Author: Continue To Breathe

Yogini Insurance

I think insurance is a pretty good racket.  If I’d been smarter I would have become an insurance agent when I was younger.  I’d be rolling in it by now.

So, yep, I bought insurance as a Yoga Trainer.  I have a good ol’ General and Professional Liability Insurance policy.  I could afford it, so I bought it.  What I bought was peace of mind.  I don’t ever expect anyone to contact me to file a claim.  The amount insured per occurrence should keep any attorney happy enough s/he won’t need to sue me directly. They can go through my insurance company lawyers.  I think that is what I am paying for anyway.

I teach less than six hours per week right now.  I expect that will continue for the next year.  I expect that in this next year my student base will double.  I’m hoping so.  That expectation is based on my idea, my hope that I will be getting better as an instructor and more people will want to come see me.  Even as my student base grows I will still be teaching less than six hours per week.  This makes for a lower premium price on my liability coverage.

The other reason my premium is so low is that I do request a Liability Waiver from my students.  I found one online and edited it for my purposes.  I may never need these things.  But I like having a folder of waivers available.  I numbered them so I can go in sometime and see how many people I have guided along the way.  It’s a pitiful number right now.

I bought peace of mind.  I expect I’ll buy it again for next year.

Devil in the Details

 

Insecure But Strong

I’m supposed to write of who I am, to write from inside of me.  I am to do those things that feed my soul, that make me feel comfortable with myself and where I am.

When I guide yoga, I am always unsure.  I am unsure if I come out too strong, if I am not fun, if these postures are hurtful or too hard.  I want to look out over my students and see them in good form, better than last time.  I’m not sure they are.  I don’t know when I have done it right.

The Friday classes are only two and three times a month.  How can this possibly be helpful?  Is there ANY benefit to just three times a month?

And am I doing the thing that brings me joy.  Is joy part of learning to do this?  Is the joy in the learning?  Are the students feeling the joy?  I have had positive feedback.  Is this only because they do not want to be negative nellies?  Are they only being kind to be nice?

I am told my pacing is good.  I am told Savasana is wonderful – and so yes, we are able to leave on a good note.  I want to be better.  Just as important, I want to feel good that this is in fact what I am supposed to be doing.  I like doing yoga.  I like doing yoga with people.  Am I  an instructor?  I don’t want to give this up without giving it my honest and authentic heart.  I will know if it truly fits.  Maybe I am to supposed to be among the crowd, and not in front of the crowd.

Maybe I am too early to pass judgement on myself.  We are our own harshest critics.  This is a tough idea.  I would kick myself years from now if I were to watch a woman my age in front of a class, showing her insecurities and still being a teacher.  I am good at not sharing my insecurities in front of the group.  Regardless of how I feel.  I am better than some, I have more heart than many.  I can do this well, and it will cover me like a glove, a nice skin tight yoga suit to be proud of.  Eventually.

My life is not yoga right now.  There is too much life beyond any yoga or spritiual notion.  There is more life to live than just “on the mat” or “off the mat”.  There is more life off the mat than I will ever live on it.  I love yoga.  But, it is the prep time that I spend before I go on to life.

I can wear this “yoga instructor” well.  And I can live off the mat, and I do for gawd’s sake live it well, off the mat.  I love me my football, and my martinis and my sweet love and children.  I enjoy my job, even while I want to replace it with a yoga job.  I have dreams and aspirations of the beach house,  and friends coming to stay the weekend, and holidays with all the family surrounding us.  I have recipes to conquer and garden’s to plant, and moon travel that I want for a birthday treat.  I have my convertible car, and my frequent flyer miles and I have a list an arm long of all the places I want to visit.  There is so much life outside of this yoga…that even as I write this you must know, you must be clear that an hour on the mat every other day is a very strong practice.  Meditations for fifteen minutes every single day, every day, every one is essential for stability and dream realizations.  And it’s only fifteen minutes.  Yoga isn’t necessary for dreams to realize.  Meditation is.  Meditation IS essential to happiness.  If we don’t have time to relax and feel our happiness, there is no happy.  And happy is important in a successful life.

My life is already successful.  Yoga feels good.  Meditation reminds me that I am happy, and for all the right reasons.

Am I a yoga teacher?  I dunno, I have only just started. I wonder if I can teach happy in yoga.  Maybe I need to teach “Aint no big thang” in yoga.  I don’t teach often enough to get across any philosophy really.  Its hard to choose a philosophy in front of the mats when I don’t get in front of the mats very often.  Three times a month for the group and once on Sundays for my private patron.  We all want to have fun and to walk away from class smiling and content.

That’s all there is to it, it ain’t no big thang that we continue to breathe.

Resting B*tch Face

 

I just learned this term in the last couple months since I’ve been teaching yoga.   Resting B*tch Face.   I’m not saying I haven’t seen this before.  Oh yes, I have.   I’ve even been accused of it.  I was accused of it by my mother, no less.   Years ago.  Neither my mom nor I knew there was such a term for it.  I denied having Resting B*tch Face.  I didn’t know I looked like a b*tch.  How would I know I had “that” look while I just hang out.  I find it interesting that my mom tagged it decades before it became a known issue.  Moms have a way of saying things that just cannot be denied. (dammit)

Resting B*tch Face is just that.  It is the look women have when they are not concerned how they look, when they are concentrated on other things or nothing.  I see it regularly all through class.  It is surprising to me that I am still surprised at the end of class to see people smiling and talking all with animated faces.  All through practice there is this b*tchy look on their faces. Resting B*tch face can be intimidating.

It’s good to know that men have the look too.  They have Resting A**hole Face.  I appreciate the equality of this.

It is time to change this terrible affliction.  It is time to make a concerted effort to enliven these faces.  Can I change this with facial yoga?  Will this make a difference?  Can I take on an entire affliction with an entire populace?  Can I win?  Can I get into the Great Records of Yoga Influencers (GRYI) by tackling Resting B*tch Face?  This needs to be addressed.  I am good enough for this.  I can change the world one B*tch Face at a time.

 

Yoga Photos

I’m supposed to have a Bio written.  I’m supposed to have photos taken to add to my Bio.  I’m supposed to have all this marketing done and ready to submit when I go looking for a job as a yoga teacher.  Ugh.

Bio?  Here’s what I have so far.  “Hey, just got certified.  Seasoned yogi. Let me guide you.  Oh yeah…here are some pics.”

As you can see, I’m not getting very far on the biography.  I really don’t want to write it.  Maybe as I get “my voice” in teaching I will have a voice for a Biography Bio.

Maybe pictures will be easier.  I can do pictures.  All I have to do is put on my favorite yoga outfit and take my sweetie and his camera out to the park and I will do yoga while my sweetheart takes pictures.  Let’s do that.  My sweetheart is busy this weekend.    He says next weekend is good, ask him again next weekend.

So here we are three weekend later.  I ask my darling again if we can head out to get yoga photos.  And he had a really good question.  “What kind of pictures do you want?”  Well, um, good pictures.   I responded, “I thought you told me you are good at taking pictures.  I just want some photos of me doing yoga for my social media and for marketing.  We’ll just head out to the park and you can get Mt. Rainier in the background.  It’ll be great.”

I do so appreciate my sweetheart’s support.  I am absolutely authentic here.  Nobody has ever supported me so completely as he does.  He’s a real trooper and he gets when something is important to me.  He plugged in his camera to charge it up while I went to change into yoga clothes, because no, I do not wear yoga clothes all day every day.

My darling’s support and his expert photo-taking at the park did not stop the Yoga Police, unfortunately, from pulling up in their squad car. “This is your favorite Yoga outfit, Ma’am?”

“Well, no officer, not really.  It’s cold out and we’re hoping it won’t rain until we we’re done here.  I’m sorry officer, this is what I wore to stay warm.“

“Well, if you are going to come out here and take pictures where Mt Rainier can be seen, I suggest you wait until the mountain is actually showing.  I’m going to have to write you up for poor planning and lousy costuming.  Also, please, next time shoot photos without a crumply mat.”

“Well, yes officer, I just figured that out.  But the ground was wet and I didn’t want to be standing in cold wet grass.”

“That’s why I am writing you up for poor planning.  Please wait here while I call this in to see if any outstanding warrants are out to stop you from teaching yoga.”

I wanted to run for our car, but my sweetheart was holding my shoes.  I was afraid the Yoga Police would confiscate the camera.  Now I wish they had.

Good Teachers – For Whatever Reason

I have moved on from some really good teachers.  My first teacher was my best.  In essence I learned the yoga alphabet and how to read from her.  I was nineteen and soaking up information like a sponge.  I didn’t take the class seriously.  There were many in the class that did.  “Back in the day” it was required to have a physical education class completed in order to receive a diploma.  Yoga was my choice for physical education.  I was in San Francisco so naturally this was a legitimate choice.  I had no idea how this choice was going to follow me for life.

It was a participatory class, so I needed to be there to get my college credits.  This teacher was strict with her yogic philosophy of alignment, protect the spine, there is no yoga without pranayama, and inversions are the natural order of things.  She called this Hatha Yoga.  Of course Western Yoga has experienced a metamorphosis since then.

From this college teacher, not much older than anyone in her class, I put together a personal practice that carried me through my dating years, job changes, pregnancies, moving across the country, all those things that make up life. Until my thirties when yoga studios started popping up and television became inspired.  I did not see yoga studios in my small Wisconsin town, but along the west coast.  I would see these studios when I flew back to visit my parents.  I was envious.  The idea of a yoga studio would never fly in my little Wisconsin borough.  Not in the late 1990’s.  That’s when television put yoga back in my reach with – Inhale with Steve Ross.

My living room became my studio.  Yoga clothes began showing up in my local chain stores.  I bought yoga pants and – lo’ – a sports bra (the crowd “ooh’s” in astonishment).  At night after the kids were in bed I waited for websites to download through my dial-up internet connection so that I could drool over teaching studios that required a month-long stay to learn intense class work at hide-away enclaves before one would be allowed to teach on their own.  And these teaching enclaves costs thousands of dollars.  I ordered  a yoga mat online.  There wasn’t anything available in my town.   I was pleased with myself for actually buying a yoga mat…just for yoga.  It was all so thrilling.

In my forties there was finally a studio with a sole owner/only teacher in a town about thirty minutes away in this rural Wisconsin.  She was doing yoga three times a day with the group.  I don’t remember how much of her time she actually did the asanas with us, but I do remember feeling wonderful to have found a studio so close to home.  I only had to drive thirty minutes to get there, sometimes in the snow.  I don’t remember her name, or the studio name.  I know now that she kept me going.  I was so glad to find her.  My children were young and money was tight and time was even tighter. But I made it.  That woman kept me going.

By my mid-forties there was an annex to the local spiritual book store that allowed a woman to use this annex space for yoga.  This space was only fifteen minutes from home.  This was still not a yoga studio in my town.  But we were getting closer.  It must have been morning meetings, 9 am, so I only came once a week on my only day off during the week, Fridays.  I was the youngest one of the group.  Just five or six of us.  It didn’t matter.  We did yoga.  That woman was putting in the effort to get yoga to our small town.

I left Wisconsin in 2009.  We still did not have a yoga studio when I left.  Currently (2018) there are two – sort of.  One yoga studio with a store-front and regular classes.  One studio type thing that is using the local senior center and other various locations around town (rooftops and large parking areas) to bring in the next generation of thrill-seeker yogis.  It’s something.  And I am glad to see anything being offered.

Three years ago, maybe four, in 2013, Azer arrived as a contracted yoga teacher at my job for one year stint to teach yoga as part of Employee Health Initiative.  The reason Azer was a great teacher is because for a while, the first three months(?) we did the same postures over and over again.  The same sequence, every Tuesday and every Thursday.  After those first three months I was doing this same sequence at home.  I wondered if he really knew yoga or just those asanas.

Two things I learned: number one, familiarity puts things within reach of students.  Number two, the more familiar I am with something, the more apt I am to do it for myself and to show others.

It was Azer that inspired me to teach. If Azer can do it.  So can I.  Azer began teaching in April.  By January I had my friends over in my living room going through the exact same asanas.  They loved it.  More friends came.  Eventually we needed more room and we moved on to another house for more space.

The other wonderful thing about Azer is I watched him try some ideas with us that brought us out of our comfort zone, and I enjoyed those experiences even while I was feeling the discomfort.  Azer was always respectful but especially in his encouragement for us to try new things.  Inversions in particular.  What is outstanding here is that I hope I have brought some of Azer with me to invite my students to grow and try some things that may not be comfortable.  It seems balance poses are the out-of-comfort-zone element for my group.

I was on the hunt to find a studio to train for my certificate.  I scoured the internet and found plenty of studios to choose from.  They all cost the same, roughly about $3,000 for 200 Hour Yoga Teaching Certificate.  I found some wonderful teachers as I was searching a place to train for my certificate.

Kathleen Hunt at Yoga on Beacon kept me moving.  She wasn’t going to take my age as any excuse to not do any poses.  And I loved the challenge, because I knew the asanas.  I knew the right way to do them and she helped adjust me just right every time.  When I went looking online at her bio much later I found that she had founded a school previously.  The school was no longer available, but I realized I had stumbled onto a brilliant instructor.  Strong, stable, knowledgeable and compassionate.   Those may be my favorite words.

Heidi Krotzer at Yoga Soleil in Puyallup is one of these strong, knowlegeable and compassionate teachers as well.  I didn’t find her until I was already in training.  But now she is doing her own teacher training.  I want to re-train for another 200 hours.  Heidi will train me more completely than my original training.  It is only because Heidi is training that I want to re-train for that 200 hours.  I hadn’t considered it until I heard that Heidi is teaching.

I can only hope (and work toward) being considered strong, stable, knowledgeable and compassionate as I continue to breathe.

The Medicine of Yoga

From where I sit, yoga is being used as a path to healing.  As in ‘medicine’.  This makes me nervous as a yoga instructor.  There is so much within a yoga practice that is not medicine.  The western science of Medicine (yes, capital M) is creeping in on the yoga horizon to claim yoga’s benefits as medicinal.  If I were a shaman, yoga is also medicinal, but I feel the shaman has a better grounding in understanding the patient’s required participation in their own health.  Medicine, the medical industry, wants to take all the credit.  The credit for health through yoga, or any yoga therapy, rests solely on the practitioner of yoga.  As a yoga instructor I can guide my students in proper alignment and balance, but it is up to my students to know what works best and at what level of intensity.  I don’t want yoga to be claimed by the medical industry.

For my own group of students of yoga, we are all hurting.  My group has arthritis, weak under-used or over-used wrists, knees that no longer include meniscus cartilage, vertebrae that are fused.  Each one comes for healing.  They come for yoga therapy.

I do have healthy students too.  Some of us recognize we are in good shape for the shape we are in and we want to continue or strengthen what we have.  We want to stay in shape and if possible be stronger, healthier.  It is a conscious decision.  I wonder that we feel the need to consciously change our decisions to live healthy.  Today in America it is not good enough to just live a naturally healthy life.  Nope, we have to choose this lifestyle.  And it is a choice.  I blame advertising, which is all media is anyway, for requiring us to turn our back on these unhealthy but lucrative choices into something that is healthy.

It’s all so simple to be healthy.  Simple to eat healthy, embrace family and friends, to help each other, to turn to our inner source for strength.  It may be simple but it is not easy.  It is not easy to turn our backs to the pervasive and insidious media diatribe of purchasing our happiness in our food, our recreation, even in purchasing our love.  There is no purchasing happiness.  There is no purchasing a fulfilling life.  There is happiness is doing the work, both inner and outer work, that completes our lives and fills our soul.  There is nothing to purchase there.

“You pay with your time or your money.”  Okay, well, sometimes it’s both.  I am finding paying with my time is far more fulfilling than tossing money at a problem.  Paying with my time is time well spent.  Ah! Time.  Don’t get me started.  Just let me continue to breathe.

Pause and Be Happy

I have a quote attributed to Apollonia, who I thought was a Greek god or ancient Greek philosopher – but I can’t find a reference to directly.  Apollonia said, “Now and then it is good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

After years, decades really, of seeking happiness it is nice to come across a quote I can live with.  All these years of pursuing personal growth has come down to this wondrous thought.   I can stop seeking how to feel better, I can relax from the drive to be better, to motivate myself to achieve happiness, the searching to find that ‘more’ that will finally enliven me to higher purpose and ultimate sustainable happiness and I can just allow myself to be happy.

“It is good to pause in our pursuit…and just be happy.”  All is right with the world, just as it is.

Yes, I can go on to pursue a greater happiness, but I am relieved to know, I can just be happy now.  It is not in the future, it is now.  And now is right now, and in a moment it will again be right now. This cycle feeds on itself and I find myself naturally, organically in the now, in the happy.

Happiness is a funny word.  It is light and airy.  Yet, as I find myself in the happy it is deep and abiding, all encompassing.  I feel it rich and fulfilling.

I just wanted to share that quote.  Because it feels good.  And in allowing ourselves to feel happy the world can be right. And we continue to breathe.

Prayer is Not Meditation

Let’s get serious here for a moment.

There is a connective tissue of desire and receiving.  When we ask, we must open ourselves to receive.  Without the opening to receive, all our desires stay out there without the path to us.  There is an almost (but not the same as) a tangible tissue that opens during meditation that allows our desires to come in to us, we receive in meditation.

We ask in prayer.  Prayer changes us, not the circumstances.  We may be praying for someone else, but ultimately it is ourselves that are changed.   By changing us we may now change our circumstances.

What ever it is in life – Faith must, must, must, absolutely must come first.  With faith all things are possible.  That is not a cliché.  That is real. “Everything you can imagine is real.” -Picasso.  Faith IS the molecule, the element, which carries imagination into reality.

Diasaku Ikeda – “The entire universe exists within us.” It is all available within us – all the time, at any time  .  Cellular and macro physics – e v e r y t h i n g  is within us.  Each and every one of us.  It is up to us through our desire, through our faith and our absolute knowing to pull this existence up to come into being.  Everything is available within each of us.

Cher said, “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich.  Rich is better.”  In my own life, this is true.  I may not be rich, but I am no longer poor.  This change was through me, not from the outside.  It was affected by me, in prayer AND in meditation.  I am just regular Josephine Schmoe.  I’m nobody special, but I am witnessing a transformation in my life every day that over the course of a year is noticeable to those around me.  Over the course of the last decade, I am not sure I am recognizable from where I was ten years ago.  And all I am doing is getting quiet with myself every day.  I am meditating.

Nichiren Daishonin – “An ordinary person is a Buddha, and a Buddha is an ordinary person.” God is truly sitting next to us on the bus, regardless of how he smells.  God is One of Us.  Thank you, Joan Osborne

Still prayer is not meditation.  Prayer is not a half-hearted longing or a wish or a plea, either.  At its core, prayer is a personal vow to make something happen.  And a strong prayer that fills one with resolve is the personal vow to make something happen without fail.  If only we could remember that our future self already knows everything we pray for is already here.  It is already present.  It is now.  In prayer our present self is asking for that connection to the future self, and this is a beautiful by-product of prayer.

Meditation is the connective tissue between prayer and results.  Meditation is the opening, the emptying, the invitation to arrive, to come in. Meditation facilitates the cycle of desire and receiving.

Prayer is ourselves opening up to god to share our most heartfelt desires, and hurts and sympathies.  Prayer cries with god, the source, and rejoices with source. Prayer is our communication with god.  Meditation is the communication of god with us.  Meditation is the receiving mode on the tuner.  We have one mouth and two ears, but we sure talk a lot.  In Meditation we are opening our spiritual ears, and closing our mouths.

I have been practising buddhist prayer for well over thirty years.  Life is still ups and downs, I felt good for having a mode of expression to  air my frustrations.  It was not until I added the meditation – straight up, no bells, no whistles meditation – every day for the last three years that my life has become filled with the rewards of my dreams.

When I yoga, I am not in moving meditation.  I am not in prayer either.  I am firmly in my body.  I am here, in this body, just as it is, right now.  This is what I have to work with.  I breathe and open my lungs.  I rejoice with the infinite and sacred pockets of humanity that reside within me.  I find myself rejoicing how good I feel.  I open my mind to consider the parts of me that may not feel good today; it is only for today.  Every day I feel different.  No two days are the same.  I appreciate and rejoice in the variety.  My meditation is only seated, calm, considered meditation.  My prayer is only seated, calm considered prayer.   Yoga is not my meditation.  It is not my prayer.  It is my humanity as I continue to breathe.

Words to Finish Practice

My favorite instructor always finishes practice by saying, “Thank you for allowing me to guide you in your practice today.”  I love when she says that.  I did allow her to guide me, and she does a fantastic job of it.  I can’t help but think, “thank you for guiding me”.

I have tried to say that same phrase after my classes.  I get as far as “Thank you for allowing me to guide you…” and then I trail off as if I have forgotten the words to a famous prayer.  I trail off without wanting to be obvious.   I can see some of the students smile and nod to me as if they know what I am trying to say, and they release me from having to pronounce all that I meant to say.

I suppose that, “Thank you for allowing me to guide you today.” is enough.  Usually though my thanks resides in the fact that people even came to my class.  From that aspect my finish remark could easily be, “Thank you for joining me for yoga today.’

I want to offer that “I hope you enjoyed a good practice.”  But that doesn’t even read right. “I hope your practice was good.”  If I have been watching the class I would know how the class was perceived, now wouldn’t I?

I am grateful that people come to my classes.  I am grateful that they express an interest.  When I started hosting yoga classes I nicknamed it “Yoga with Friends”.  If I stick with this theme for a little while longer, and I expect to, my salutation can easily be “Thank you for joining me today.”  Simple seems better.  Enough said.

Instruction is Not Practice for Myself

The name for my yoga business is “Yoga with Friends”.  Being a yoga instructor has kind of changed all that, but I still like the name.  The intention was that I would have friends to do yoga with.  I now see that my own yoga practice is not actually available while I am guiding others.  To be the instructor I find I am demonstrating the posture and then scanning the group for alignment and facial expressions.  While I breathe into a posture, it is more for show than to actually feel the deepening for myself.  I don’t know why I thought being a yoga teacher would allow me to do more yoga (and be paid for it).  I still have to carve out time in my day for my own practice.

I see that even more now that I am instructing others I need to kick it up a notch for my own practice.  I am a better guide in class when I have myself well-grounded.  Yoga with Friends has morphed as I am shifting my focus to the friends in front of me.  In my classes I am doing yoga for friends more than with friends.  No, I don’t expect to change the name.  It will stay Yoga with Friends.

Yoga teachers still take yoga classes.  I spend more time in classes than I do teaching yoga to others.  Of course, I am a better teacher for it.  Some classes I take for myself, to deepen my own practice.  Some classes I like to go to because they have sequencing or cueing that helps me guide the people in my classes.  Either way it is a compliment to all of my teachers that they help me be a better instructor.

The more advanced classes, Level II, I enjoy for my own stretching.  The Level I classes and All Level classes I like for the review (again and again) of the basics.

When teaching a class I have to take into account the lowest common denominator.  The person that is new to yoga has to be my main focus.  Everyone that knows what a Sun Salutation is knows how to follow along.  For those new to yoga I repeat the sequence, the alignment cues, the left and right of the postures.  For the comfort of everyone I do not allow myself to go any deeper into a pose than the least flexible person in the room.  I take that back, I do go deeper and I show the next fullest expression of the posture for those that are ready to try that added benefit.  Then I come back to the level of the newest member and keep my eyes on the group.

People don’t want to admit to not knowing the postures.  I can tell who they are.  It’s okay, there’s usually more than one person that is trying something for the first time.  I have to keep it slow, basic, informed.  We all end together regardless of the level of experience.  And we continue to breath.