Show and tell

Hello, yogis!

So, you might have noticed that I’ve been writing here a little less than normal lately. I’ve been busy working on another project that I’ve mentioned here before – my book.

It deals with something that I don’t talk about on this blog – or in real life, for that matter – my life growing up as an actor. I started working at age four and retired from the film industry at age 22. I realized that I was no longer passionate about my job and got tired of just being “that girl from Mrs. Doubtfire/Independence Day/Matinee.”

I decided that rather than becoming a stereotypical flame-out of a child actor, I would leave LA, move across the country with my boyfriend (who you now know as “Husband”) and try to carve out a more authentic path for myself. It was a difficult – and unpopular – decision, but it was the best one I ever made. I wanted a life that felt truthful, not just one that looked good a glossy magazine cover. I needed to figure out who I wanted to be when I grew up.

Turns out, I wanted to be a yogi.

But I also wanted to be a writer. So, I’ve been working on my memoir, a blog for the book, as well as starting my new gig as a contributing writer for HelloGiggles. I have a literary agent and we are working on edits now.

I will still be here, posting about mindfulness and back-bending, but since I might be here a little less often, I wanted to also let you in on what else was going on in my life.

JustHereJustNow now has the most wonderful readers that I could ever have hoped for. It is no exaggeration to say that without the kindness and support that I have received from all of you here – I never would have been brave enough to write a book.

So, thank you. You truly were integral to this whole process, and that’s why I wanted to share it with you.

And thank you for continuing to read and engage, even though my attentions are a little divided at the moment. But I promise to always be back here, talking about joy and sweat and why I will always love Standing Bow.

If you would like to be kept up to date on the progress of the book and musings from my former life, check out the blog – today’s post was about authenticity, so my yoga roots are still very much intact! Please also join me on Facebook or Twitter.

Namaste, y’all!

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Give it 60%: battling perfectionism in yoga

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perfectionism

Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.

~Brené Brown

A friend of mine was talking with our yoga teacher before class and I heard this advice from the instructor.

“Just go in there and give it 60%”

How un-Bikram-ish.

Isn’t it all about “100% effort, 100% results??”

Yeah, well, this is where yoga reminds us to hold dualities comfortably.

Sometimes, you just need to be good enough. For those of us who happen to be perfectionists (yoga, particularly Bikram, seems to breed many of those) some days we need to remember it’s a win that we even showed up. We need to give ourselves a little break.

I’ve been reading the work of Brene Brown lately – I swear that woman speaks to my soul. She talks about the connection between perfectionism and shame. We are perfectionists because we are worried that if people find out we are flawed, we will be deemed unloveable and unceremoniously rejected.

I don’t tend to think of myself as much of a “type A” person but I seem to struggle with perfectionism in the hot room. I want to be thought of as a good yogi. I want to be accepted into the yogi community. I often feel too shy to tell people that I write a yoga blog because I worry that they will say “You? You write a yoga blog? But I just saw you fall out of Standing Bow three times. How are you qualified to write about yoga?”

So, yeah, I guess I would be one of those perfectionists.

When we think about giving it 60% –  accepting something that is imperfect –  it tends to make us nervous. But what really happens when we decide to be happy with “good enough”? What happens when I don’t have to be flawless, all the time?

When I accept those realities, it opens up space for so much more acceptance. Love. Kindness. Gratitude.

After all, I don’t expect everyone else to be perfect. Why should I be?

This is not about laziness or being too soft on yourself. Shockingly few people have that problem and I am certainly not one of them. This is about being compassionate to yourself, because that opens up the likelihood of having more compassion for others.

Maybe try it. Just once. Go in with the expectation that you are going to have a fine class. It’s going to be completely okay.

You don’t always have to move mountains. Maybe sometimes you can just sit there, with your open, brave, honest heart –  and they will come to you.

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Hell-bent: book review and giveaway!

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Benjamin Lorr, Bikram yoga, Hell-bent

***This giveaway is now closed. Thanks so much to all who entered and congratulations to April!!!***

I read this book in three days.

It only took me that long because I had to host Thanksgiving in the middle of it.

Benjamin Lorr recently sent me his new book, Hell-Bent: obsession, pain and the search for something like transcendence in competitive yoga. 

It’s the story of Ben’s journey, and the journey of many others, though the ups and downs of Bikram yoga. He talks to the hard-core and the disillusioned. The healed and the cynics. He separates Bikram the man from Bikram the yoga practice.

This is not a dreamy love poem to yoga, nor is it a scandalous exposé. It’s an arms-wide-open exploration of a practice that has been personally life changing for the author.

The stories of teacher training and competition are alluring and terrifying, in equal measure. The stories of Bikram Choudhury himself are shocking, both for their level of compassion and cruelty. These stories act as an important reminder that deifying or vilifying someone (or something) never tells the entire story. The yoga, once again, is all about balance.

The truth, the complicated beauty, lies in the gray area between the certainty. As the author says,

“Yoga is simply one of those things impervious to certainty, as incapable of corruption as it is of authenticity. No amount of bossy, possessive attempts to claim a “real yoga” will make it otherwise…the only one thing for certain is the more certain someone gets about yoga, the wronger it goes.”

Ben’s writing style is engaging and funny, his research is in-depth and unflinching. The book made me fall deeper in love with the practice – in all its sweaty, conflicted glory.

After I read it, I immediately wanted to give it to every yogi I know. Including you. So here you go!

To win a copy of Hell-Bent, go check out Ben’s site at www.hell-bent.com.

Then come back and leave a comment on this post.

That’s it!

To have an extra chance to win, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, subscribe by email (top left) or re-tweet the giveaway and leave another comment saying that you have done so. The giveaway will be open for one week, I’ll close it on Friday December 14th at 9am EST. A winner will be chosen randomly.

Good luck!!

————-

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What I’m reading: Everyday Sacred

Tags

Bikram yoga, gratitude, life lessons, mindfulness

I recently finished reading this book.

I began reading this book two days before that.

It took two whole days because Husband made me come to bed.

Everyday Sacred has been on my shelf for a while; I picked it up at a library book sale for $1 and then promptly forgot about it. It’s a beautiful and simple book. Sue Bender captured my heart as soon as she started talking about her love of throwing pottery. I share such a love.

But she made my stomach flip when she spoke of making shattered pots. These are bowls that are lovingly thrown and fired, then smashed intentionally. The pots are then glued back together in an homage to change and impermanence, each one even more unique and stunning because of its cracks and damage.

She tells a story of participating in a sweat lodge ceremony. The leader told her that you go there “to die.” She said she was completely overwhelmed and afraid at first, then, as time passed, she felt calm. Deeply calm.

“Having no place to hide, I had felt my fear and the fear cracked open…the more I was able to stay with, not move away from, uncomfortable feelings, the more I was also able to feel happy and alive.”

Sounds just like a Bikram yoga hot room to me.

I was intrigued by the icon of the begging bowl that keeps coming up in the book. The idea of begging sounds terrible to me. Begging is what you do when you are desperate; when your boyfriend leaves you sobbing in the driveway or you are incapable of taking care of yourself.

But this begging bowl is about receiving, with gratitude, whatever is placed before you.

What an important idea; receiving all of life with grace and thanks, regardless of what is placed in your bowl.

That’s how I want to live my life.

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Yoga Cures by Tara Stiles: a book giveaway!

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giveaway, Tara Stiles, yoga

***Congrats to rawveganincollege! I hope you enjoy the book!***

***This giveaway is now closed. I’ll be contacting a winner soon! Thanks for entering everyone!***

Tara Stiles is a Ford model turned yoga teacher. She is leggy and graceful and gorgeous.

But surprisingly, I don’t hate her.

I actually really like her, because instead of feeling pathetic and full of distain while watching her loveliness, she makes me want to do more sun salutations until I can maybe someday float around like that, too. She somehow instils a sense of hope.

I started checking out Tara’s YouTube channel and did a few of her yoga routines. In one of them, she nonchalantly suggests trying out crow and says if you get one foot of the ground, fine. Another one? Fine.

I scoffed. I can’t do crow. Crow is one of the crazy ones. It’s not for me. But I found that her relaxed suggestion actually allowed me the space to try it. And after a couple days of doing the routine – holy hell, I actually did CROW! It was awesome and a really nice reminder not to limit myself or my practice.

I was recently sent Tara’s new book, Yoga Cures and I am really enjoying it.

It suggests a few postures to try for common ailments, along with photos and detailed explanations. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve tried out the cures for PMS, Tummy Troubles, Chill the *&@# Out and Monkey Mind (Wow. I must be a joy to live with.) After each one I felt simultaneously relaxed and energized.

I love the photo index of postures at the back. It’s perfect for those moments when I can not for the life of me remember if I mean Warrior I or Warrior II.

What is even better than the lovely photos and the helpful cures, is reading Tara’s thoughts on yoga. She is just so…chill. It’s like sitting down with a particularly cool yogi friend. It’s straightforward and not at all fussy.

“I don’t like to think of myself as a yoga teacher because it sets up a student/teacher thing and that makes me feel like I need a ruler and a notebook to strut around the room. I prefer yoga guide. I can help get you plugged in, but you don’t owe me anything…Just do the work. Be heathy and happy…At the end of the day, you are your best teacher. I am just simply here to ride shotgun on your journey back to yourself.”

-Tara Styles

This book is going to be a permanent fixture on my shelf. It’s a reference guide, a refresher and a wonderful motivator. I’ve already covered it in sticky notes.

And yep, you can get a copy, too.

Leave a comment on this post to be entered to win a copy of Yoga Cures. To have an extra chance to win, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, subscribe by email (top left) or re-tweet the giveaway and leave another comment saying that you have done so. (US readers only, please!)

The giveaway will be open through Thursday, at which point I will randomly choose a winner and the publisher will send you a book!

Good luck and happy down-dogging!

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Just now now: book induced teleportation

Tags

Alexandra Fuller, Books, Southern Africa, Travel

Just now now: a photo representing the past week; a visual gratitude journal, of sorts. 

My heart belongs to Southern Africa.

I can’t entirely explain it.

I was obsessed with the place for a solid twenty years before I ever set foot on African soil. And when I finally did, it was better than I could have imagined. It was like coming home.

I’m now a ridiculously lucky duck; I have been over there several times and I freelance with organizations that do work in South Africa.

I’ll live there someday.

It’s now been almost seven months since I was in Africa and I miss it like a dear, far away friend.

When the missing is like this, books ease the ache. This week, it’s been hard to get my nose out of Scribbling The Cat by Alexandra Fuller. I loved her first book, Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight documenting her childhood during the Rhodesian/Zimbabwean civil war.

Here in Virginia, the weather is getting cooler, the dog curls up on the couch next to me and I am powerless to resist. I might just be flipping pages, but I’m suddenly back in Southern Africa. Fuller’s story is painful and beautiful and it reminds me the power of a good story to transport you.

I don’t think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don’t think we have the range of emotion to fully feeling what someone else is feeling. I don’t think we can sit in judgement of another human being. We’re incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. Is it possible – from the perspective of this quickly spinning Earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin – to know the difference between right, wrong, good and evil? I don’t know if it’s even useful to try.

-Scribbling the Cat

Why are there some places that just get into your soul and stay there?

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What I’m reading: The Artist’s Way

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The Artist's Way

I have, once again, started reading The Artist’s Way. I bought it a while ago at a library book sale, because it is One Of Those Books; the kind I should read and want to read but I never quite get to it. Or I read the first chapter and decide – yes! I am going to do this! And then I discover Pinterest.

It’s not just a book; it is an in-depth course in jump-starting your creativity. So, I thought I’d talk about it here, as a sort of public commitment to the process. I’ve been doing Morning Pages for a while now, albeit with sporadic levels of enthusiasm and consistency. (Morning pages, if you are not familiar, are three pages of unedited, stream of consciousness writing that are done on a daily basis.) The writing is pretty much garbage, but my hope is that I can subject the private morning pages notebook to my terrible prose and get it out of my system so you nice people don’t have to read it on my blog. Plus, I get out all my crazy, manic issues on the page, and I’ve found that they are less likely to surface at inopportune moments.

In order to really get into the book and the program, I need to deal with some labeling issues that I am finding myself tripped up by. Namely, am I declaring myself an artist by participating in this creative process? If I’m an artist doesn’t that mean I have to leave my husband, live in a SOHO loft, take up binge drinking and wear flamboyant pants? Don’t I have to suffer?

I was listening to an NPR interview recently, with an acclaimed young writer. Her first novel is getting tons of attention, and she was asked how it felt. She laughed and she had a hard time defining herself as a writer, let alone a successful one.

I, too, struggle to claim the title of writer. Clearly, the fact that I’ve been writing stories since I could hold a crayon and have a hard time going a whole day without expressing myself on paper is not enough. Because when you tell people at a party that you are a writer – or an actor or painter or anything else that feels artsy – you are automatically required to prove it somehow, as if you are alleging to be a unicorn. The lack of official credentials seems to relegate artistic pursuits to a murky fantasy world that isn’t quite legit. No one does that with plumbers. No one puts on the cynical face and says “Oh yeah? What do you plumb?”

It’s not fair. We need art in this world, just as much as we need that leaky faucet to be repaired.

I’m enjoying this book and the ensuing artistic adventure thus far, and Julia Cameron speaks to my love to awakening to life. She says wonderful and relevant things, like:

The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment, when taken alone, was always bareable. In the exact now, we are all, always, all right. Yesterday the marriage might have ended. Tomorrow the cat might die. The phone call from the lover, for all my waiting, may never come, but just at the moment, just now, that’s all right. I am breathing in and out.

So, through all this murkiness of labels and self-definition, I delve into the Artist’s Way. It really is an amazing spiritual journey and anyone could benefit from this chance to get to know yourself a little better. Even if you think there is no art in you at all. Even if you are a plumber.

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Techie Tao: digital spirituality

Tags

Books, spirituality

I’m reading the Tao Te Ching on my Kindle.

Is that weird? Is there something strange about reading an ancient and sacred text on a Kindle? Something that is so…not a scroll?

I’m still getting used to the Kindle in general. I love tech toys but I miss the smell of paper; I’m one of those nerds who shoves her face into old library books. I miss the feeling of turning a page and no, the page turning sound on the iPad doesn’t work for me, either. I can’t help it…I’m a writer; I like paper.

All these feelings are pushed to the extreme while reading something like the Tao Te Ching electronically. These are seriously revered texts. There is just something unnerving about it being digital, though I can’t entirely explain why. (Wait, isn’t the Tao about the acceptance of not knowing? Well, maybe it does still work on the Kindle…)

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Is this where we are heading with e-books? Will future “book” shelves hold just vases and frames?

I must admit that the Kindle has some serious perks – it’s pretty awesome that Nelson Mandela’s 500+ page autobiography Long Walk to Freedom no longer takes up my entire carry-on. I also really do love the idea that going electronic saves trees and reduces toxic ink chemicals. Apparently, the carbon footprint analysis of e-books really is a legitimate environmental trade off; in this particularly icky analogy, e-readers are considered the “cloth diapers of books.” Um, eww. But point taken.

They are no longer printing the Oxford English Dictionary and Amazon sells more ebooks than hardcovers. That’s how digital we’ve become. It’s kind of weird to think that the dictionary is extinct.

I know. It’s as if I’m clutching a box of cassette tapes, yelling “No! I like it this way!”

It is undeniably amazing that I can download Autobiography of a Yogi. From my couch. In 30 seconds. For free.

I just wish they could make it smell like dead tree.

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Freedom: deep questions from a light post

Tags

childfree, life choices

I was walking down a street the other day, a street that I have walked a million times. On the day I needed it most, I saw this:

That is an excellent question, Light Post.

What would I do if I were free?

Free from worry, what-if-ing, social pressure, internal pressure, self-doubt?

I might work pro-bono for for causes I believe in and I might ignore people who don’t count it as real work.

I might flirt with my husband.

I might respond, without qualification, that I’m not planning on having children and I might not get uncomfortable that it makes people uncomfortable.

I might remember that you are not a kind person if you are kind to everyone else, and an asshole to yourself.

I might own my square-pegness.

I might wear pigtails, even though I’m 32.

I might simply decide that it’s OK to be happy.

I might do things that don’t sound like me, just to see if they fit.

I might gracefully let go of people who need to be let go of.

I might get up and laugh, after falling flat on my face in a grand failure that is spectacular in scope. And then I might try something different.

I might go places and see things that confuse me and change me in inalterable ways.

And I might stay home all day and play with my dog.

That’s what I would do if I was free.

What would you do?

————–

Just before posting this, I read the following passage in the wonderful book I am reading. It is staggeringly appropriate and quite beautiful, so I thought I’d share:

“…he is repowered and free to be whatever he wants, free to pursue the hugest aim, the confidence right in his bones to be his particular I…Free to go ahead and be stupendous. Free to enact the boundless, self-defining drama of the pronouns we, they and I.”

– The Human Stain, by Philip Roth

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Simple, but not easy: meditation

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Jon Kabat-Zinn

Next to my bed is my (appropriately named) bedside table.

There are a few things which hold a permanent place upon it.

• A glass of water.
• A piece of paper and a pencil for those 3am moments of list-making mania.
• Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

I’ve had panic attacks since I was a kid. In a word, they suck. One minute you are fine, the next you are gasping for air and feeling as if they are nailing your coffin lid shut. Fun stuff.

The idea of managing panic attacks with meditation seemed as likely a pairing as tar and sunshine. Meditation always seemed like something exotic and sacred. Something that could only be accomplished on a mountain top or in a room painted all in gold and stinking of incense, by inherently peaceful men wrapped in cloth. It had nothing to do with me gasping for air while crouching in a school hallway with my fingernails embedded in my palms.

But that stereotype of meditation changed for me when I was introduced to the writings of Jon Kabat-Zinn. He’s is not quite the Holy Man I had in mind to become my meditation guru. He’s a doctor. He looks logical and scientific and not exactly in touch with any spiritual realm; he’s got a Ph.D. in molecular biology for pete’s sake.

But because of that, he makes meditation accessible. Reasonable. He removes any sticky religious connotations and looks at the tangible effects that meditation has on your body and mind.

He discusses the simplicity of meditation – personified by the hilariously titled Wherever You Go There You Are- but reiterates that simple is not synonymous with easy. This is no high minded existential rambling (not that I don’t love that, but sometimes it’s nice to have some science-y stuff to help with the motivation that you really are doing something worthwhile.)

Here are some of his books to check out if you are interested in learning more about meditation or enhancing your existing practice.

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life  

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness

 Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness 

Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness 

Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting 

The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness

Kabat-Zinn always says that it is important to not talk about your practice too much with other people; it’s your practice. Don’t bother wasting your energy by telling everyone how amazing meditation is and how much it has helped you in your everyday life. Never proselytize and tell others that they should meditate, too.

So I won’t.

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