But I began to adjust to the rhythym, and now the trains are just a blur moving across the periphery of awareness.

My life has changed over the past year, significantly, and by the power of my intention. The challenges and choices have all occured in the present, under the control of my breath’s capacity. You can’t be overwhelmed when you’re just taking in a lungful of life, exhaling out the junk.

I haven’t taken time to assemble my thoughts into a blog post for months, and I don’t intend to encompass everything here. It’s overwhelming, as I realize where my self is now, with respect to these changes.

If I am the benign observer, I’m sitting on a train car, watching the ground with a fixed gaze. At first I was able to distinguish each frame of vision, each thought, individually. How new this is! What evolution from the last frame! But then I relaxed my gaze and stared beyond it. I let my vision blur and I honed on an unmoving place under the surface.

Now the ground is whizzing by, beautiful stokes of colour stream across my sightline. I want to mark this moment, some moment, this one or another. But now I wonder if by launching a nugget of experience off the train like baggage, it would be broken by momentum when it hits the ground.

Tangibly now. I’m incredibly blessed, and deeply thankful of each day. I am now co-owner of a yoga studio, Newport Yoga. It’s just minutes from my door. I have a new community of open hearted people that I relate to every day. The future of the studio is going to be co-authored by my pen. People who come to practice yoga are seekers.

My husband said to me tonight that he can’t remember the last time I was in a “mood”. It’s true, I’m consistently happy. A big step for me.

It’s not really the yoga. I love yoga – but that is only the language of my autobiography. What’s evolving in me (I say tentatively…) is confidence. I’ve struck myself down so many times, even when I’m achieving “goals” I counteract my gains with assault on my body and mind.

But when I walk into the studio, my anxiety ebbs. I work to culivate a group dynamic and personal experience for the participants in my classes. It’s outside of me. I think, at least lately, I’ve been beating my fear.

I had so many personal doubts when I decided to make yoga and the studio my focus. But I chose to ignore them. Something beneath the chiding words of my ego rose above them, and I listened too it. I’m still calling it “It”. When I’ve resolved that “it” is “me” then we’ll celebrate

Love yourself.

Karen

It wasn’t that one day I cleaned my ears with a Q-Tip and suddenly it was clear; the ingredients of change intermingled slowly. Giving up something that had been a part of me for almost a decade was not an easy decision.

Last summer, I decided to take action on some minor health issues that I had been apathetic towards for many years. I am 32 now, and feeling my mortality a little more closely. My doctor identified that the causes were not physical – instead, they were likely stress related. Her mandate was to treat the ends, not the means. This wasn’t an adequate solution for me, and so I looked outside of conventional medicine.

I started seeing a naturopath last November, but I have to admit, the course of naturopathic treatment didn’t suit me. I sustained it for five months, and in the end, the practitioner was as lost as how to help me. She had tried everything in her bag of tricks. But in one of my early visits, she recommend that I try yoga – a piece of advice that I acted on.

Enter Yoga

Establishing a yoga practice has created an undefinable space in me. It didn’t come right away, but with regular practice, it also didn’t take long. From the start to end of each class, I experienced a temporary transformation from chaotic to calm. At first it didn’t seem to be lasting far beyond the end of class. But the decision to continue to practice regularly meant that I was finding intention outside of class.

Somehow this practice has grounded life in me. That’s a pretty grand statement, but I think above all, it began to crack open my mind, and in the space created – a reservoir of new ideas, feelings and motivations pooled. I took a renewed interest piano (after 15 years), writing, sharing my recipes with others, I started this blog. I also have began to think of yoga a lifestyle over an intermittent practice.

Listening

Ironically, during this time, my stress response was becoming more acute. I had little idea of the cause or solution, and felt deeply frustrated that I was doing “everything right” to mitigate it. In an effort to further understand the stress, I identified the triggers of anxiety in my life, and observed my reaction them to them closely. I also started talking about stress. It had grown to a degree that I couldn’t just abide with it internally, I needed to start expressing it to people close to me. As soon as I put it into words, it was real, manifest, and could stand nothing short of a solution.

My now former job is truly remarkable – working remotely with the freedom to travel and work, great people, a small business energy that let you see your ideas turn into results in short measure. The exchange currency used to be simple: I gave a lot, and took back the satisfaction of a job well done. But in the past year, that hasn’t been enough. Beyond doing a job well, I’ve also realized that I want to do something that resonates more closely with my nature.

In the past, changing careers has been something I have discussed with my husband as if I was talking about someone else’s life. I’ve never let the idea penetrate the security shield protecting my sound existence. I would deflect the idea of “moving on” as something for the future, always a couple more years down the road. I didn’t shed light down an alternate path; I only saw darkness and unknown, and a direction of infinite fear.

Yoga helped me turn on the light.

Whatever I choose as my life’s pursuit, becomes my outlet for personal energy and creativity. I don’t like the word “work”, especially when used in contrast to “life” or “personal time”. I feel like I’ve sold myself short if I spend too much time doing something in a category defined by unwilling effort. Stress comes naturally when I engage in my life’s pursuit, and that is fine by me.

It’s remarkable how positive, energetic stress can degrade into destructive stress when the inner drive has shifted gear. But because I had all the parameters in place for an objectively ideal life; I had believed that my attitude was all that needed to change. I tried to continue to work as hard as I ever had, but at some point I passed empty and started running on fumes.

The Question

One night at dinner a close friend posed the idea “Why don’t you work part-time?” In the past I would have laughed at the idea; I believed my job simply couldn’t be done with part time effort. But the suggestion came surprisingly easy to me, I felt an immediate energy in even considering it. I brought up the idea with my former business partner. He himself had noticed that something was wrong, and was happy to accommodate this request on a short term basis.

What could the other half of my time might bring?

Nightly, between midnight and 6am, I’d lie awake considering what a part-time split between work and life could bring. But ultimately I did not want that distinct separation – I wanted to be pursuing something with full-time engagement. I was deeply restless, I don’t sit well in limbo without a firm decision in hand.

Understanding

One Saturday night during another contemplation session, I was sitting alone on my couch, computer on my lap, and I stumbled across an excerpt from “Soul Dance”, by Bill Plotkin

Harley Swift Deer, a Native American teacher, says that each of us has a survival dance and a sacred dance… Our survival dance, a foundational component of self-reliance, is what we do for a living—our way of supporting ourselves physically and economically… Once you have your survival dance established, you can wander, inwardly and outwardly, searching for clues to your sacred dance, the work you were born to do.
Read full excerpt

The feeling that came over me was best described as elated nausea. I heard myself so clearly. It was time to leave my survival dance behind, and set a new rhythm for myself. The dance actually became literal… I did a little jig in my living room.

Decision

I resigned five days later. The move was quick but I couldn’t deny my resolution. The hardest part of this process was recognizing that although I have undeniable fears, I can choose to accept and move beyond them. Everyone has fears. I started to look at people who I respect and realize that they too have fears; likely as many as me! But fears are only temporary if you act in spite of them. And soon there will be new ones to take their place, but their power will be lessened. Although they pass through your present life, they won’t calcify your spirit with apathy.

Don’t get too comfortable in the safe and secure default settings that limit your potential in life. For me, it took physical symptoms to alert me to a possible problem. Next I needed to create space to figure it out, and in that space, new passions started evolving. Once I listened, deciding on a solution and acting on it were much easier tasks.

Since my resignation I’ve been glowing. It’s a funny thing, strangers have been randomly greeting me while walking my dog. Apparently I’ve lost a subtle crease in my brow, and replaced it with a smile. It has not taken long for brilliant opportunities to arise from darkness, and I’ve begun to trust that as long as I choose a future that transcends fear and apathy, I will thrive.

I did intend to go to a Yin/meditation class tonight. It didn’t happen. I empathize with good excuses, especially my own. I was driving home from visiting my husband’s parents, and I had no food in the car, and realized it was too close to class time to eat anyway, but I was getting the hangries (I credit my sister for labeling the place between hunger and anger). So I came home and pulled out leftovers and watched the post-election turmoil in Iran, drug wars in Mexico, and ever expanding swine flu pandemic on the news. Sure glad I missed yoga tonight.

A few weeks ago I came across a yogini’s blog titled 108 Days of Yoga. Tonight I realize that that is 100 more days than me (a nice decimally-harmonzied number). She made time for her practice at 6 am each morning, amongst other commitments, not the least of which were running a studio, with a 7 month old child. Inspiration is comparison turned outside-in. This woman is inspiring.

Each of us filled out the multiple choice questionnaire. After tallying our results we were physically separated in four quadrants representing combinations of introverted vs. extroverted and global vs. analytical traits. In our segregated groups we stared or shouted at each other (this varied considerably between the introverted and extroverted groups) and studied our newly branded identity.

For the remainder of the trip, the teachers were left to clean up the carnage of a hormone induced group emotional breakdown. Although this was my first memorable lesson in the process of self-identification, the pressure to define our individuality began sooner than grade nine, and can persist long after our teenage years.

Many metaphors have beautifully described humanity’s quest for personal identification. In Pink Floyd’s concept album “The Wall”, the antihero struggles with the barricade separating his shriveling inner self and the outside world. The bricks were laid by himself and others, forming a superficial but effective external identity – an activity condoned to a less dramatic degree in most of our lives.

But there is a concept that I feel is under-represented. Every posture has a counterpose, and personal identity is no exception. I’ll call it the anti-identity.

Eating Disorders and Anti-Identity

I believe that individuals suffering from eating disorders are attempting to dissolve any visceral and psychological sense of identity that society pressures them to have. Others may argue anorexia, bulimia and other disorders are just another external identity statement – but I believe this condition is defined not by what you are, but by what you are not.

I am not perfect. I am not logical. I am not smart. I am not beautiful. I am not strong. I am not what you think. I am not here. In the end, I am really not here.

The further the condition progresses, the closer to those ends the person suffering becomes. The side-effect is a feeling of success, which feeds the anti-identity and perpetuates the illness.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. It’s potent stuff, and it’s no surprise to me that the incidence of eating disorders is escalating, especially in individual-centric cultures. It’s not a pressure to be thin, but a pressure to harden ourselves against malleability; to build a external manifestation of who we are.

Yoga and Eating Disorders

When an individual is recovering from an eating disorder, one of the most terrifying questions is “When I recover, who will I be?”. The misunderstanding is that the fear is not rooted in weight-gain itself; weight brings emotions, laughter and energy. The apprehension results from the perceived pressure to form an identity, and have other people assess and judge that identity.

For those suffering with eating disorders, the need to find balance is imperative, it’s a matter of survival. Yoga has a lot to say about the Self, and many tools to help a person achieve balance. I was delighted to read that in Vancouver, the leading eating disorder treatment program now incorporates yoga into their recovery program.

Yoga can aid in eating disorder recovery on a number of levels. Benefits like increased presence of body and mind, lowered stress and increased strength are well known. But ultimately, yoga is a powerful recovery tool because it trains a person to lighten their grip of the importance of their “lower self”. By this I mean the formation of traits, physical and psychological, that we internalize and project: the external testimony of who we are.

Between identity and anti-identity, there lies a balance that is rooted in impermanence. We are different every day, and it’s simply not important to waste energy forming or dissolving an external identity. Osho said many beautiful things, and one sticks in my head right now

At the end only that remains which you had brought in the beginning.

It’s been a long journey, and I am only starting to internalize this idea. Now I wake with it. I sit with it on my yoga mat. And I fall asleep with it when my consciousness dissolves into the inky sky blistering with pure starlight.

Today marked day 17 of the 40 day yoga challenge, and day 1 of my husband’s three week trip to Europe. My challenge is now amplified because I’m struggling to quell feelings of envy, and also push against the hollow that’s shaping into loneliness.

It doesn’t help that my dog is whining by the door, wondering when her favorite owner will re-enter our living space. Sorry Tobi – you’ve got 21 weeks in dog-time to suffer through. I guess I’m getting off easy.

But honestly, this time will be good for me. I look around our place and see opportunity – untidy things I can obsess over or random chores that didn’t seem important last week. I’ve got lots of people to catch up with, new opportunities to dive into, hours of sleep to log, lotsa yoga to work through, and now more time now to get dirty in it.

Speaking of dirty. Yoga in the summer.

I love what the summer heat does to my muscle fibers. Like ice cream that’s sat in a bowl for a few extra minutes – yoga just tastes better in the heat. My sticky matt becomes a slip n’ slide, I squish into it when rolling from a squat to an inversion, down dogs lose their grip and become high planks. Okay it’s gross, but getting gross is kind of nice – once a day – for about an hour.

Yoga today was lengthening. We did lots of stretching with cloth bands, and broke apart scar tissue with golf balls. My balance was worse than normal – one of those days I felt like a stool needing a third leg. I hope my visceral balance is not an indicator of my internal stability.

Now for a cold sauvignon blanc and a starfish pose sleep… why not use the space.

Sunday morning power class is a notch above my weekday practice. I got squeezed and replenished in a few cycles through the class, turning over the leftover energy from yesterday and making room for clean morning fuel (aka a good breakfast). I ended up taking a late morning tap to round it off, and just woke up.

There were a couple of personal challenges evinced today. One that brought the glow of success, and the other, a realization that I have a bigger challenge to face.

We tried a pose that I had never done before, and I didn’t catch the name, but it involved moving from a standing balance pose to a modified crow out to high plank. Although I didn’t execute it perfectly, I feel with a few more attempts it will be singing (see resonance).

My second challenge came from acknowledging my present limits, deciding to stay on the safe side of that boundary, and then tackling the disappointment that stemmed from that decision. In a particularly challenging series of standing poses, I felt my knee tingle, like a sparkler had been set off inside. There was no pain, but I noticed the sensation and backed off. I couldn’t even attempt a modification with less intensity – it just wasn’t working out.

What came over me was disappointment – but the feeling wasn’t completely internal in its source and target. What arose above being disappointed in myself was the feeling that I had disappointed someone external to me (the instructor?). It sounds ridiculous, illogical, totally un-yoga… but that was what I felt. It’s a left over reaction from ballet, where I felt the teacher had invested in me, and “put” something in me and wasn’t “getting back”.

Photo by Uršula Berlo

So that’s got to go…. and that’s going to be a challenge because, well, I think today I realized that my practice is not completely seated from internal intention, and directed towards internal balance. There’s something like internal projection/reflection going on here. But it’s been acknowledged, so now I’ve got to do something about it. I have no ideas yet but I’ll ponder that in the next still moment.

Vinyasa is a dynamic style of yoga that emphasizes the flow of movement and breath between the postures, not just the postures themselves. My introduction to vinyasa was fun and thought provoking, so I’ll share a bit of both.

First the fun. I’m realizing that I really enjoy being upside down. Today I got to do 3 types of hand/head stands! We jumped, rolled, stretched and slinked between postures. I also found that the stress on my bad hip was lessened by the fact we didn’t hold the poses for a more than a few cycles of breath.

Islena instructed today’s class. She incorporated two thought-provoking ideas that I’d like to share (or at least my interpretations of them).

Resonance

The first idea is about finding resonance in your yoga practice. This is a place where your body and mind are attuned to the energy in every level of our being, from the atomic to a higher self. This sounded pretty esoteric until she demonstrated the analogy using a gong.

After striking the gong, if there is an interruption (like holding your finger against the gong), the tone is muffled and does not resonate. In yoga practice, if you have discomfort, excessive tension, or pain, you are muffling the ability of your body and mind to resonate from the poses. If, however, you free your practice by expressing your movements and postures at the “right” energy, the internal gong will reverberate with a spectrum of harmonics.

I thought this was a beautiful metaphor, and an alternative the idea finding the “edge”, where you measure your physical limits by monitoring your breath and body’s cues. Here, you seek not a limit – but a sense of harmony. This especially makes sense in vinyasa: as you move from posture to posture, the series of tones forms a song.

Fascia

Islena also encouraged us to focus our attention on the fascia (I never knew I had any of this stuff prior to today!) Reading further on Wikipedia, it’s described as “an uninterrupted, three-dimensional web of tissue that extends from head to toe, from front to back, from interior to exterior.” It wraps almost every other part of our anatomy in its casing. Because in our practice we commonly focus on sensations in the muscles and joints, we neglect to think about the stuff that binds it all together. I had always wondered how organs stay in place when I’m standing on my head!

But it gets more interesting – this stuff isn’t just structural. Again from Wikipedia, it “provides the medium that allows for intercellular communication“. That strikes me as a powerful idea. Each of our body’s cells is pretty much a self contained micro-system. But the fascia is what brings these units to form a whole greater than the sum of the parts. I’m going to focus positive concentration on the fascia – I love these discoveries!

Islena’s suggestion to bring our attention to the fascia made particular sense in vinyasa, where interconnected movements are made possible by the physical structure that binds us.

All in all it was a great class, the kind that pushes your practice forward a notch, or three.

The new version is “To let myself practice within my physical means.” That means staying further away from my perceived edge, since apparently I’m a poor judge of where it lies.

Goals and challenges aside – I feel lucky to be part of this day.

I held it together through the first 45 minutes of class – controlled breath and movements. But in triangle pose, I reached my arm and gaze up to the sky and then felt my neck tweak out. 40 Day Challenge Goal #1 has been shattered.

The last time I strained my neck was in triangle pose too. It’s an old waterskiing whiplash injury that resurfaces without warning. And that’s what is frustrating me… I’ve heard that you should only go to your edge, not beyond it, and to maintain this balance by observing the depth/quality of your breath. But in a twist, when my breath is shallow to begin with, I can’t measure where I am with respect to my limits.

Apart from that tissue snag, the class was purifying. Lots of sweat and energy. Now to haul out the ice pack and take note of the pattern – I need to be careful in triangle pose.

After the call ended, I was buzzing with adrenalin – that kind that comes from the game of formulating your opinion into a logical argument for an extended period of time. Getting closer to the studio I noticed the no-nonsense sunshine and warm breeze, and my energy turned to giddiness.

I was worried I might have an eruptive laughing episode during pranayama… it will happen one of these days. But I gradually gained control of the energy the was bubbling over, and turned it inward.

By the end of class my energy melted my physical form into a warm wax blob. I find that when I get into this state, I lose my natural breathing rhythm in savasana. I’ll suddenly be snapped back to consciousness when my body gasps for much a needed breath. I’m not sure about that situation… if I should be happy that I’ve reached a state of deep relaxation? I just didn’t figure my body’s responses would check out along with my thoughts.

Anyhow… brilliant day. It can’t feel much better than this.