“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are
afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that
life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to
learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections.
If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love
others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better
world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who
embrace life.”
-John Lennon-
A friend hugged me in class tonight, it was one of those hugs where you really feel connected to the person giving it, you feel loved and supported. I love hugs, I love making a connection with another person and creating a space for them to feel at ease and important. Sometimes people just need a hug. Well tonight, my friend hugged me, and instead of letting go a few second later she held on and gave me a little back massage. When she finally let go, she told me that my back muscles, the rhomboids, right behind my heart, felt really tense. She said, I bet you need to find a way to let some things go. It was an amazing feeling to have someone hug me and have my body respond to that touch with resistance. I've been thinking a lot about the fear of letting go: of expectations, of results, of outcomes, of resistance, of things to which I truly have no control. It was amazing to me that without even talking to me, my friend could feel this fear bottled up in the space behind my heart. Secretly, I could feel its collapse and rigidity for a week but I haven't acknowledged it out loud to anyone.
Sometimes it's necessary to be vulnerable; to let fear pass over you and through you so it can transform into something else. There will always be something to be afraid of, but when we collapse into fear we can't find the space to open up and explore what else the world is offering. If we believe throat our fears are our future we can never reach me heights, grow, and shift into a stronger sense of self.
I needed that hug. I needed that hug to remind me to relax, to acknowledge those fears, accept those things that I cannot change, and find a way to let something go! In yoga, we always say, let go what does not serve you, this is one of the hardest things to do but it's also the most transformational.
As I reflect back on the last eight weeks, I feel a deep sense of gratitude. Every week these amazing human beings brought their best selves, shed their comfort zones, and set out to create new boundaries for themselves and for the other people sitting open and vulnerable in the same position.
I originally set out to expand my community, to build some new friendships, and to find a way back to who I am. I am blown away by the fact that a mere eight weeks later, my life has been profoundly altered in both small and monumental ways. I have gained such an amazing group of friends. It's amazing how fast and strong you can build a bond with another person when you set out to change our life in the same way. I have gained a huge community of teachers and students since I started this program. Now when I walk into a CorePower Studio there is at least one person who waves, smiles, and says hello! This has helped transform my neighborhood and my confidence when I walk into a studio to practice. I truly feel supported by this expansive community and now I just want to be a part of it in a larger and more comprehensive way.
It's weird, the plan I had for my present life had stopped at this point. I had thought intensely about doing teacher training and now, at it's end, and at the beginning of the next phase of teaching, I feel this sense of uncertainty and possibility simultaneously rolled into one. At least from this moment on my mat, I feel stronger, I feel more connected, I feel joy, I feel a sense of truth, I feel a sense of deep accomplishment, and a sense of profound courage.
Here's to forging new territory and discovering what lies ahead.
My incredible teachers at CPY: Kelly, Amanda and Kristie Rose.
BURSTING WITH LOVE FOR THESE THREE.
Registered Yoga Teacher! Here's to the continued journey!
I stumbled upon Brené Brown's TED Talk almost a year ago. I was so blown away by the words coming out of this brave, beautiful woman. Everything she was talking about deeply resonated in every fiber of my being. So of course, I watched the video three more times, taking notes, and trying to break down and implement everything she so eloquently talks about.
Brené is a vulnerability "researcher-storyteller". She has been studying the effects of shame and vulnerability for over ten years. Her 2010 TED Talk, given to a "small" audience of 500, soon became a phenomenon (over 4 million people have watched it since). She seemed to hit a deep and profound nerve of the American psyche. Her research is vital to healing of our individual selves and the world we share with billions of others. When we seek to be vulnerable, the world opens the door to an abundance of opportunity, joy, love, compassion, and freedom.
Using quotes from the three separate talks below, I wanted to share with you some of the most profound moments of her talks. Brené says we can't talk about vulnerability without first talking about shame. Shame is "a focus on self". Shame lives and breathes in the world of "I am not enough." It's referred to by Jungian Psychologists as the "Swampland of the Soul". Shame and Fear are ONLY ever overcome by a willingness to surrender to a sense of "extreme vulnerability". We must be willing "to lean in to the discomfort" to really be able to free ourselves from shame and fear. Her lifelong research as uncovered that people with a "strong sense of love and belonging, believe they are worthy of love and belonging". It only takes the belief that YOU are WORTHY. That is profoundly empowering.
Brené talks about the importance of realizing that "vulnerability is NOT weakness. It's emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty, and it's the MOST ACCURATE measurement of COURAGE." She discovered, combing through years of interviews with hundreds of different people, that the people living from a place of vulnerability all had one very important thing in common, "wholeheartedness".
Brené categorizes wholeheartness using three unifying parts:
1. Courage: to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart, to be imperfect
2. Compassion: to be kind to yourself first and then radiate that to others
3. Connection: as a result of authenticity, to fully embracing vulnerability by believing that failure is fundamental to your life and happiness.
She consistently emphasizes that, "vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging and love." Furthermore, she says, "you cannot selectively numb your emotions: when we numb, we numb everything." So when you shut out shame and fear, you also shut out joy, happiness, gratitude! It's a all for one and one for all proposition. When shame and fear rule our lives, we are unable and unwilling to feel and accept all of the things in our lives that are a source of happiness! She says, "We make the uncertain, certain. We perfect. We pretend that what we do doesn't have an effect on other people," and this disconnection from ourselves and each other is what fuels our world. She suggests that when we "let ourselves be seen, deeply. to love with our whole hearts, even when there is no guarantee, practice gratitude and joy, and believe that we are enough, then we stop screaming and stop listening", and radical and profound transformation begins to take place.
2010 Ted Talk on Vulnerability
2012 Ted Talk about Shame
Brené and the amazing Jonathan Fields, from The Good Life Project talking about Vulnerability
"Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start Here." - Cheryl Strayed
I've already talked about my love for Cheryl Strayed, but this week I was really thinking a lot about GRATITUDE, and her incredible book Tiny Beautiful Things has gratitude oozing out from every page. I feel especially grateful in my life at the moment for every tiny detail. What do you feel grateful for? Maybe it's someone you come home to, maybe it's the first cup of tea in the morning, maybe it's the light in the afternoon. I hope you can take some time this week to really take a moment to soak up something and feel it absorb into you! We don't take enough time in our day to day lives to be grateful for the things that give us purpose, that lift us up, that make us smile. SO this week, make some space to find GRATITUDE in your life. You'll be amazed what happens when you do!
Here's some words of wisdom that were really resonating with me this week. They come from Cheryl Strayed's book: Tiny Beautiful Things.
“Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.”
“You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.”
“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.
"You have to pay your electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.”
Well, It's official. I've crossed over to the dark side (or the light side depending on how you look at it). After nine hours of training over over the last two weeks, I want to be a yoga teacher.
Just when I was about to give up on myself, give up on finding supreme joy in my work life, frustrated by being disconnected from myself and my purpose, I took a giant leap of faith and signed up for this training. Little did I know that five weeks later: I have gained a community of people who support me down to their bones, a studio to practice, a family, a place of courage inside myself I never knew existed, the knowledge that my voice has merit and strength, reconnecting to my body's needs, taking time to rest, and finding the tools within myself to construct a road map to a true sense of purpose.
It was my 26th birthday last weekend and for the first time in a long while I finally feel like I am coming into my purpose; that true sense of self where I am allowed to love my job, where I am allowed to love my life, and where I am allowed balance and community. Those are powerful and life changing things to discover in only five short weeks.
Two weeks ago, we had a six hour anatomy training weekend. It was amazing to be able to learn about the micro inner workings of our bones and muscles. I gained such a wealth of new information and understanding that I am sure will not be done sinking in for quite a long time. It's amazing how much our body does for us and how often we take it for granted. Next time you have a moment, think about something you take for granted in your body and acknowledge it's purpose and sincerely thank it for functioning.
Last weekend, we dove head first into adjustments. This was the most meaningful lecture for me thus far in this program. Adjustments can be such an amazing addition to a class. I am one of those yoga students that is jealously peering around the room to see who the teacher is helping adjust deeper into a pose, silently pleading to them,"Help me relax and move deeper into the pose!". I feel so grateful to have the tools and intuition to safety help others move there now. I feel like I was imbued with a super power and I can't wait to be able to use it!
We had a fun time coming up with love adjustments and creepy/ouch adjustments!
Our lecture was taught by some of my new favorite CPY ladies: Kristie Rose & Inanna & Racquel
A dear friend of mine was visiting this weekend from Washington DC. We hadn't seen each other in quite a long time and every day was filled with long talks about happiness and the joys and frustrations we have and can't seem to find in our lives at the moment. Both us of us are women, both of us are in major transitional moments in our lives, both of us are optimists, and both of us truly strive to find the good in the everyday. Lately, for both of us, this has been difficult. Mostly this has been due to the rapid rate of change that has infused our lives for the past few years and the struggle of learning and growing into our adult selves. The TED: Talks summits have been a place that we have both found really inspiring people who are offering constructive solutions to finding joy, happiness, and bravery especially in moments of uncertainty and doubt. I was so inspired by them that I thought I would periodically share some of them with all of you.
Shawn's talk is totally worth 12 minutes of your time. He is fast talker and by the end of his video you will want to take some concrete action to shift the happiness in your life. The amazing thing about Shawn's view on the world is that it stems from science and can be tangibly applied to your life in a way that will deliver concrete results.
Shawn studies "positive psychology" which he defines as "the lens though which your brain views the world and how that lens then shapes your reality". He suggests that "if you can change the lens, not only can you change your happiness, but we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time."He has found that a person's level of happiness is determined 90% by our internal perceived world view and 10% by the external world. This means that we are in control of 90% of our happiness. That's incredible. That means that the power to be happy lies WITHIN ourselves and the outside world has a very small impact on our happiness levels, even though we perceive it to be flipped.
About halfway through Shawn's conversation, he talks about our warped perceptions of happiness. He goes as far as to say that "we've pushed happiness beyond the cognitive horizon"which means that "every time your brain has a success, you've just changed the goalpost for what success looks like and when happiness is on the other side of success your brain never gets there". We created an unsustainable model for happiness that can never be fully obtained because we measure happiness through the lens of our success.
Shawn posits that the way to be happy to is "be positive in the present". This presence is what he calls, "The Happiness Advantage" which means that "your brain at positive preforms significantly better than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed." Happiness stimulates the dopamine receptors in your body and when you are happy dopamine turns on all the learning centers in the brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a totally different way. When we begin to understand that the power to be happy lies in how we see ourselves, we can begin to define our lives by the things in the world that make us feel grateful, accepted, content, and less by the things that consume our negative perceptions of the world.
Try this at home. Challenge yourself to be present, mindful, and filled with gratitude for yourself and those around you.
My friend and I challenged ourselves to Shawn's 21 Day Challenge. I'll update you half way through to share my thoughts and see if I start to feel more deeply connected to myself and the world around me.
Shawn's 21 Day Challenge: Creating Lasting Positive Change: Rewiring You Brain
1. Write down 3 new gratitudes a day: scan the world for the positive not the negative
2. Journal about one positive experience over the past 24 hours: allowing you to re-live those moments
3. Exercise: teaches your brain that your behavior matters
4. Meditate: helps us gain control of our cultural ADHD
5. Random or Conscious Acts of Kindness: Write one positive email or note (or tell them in person) praising someone in your life or social support network
Doing this daily for 21 days creates a new normal, makes a shift internally for you to create a revolution in yourself to help inspire a ripple affect in the world around you.
I've always been intrigued by the beautiful strands of beads that I've seen on delicate display cases at yoga studios and wrapped around the wrists of my favorite teachers. These beaded strands are always a mixture of bright and lovely colors that invite you to stop and look at them. I've paused several times over the past month to feel the smooth roundness of the beads and wondered what meaning they carried within them. Each strands carries a small tag with a short description of what the beads signify and the mindful intentions imbued upon the wearer.
The japa mala is a strand of 108 beads, each bead is touched as the yogi
goes through repetitive prayer, reciting the same mantra or prayer,
with each new bead. Each strand has a 109th bead at the end of the
strand. This bead known as the bindu or the "guru" bead, it sits outside
the strand of 108. When one reaches this 109th bead it signals the
wearer to switch to the opposite direction and continue the prayer around
the strand again. The prayer then becomes an endless cycle of repetitive
intention, never ceasing. Just as yoga is a moving meditation, so are these
beads. Japa in Sanskirt stems from jap, which translates as
"uttering in a low (or internal) voice". The japa mala becomes an
extension of the person who wears them, a secret is stored in the beads
that only the wearer knows how to unlock.
So in order to do a little more research before just picking one up at the studio, I found the website on the back of one of the strands and found out that they came from a little store in downtown Denver. Since my parents live fifteen minutes away from the store, I immediately called up my mom and asked her to make a little detour downtown for me. I was on the website for over an hour, trying to select the beads that reflected a color I liked and a message I felt resonated with my personality and intentions. I had picked out several choices and my mom set off on her mission to find them for me. Little did I know what she had in store for her.
My mom entered the small store, Tibet Imports, off 6th Ave in Denver, and immediately inquired about my bead selections, thinking she would just pick a color and be on her way. One of the owners, named Sarita, stood quietly behind the counter and stopped my mom immediately, "Wait, I need to know so much more about this woman before we start talking about the beads." My mom was surprised by the question and was immediately encouraged to tell her more about me and my wish for the beads. They talked for generally about my intention for the beads, my birth date, the hour of my birth, and my astrology sign. Then Sarita entered everything meticulously into a computer until out came the perfect "recipe" for my japa mala.
As Sarita began to deconstruct the meaning behind the strand, the bead color: garnet, the string color: dark blue, the 109th bead or the "guru" bead: the Rahu bead for grounding; she slowly strung the 108 beads together, knot by knot, the woman told the story of who I am and how these beads would aid me in my life.The amazing thing was that the woman knew so much about me as a person, without ever having met me. In my kitchen this past weekend (my mom was visiting to help out on short film collaboration between my boyfriend and I), my mom pulled the japa mala strand from a small purple bag and began to describe it's deep meaning to me. I was amazed to discover that the beads were infused with my deepest intentions; all without ever speaking them aloud to myself or other people. I now carry this strand of small beads on my wrist, especially when I need to connect to my intentions. It has turned a pretty necklace into a unlikely spiritual intention.
