Life is not an adhesion contract.

I used a fancy legal word but you know adhesion contracts because you’ve signed them: think of your Facebook terms of service, and how about that liability waiver at your local yoga studio? Yeah, I just took it all the way back to Contracts II, my 2L days in law school. Stay with me, yogis. Those adhesion contracts are ones where you have little to no opportunity to negotiate the terms–you just sign it or leave it.

The thing is, life is not an adhesion contract. Life is not take it or leave it. I’m thinking about this as I sift through the Kino-Cody-Dana-David-Alo-Goliath stuff going on, and no, this is not a comment not the legal paper chase over there, but a totally separate train of though (though I might, just might, turn to Alo-gate for fun with my legal brain in another post).

If yoga is about changing your perspective, about burning the stale world we know to the ground, then let’s stop taking what’s shoved in our faces as take it or leave it.

I know the world I thought was it: it was a world of getting good grades, starving my recalcitrant ass into balletic nonexistence, getting the right job as a lawyer, working 24/7 not sleeping, celebrity mag binging, anxiety-wave riding, eating take-out at my desk-ing and doing everything right in the state of New York which, according to the family I grew up in, is where the world begins and ends (ok, the tri-state area would suffice, too). An eminently “reasonable” life of jamming my albeit flexible body into the Keebler Elves’ factory to cookie-cutter mass produce it into the shape of some Girl Scout thin minty artificial, highly processed and ubiquitously reproduced confection.

Turns out I am no fig newton.

I personally don’t want the middle ground. I don’t want reason or reasonable. Reasonable arrives and eventually looks and feels like Walmart, Captain Crunch, continuous streams of ads for things that don’t offer us an honest place of really looking at ourselves. I say bring on the fire, let’s burn this stale, safe, known, fearful place to the ground.

~David Garrigues “Should Fiery, Pittas Practice Ashtanga Yoga?”

Hmm, How about we cut it?

I wanted a yoga shirt that didn’t stink to high heaven because of some expensive techie fabric that morphs into a bacteria stink geyser if you happen to wash or dry it incorrectly. I wanted a yoga shirt that didn’t constrict me like a Victorian corset or cost more than a freakin five class pass at a yoga studio. So–

I took a scissor and negotiated my own terms.

I cut myself the shirts of my dreams– v-neck, deep arm holed, jagged, rough, tie-able, soft. Cheap. Functional. And, day after day of sweaty practice– stink free.

To assume that the world is quilted in fancy techie-fabric $70 yoga shirts from brands is, to be blunt, bunk. To assume that when you can’t find the shirt you want the game is over is, frankly, bunked-up. Guess what else is not take it or nothing –$120 yoga pants and apps with yoga class videos. Really.

I’m so fired up I might be ready to make my own damn yoga pants.

Let me return to the point. The notion of “Yoga essentials” is an oxymoron. Burn this stale, safe, reasonable $120-pants clad world to the ground. Look at the fabric of the world around you, dye it, tie it and please, pick up your scissors and

Cut it.

 

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Since I don’t have time or skill to cut everything I want into reality, here are a few things I do like:

I buy my favorite (and I mean favorite) capris from Outdoor Voices, a women-led company to boot. They aren’t the most inexpensive ($65) but man they feel great, look great, work and wash well. Also, the brand’s customer service is top notch– they rushed me a pair in time for a trip after my original order got bungled.

As for fancy yoga class video apps, how about you learn yoga that doesn’t make you so dependent on others? Ashtanga teaches you how to practice on your own, with a little help. Ok, even if you don’t want ashtanga, you can find videos made by people just putting them out there on their own terms. I just purchased “Pilates for Arm Balances” from Jen Rene’s website.

My friend and girl crush Ashley Battersby handcrafts yoga pants and lots of cool stuff over at A-bomb Apparel— a one-woman operation (she’s also a professional skier and X-games medalist so….kind of like me in my dreams). My Mysore roommates Dustin and Ale also make lots of cool stuff over at Ananda 108.

 

“Don’t throw any of yourself away. Don’t worry about a grand scheme or unified vision for your work. Don’t worry about unity–what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day you’ll look back and it will all make sense.” 

~Austin Kleon, Steal Like An Artist

 

A few years ago I found myself in Philly with some downtime after Mysore with David Garrigues — a perfect time to get my eyebrows done. I got lucky: a master make-up and eyebrow artist sat right around the corner from my hotel and she’d gotten a rare cancellation. I took the spot.

Ursula was lovely. Did she try to sell me stuff? No. Did she try to use the opportunity to change me? No. Ursula looked at me and made me look at myself, my face in her mirror. Then she set me straight:

“Jean Marie, you are missing 75% (maybe it was 45%, but you get the point) of your eyebrow hair. You need to stop waxing your eyebrows.”

She explained that the waxing had removed my natural arch and replaced it with a horizontal line– what she called “Sesame Street eyebrows” after those beloved characters with black bars above their fuzzy eyes. My efforts to get perfect eyebrows had obliterated their natural perfection.

Ursula counseled me to leave my eyebrows alone. I resisted but no, she said, do nothing! She relented a bit, suggesting I try threading if I absolutely couldn’t stand leaving the eyebrows be. In her hands, she proceeded to pencil in what I’d spent years removing from my own face. She colored in what I had erased.

This experience changed how I perceive my eyebrows and more. It’s easy to get caught up wanting so much to be like everyone else, to appear like the dominant trend— whether it’s wishing my butt would disappear, or for a better handstand or a more acceptable voice— but then you risk losing your natural arch, your natural beauty.

People often write me that they envy my backbend, but:

Maybe you already have the flexibility you desire but don’t see it.
Maybe you are overlooking the beauty in the strength you have more dominantly.

Maybe you already have what you think eludes you— it just doesn’t look the same on you as it does on others.

Austin Kleon wrote “don’t throw any of yourself away.” (Please buy his book, “steal like an artist”) and sign up for his weekly email newsletter because it’s a goldmine.) Don’t throw away your backbend, your butt or that arch in your eyebrow. And don’t despair: it’s not too late to color back in what you have erased.

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PS: I’ve barley touched my eyebrows since the day I met Ursula but now people ask me “who does them?” And, if you absolutely dowant to throw something away, make it that guy who tells you that “you could lose a little weight In your hips”

PPS: This post originally appeared on my Insta, but I cleaned it up and put it on the blog because I wanted to make it more mine. “Don’t throw any of yourself away”  This is a constant battle for me: Insta post or blog it? Does anyone read blogs? Well, now it appears on both. Thank you for reading. Cheers!

“We’re gonna have to do a pat down; would you like a private screening room?”  I turn to see the surly TSA agent in Salt Lake City pointing to an image of my body from the scanning machine and —

My crotch is glowing bright red.

With a resigned sigh, I say, “Nah, just do it here and get it over with.” Public witnesses seem like a good idea and really I can’t afford to miss my flight to the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence (with a little time to grab an Americano).

As they say: “No Coffee, No Prana.”

Thanks to my husband planning the best birthday surprise ever and, um, the denim zipper on my fly, I received an airport pat down on my way to sunny San Diego for the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence with nothing ahead but almost four days of connecting with friends, the sun, beach, and morning Mysore practice with the heroes of the ashtanga world as I put my leg behind my head like a gazillion times, return to my Catholic beginnings with hushed prayers to Mother Mary that I land Karandavasana and try, like the Little Engine Who Could, to make some headway on my final posture.

In a word: It’s heaven (the Confluence, not the airport pat down, ok?)

After getting settled, I immediately set off for the hotel to register and crossing the threshold I see–

“Oh My God it’s Tim Feldmann!”

Don’t worry: It was an internal scream (though I furtively texted the same words to a friend). Turns out, “internally screaming, star struck tween fan crazy yoga dorky” essentially captions me in this epic weekend with these teachers.

Let me set the scene. Say you study in a mysore room with a teacher who lights you up. Sometimes you go to workshops or practice with a special teacher of the likes of say, Richard Freeman. Perhaps an intensive with Tim Feldmann, or a month with Dena Kingsberg in Australia, you lucky dog you. Well, this mysore room is all of that. At once.

Mysore, Day 1: Friday morning I walk into that Mysore room times 108, an ashtanga-fied

everything bagel, an ice cream sundae with rainbow sprinkles and big final backbend cherry on top, all the poses you dreamed of under the bodhi Christmas tree: Richard Freeman. Tim Feldmann, Dena Kingsburg (not till Day 2), David Swenson, Manju Jois –ALL TOGETHER– not to mention the assistants (ahem, assistant is the understatement the of the year here): Mary Taylor, Kiran Kennedy, Diana Christinson, Jack Wiseman, Holly Gastil and Jessica Walden.

I walk into that room with some effort, as my body is human pinball machine of nerves smacking around cells, my brain a case study in imposter syndrome (who does she think she is, doing third series, I mean really). I have the texts to friends early that morning to prove my level of jolty excitement…. ok, crazy. I covered an entire page of my morning journal with one word: “Nervous.” On my mat there is nothing to do but practice myself home. I call on David Swenson-style pratyahara to tune out the even crazier-than-me rug, the swell of people, the Richard Freeman eyebrows arching near my mat. That morning, angels help me land the world’s most hanging-by-a-thread karandavasana. As Richard will say later: “Asana is pranayama for restless people.”

I survive.

Survival. Yes, that’s how Dena Kingsburg aptly put the deal on the first day in a Mysore room like this, i.e., on steroids, or I should say, Mysore room on maca matcha ashwaganda superfood powers. By the time I hit my final posture I am blinded by the light. Literally. The sun has come up and through the window it bathes me in a spotlight, adding to the challenge as I try to balance upside down.

Then I hear some happy talking and–

I look up to see Kiran Kennedy and Mary Taylor standing at the top of my mat, commiserating about this very Kukku posture, offering their experience and thoughts on how I could work it forward. I’m in awe –It’s like getting music lessons from Prince. How f*cking cool is this? And yet, this whole experience with these wonderful people who don’t stay on the pedestals we stick under them because they can’t help but get right down in the dirt with you, they relate to you, because they have been there– they are you. Richard said as much at one panel (I’m paraphrasing messy notes):

“Our practice is to get off pedestals.”

Maybe I’m star struck by Tim Feldmann and this crew but I’m also getting the starlight thrown right back and pulled from me by all of them. So forget the silly schoolgirl nerves I walked in with, the insecurities, the excitement all since smoothed out by this moving, breathing practice. Indeed, forget that I still cannot lift my damn head up and execute this damn pose, because as I see these two women before me –while Richard Freeman, David Swenson and Manju pass between mats, and the memory of Tim Feldman swooping in to lift me lingers — all I can think, as I sit there sweaty, and, let’s face it, failing to launch, is:

This was so worth that airport pat down…

(though the only thing glowing now is my internally screaming star struck yoga dorky heart).

 

Stay tuned for Day 2!