Author: Jean Marie

If I see another photo of you in a handstand, I’m going to barf

Published by Jean Marie

It took less than three minutes of Facebook to annoy the namaste out of me after having indulged in a week-long Facebook-free skiing spree in Colorado. Almost as soon as I revived my phone upon landing, it dawned on me:

If I have to see another photo of some hot blond balancing on her elbows in some forearm stand/scorpion variation, I’m going to puke. If I see another photo of you, insane yoga girl, in a bikini-ed-up handstand — with cowboy boots on your sky-reaching feet, no less — I’m going to hurl. And dudes, you’re not getting off here, either. I mean, there you all are, always shirtless, always tattooed, always looking like your very essence forms from a precise mix of ink and abs, which of course always takes the shape of a handstand. Yeah, oh, and there you are AGAIN hot blond on your elbows again for crissakes, and now I’m going to spew, I’m going to un-like you, I’m going to hide you from my newsfeed, I’m going to barf displeasure, a million meaningless hashtags hurling from my mouth out into infinity whenever I think of you and your perfect (or not so much, sometimes, sorry) form in some pose that I can’t do, or can’t do like you, or can’t do looking like you, even where just the hair is concerned, or the tattoos, or even if I could (where the asana or the hair is concerned– I’ll take either), I couldn’t get a photograph of the event because the camera and storage settings on my battered iphone are still a mystery to me, and I don’t have a photographer trailing my every move as I practice, or a faithful yoga assistant ready for a spontaneous inversion photo as we pause during our lovely walk down the street in a disgustingly beautiful and exotic location, like the market in Bali, perhaps…no wait, how about here, in the snow…and here, on this big city street, and of course why not here, on the highway, in the midst of standstill gridlock? Have I mentioned that this onslaught of barftastic yoga photos took only a minute of Facebook perusal to overload me?

I know. The problem wasn’t the hot blond on her elbows (I hid her anyway). And no, the problem wasn’t the famous teacher handstanding in her cowboy boots, either (i decided to give her a pass), or even the shirtless tattooed dude. No, the problem was me. Sigh. Too much facebook, too much online time, too, too, too much– a break is not enough, clearly, I need a whole new regimen. And then, the obvious problem you’re thinking of right now. Was I a little jealous? Sure. You got me. I wish I had that sidekick photographing all my yoga heights, and I wish all my yoga heights looked as photogenic as yours, handstand-hashtag-ista. But it’s more than that.

I imagine some of my online yoga teacher friends might read this and wonder, angrily, perhaps, is she talking about me? The answer is No. The answer is Yes. No. Maybe. No. Really, No.

Actually, I’m talking about me. Because, as you may be the first to point out, I post yoga photos too, and videos, notwithstanding my lack of yoga fame, a personal photographer or assistant, and in spite of my plentiful smartphone incompetence. And I can imagine you all groaning with each glance at my feed, thinking…Ugh! there she is, in a backbend AGAIN. I mean we get it, JM, you can bend in half, so just spare me, OKAY?

The unfortunate fortunate side effect of delving into yoga is that the oft-repeated maxims “All is one” and “I am that” turn out to be proven time and time again, to be true. Because as I recoil repulsed at the photos of you, I see it is only because you are reflecting pieces — and sometimes whole chunks– of me. And so, to fix my burning eyes, it turns out I’m going to have to start with me.

When is it appropriate to post yoga photos and videos? Or what makes them meaningful? #inversionsmakeyouhot girl, you have inspired me to look at what actually makes this stuff matter for me.

Struggle. I am interested in your struggle. Because when I see photo after photo of you in some advanced variation punctuated only by vapid hastags I feel bereft.

Frankly, I get bored.

The struggle, where is the struggle? Where is the work, the story, the inner fire that culminated in this beautiful instagram?

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty” -Maya Angelou

I remember when a dear mentor yogini (who I had seen in an artful handstand scorpion photo, pre-facebook) stopped class in the midst of (attempted) forearm stand practice. It seemed that few in class were biting. She told us a story about how she used to practice to an audio recording of Sharon Gannon, and whenever the class reached forearm stand, she would fast forward through it.

What? This otherworldly perfect teacher once had fear? Struggle? Obstacles to overcome? It endeared me to her, it made me feel okay about practicing in her classes even though forearm stand (and all upside down poses) remained at that time feared impossibilities. Indeed, I got into my first yoga teacher training by luck, serendipity, having never taken class with it’s leader, the divine Kelly Morris, and when I read her interview in New York Magazine, http://nymag.com/nymetro/health/fitness/features/5394/index3.html, I knew I had made the right decision, because of this, the very end, where this absolutely exquisite creature baldy admits:

“But I have so many more shortcomings than most of my students! You might not see it in class: I’m flying in there. But when it’s over, I’m back to the same struggle. Yes. The same struggle.”

The lesson for me is to avoid posting so many naked end-result photos, or perhaps to only post them with some message about the work it took me to get there. Because I could post my forearm stand (my recent triumph) but wouldn’t it be more interesting to know, and to see, that I started practicing this pose ten long months ago, and it is only after getting over my fear (no small potatoes), followed by months of falling every time I attempted it, then falling every other time, then balancing for the world’s quickest who-am–I-kidding-five-breaths, then falling again, that I finally think I have this pose in my body and mind.

This morning I held forearm stand with ease. No struggle. Later, scrolling through my phone, drinking my acupuncturist’s kidney tonic, I saw my once-hidden blond yoga chick on her elbows –AGAIN– and managed to smile. I saw, with peaceful clarity, that I was smiling back at ME. And despite her constant slew of beachside handstands (and yes, some of those gymnastics are in cowboy boots), I’ve discovered that I need a little sunny famous Kino in my life, because this magnificent –and adorable– yogi readily shares the days and years of practice, dedication, and fear-toppling that her photo-ready feats required. http://kinoyoga.tumblr.com/post/78739179298/ashtanga-yoga-fourth-series-is-one-of-the-most

Sometimes she even posts videos where she falls out of the poses.

I can’t gag at that.

Nope, I’m going to swallow that video and keep it down, hashtags and all, keep it where it can stream and warm and smile me from the inside out.

 

 

 

“This is my kapo, B*tchez” (Oh, and all my fears of not being good enough, too)

Published by Jean Marie

My DC Mysore teacher once offered me a sweet compliment:

“You’re so humble about your practice.”

“Well,” I laughed, “you just wait till I can stick a forearm stand in the middle of the room.”

Wait? Um, no waiting necessary. I was not and am not humble about my practice. Nope, not at all. Maybe I thought I was, because yes, regardless of what my primary series looks like I still believe the work will never end; I believe there is so much room to grow in everything– in the transitions, in the maintenance of the breath, bandhas, and dristi. As David Robson recently underscored, staying with the vinyasa (breath and movement) in primary is almost an impossible ideal. So yes, perhaps at times I can sound humble.

But I’m not. I realized this the other day when I headed to the Mysore room and found myself mat to mat with someone I knew from the ubiquitous facebook yoga world but who had never actually seen me practice. And he was someone, for whom, I admit, I wanted to show I had the goods. I was a bit scared. Would he see me modifying navasana or mucking my way through a jumback and call the ashtanga police out on me? And heaven forbid I fall out of utthita hasta padangusthasana today, of all days!

Stop this line of thinking at once! I scolded myself. Do your practice. And of course, all of the above happened. My jumpbacks were tougher than usual, I bobbled and faltered here and there, and then I came to the backbend section of my practice, where I stole a glance and noticed this guy was almost done.

Suddenly, there it was. That voice inside me, that so-not-humble-voice– the one that is so, so incredibly embarrasing to own up to– and it said, “oh please, let him at least stick around till you do kapotasana.”

Oh yes, kapotasana, the backbend of all backbends, “the wicked queen of all heart-openers”, the one that stops so many in their tracks, exiles countless yogis to the wall with a parade of blocks between their feet and straps ensnaring their shoulders, Inspires even some of the most diehard ashtangis to just up and quit ashtanga, and causes countless others to lay on the floor like crumpled toddlers silently (or not so much) screaming “No” as their teachers urge them “Again!”

I want him to see it, because I can rock kapotasana. I love kapotasana. I was born to do kapotasana. Sure, I’ve had to learn how to use my legs and work my upper back in this and other backbends, and I’m lucky to have a teacher who has pushed me to evolve the pose further (a.k.a., he’s made the pose harder for me) but I could do kapo before I even knew it was kapo. Kapotasana is the pose I am apt to hold more than five breaths, the pose I (and this is again embarrassing to admit) sometimes hope someone in the room is watching, just so my silent, not so humble voice can say:

“This is my kapo, B*tchez.”

It doesn’t hurt that I’ve gotten one deep, juicy taste after taste of just how much others– including some sick-ass yogis– hunger for kapo. Some advanced series ashtangis I know can do sh*t that looks like a cross between the cirque de soleil and x-games feats — and for sure, they can do kapo — well even they cannot do kapo the way I can do it.

Ashtanga strikes me as beautifully challenging for everyone. It’s the practice that has everyone’s number. Hamstrings, hips, strength, inversions, backbends, it’s all in there. So for all the stuff ashtanga throws at me and makes me work through — my tighter right hip, my challenged core, my lacking strength, and my lifetime supply of fear, fear and more fear — for all the stuff that I can do but can’t do in a way that I would want to video and post for the world to see, well, for all of that, ashtanga, at least I have this. I can really do this.

And so, there I am, hoping that he will be there to see.

He is.

And nothing.

A wonderful teacher once referred to ashtanga’s second series practitioners as the “crazies” because this series stirs up such intense emotions. I am not immune. As my would-be audience exits, the glaring realization slowly takes shape– that no matter how many times I try to teach myself otherwise, I still feel lacking. I still want something to show that hey, I really belong here. That’s why I do this posture, and I really hold it, I stay there for a genuine five breaths and beyond—why, aw hell, I milk it.

Because I remember not being enough. I remember suffering daily, relentless public humiliation at the hands of a boy in the seventh-grade. I remember when my dearest ballet teacher pointed her finger at my hips in the middle of class and shouted in her thick Russian accent that she wanted to “cut” my butt off with “scissor.” I remember all the people I allowed to use me when they wouldn’t love me. I remember beating myself up with obsessive-compulsive behavior, thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I check [fill-in-the-blank] again and again and again and again and again, maybe I won’t ruin everything. I remember all the people who, no matter how hard I tried, would not like me. I remember exploiting my own brainpower, my own talents, just to prove something, just to prove, well, anything.

Perhaps I milk kapotasana not because I am full of myself, but to fill me where I believe I am empty. Kapotasana, “easy” though it may be for me, still represents my fear of insufficiency.

Is it any surprise, that I started working kapotasana tighter and deeper, as the poses that came after it became more difficult, more daunting, more damn hard?

It is a wonderful thing to have this gift for backbends. But more wonderful that I have a practice and a teacher that work with this gift and beyond it. Because it would a shame to let my gift for backbends obscure the gifts I have yet to uncover, to allow what I can do now limit what I can become. As I begin to move into this world were I am doing poses that require strength and serious upside-down time, poses I can barely believe someone like me is doing, I’m beginning to discover that maybe I’m not just a heart-wide-open-backbender.

I am strong, too.

During a recent semi-private Mysore session with David Garrigues, he gave me some feedback on my exit out of kapotasana. As I happily prepared to execute the entire posture again, he stopped me.

“No,” he says, “move on.”

So I do.

 

Stupid Poses

Published by Jean Marie

Perhaps, like me, you’ve gotten the message that everything in yoga is sacred, unassailable, and immune to light humor. I love yoga, I practice yoga, and I teach yoga, yet I’ve seen plenty in various yoga rooms that seemed, at first glance — or maybe the first 20 — downright silly. I’ve still got friends who do the hottest of hot yogas, standing in the hottest corner of the room, known as the POD, or “Pit of Despair” where they undertake a series of postures and simultaneously try to stay alive. In other styles of yoga, you may be asked to hold a certain hip-opening posture so long you might imagine bolting from the room screaming about two dozen times before the teacher finally cues you out of it. In another class, a strange teacher at the front of the room may instruct you to “squeeze” your unmentionable parts, chant in a foreign language you do not understand, and bend over backwards and grab your ankles– not necessarily in that order.

Personally, I have laughed and yes, I confess, even belittled, a number of yogic practices along my way. When first asked to chant in this strange language I now know as Sanskrit, I meanly joked that I could have been singing “I hate puppies” for all I knew. And in my earliest experience with mysore-style ashtanga, I got on a bus to arrive at the crack of dawn for my newly-found practice in New York City, so early that the city that never sleeps was in fact, sleeping, only to find the place CLOSED. I learned later that morning that the mysore room was closed in observance of a “moon day,” as if that explained everything.

“A “f—ing” moon day”! I exclaimed to my then boyfriend. “What the f&*k is a moon day?”

I did not stick around long enough to find out. I decided to flee this likely cult, and take refuge in the “no moon-day” sweat culture of Bikram, where I joined my friends in the Pit of Despair. I enjoyed suffering. Nothing stupid about that.

Years later, I came back to ashtanga, and left and came back and dabbled and then dabbled some more and then gave it a real go, which is still going, with some stupid-seeming things popping up along the way. A friend of a friend once referred to some of the postures in the ashtanga primary series as the “stupid poses.” Once I returned for real to the world for ashtanga, I stole this joke when talking with someone new-ish to ashtanga about some poses which, yeah, at first glance, or even after 100 glances, seem kinda stupid — janu sirsasana C and supta kurmasana, for example.

To give you some context, janu sirsasana C looks like what happens when the innocent, sweet forward fold that is janu sirsasana A goes out on the town, drinks way too much– maybe even partakes in a few questionable substances — and then while taking a drunken walk of shame home, trips over a fence and lands in this messed-up position with a heel in the navel and a knee twerked down to the floor. And supta kurmasana, my nemesis pose for longer than I wanted it to be, involves laying on your belly with your legs behind your head and your arms bound behind your back. Enough said there. trim.A460E01F-2037-4C8B-91BB-BA2338A47DEA

Of course, once the “stupid poses” joke slipped from my lips, a wave of guilt and anxiety crashed over me…would I be excommunicated from the land of ashtanga for such blasphemy?

Here’s the thing. I made the joke because I am close enough to my beginnings to remember how stupid all this sh*t — the breathing control, the unmentionable parts squeezing, let alone some of those not-very-Facebook-profile-photo-friendly poses –once seemed. It is only with practice and time and dedicated study with a teacher that I saw the wisdom and beauty of all these stupid things. The best teachers I have encountered rarely ask me to take things at face value. Instead, they say “you do it, you try it, and you see for yourself.” When I decided it was time to delve deeper into ashtanga, I wrote my teacher. Even though I was practicing fairly regularly, I told him I’d never given the six-days-a-week practice a chance. Even though he’d once told me sternly, “Practice six days! Not four, six!” I’d never given the system as it was meant to be practiced a chance. My teacher didn’t respond with criticism. He encouraged me to try practicing six days, to give it thirty days, and to be kind to myself.

Thirty days and then some later, the world looks different. Sure, having a life, a child and snow days and moon days sometimes reduces six days to less, but still I can now say that I get the f*&king moon days– the need for rest when you practice intensely regularly, the way the body connects with the cycles of the moon. I get the genius of the sequence and those stupid janu sirsasana C and supta kurmasana postures. But I didn’t “get it” because someone told me; I got it because I practiced.

Whatever yoga class you find yourself in, don’t be ashamed if something you are asked to do strikes you as “stupid.” It is only through my own regular practice and careful investigation that I have come come to see the wisdom behind those yoga class staples that initially (or for a while) struck me as weird, laughable, and yeah, even kind of silly. Perhaps it is self-serving of me to say so, but if you’ve felt this way, then maybe you are the kind of potentially inquisitive yogi who just might be a true student — the kind who really wants to learn. And when you reach that knowledge for yourself, then, well, now that’s something sacred.

I made the “stupid poses” joke for another reason: because I remember being afraid to ask what the deal was with the chanting, the Darth-Vader-esque breathing, and the f*&ing moon days. I don’t ever want to get so far down the path of yoga that I forget what it is like to see it with new eyes. I hope I continue to to find and re-find my new eyes and more stupid poses and practices as I go about my exploration. I don’t want to assume people can understand what I understand when they haven’t yet had any personal experience with it. Sure, there is a place for faith here– my thirty-day experiment took a big helping of that — but I still don’t want to make anyone ever feel like it is inappropriate to have doubts or questions, or a sense of humor.

Because that would be really stupid.

Mysore….My family

Published by Jean Marie

yesterday I tried explaining to a friend how the mysore room is…different from other yoga practice rooms. But I didn’t speak of the sequence, the so-called “rules,” or self-practice.

I talked about the special relationship that forms between student and teacher (and by extension, between students) in that room. It’s a little different than anything I’ve experienced before.

before going any further, I feel compelled to add that I can’t say this special relationship exists only in the mysore domain. I had a very close relationship with a vinyasa teacher I chose as my mentor back in New York, and to this day, we still talk about the art of teaching.

what i am talking about is a relationship that forms almost automatically by stepping into that realm of practice with that teacher in a mysore room. My physical body is not independent of the rest of me. Because of the work done in the mysore room, my teachers and fellow mysore practitioners have been aware of the most private and precious events of my life.

what’s even more amazing, is that this remains true even though I moved away from the Dc/Northern Virginia mysore programs last Spring, and the teacher who guides my practice lives in Philly. I practice alone at home most days, with periodic visits. You might think that it’s like dropping into any other class. it’s not.

Last summer I became pregnant. Because of my periodic visits, the DC area mysore teachers were the first to know. They knew before I came, because even before I came to the studio, I told them over email because I had questions. I also told other pregnant ashtangis who I had met in Philly, because I wanted to hear their experience. Because of the nature of the mysore room and the community, I told my fellow practitioners of my pregnancy on my visits. They knew, before any friends in my immediate area knew.

But more than that, My teacher in Philly knew not just of my pregnancy, but my struggle and ultimate decision to pursue an out of hospital vaginal birth after caesarean. I told him about how his teaching had connected me to a dialogue with my own fear– not just where pincha mayurasana was concerned, but also my deep fear about how the hell I would get this second baby out, and concomitantly, my fear of death. I don’t think I have told many people about the turmoil I faced with this second pregnancy. I did tell him.

when I miscarried (I actually miscarried at 5.5 weeks; I just did not know about it until almost 11 weeks) I decided to write an email informing my friends, because I did not want to have to tell the story in person over and over again. Most of the recipients were fellow practitioners in the mysore room, the mysore community that studies with the same teacher in Philly, and the local DC/Va area mysore teachers. Of course.

What surprised even me, was when about a week after that email, I received personal phone calls from my dear first DC area mysore teacher, followed by another DC area mysore teacher and my Northern VA mysore teacher. I felt incredibly touched.

As I head to Philly tomorrow to see my teacher, I have within me a series of emails between us as I have informed him of my efforts to get back into my practice after my D&C surgery, my efforts to bring my practice more in line with the system as it was intended (that is, 6 days a week); I’ve also informed him of my doubts about the system.

He gave me one piece of advice that has stuck with me: “be kind to yourself.”

I may practice alone, most of the time, but I am never alone. These teachers in the DC area hold me in their space as if I never left. I only see them periodically (though I am clearing my schedule to make this a weekly thing) but to them, to me, I am part of their community. They know I have a teacher directing my practice and they assist me with my efforts.

When I am with this group of people, I feel like I am with my family. I feel like if anything wonderful or terrible happens, they will be there. And though I’ve never been to Mysore, I feel a certain connection to those who are there. I once read that in colonial America, when people were away from their loved ones, they would read a book at the same time..it was a way of communicating and staying together even when apart. I feel like I do this with my own practice.

I am grateful for these wonderful people and teachers who have embraced me and my journey. My teacher told me to be kind to myself; I am fortunate to have so many examples of kindness around me. The msyore world is different. Mysore…My family.

Enjoy it!

Published by Jean Marie

The best advice I ever received about being a mother was from Darcy Kamin, the amazing lactation consultant at Yo Mama Yoga-Boulder. It was in a prenatal breastfeeding class. She said “Enjoy your baby.” Since then whenever I’ve noticed that I’m suffering, that it’s feeling too hard, that I’m not having any fun at all or connecting with my child, I’ve thought of those words and I’ve been inspired to turn things around.

I’ve also realized that Darcy’s advice applies to everything (well, almost). Enjoy your day. Enjoy your food. Enjoy your running. Enjoy your yoga practice. Enjoy your wife. Enjoy your husband.

Ever notice how all these things can become battlegrounds?

My beautiful vinyasa teacher, Lesley Desaulniers, would often say in class that we were trying to strike a balance between effort and ease. Sometimes the drama of daily life becomes, well drama. Effort. Heavy. Where is the balance in our lives that some of us more easily find on the mat? I’m on quest. Each day I try to find joy, but it’s more like I’m working on milking the joy out of every day, however I can. My little girl and I have changed our routine. New playgrounds, dinners out, adventures to new parts of town. It’s been nothing short of amazing and transformative. I’ve found that the energy I am cultivating inside myself is being matched by the energy in the world I interact with.

I’m done being an approval whore

Published by Jean Marie

Last Wednesday I collapsed onto a bench in the lobby of a downtown D.C. office building and cried with my 15-month old child strapped to my back.

Just how the fuck did I get here?

Maybe it was the rough week I’d had.  It began with the previous Wednesday, as stress and tension began to mount over our family’s planned trip up to Pennsylvania to see my sister in law and related family in Pennsylvania.  My husband had been working rather late all week and I was without babysitters. For me, this meant almost non-stop care of a toddler who had suddenly developed the ability to emit blood-curdling screams over just about anything, or for no reason at all. It meant non-stop preparation of 3 meals a day, snacks, and all the accompanying rounds of dishes, and all the accompanying shooing away of two dogs from the baby’s food; all the diaper changes, naps, baths, and bedtimes. It meant walking in a city in 100 degrees plus humidity to the grocery store up a hill while pushing a stroller and it meant wearing her 24 pounds on my back just so that I could get to the gym I had just joined to get an hour of low cost daycare.

And right from all that, on Friday night at a time when I’d normally be relaxing and getting ready for bed, I had to load my normally sleeping baby into a car packed with me, my husband and mother in law for three hours, to travel to a house without baby proofed staircases, to chase baby around all day Saturday when normally, for the first time in a week, I’d have been able to hand her over to my husband and go out by myself for three whole goddamned hours.  That Friday night upon our arrival, Lilah also did something she hadn’t done in over a year—she refused to go to sleep, she just screamed and cried until I finally realized she needed to sleep with me in order to go to sleep in this new place. Needless to say, I was not the shiniest brightest sweetest version of myself amidst my sister in law, her family and friends. On top of everything else, I was now exhausted after a sleepless stressful night, and embarrassed about the commotion others may have heard during the night

A malaise persisted into the early week after we returned. Why? Because I couldn’t stop judging myself. I heard this incessant chorus in my head of naysayers everytime I tried to explain, to make a case for myself, for why I wasn’t my best and shiniest yogi self that weekend. Because I couldn’t bear it if my sister-in-law didn’t like me.  Because I was embarrassed. Because I couldn’t bear it if the world at large didn’t approve of me.  What kind of bullshit yogini was I?  All I saw was FAILURE.  And I continued with these negative, self-valuing thoughts purring so loudly and so constantly that I almost didn’t notice them.  When I did notice them, I berated myself for not being happy and positive and appreciating all the good fortune I have.  I had these feelings and it’s not that I bottled them; it’s more that I just couldn’t face the fact that I had them.

That is, until I traveled by bus with a baby strapped to my back, a bus ride where no one got up to offer me a seat, a 40-minute trip door to door, to this new doctor in this new city for our 15-month appointment. I waited more than an hour to be called. By that time, Lilah was tired and hungry and crabby and I knew we had another 40 minutes of travel home. So I left. I walked out. Then I sat down on the lobby bench and cried.

For the first time, on that bench, I began running through all the unpretty thoughts and emotions I have felt since, I don’t know, my entire life in Colorado since my baby was born?

I was angry. Angry that people wouldn’t give up a seat on the bus for a woman with a 24 lb child on her back. Angry that I couldn’t just decide to go get a haircut or go to the bathroom when I wanted to anymore or go to such and such event because I had to consider the little one constantly in my care. That I couldn’t sleep whenever wherever. I hated all these people who could just do things without anything to hold them back. I was angry….That I didn’t have my body back, or that it was back but my stomach looked “great for someone who’d had a baby” but goddamn it I want it too look great, period, end of sentence, because my stomach was always my best and favorite fucking body part. I was sad about this person lost when I had a baby, this person I’d been before, this person who had energy in droves, time to sit and meditate, time to do yoga, time to see friends, talk on the phone, time, energy.  I missed my car, my doctors in Boulder, and my friend network in Boulder.

I screamed at all the people I heard judging me inside my head, this amorphous group of hecklers who were forever telling me that I was doing it wrong, that everyone else who had a baby was handling it way better than I was and they had jobs and all this other shit that they juggled along with it, and well too.  And by the way, the voices said, you know there are women in other countries, who have to do everything by themselves in conditions you can’t even imagine and they don’t have daycare at their fancy gyms like you do so you are just such an ungrateful failure, you know? They told me to stop breastfeeding if I wanted more freedom because isn’t it weird to still be breastfeeding this much? Why wasn’t I feeding my child more “normal food” like cookies and crackers and sugar and non-organic eggs, wouldn’t life be easier if I just fed her processed food?  Why couldn’t I stop wasting the time I did have on facebook and Olympics video replays whatever else? Why wasn’t I able to make it to such and such yoga event, why couldn’t I get up a the crack of dawn for ashtanga mysore practice, why couldn’t I get up even earlier than that to meditate, Why, Jean, do you need so much goddamned sleep? Why couldn’t I teach more, I mean, really, it’s not so hard, is it to do what everyone else seems to be able to do easily except for you.

Something about that bench, the feeling of a low point, or sadness… it brought me to acknowledge that I was suffering. I suffer. And even that came with the retort, “you call this suffering? Haven’t you seen anything that’s going on in the world?”

Oh, shut up. I was so tired of arguing for my right to feel what I feel, it came to me. Life is suffering. Duh.  The Buddha said it and man, it feels right to me. Suffering is everywhere.  I suffer, you suffer, we all suffer. It doesn’t mater how much money you have, whether you have a child or anything….everyone on the bus is suffering.

The worst of my suffering, though, was in the form of fear of my own feelings and judgment and not trusting myself. Why was I always looking for approval? Why was I always hearing people in my head judging me – whether it be my sister-in-law, m husband, the angry looking commuters on the bus – and buying into it?  When I stopped to think about all those judgmental voices I imagined in my head, where was their heckling script coming from?  Who was writing it?  Me.

I was making a case for myself to this invisible judge and jury for everything I did, said, ate, and I did so not just in terms of my parenting but even my yoga practice.  I had taken the joy out of everything, even my yoga by setting myself up against a scoreboard. I had to practice this much, this way, I had to meditate this much, blah, blah and then when my meditation practice went down the toilet along with baby’s second nap, I found myself just so, so far behind….the yoga was just another race I would never win.  It was the balance beam finals and there were just so many balance checks and man, I had just fallen off the beam completely. What was the point of getting back on?

It’s in many ways a good thing that the Anusara community has had an identity crisis (though I understand others may feel differently) and that a certain piece of the Buddhist community, a sangha that I had some ties with, saw some crazy weird drama, tragedy, scandal, whatever you call it (I’m not suggesting that the tragedy itself was a good thing).  It took awhile for this notion to sink in. For a long time in and around these events I continued to pine for a label, an ideology, a guru, a lineage to call my own, be it ashtanga or Jivamukti or Bikram or Conquering Lion or something for Christ’s sake, to hang my hat on, to make me feel secure. To provide the answers. Because without that, it would just be me.

A combination of questioning my suffering, some wisdom from Sylvia Boorstein and some inspiration from Anita Moorjani brings me now to say…. Yes. Me. My happiness, my joy. Of course, I’d forgotten all about that as I sought approval from the judgmental peanut gallery.

Happiness, Joy.   Oh…right.  Yes. I know.  I know how to take care of my child. I know what to eat to feel good. I know I need 8 hours or more of sleep to feel good.  I don’t need a study to validate that. I know that from years of living in this body.  You might need less.  Duh, you’re not me! I’m not you. Thank God for that.  I know I like to sweat and enjoy a good Bikram or Baptiste power yoga class just as much as sometimes I like the quiet power of ashtanga and Jivamukti. I know I like athletic fun vinyasa classes that are physically hard. I know I like loud music that might not always be considered “cool.” I know I love the sound of my child’s laugh. I know I make the best fucking smoothies. Seriously.  I love ice cream. I know I love my friends.

Here’s where the yoga practice has served me in all this.  Because of yoga, I knew, I knew, that the low feelings on that bench would pass. That the way I felt on that bench would change.  And it doesn’t matter what tradition says it, though Swami Satchidananda’s translation of the Yoga Sutras says it more than once, Buddhism says it, science says it—everything is constantly changing.  Who cares that they say it, because I know it; I’ve felt it. I’ve seen my hamstrings go from wooden stakes to melted butter with five rounds of sun salutations. I’ve gone from afraid to kicking up to the wall in handstand to sticking handstand for quite a while! I’ve seen my body change, change more, and change again.  So I have that comfort, even in my lowest moments, of knowing that the misery would pass, and better yet, that when it passed, something good would come out of it. Those twin understandings are the gift I’ve received from my own yoga practice and form the foundation for how I “manage gracefully,” as Sylvia Boorstein calls it, when the shit hits the fan. Those understandings are what make me want to each yoga.

So what good came out of being a hot mess on a bench?

I know that I’ll get back into some meditation and maybe even mysore practice when I am ready to do it out of love instead of the need to meet others’ expectations and approval. In the meantime, I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to pursue the things I love and find joy in everyday, instead of the things I think I ought to be doing. I’m through with devaluing my feelings, thoughts and needs. I through with doubting my knowledge, my intellect, my self-worth. I am done with checking my self-agency at the door (thanks Kelly Morris). I’m done with being a puppet of my own fear.

Most of all, I’m done being an approval whore.