege to make more space, not less, for those who tend to be pushed out of the mainstream yoga world. Tiina Veer (founder of Yoga for Round Bodies) says, "One of the best ways teachers can serve their round students is to accept and claim ownership of their own privilege and internalized prejudice."  Every day I see more and more inspiring people in the yoga world pushing back against the yogi robots that want to sell us gazillion dollar yoga pants alongside impossible beauty standards.  (FTR, I'm not actually knocking people who happen to wear $100 pants. You do you.)
 

Right now I’m loving Jessamyn Stanley, Valerie Sagun, Amber Karnes and Dianne Bondy. These folks have made a name for themselves through their online presence. Simply showing up in the yoga world in a bigger body, or as a person of color, or as a person who is older (or, or, or...) is an act of resistance against the systemic misogyny and white supremacy that tells us that only one kind of body is okay. 

Dianne Bondy and Amber Karnes of the Yoga for All Training.

I asked in my classes this week “What is body positivity?” and as usual, you all have had utterly brilliant answers.

Removing shame from the yoga practice

Rejecting cultural norms about what a beautiful body is

Practicing yoga for benefits besides a “yoga booty”

Celebrating every body

Yes! Yes! Yes! I feel drawn to teaching in a body positive way because I’m always trying to create a space where students feel like they belong! When you come to my class, I want you to feel whole, complete, and accepted just as you are. I’m cultivating a space where I hope you feel connected to your own fundamental okay-ness.

I believe that I don’t know what is best for you more than you do. I believe that you are the arbiter of your own life, and by extension, of your own body. I believe that we are made powerful by having autonomy and self-determination over our own bodies. I believe that the body is a temple, and that by celebrating it and protecting it from harm, we create sacred space inside ourselves. And that is pretty amazing! 

So how do I go about teaching yoga in a body positive way? The most direct way is that I try to never ever body shame in the words I’m speaking in class. That means I never make comments about bodies beyond what is necessary to teach a given pose or give a personal adjustment. This is a growing edge for me, a place where I am always trying to cultivate more and more sensitivity.

For instance, when cuing the drawing backwards motion of the head to stack it over the spine, I used to say “It’s like you’re trying to give yourself a double chin.” Maybe not a big deal to some, but why even bring up a feature that many people have felt self-conscious about? I am creative enough in my languaging that I can almost certainly come up with something to say that gets my point across without potentially shaming someone. So now I say, “It’s like you’re a turtle tucking your head back into your shell.” Clear enough, and free from potential shame (unless you're a turtle?).

I also try to practice body positivity by teaching to look for internal sensations rather than the external form of a pose, by offering modifications and alternative poses, and by incorporating the use of props.For example, if I’m teaching Utthita Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), I might say something like:
 

“Place your front hand on your thigh, or your shin, or your block or the floor. Only bring the hand as far down as you need to to be able to feel a stretch in the inner thigh and hamstrings of the front leg.” I’m not particularly interested in you getting your hand to the floor (external form); I’m more excited about you having an experience of stretching your leg (internal sensation)!

So go ahead and use a block if that's what helps you to find the stretch in your leg. A prop is not a crutch or a cheat. Props are pose enhancers! Utilize them as such. The classical poses all look the same from the outside but our bodies are not all the same.

I encourage you this week to try to modify your mindset and your practice so that your poses are in greater service of your body, rather than the other way around. How has your yoga practice helped to shift your relationship to your body? In what ways are you making your practice or your teaching more body positive? 

I’d love to hear from you! And if you like what I write, sign up for weekly blog posts direct to your inbox by clicking here or filling in the form below!

NOTE: Many of my philosophical ideals around body positivity have come from the writing of Tara Brach, particularly her book Radical Acceptance, which I highly recommend. Much of my technical knowledge about how to make yoga more accessible has come from my own teachers, particularly Heide Grace, and from the work of Amber Karnes and Dianne Bondy. For more info I recommend the Yoga and Body Image Coalition. Or you could just watch this badass grandma run sprints. 

Much love, 
Bear

For Orlando

Hello dear ones,

I have been shattered this week over the news of the massacre at Latin night at a gay bar in Orlando. I have felt immense sadness over the loss of more queer people and more people of color to violence spurred by hatred and fear. I have felt rage over the use of this event as a justification for Islamophobia, policing and prisons. I have felt grief over the murder of Black transwoman Devin Diamond in New Orleans East.

It matters that Muslim Americans will be subject to more profiling and prejudice because of this event. It matters that the people who died last Sunday were mostly Latinx, largely Puerto Rican. It matters that queer people of color are subject to systematic destruction, and it matters that the history of this destruction is so easily erased and minimized. 

I have cried. I have raged. But I have also felt the immense support of community. I have felt capacity to offer support in the ways I know how. I have had many tender moments with friends and loved ones that have filled me with love and hope and belief that “another world is not only possible, she is on her way.” As I sat on Cabrini Bridge yesterday, I remembered the second half of Arundhati Roy’s quote: On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

The community altar created at the vigil on Sunday night. Come visit!

I came out as queer in 2003. I was 19 years old. My mother was not surprised, but she was not supportive. “You know what the Bible says about this, so you know what I think about it,” was her statement. I have always dated both men and women (and people who identify as neither.) Because of this I have had to come out again and again, reminding my mother and others that no, it wasn’t a phase, and that yes, I am still queer.

When I changed my name in 2012 (nearly ten years after coming out as queer) to better reflect my gender identity (critter, for the record), I talked with my mom about my gender, and how I have never been “a regular woman.”  I wanted her to understand me, but I also understood her. I didn’t insist that she call me by my new name, and so for years, she hasn’t.

Every Sunday evening I call my mom. She is a deeply religious woman, so when we spoke this Sunday, I didn’t know how she would respond, if she would understand the relevance of what happened in Orlando for me and my community. So many other Christians have reacted with indifference or hate. When I brought up how sad I was feeling, she affirmed how terrible the attack was. Then she said, “God’s call to us is simple: to love one another. God never said, ‘Love your neighbor if...’ He just said, ‘Love your neighbor.’”  

On Tuesday my mom left me a voicemail in which she spoke the sweetest words. “Hi Bear. It’s your Mom.” I could hear the hint of hesitancy in her voice as she said my “new” name, my chosen name. My mom called me by my name. I felt seen and understood. I cried.

I’m not trying to make parallels where they don’t exist, and I don’t know if what happened in Orlando is what instigated this shift for my mom. But I would like to believe that some small good can come from such unspeakable atrocity. I hope that this horrific event is encouraging difficult conversations. I hope that there are parents who are understanding their kids a little better, and people who are taking seriously the risks inherent in being out and proud even now.

I believe that the world will come around to our perspective eventually, or it will destroy itself trying. I believe this because we are on the moral high ground. There is no ethical justification for discrimination, for violence, for hate, against queer people, people of color, Muslims, or any of the other groups that have historically been and continue to be targeted.

The stakes are so high that it can be challenging to cultivate patience, but I hope that we are in it for the long haul. I hope that we are finding the courage to stand against this tangled web of intersecting oppressions and say, “No, not in my name.” I hope that we are meeting ourselves and each other with love within these difficult conversations at this bleak time. I have seen the way that continuing to meet each other with compassion can evolve our understanding, one small step at a time.  We can be transformed.

Take good care of yourselves and each other, this week and always.

I see you and I love you.

Bear

Consent Politics in Yoga Practice {Why I Ask Permission To Touch}

Content Warning: This week’s post is about consent and contains frank discussion about sexual assault.

I teach consent-based, body positive, sliding scale yoga. Or at least, I try to. These are the values that I try to uphold in my practice and in my teaching. I’m writing over the next couple weeks about why and how I enact these values.  Stay tuned for thoughts on body positivity and sliding scale classes.

I had planned to talk about consent this week before I knew the Stanford rape case would be all over the headlines, and though my heart is broken for the survivor in that case and all survivors everywhere, I’ve felt encouraged by all of the impassioned conversation about consent, sexual violence, and rape culture happening both on social media and in real life.

As a yoga teacher, the simplest way I enact consent is by always asking for permission to touch my students before I make adjustments. I do this by having everyone rest in Child’s Pose (or some similar posture), and then say something along the lines of, “As we practice today I’ll give a lot of verbal instructions, but I’ll also do some hand-on adjustments. If you’d rather not be physically adjusted, turn your palms to face up now.”

Other ways I practice consent are asking if a student would like to demonstrate a pose rather than volunteering people, allowing students to opt out of partner work, and having students ask each other for consent when we do partner poses.

Ninety percent of the time people consent to be adjusted, and to do partner work, but every now and then, people request not to be touched by me or others. Those few times confirm for me how important it is to ask. Even if no one ever said “No thanks” to physical touch, I would still ask. And here’s why.

1. I have been injured by a physical adjustment from a yoga teacher. It was a non-consensual adjustment given by a teacher I didn’t really know. I’d asked a question after class about Revolved Side Angle,  a pose I have always struggled with. She had me come into the pose, and she wrenched my back around to try to get me deeper into the pose. My shoulders did not comply, and I was in pain for weeks. I never mentioned this to her.

2. I have injured a student by giving a non-consensual physical adjustment about five years ago. I gave a commonplace adjustment to a student in bridge pose. I didn’t know she had issues with her lower back and her knees, and though it wasn’t serious, my adjustment injured her. I was horrified and remorseful when I got the email saying so.

3. I was sexually assaulted in 2006 by an acquaintance I was on a date with. He invited me for dinner at his house. I got drunk on red wine. When it happened, I did not react how I imagined I would. I said no, but I did not scream. I did not run. Instead I lay paralyzed and disbelieving. I never reported the incident. 
 

I am not the only one with this kind of trauma. One in three women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Many of my friends and loved ones have suffered sexual abuse or assault. (It's worth noting that people of a variety of genders, not just women, and particularly trans folks, are at risk of assault.) Add to that all the people who have been injured by yoga adjustments (see the work of Matthew Remski for more on this issue), not to mention all those who have been abused by their yoga teacher/guru. That in itself is reason enough for me to always ask for permission before I touch a student.

But there are deeper reasons that I practice consent. We live in a world that affirms over and over again that men are entitled to women’s bodies and that women’s bodies are constantly available for consumption--to be looked at and to be touched, sexually or otherwise, consenting or not. This is rape culture.*

I long for a world in which women are unafraid. I long for a world in which asking for consent is a given. Fighting back against rape culture is one vital way to take down rape culture. Building new ways of being within the world as it is now is another way. This is why I practice consent.

Here are some ways you can practice consent in your daily life.

• Ask permission before you hug friends and acquaintances rather than assume they want to be hugged.

• Ask your own body if it would like to do the yoga pose rather than force yourself into it.

• Teach children that no one is allowed to touch them without their consent, and that they are not allowed to touch others without consent either.

Want more resources or to share your story?  I’d love to hear from you. And if you like what I write, sign up for weekly blog posts direct to your inbox by clicking here or filling in the form below!

Much love,

Bear