A Love Letter to My Younger Yogi Self

A Love Letter to My Younger Yogi Self-

Hey there, slightly broken bird. I see you, proud but nervous, confident but willing to try something new. Thank you for finding yoga. Thank you for finding this home. And for seeking out wise teachers, more knowledgeable than you. And for knowing, despite your brazenness, that you needed to find a soft place to heal. Know that your decision to walk through those doors on that very first day will set you on a lifetime path of learning and growing.

You did well landing into the rooms of some of the most incredible teachers - yogis who will lovingly guide you through a system of yoga that is so smart, so kind, so intentional.

You will be surprised to learn as you grow older how yoga will hold your hand through some of your most incredible life moments. So keep coming.

Stick with it. Stick with it when it feels clumsy or hard. 

Stick with it when it feels heavenly and profound. 

And show up for all the days in between.

Roll out your mat more days than not. 

Practice yoga when you want to. And practice when you don’t. The days will add up and one day, far, far, far from now you will credit yoga for ushering you through some of your life’s greatest challenges.

You will be disappointed to discover that you can’t get an A here. Nor can you win. But you will learn to be astounded by the gifts of this practice.

Find teachers you trust and admire and make you feel seen. Teachers who push you but not too hard. Teachers who remind you to soften and be gentle with yourself. Teachers who mirror how strong and beautiful and capable you already are. Teachers who take the practice seriously, but not themselves. Teachers who will challenge what you think you know. Teachers who know what a profound honor it is to have you in their space. And who would never, ever take that for granted.

Never return to a class if you find a teacher who belittles you or anyone else. They are not worthy of your time. Move on.

You will learn to harness the skill of discernment in so many ways.

Practice the poses you love and the ones you don’t. Give yourself the grace to come to realize that these poses mirror our lives off the mat, and we must learn to show up and breathe through it all. The parts we love. The parts we don’t. The transitions. The big moments. The hard ones. The restful ones.

Never skip savasana.

Know that as you awkwardly or uncomfortably try to find ease in a long hold of a pose, that you are preparing yourself to breathe through life’s inevitable challenges. 

May you learn to find grace in the midst of struggle. Humor when you falter. Humility when you succeed.

Have so much fun doing all the crazy, fancy poses if you choose. Feel elated when, after years of consistent practice and effort, a pose that at one time felt impossible, now feels almost effortless.

Also know that whether or not you do that pose has zero to do with enlightenment.

And that one day you may not even care about those postures anymore.

Make space for the possibility that one day your practice will become the most sacred space where what you truly crave is ultimately sitting in stillness. Know yourself well enough to realize that you may need to move a lot to eventually become still. When you finally get there, relish in deep relaxation, a quieter mind, and a feeling of contentment, regardless of life’s circumstances.

Remember always that you are not an advanced yogi simply because you take a hard class and make fancy shapes.

Remind yourself that kindness off your mat is a million times more profound than any posture.

Know that the physical strength and flexibility you gain on your mat will empower you through marathons, childbirth, ski trips, and massive hikes.

Use your practice as an opportunity to hone the most encouraging and loving internal voice. And an opportunity to notice when that voice is less than kind that you can choose to change it. 

Would you believe me if I said your practice will become one of the most enduring relationships of your lifetime?

Or that you would seek out your mat to ease a grieving or broken heart?

Or that you will come to love this practice so much that you pivot your entire life’s trajectory so that you can become a teacher yourself? And then a teacher’s teacher?

Or that you will come to know and love so many students, peers, and friends through the years because you found each other through yoga?

Keep your heart open to the possibility that your practice will change and evolve so much through the years but that the breath will always, always be the most important part.

So keep practicing, young yogi.

Keep practicing no matter what.

With love always.

Thank you, Loco

“We are all just walking each other home.” 

Ram Dass

Yet again, the practices of presence, breath, yoga, sobriety and gratitude are carrying me through all of life’s offerings.

Our yoga practice teaches us how to show up for what is with equanimity. But we are human, and many times life offers us experiences that we would like to dull or avoid altogether. Some of us love a nice long hold in warrior 2 - we feel aligned, powerful, focused. Or perhaps we lay in the beautiful rest in savasana - peaceful, content, right sized. But then parivrtta ardha chandrasana (revolved half moon) comes along, and we may feel challenged, awkward, uncomfortable, even defeated. Or a class offers an inversion that brings up fear or resistance. We hold each pose equally for whatever each one offers, and, like all things, they eventually end, and we are on to the next thing. But each one demands our steady attention, a small, measured breath, and calls on us to sit with the experience without escape or distraction.

In recent months, weeks, and days we have been keeping watchful eyes over our beloved older dog. If you have loved an animal, you know all too well that this is the painful stage that we sign up for when we let an animal into our hearts and homes and they become family. I cannot imagine a greater honor than holding vigil and ushering a creature who has offered us nothing else but unconditional love through this final stage of life.

Our animals teach us so much. How to live with unadulterated joy. How to greet your people with complete enthusiasm, whether they’ve been gone for five minutes or five hours. They hold such stealth and quiet space for us when we are in grief or heartbreak, and they are up for absolutely any adventure, anytime, anywhere. The love they have is the purest, has no strings, no conditions. They remind us of the wisdom of a well-timed nap in a patch of sun, and that delicious snacks are always a great idea. They teach us day after day that we should never miss an opportunity for a snuggle and that holding grudges or resentments is a waste of this precious life. 

They teach us how to love. Every moment of every day.

Loco was the king of our home. He took care of our girls when they were younger and did his best to teach his younger brothers not to be knuckleheads. When our girls got older and the inevitable separation of adolescence ensued, he was my constant love and support. He was soulful and regal and the best, best boy. For this, we forgave his pathological love of stealing underwear, the time he ate the Thanksgiving turkey, the scary and expensive lesson that sugarfree gum with xylitol can be fatal for dogs, and the myriad of other antics of his youth. But as an older dog, he held court over our home, a quiet, reassuring presence to us all.

We knew his last day was coming, and we did the gut wrenching wondering as to when the right time would be. We wanted only to honor him and let him go before he had too much (ideally any) pain. With our fur babies, they don’t want us to know they suffer as they are there for us up until the very end. We did not want to hold onto him a moment too long for us. We knew we owed him the grace of passing on peacefully. So we watched and waited.

Until we knew.

We spent his whole last day gathered around him, petting him, and telling him all the reasons we love him. I sat in upavistha konasana (a wide straddle) for hours, with him lying peacefully between my legs, petting him, telling him how he was the best boy, and that it was okay to let go. This is why I practice yoga. Not to practice fancy asana, but to be able to sit in profound peace, whether in times of sadness or contentment. The profundity of the practice felt so real in that moment. We practice yoga, not to be good at poses, but to be able to show up fully for whatever comes.

To be able to sit in ease with Loco for hours on his final day, without distraction, and allow myself to feel the hugeness of the love and the deep grief of loss was the most beautiful practice of all.

When we gathered for his final moments, he seemed tired and ready.  Our tears flowed as we held our boy for the last time. He licked my hand up until his last breath, as if reassuring me through the experience, the consummate caretaker of our family.

The pain and grief we experience when we lose someone we love is the natural consequence of loving so deeply. I would not dull a moment of it, just as I wouldn’t dull a moment of the incredible joy and love we get to experience. You all know this. I watch as your cats and dogs and humans mill around you as you practice, always sticking close. I must confess, seeing your beloved pets is one of my favorite and unexpected joys of teaching zoom yoga.

How lucky are we to learn to show up for all of it? The luckiest.

Home

I am writing to you from an airport lounge, waiting to board a red eye to get home. Home… the notion of “home” has been my meditation and wondering for the past many, many months. 

To say my life has been in a time of change recently would be an understatement. I know I am not alone in this. We have all been riding the waves of change, and the longer I live the more the cliche rings true that change, indeed, is the only constant. A younger version of me had even etched in a journal that “Change is not painful. It is the resistance to change that is.” 

In the midst of these changes, there has been a constant wondering if perhaps the time has come to move from our home of over twenty-five years. This, of course, has brought up so many feelings and intense resistance. I wondered and worried that this would be too much change. A thousand “what-ifs” ran through my mind. I felt unsure and afraid. As a mother, I feel a primal need to take care of our nest. To suddenly not know where or what our nest was felt lille the ground was falling out beneath me.

In yoga philosophy we study the kleshas, the five obstacles in our lives that can cause pain or suffering. Abhinivesha is one of those kleshas. It is loosely defined as fear, fear of death or clinging ignorantly to life. As I struggled to wonder if I could stay in our home, I felt a very young, very child-like version of myself desperately holding onto an old idea of this home. “I don’t want to leave,” I cried to myself. “I won’t.”

I could feel myself clinging so tightly onto an old idea, an old version of home. This clinging, indeed, was bringing me suffering.

And so I meditated and meditated and meditated on the idea of home.

What is home?

I know it is not any four walls.

It is with us all the time.

It is when I am with my children.

With the people I love.

It is every place I visit.

Every place I stand.

It is when we feel love.

It is in each breath.

Slowly, slowly I began to loosen my grip. Until I was finally able to let go.

This past week, I stepped out of the busyness of my life and traveled to a faraway land. Despite never having been to this particular spot before, I was struck by an overwhelming sense of home. I stood in a valley between two cascading bright green mountains and felt such a visceral sense of peace and home… thousands of miles from the home to which I had been so desperately clinging.

In that moment, standing in a tropical rainfall, my tears merged with that rain and I knew I was home no matter where I was.

Take the Leap

This letter stems from the remembering that we get this one big beautiful life and to remind ourselves to carve out time for connection, travel, friendship, and powerful pilgrimages. .

When I was twenty-two years old I spent a summer on the island of Santorini. When I was fifty-one I returned. I had no idea how profound that journey back would feel. 

As I explored those same white-washed pathways, searching for the place that was home to my younger self all those years ago, it felt like a pilgrimage of sorts, a journey to rediscover the very young and slightly radical altruist as my present day self who now has lived and applied those young ideals into the real live world. As I turned a corner and found the very same, basically unchanged spot where I had watched nightly sunsets, nostalgia hit me in such a wave that I was taken aback and had to sit and allow the tears to come. 

It felt as if that timeless village at the tip of the island was holding my younger self in a time capsule for me to visit. I could see her and feel her as if no time had passed, and yet… It was indeed a lifetime ago. 

I returned as a mother to two young women approaching the same age I had been. My heart swelled at the possibility of all of the adventures before them. My soul felt overwhelmed at the beauty and pain of our lifetimes and how our very lives can feel at once limitless and fleeting, and how we truly get this one awesome chance to make the very most of the limited time we have.

Knowing this was going to be a powerful day, I brought two of my closest friends with me. As women do, they simply bookended me, holding space, bearing witness. Together we walked down hundreds of steps to the sea, my feet remembering how to carry us to a secluded off the beaten track place where we could swim to a small island and jump off a cliff into the sea, just as I had all those years ago.

That high, exhilarating leap felt like a reunion with younger me - all of her brazen confidence, limitless beliefs of changing the world, a hippie traveler collecting experiences and love as she moved along her path.  The joy I experienced as my body plunged into the Aegean was fully realized. I felt viscerally grateful in knowing I am still that same girl but with the wisdom and humility I have worked so hard to achieve. It also felt like a powerful leap of faith as I venture into the next phase of life that holds its own mysteries and unknowns. 

Could I have made that journey alone, opting not to bring my soul sisters along? Of course I could have. But what I know with all I am, every experience - the challenging to the very most fun - is infinitely more powerful when done in a collective. We now carry those experiences together and those women have become an even bigger part of my story. One of them gently pushed me to identify what I was feeling, and I was able to realize that there was some sadness - perhaps more wistful than anything else -  to realize that part of life’s experience was uniquely extraordinary, never to be repeated as I journey into the second half of my life. That epiphany and willingness to feel the complicated swirling of emotions would have been impossible alone.

This is my dharma - knowing completely that when we choose to surround ourselves with kind, powerful, loving and wise chosen friends, the experience takes on a texture impossible to attain alone.

Choosing and curating our friendships and community is everything. I am abundantly grateful for mine.

Take the trips, the leaps. These memories become the fabric of who we are.

Unexpected Lesson

Humans I love!!!

As the days begin to feel shorter, the weather cools, and darkness descends earlier, we are reminded again how the practice of yoga and meditation is our constant companion through all the cycles of life, all of the seasons, all of the chapters. For some of us, it is one of our longest standing relationships - and certainly one of the most beloved.

Despite that I consider myself a fairly intellectual, logically thinking human, I have been known on occasion to seek out guidance from all sorts of sources - yoga teachers, doctors, therapists, and even psychics (and maybe even once or twice a pet psychic - because I miss Bobo the Boxer so much). I am a huge believer in throwing the kitchen sink at a conundrum, the more information the better, and then use the power of discernment to decide what to take or leave.

In one of these recent sessions a woman I was speaking with about a particular challenge I am moving through (notice I did not stay “stuck in”) said, “You are done with the suffering. Now you just have to go through the pain.”

For me this was a mic drop moment. Because pain in life can be inevitable. Shitty things happen. To deny they are painful, to me, would be a denial of truth. However, the suffering part? That in many ways can be optional. Do my thoughts lead to suffering? Do I linger too long in “this is hard” which makes getting through it harder? Do I cast myself as the victim or the victor?

When I realized that some degree of suffering is optional, I immediately moved towards peace.*

[*footnote: this is very different from what I consider to be cringy fluff that comes from some parts of the wellness community that minimizes real, systemic pain and suffering that comes from living in a world that is set up in a way that automatically gives certain people advantages over others.]

But you know how sometimes life (or the Universe or circumstances or whoever/whatever) wants to be sure you are really hearing the lesson? Like really listening and heeding it?

Case in point…

Recently I was co-leading a retreat with my sublime and incredible friend, Stephanie Crochet. We were at a gorgeous property on the Sea of Cortez side of Baja. I had spent some time swimming with a beloved friend and student (are you reading this gorgeous Kate?). We had shuffled out through the shallow, as any learned ocean goer would, just in case there were any stingray friends. When we came back in we sat in the shallows discussing all things life, and when I stood to leave HOLY MOLY MOTHERFU$CKING SHIT I felt the most searing pain in my foot.

Hello, stingray.

And, hello, yoga practice. I immediately started taking deep breaths as the pain spread and intensified. I was at once astounded and humbled by the intricacies and power of Mother Nature and bowled over by how much one teeny spot on my foot could cause such extraordinary pain. LIKE EXTRAORDINARY PAIN.

And then these words washed over me.

Yes, this is painful. The suffering part is optional.

I didn’t need to go into any “why me” line of thinking (in fact I was so grateful it was me and not one of our students). I didn’t need to scream or cry or freak out. I could have. I mean, I really could have. But I knew it wasn’t going to help. I knew, in that moment, it would only lead to unnecessary, senseless, dramatic suffering.

Please know, I absolutely believe in a good cry and not stuffing any feelings. 

But this felt different. It felt, almost, spiritual.

I needed to get still (and my foot into a whole lot of hot water) and breathe. I needed to find the lesson.

So as I took deep breaths and sweet Steph kept bringing me hot water, we took to google, as anyone would whilst on a spiritual quest and found this.

“The spirit animal of a stingray reminds you to keep faith in your abilities, trust your instincts, and follow your inner compass. Everything that you have been working towards is now available to you, so do not hesitate in your pursuit of the next steps. Keep moving forward and stay on track.”

Our practice is transformative when the lessons transcend the mat and support us in all we do. The pain, the incredibly searing pain, of that sting was unavoidable. I could choose to either add to the suffering or not.

I am moving through a part of my life that may include some pain. 

But suffering? No. Hard stop no. 

I have learned through years of practice, and this fateful afternoon with a sweet and potent messenger embodied in a stingray reinforced what I know to be true. I can do hard things, painful things. Sometimes they are necessary. But I trust myself. I trust my instincts. I trust my path.

So as I breathed through the pain, which eventually dissipated, as pain often does over time, I embraced the moment and the lesson.

“Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” Grateful Dead

Big love to you all.

Thoughts on Resilience

I have been ruminating on something for a while now. While I am wholeheartedly in the camp that resilience is an essential human trait, often well and painfully earned and one we need to support in our children, my relationship with that idea was challenged during Covid. I have enough self awareness to recognize that my tendency as a mom can be to sometimes smooth the trail too much, even when I know I probably shouldn’t. This last year challenged many of us in more ways than we have shared openly, and that has included the emotional suffering of many of our kids, as well as the compensation many of us parents engaged in to attempt to make the pandemic less painful.

When your relationships are your lifeline and they are suddenly and necessarily removed for the greater good of tackling a pandemic, the toll can be heavy and the effects perhaps more long lasting than we know. Heavier for some than others. Long lasting for some but not all. 

My older daughter's school suffered a terrible tragedy in recent weeks. Let me rephrase. A child at my older daughter’s school made a last resort decision that she can’t take back, and in that decision’s wake, left a community to reckon with its impact, and I would hope, its cause. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened at the culmination of so many months of a community doing its best, but nonetheless falling short (was it even possible not to in some ways?) to adapt to a pandemic time of higher learning at an independent boarding school. In addition to the stressors of Covid, compliance with the sometimes baffling social distance rules despite frequent testing, a reckoning regarding systemic misogyny and racism on campus, a faculty predator who finally, but way too late, was terminated, this community was in crisis.

Throughout this time of Covid we’ve heard the word resilience thrown around more times than we can count. And while I would never want to discount that, yes, we humans can indeed be resilient, something about the word and the frequency with which I was hearing it was rubbing me the wrong way. 

It felt too tidy, too dismissive, too rushed.

I am truly so happy for the kids who have thrived during Covid, who made lemonade out of lemons, pleasing proud adults and parents alike. My heart absolutely sings for the introverts who loved the quiet and solitude of the months, the chance to slow down, spend more time with household loved ones and family. The silver linings, for some, were many in the midst of the suffering. As days turned into weeks into months and months of lockdown, some kids thrived. Mine did in certain ways, but most definitely not in others. One was on a strict zero contact (I mean, ZERO, no family, no friends, no contact) lockdown in her boarding school room for many weeks. The other, highly social, stuck at home with mom and dad - physically safe, still surrounded by beloved pets and parents, but isolated nonetheless.  My kids, like most humans, need and require connection, love and emotional intimacy. 

In the case of my older daughter’s school, how could we have imposed rules on developing human beings to never be held or hugged or comforted for such long stretches of time? Every fiber in my being knew that it was wrong. When I brought my concerns to the school that I believed her mental health, as anyone’s would be, was suffering as a result of physical social distancing rules that prevented her going home and seeing family or even leaving campus, rules that made hugging a friend an offense for which you could be written up and given detention, it felt as though I was basically being shown the door. Mind you, a door to a place I had grown up, lived, gone to school myself, and had supported my whole life. I felt sucker punched. 

When a community lauds and sings the praises of resilience, what is it telling those who are having a very real and appropriate emotional response to loneliness and isolation? An utterly human response? That they are lacking? Broken? Failing.

When one side of the mouth says we acknowledge and love the whole child but the other side preaches and praises resilience ad nauseum, what messages are we sending?

Has the word “resilience” become the 2021 code in some circles for pulling yourself up from the bootstraps?

I was recently sitting in a parent zoom meeting in response to this tragedy (not my place or story to tell), and I found myself getting angrier and angrier by the moment. I must have heard the word resilient more than 20 times in the course of that meeting, and someone had quite literally just lost her life. 

It is reminiscent of the old school parenting strategy of declaring to your child when they fall down “You’re ok! You’re ok!” before even allowing the child to take a beat and determine whether or not that is indeed true. Again, the insistence that we are all “okay” when we may in fact not be is another form of denial. 

Please understand, I am not saying we need to coddle and overindulge our kids at every bump. Like so many parents I embrace the “blessings of the skinned knee.” We definitely need to encourage and empower them to discern between moments to brush off and ones to pause and reflect upon. 

In the incessant praising of resilience what are we conveying to those who are silently suffering and need our help? Like the kids in their dorm rooms contending with anxiety, eating disorders, depression, not to even broach the topic of the emotional and social warfare that can, and did, play out in social media. 

Yes, we are resilient, and as adults we have the benefit of a fully formed prefrontal cortex, life experience and hindsight. The path towards resilience looks different for everyone. Many times the path there includes a whole gamut of emotions and the time table is different for all of us. Some of us are deeply feeling creatures whose absolutely appropriate response to trauma or pain is to feel it. To fully feel it and experience it. Otherwise, as we well know, buried pain or trauma at some point or another will resurface and, at a minimum, cause us suffering, even if we aren’t aware of why. 

Resilience defined is to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. But don’t we want our kids to be tough and soft. Brave and vulnerable? And why on earth are we in such a rush to “quickly” recover? Some things, yes. But do we hurry the mourning of a death of a loved one? Do we try to simply be “tough” and stand on a broken leg? Isn’t there great merit in unpacking and wondering and investigating the whys and hows so that we may learn and move forward and potentially prevent future and long term sustained suffering? To claim resilience may encourage denial and lack emotional intelligence. 

Resilience is for sure a quality we want to teach and instill in our children and ourselves, but not to the point of bypassing the very necessary work and stages of grief and recovery from pain and trauma. 

This, I realize, is what was bothering me so much. There was such an urgency to, what felt like, hurry up and heal towards resilience that it was reminiscent of the spiritual bypass crew in the wellness world. It felt like the buzzword of resilience had lost its true meaning and was another means to gaslight those of us who believed there was ongoing injury that had to be stopped.

As Dylan walked the path towards her high school diploma this past weekend, she absolutely brought with her more true resilience than I certainly ever had to have at her age. That walk was powerful, bittersweet, and beautiful. It was all those things because she was fully embodied, utterly honest about the time during Covid and all that entailed, as well as possessed with an air of confidence. It is a huge moment as a parent to watch your child step out of one phase and into another and know full well the grace and humanity that brought her to that point. Bravo, Dylan.

Merely my musings. I am sure there are all sorts of differing points of view.

Leaving with Love

I have been doing a lot of unpacking lately around the idea of quitting something. We have been bombarded with messaging that quitting is for losers and to dig deep and to pull ourselves up from the boot straps... I even looked up quotes about quitting only to discover even more gems that imply that there is no failure except in no longer trying.

But what if we have tried and tried and tried?

Now, of course, NOT quitting has its place. Perseverance is actually an attribute of mine that I am pretty proud of. Not quitting has served me well in my life when it came to arduous tasks. Rolling up my sleeves in relationships. Completing long projects. Tackling a daunting work project. Studying for the bar. Cleaning the house one room at a time. Or step by step, breath by breath, running marathons, or doing a challenging yoga practice. Anything, really, for that matter that I knew I wanted to accomplish. So this isn’t what I am referring to.

But what about quitting something that you know in your heart of hearts just isn’t right for you anymore? What if when we get quiet and truly sit with ourselves and ask those deep, profound questions like…

Is this truly serving me?

Have I given it the best of me?

What does my heart tell me?

What would I tell my closest friend?

Is it time to throw up the white flag and surrender?

Is it time to move on?

What is my truth?

...we realize that quitting or walking away with love is the exact right thing.

But it has to be with love.

These are the questions I ask myself when it comes to big, pivotal decisions, and these are the very questions I ask my sober coaching clients when they come to me. It can also apply to our yoga practice. After a nearly twenty-five year consistent practice, I have lovingly walked away from certain poses that have taught me great lessons but also no longer serve a purpose. We evolve. What we need, what fulfills us, what serves us changes over time. It is up to each of us to listen.

Sometimes we (I) cling so desperately to a romantic version of a relationship that we cannot see it for what it really is- something that may have worked for a period of time but just no longer does. Or something that has evolved into something else. What if that beautifully paired glass of wine with a gorgeous meal in reality is several nights in a row every week of many glasses, used to numb feelings, to escape, leaving us feeling like shit, depleted, exhausted, or, worse, ashamed? What if a night out with friends that seemed like no big thing back in the day now eats up the following day or even two for the body to bounce back?  And what if numbing or drinking or putting alcohol in our bodies is just no longer in alignment with who we are? Or what if we are just curious and want to see what it feels like to take a break?

It doesn’t have to be a drama. But maybe, just maybe, walking away from something is the most radical act of self love. 

Please see below an April sober curious offering, as well as several retreats. Also, please let me know if you think Steph and I should organize another bucket list trip to Bora Bora spring of 2022.

Yoga and Politics - VOTE

If you cannot spare time to read this whole thing, read this-

      VOTE!!!

Vote like lives depend on it. Because they do. Vote like our daughters' access to reproductive health care is in jeopardy. Because it is. Vote like we will be catapulted back decades and decades if we don’t. Because we will. If any part of you wants to opt out of this process (I would be shocked if anyone on my mailing list does, but you never know), please reach out. I would love to understand why and have an opportunity to discuss the incredibly hard fought privilege the right to vote is. Rant over. 💙

I have spent a good portion of the last four years mad. Enraged, really. From the moment the election results came in in 2016 to the present moment, like so many of you, I have felt like we have been getting pummeled by trauma after trauma after trauma. And some way more than others. Marginalized communities have been hit harder, and those of us who are allies, have realized we must do more. It has been a lot, and, thank god or whoever, we have a practice to help us move through our feelings. My yoga practice, more than ever before, has become a sanctuary, a place of returning to Self over and over and over.

2020 has been a pinnacle of painful lessons, an undeniable and important time that has demanded we all show up. Yes, a shitstorm for sure, but one that has shined a light bright enough, with too many egregious examples of the disparity of justice in America, that it could no longer be denied. It is heartbreaking that it has taken so long. But we are all called to do our part.

I came across an Angela Davis quote this morning that hit me to my core-

“I have never used yoga as an end in itself but merely as a means to prepare myself for a more effective struggle.”

Yes.

A more effective struggle. This speaks to me.

These past few years have led me through some deep self inquiry as to my role, not just as human, but also as yoga teacher. A piece of me envies (not really) the “love and light” crowd, who continue to post pretty pictures of yoga poses, discuss asana and workouts, and continue to live their lives, seemingly uninterrupted, while communities suffer and black and brown people are murdered without consequence. This, of course, is me being in all of my ugly and fallible humanness, sitting in judgment of what I perceive to be either spiritual bypass or a comfortable opting out of the fight for justice. How can I know what other people are thinking and feeling? How do I know that away from social media they aren’t deep in activism or going through their own personal struggles? All I can see is what they project on social media. But I am flabbergasted when, in a time that has so many parallels to the rise of a dictator like Adolf Hitler, people do not use their platform to raise awareness and ring the bell from the highest hill that WE HAVE TO HELP AND PEOPLE ARE DYING.

Again, me in judgment. Me being human.

One of my most beloved teachers has, for the most part, been fairly quiet on matters of social justice. She is a true yogi - deeply committed to her own practice and teachings. She is sublime, ephemeral, talented, and, by all intents and purposes, her teachings transcend time and space. She truly may just live on a higher, or different, place than I. And I love her. The messages are there, but they are subtle. And I believe her. 

My messages? Not subtle. Clear. Loud. Sometimes in your face. And, some would say, angry and aggressive.

But they are truthful. And they come from the most urgent, human place that wants to see kindness and truth and justice prevail. That may mean I check my manners and my cool at the door sometimes. When a woman is called aggressive or angry, a man is called confident and effective. 

I can live with being called names. I cannot live with other people suffering as a result of my trying to be polite. 

What has become clear to me is that my yoga, the way I teach and practice, is political. I am meant to live, not necessarily on a higher plane, but on one with boots (or barefeet) on the ground. That is where my work and practice lies.

As Angela Davis says, my yoga practice is preparing me for a more effective struggle. Throughout my life, from early years as a feisty young girl through years as a young woman lawyer to present day I have felt some pushback or judgment that I am “too angry” or “take things too personally.” I wear that as a badge of honor. What I say to that is HELL YES, I AM ANGRY. I absolutely take issues of inequity and injustice personally. Until all of us are free; none of us is free, remember? Opting out of the fight or being quiet in matters of oppression only helps the oppressor. Staying in my corner doesn’t work for me. For any of us.

Where RBG was restrained and methodical and patient, I can be confrontational and mad and loud. She had the patience of a saint, restraint of tongue, and more intelligence and fortitude than I can dream of. But we are both going the same direction. Our messages are the same (hers a thousand times more researched and eloquent, but the same). Her life and work paved the way for me, for all of us, to march forward in the way most authentic to all of us.

There is room for all of us. May we cheer one another along.

What is happening now is different than anything in our lifetime. I grew up with an uncle who was a right wing senator of a conservative state who called Dick Cheney a close friend. But, even then, I loved him. We could agree to disagree and still love each other. This administration is different and dangerous in a whole new way. Agreeing to disagree has no place in today’s politics. Not in this fight.

So I continue to practice and teach from my true and authentic place. 

I will yell from the highest hill that people are dying and that we have to help. I will listen to opposing perspectives and challenge them respectfully. I understand my point of view was formed from a place of privilege, access to education, an ability to travel the world and be exposed to all sorts of ideas, places and people. I understand that and I truly do pray for peace and equity for all. I will not engage with racists and bigots, but I will volunteer as much time as I can to be sure we vote their ringleader out of office.

Truth, satya in sanskrit.

This is my truth.

Another truth is that I love you. That’s for sure.

WTF??? My own racism??? I am NOT racist. But what if?

Dearest humans I love,

How ARE you?

Take a beat. Take a breath,

How are you?
 

I feel as though I am in one of the more important times of my human development right now. I long ago learned the important life lesson to remain teachable. To understand that I most definitely do not know everything. And also that I most definitely can be wrong.

Well, here we go. Time for more learning and unlearning.

I imagine we have all been outraged since the murders (can we please not call them deaths) of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. This has been a call to action, a “wake up call” some say. But what I have been sitting with is how has it taken me THIS long to be THIS outraged. Upon realizing that Black Americans have been living in fear and that I have been cloaked in my own white privilege and that this hasn’t felt more urgent has humbled me.

 Initially, I wholeheartedly believed I was already a white ally. 

 I studied Black Literature and Black Music in college. 

 Of course I am an ally. (P.S. Do you hear how lame this is?)

 My favorite authors are Black Women. Of course I am an ally.

 My great uncle marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Of course I am an ally.

 I became a lawyer to give a voice to the voiceless and downtrodden. 

 Of course I am an ally.

 I clicked off a resume in my mind of how that was true - how that had to be true - internships for social justice, clerkships with the ACLU, Homeless Advocacy Project, a career as a public defender, death penalty appellate work, a willingness to stand up for injustice, long standing charitable gifts with The Innocence Project, Delancy Street, the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law to name only a few of many. 

 Of course I am an ally.

 I teach about love and truth and justice. 

 Of course I am an ally.

 But then I listened to powerful Black Women speak about what it truly means to be an ally. It requires me to look at my own racism.

 WTF??? My own racism? I am not a racist! This cannot apply to me.

 I mean, see list above. I am a good human, trying to be better and to elevate everyone the best I can. Right? One of the good guys.

 But then I got quiet and I listened. Not to my own justifications but to Black leaders.

 And I am still listening. I am committed to continuing to listen. I am reading. I am following Black leaders, especially Black women leaders, to listen and dismantle some of my own internal systems. How I get to move through the world emboldened and safe a white woman. 

 How despite all of my advocacy, marching and donating, I live in a world of privilege that rests on the back of the oppression of others.

 Hello, jagged pill. Time to swallow.

 For me the teaching and practice of yoga is about uncovering truth. Yes, ahimsa, non violence as well, but we have to, we must dig deeper into what that means. 

 This conversation has only just begun. This is indeed not a moment, it is a movement.

 I love you.

Purpose and Truth

Today I am mulling over the idea of Purpose. Like so many of us, I am sitting in a lot of sadness and anger at current events that appear to be fueled by fear and division. I am meditating on what is my part and can I do more. Sometimes I feel like the house is burning down and the yoga and wellness community is lighting sage and making vision boards. I follow this train of thought to understand that point of view comes from my own deep judgment and fear that I am not doing enough and that we are all grappling with our own versions of the same questions. What I believe this is leading me to is the ultimate understanding that dharma, all of our dharma, is always evolving. But at its core is truth.

Like so many people (mostly women), I am currently reading Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. I am reading it slowly. Savoring it, because I know I am in the midst of big change. We all are. To read this book too quickly right now feels like I would be biting off way more than I can chew. I have loved her writing since Carry on Warrior, a book that sparked a desire in me to get my own words back onto paper. I am reading this one thirsty for the connections and the lessons. There is so much there- love, truth, mothering, courage, fear. 

I am not willing to finish reading this book until I am willing to excavate some of my own truths. And that feels hard. And really, really big.

So some days I don’t even pick it up. Avoidance is a tried and true strategy. It sits there next to my bed, obviously ignored for Netflix or Instagram, but holding space nonetheless with its pretty cover, just patiently waiting and knowing. Some days I’ll race through several chapters. Others it's just a poignant paragraph or two. Fodder for meditation.

More on that later, but the reason I bring Glennon up is a quote of hers from way back that struck a chord in me when I first heard it and one I return to over and over again. It’s about Purpose. I’ve never struggled looking for a single purpose. If anything I feel utterly devoted to so many (maybe too many?) things that I wish I had more lifetimes. Regarding purpose, Glennon says,

“Figure out what breaks your heart in the world. That’s your purpose. Find the folks working to fix that thing and join them.”

A lot of things break my heart in this world. Too many. 

But perhaps the thing that always hits me the hardest, breaks my heart the most, and leaves me wondering if I am doing enough, is injustice and racism. It always has. It’s why I became a lawyer. It’s why I clerked for the Death Penalty Project. It’s why I have supported the Innocence Project, The Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU all my adult life. Why I always will. But I am always left wondering, is it enough? And it’s probably not. My gut and my heart are telling me that. 

There have been far too many horrible examples of late that human beings can be the very worst. That as humans, white humans, we have failed over and over again to evolve, to learn lessons, to be brave and do better. I recently read a paper Dylan (my seventeen year old daughter) wrote comparing the Emmett Till Case of 1955 with the Trayvon Martin Case of 2012, the conclusion being that we have not yet learned. In the time between when she started writing that paper and when she turned it in, Ahmaud Arbery was killed. And then just yesterday yet another black man, George Floyd, was murdered by law enforcement.

This is what breaks my heart.

And, yet, some humans are the very best. The helpers. Those of you reading this now. I am grateful for an era of social media to not only shine the light on previously swept under the rug injustices but also to shine the light on awesome humans heeding the call to create change, seek justice, mobilize. If you don’t already, consider following @shaunking and @grassrootslaw. I have been inspired and humbled by their relentless work in seeking justice, as well as grateful for the naming other incredible people and organizations in this fight.

I have been meditating on this a lot during this COVID time. A lot of us are using some of this moment in our history to question our paths, despite the very real stressors of staying afloat with the financial impact a pandemic can have. 

I am sitting with swirling thoughts of school tuition and mortgages as well as the deepest questions of true love and purpose.

Recently, a random yoga teacher I only know peripherally, made a comment on a fairly benign post I made. The post was asking when or if people would be coming back to group classes when clubs and studios opened. She ran off with a tangent that said when clubs open, she hopes teachers will keep opinions and politics out of the room. I kindly told her that I respect her opinion, but that she definitely would not like my class. I can’t leave everything out of the room. Can you? The yoga room is not an empty vessel. All of our humanity, pain and joy comes with us. To ignore the outside world feels like a denial of truth. If teaching yoga was just about physical poses or fitness, would we keep showing up? I certainly wouldn’t. And I definitely wouldn’t teach it. I am not meant to be everyone’s teacher, and that is fine. Nor is she. Isn’t it beautiful that there is room enough for us all? 

I loved being a lawyer. And I love being a yoga teacher. This week we will marry the two. The full amount of the proceeds of my classes the week of June 1 will be donated to Southern Poverty Law Center and The Innocence Project (scroll to the bottom to watch Archie WIlliams).  And I will match whatever amount we raise.  This is where, for me, yoga and activism merge. 

It is not enough anymore to not be racist. We must be anti-racist and be louder, way louder about that. Our own humanity demands it. 

While I continue to sit in not knowing exactly what the future holds as far as next steps, I have to do something. And if you join me that week, you will be doing something too. 

Thank you thank you thank you.

Glennon asks what breaks my heart. Unchecked racism breaks my heart. Cruelty breaks my heart. Ignorance breaks my heart. 

Not living my complete truth breaks my heart. 

I am still sitting in the unknowing of exactly where that will land me, but I remain grateful to all of you for being a part of my path.

Coronavirus Musings & Offerings

My beautiful friends and students!!!

I woke up this morning spooned on both sides by our sweet puppies. I lingered in bed longer than usual in that coziness, musing on how lucky we are to have our dogs in this time. Any time really. They just give and give and give. I peeled slowly out of bed and went downstairs in our quiet house and drank a cup of hot water as I waited for the coffee to brew. I then poured a giant cup of coffee in an extra big mug and got back in bed. I am feeling the need to connect to you and for us all to collectively remember that this is temporary. 

This is temporary. It will end. 

We will hug again. And share bites of food. And gather. And practice yoga in crowded rooms. We will travel. We will look kindly at strangers and shake their hands. We will go to dinner parties. We will still wash our hands but not nearly as much. We will take the postponed trips and retreats. We will even complain about crowded places. 

And guess what? We will appreciate all of those things even more. Maybe the hugs will be longer. Maybe we will schedule the trip that we thought we were just too busy for. We will feel huge gratitude that we can meet a good friend for lunch. 

My younger daughter asked me the other day, “Is this ever going to end?” And while I cannot promise much about the future, I can say with confidence that, yes, this absolutely is going to end. Everything does. We realize everything is temporary. 

Will everything be the same as before? No. It won’t. 

We will be changed by this experience. And we still don’t know how and how much. How we choose to frame those changes are up to each of us. I meditate and pray every morning for the health, safety and peace for all beings. All of us. 

I know we are all experiencing varying degrees of anxiety, insecurity and fear. In my home we have some very real financial stressors happening. A lot of unknowns that challenge my sense of safety and security. But I also know that we are better off than most. I know I have lived this long and thrived so far and that I can definitely handle whatever comes. I write to you now, surrounded by our two dogs, our daughters sleeping in their rooms, the sun rising on a beautiful day and the birds are singing. 

So many birds are singing. 

Has anyone else noticed that the birds seem to be singing even more loudly? Or is it just that I am finally listening more? Or is it that we humans are a little bit quieter?

This time is requiring us all to go more inward. To be mindful of how we interact with ourselves, our smaller communities and the global community as a whole. As yogis we practice ahimsa, non violence, compassion and kindness. This time is demanding we look at our actions, feelings and thoughts and examine them and whether they are aligned with our own good and the greater good. What a beautiful lesson. 

I want to share with you what I am doing every day to feel supported and sustained and fortified. That said, we are all doing our best. This is what is keeping me fortified and whole. Your process will look different and that is perfect for you. 

1. Every morning I drink a big glass of hot water as I wait for the coffee to brew. My morning cup of coffee remains a great joy and ritual. 

2. I am waking without an alarm. It’s amazing. I am going to bed by 10 at the latest. 

3. I am exercising every day. Without exception. Yoga. Running. Walking the dogs. Push up challenges. Every day. Preferably in the morning when I have way more energy. It also sets the tone for me feeling better throughout the whole day. This is nonnegotiable in my family. Mama needs to move. 

4. Meditation daily. I have definitely upped my personal meditation practice and am teaching way more meditation as well. 

5. I am constantly remembering my family is doing their best especially when feelings go… sideways. I am so grateful for how they are all stepping up. Having Dylan home from school has been the greatest gift of all. Treasured time together we never would have had. 

6. I am eating healthy food. I am very aware that when I eat processed food or sugar that it backfires almost immediately. It just makes me feel like sh&t in every way. I just don’t do it anymore. 

7. I am reaching out to family and friends every day via FaceTime. We do not have to feel isolated or alone. In fact, we can connect more deeply and honestly.

8. I am saying I love you a lot. Even more than usual which is saying a lot. 

All this to say, we don’t have to engage in perfect healthy eating and exercise and meditation. All of our processes will look different. There is no one way to move through this. But what I do encourage all of us to do is to move through it on purpose. Make a choice, a decision for how you want to be and feel and make choices every day in alignment with that. 

If you want to stay in bed and pull the covers, do it. If you want to commit to more meditation, do it. If you want to eat a pint of ice cream, do it. Just do whatever it is on purpose. 

I love you. 

J

My offerings in this COVID era:

1 Live yoga through Zoom three times / week. 

           Tuesday 12:30-1:30PM PST

           Thursday 12:30-1:30pm PST

           Saturday 9:30-10:30am PST

Pre registration is required. Link below to sign up.             

http://jocelynsolomonyoga.com/classes-om

2. Private yoga sessions via FaceTime. Please reach out to schedule a time. 

3. Private guided meditation sessions. 30 minute sessions. 

4. Private yoga and meditation combo. 60 min. 

*reach out for any of these to jocelynsolomonyoga@gmail.com

Love in the Time of Corona & My Virtual Offering

*Please scroll to the bottom to see my corona inspired virtual offerings.

Beautiful babes. We refer to our yoga as a practice. And indeed it is. There have been so many times throughout my life when this practice has carried me through moments with way more grace than would have been possible without it. 

I used this practice and the skills of presence as I witnessed and supported my dad through his final days of fighting a painful battle with cancer. The breath we learn here helped me labor and deliver two beautiful baby girls. Yoga has carried me through several marathons one step at a time. This practice soothes me when I am scared or unsure. This practice reminds me to pause in the complete beauty and joy of life and truly experience it and breathe it in. Yoga and its lessons remind me to be kind, patient, brave, truthful.

This practice is a constant, loving reminder that we can truly do anything one breath at a time. Yoga also reminds me that, when in doubt, a deep breath is always a good idea. We know that our breath is our very own built in self-soothing system, allowing us to access our parasympathetic nervous system to calm. Our breath reminds us that right here, right now, we are okay.

This is what we have been practicing for. This moment.

There is a lot of unknown, reaction, and fear going on around us. We hear it on the news incessantly. We can feel it as we move through our days. 

There is also a lot of love and kindness. Let’s lean into that. 

It is easy to practice our yoga on a good day. But how do we show up right now? This is what we have been practicing for. 

I believe we yogis can be leaders in our communities in moments like this. Can we be kind in the face of panic? Can we be the face of calm in the midst of hysteria? Can we move with intelligence, grace and love?

Yes, we can. Of course we can. But it is a choice. Sometimes when we get scared or triggered we forget we have that choice. But we will remember. Our communities need us to. Our families need us to.

As we hunker down at home for a whole lot of togetherness, perhaps this is a silver lining of moments with my kids that I otherwise never would have had (albeit probably way more than any of us wants, but still). I get my oldest home from boarding school, days and weeks that we would have spent apart. Bonus time before she graduates and goes off to college! Can I finally re-Marie Kondo my house (I can, the question is will I)? Just this morning I found my husband clearing out overstuffed kitchen cupboards. Is this my opportunity to build my private practice? Will I do more of the writing I have been meaning to do?

Yes, there is a lot of fear in the unknown, job security, planned retreats, health. That is not to be minimized or ignored. Our practice, as I often talk about, is not good vibes only. 

This practice is about truth. We are not a community that puts our heads in the sand and sees only love and light, believing at all times that the universe will provide. 

We do our part. We are informed. We will be smart. We will be as prepared as we can. 

We will wash our hands like the champs that we are. We will recognize that we are part of a global community and strive to keep all of us safe. We will nourish our bodies and continue our practice, even if it is at home. We will take long walks and hikes. We will eat healthy food.

We will also be aware of our thoughts and our words and realize they have an effect on us and the people around us. We can be a force of calm and kindness and love no matter what. We all need that right now. 

We have been practicing for this. So let’s practice.

I love you.

Virtual offering…

During this time I am offering private sessions via Facetime. They can be asana and/or a combination of meditation and asana. We need our practice more than ever right now. I certainly do not plan to upcharge and am most definitely discounting my regular rate. 

30 min: $75

45 min: $100

60 min: $125

You can also find a few of my classes online at myyogaworks.com for no charge.

Whether with me or not, keep your meditation and yoga practice strong. ❤️

How Yoga Saved My Life

I realized as I sat down to write you all, that I don’t believe I have shared the genesis of my own personal yoga practice and how, in many ways, yoga saved my life. I think this is true for many of us on some level. Our practice often really is that tried and true metaphor of the oxygen mask, filling our own cup, so we have something to offer others. Many days it is the respite from an overly scheduled life, a chance to slow down, breathe, sweat and work out the primal need to quiet the mind. We build incredible strength, endurance, flexibility through a consistent practice. A physical yoga practice is a beautiful ritual where we place ourselves on our mats knowing we are ready to do the work, to show up for ourselves.

The physical practice for me is a window into how I do everything. Am I willing to pay attention to the smallest details? Am I powering through guns blazing or willing to find the sweet balance of strength and grace, power and ease, presence with each breath?

You have probably heard me say in class that after the flow, after the heat and fire of a strong practice, it is imperative to be still in those final postures, especially savasana. For me, that is the time when I listen. A long time ago, one of my teachers, upon taking us out of savasana and into a short meditation, cued, “Is there something I need to hear?” I ask myself that most days, and often times it is in those moments when I hear something I need to hear, or many times, something I have been avoiding by moving too quickly through my own life.

I was always an athlete, a runner mostly, but dabbled very lightly in yoga. But nearly twenty-three years ago, at twenty-six years old, I hit a major pothole. No, not a pothole. More like a giant life threatening crevasse where I either got my shit together or died. It really was that simple.

I had to get sober. 

And I did. 

That very short “And I did” sentence is a novel in and of itself, as the process of getting and staying sober is rich and painful and courageous and ugly and complicated. Perhaps a story for another day, but yoga and my recovery go hand in hand.

In the beginning of my recovery I knew I needed to get back into my body. I had been neglecting it, punishing it, taking it for granted, assuming it (and I) were invincible. I needed to love myself back to health and yoga led me there. So every day I went to meetings and I went to yoga. Every single day. Pretty much without fail. No excuses. 

Meaningful recovery demands you live a life of rigorous honesty, and so despite that the overachiever in me considered bypassing introductory level classes and bulldozing right into the fast pace of strong vinyasa flow, the newly sober me knew that I had to become teachable, humble. I had to learn humility. I had to be willing to slow down. I had always been a good student. So good student I became once again, making a commitment to myself to stay in lower level classes for a full year. And I did. There I found the teachings of beautiful women like Jasmine Lieb, Julie Kleinman, Seane Corn, Sara Ivanhoe and more. 

In those classes I learned how to breathe consciously for the first time. I discovered how moving on a yoga mat was a moving meditation, a forgiving prayer to myself for all the pain I had suffered and caused. 

A breathing dance of redemption. 

My yoga practice became a living amends, a one-breath-at-a-time prayer that affirmed I was committing to a life of beauty, honesty and presence. 

One breath at a time. One day at a time. For nearly twenty-three years.

I love you. Namaste.

Ripple Out

I often talk about how every single thing we do matters. Every choice has a ripple effect, whether positive, negative or flowing somewhere in the middle. I often end class reminding us that we get to choose how we move through the world. WE get to choose. Nobody else gets to decide for us. No husband, wife, partner, boss, colleague, politician, other driver. No one. Sometimes we forget that and we give that choice away. But as yogis we are (hopefully) engaged in the process of noticing. Noticing everything. Our breath. How we feel. How other people feel. How we move through the world. Are we aligning ourselves with our higher good? Or not? And when we don’t, are we able to notice and right the path. This can show up in seemingly insignificant ways (ever called another driver an asshole? I sure have!) or on larger scales like allowing the state of the world to enrage us so much that we become angry at everyone (guilty). Over and over again we get to come back to realizing that truly no one else has the power to MAKE us feel a certain way. We do. Just us.

Recently two moments underlined for me that how we choose to move through our lives has an impact far beyond what we imagine.

Early last Monday morning I was driving to a 7am class that I teach (you’re all invited!!!) and I had a moment that was seemingly benign and inconsequential but yet struck me as incredible. I actually love Monday mornings. To me they feel like a clean slate, an opportunity to start fresh, to lean into good habits and set the tone for a great week. I have long since framed my Mondays this way, and it has been a game changer. Anyway, on this particular Monday, I was stopped at a red light on Lincoln Boulevard and a gorgeous (like from the inside out radiant gorgeous) older woman was crossing in the crosswalk in front of me. She had on the most beautiful smile. She was positively radiating warmth and gratitude. She made such an impression on me with how she was moving through the world that I am still talking (and now writing) about her days later. I’ve never seen her before. I have never met her. And I may never see her again. And, yet, she changed me. She affected me. She enhanced my life merely by walking by with a smile on her face. 

What this beautiful (and I am talking about soul beauty) did for me that early morning moment was to remind me of how we all are constantly creating a ripple effect. Whether we know it or not. We are. All the time. By the words we use. The choices we make. The energy we bring to everything we do. Simply by walking down the street. Each moment, each choice makes an impact. This woman, who didn’t even see me notice her, is now in your inbox and a living example of how crossing the street with a sweet smile on your face can shift someone else’s day into the amazing.

In contrast, I spent a wonderful week of rest and relaxation over Thanksgiving with my mom and daughters in Tulum, Mexico. Each morning I would take a long run down the beautiful white sand beach. After getting far enough away from any resort, I began noticing so much trash. Mostly plastic water bottles, little pieces of plastic, trash upon trash upon trash. I started to think about how every single one of those pieces of plastic represented a myriad of choices by every single human that had at one time been in possession of that trash. The choice to purchase or acquire it in the first place. The choice to either just toss it and litter or dispose of it in a way that would eventually land it in the ocean. But there were definitely choices along the way. The contrast of the magnitude of the magnificent sea lapping up onto the beautiful beach overflowing with a million plastic examples of humans making shitty choices was staggering. It also made me grateful. Grateful that we are yogis and at least striving to be better, conscious, and to live in concert with the environment.

None of us is perfect. Definitely not me. Probably not the awesome lady in the crosswalk. But all of us are creating a ripple of effect. The awareness of that carries with it, I believe, a responsibility to strive to be better, kinder. When we understand that we are all connected and that every choice we make actually ripples out, wouldn’t we want to be part of something good? 

As we roll into the holiday season, remember it is not the gift you get a person that impacts them, but how you make them feel. Every day.

I love you. And merry, merry, happy whatever it is you celebrate.

Hands Off: Consent in Modern Day Yoga

An important conversation is unfolding in the yoga world. And it’s about time. On the heels of the #metoo movement many women are speaking up (and some have been for quite a while) about being wrongly touched, being made to feel incredibly uncomfortable, or straight up sexually violated or harmed at the hands of a trusted yoga teacher.

The conversation has so many layers. There are the egregious violations perpetrated by (primarily) male yoga teachers, often highly regarded gurus (don’t even get me started on what I think about that word, especially in this context) against (primarily) female students. And then there is a more nuanced discussion about whether or not an adjustment of any kind should be allowed without consent.

I believe what we are learning is this: WE MUST GET CONSENT. For all of it. 

If there is even a hint of a possibility that my, as yoga teacher, touching you could take you out of your practice in any way (at the minimum be a distraction and at worst trigger a traumatic memory) then why on earth would I ever put my desire to do an adjustment over your need to feel safe? I wouldn’t. 

The conversation is changing and so must we. If there is even a hint of a possibility that we could create harm of any kind, then we must err on the side of absolute caution. Ahimsa, doing no harm, is one of the primary tenets of yoga philosophy. As is svadiyaya, self study, It appears we all have deeper layers of svadiyaya to explore.

If any teacher feels defensive or threatened by this ensuing conversation, that suggests they have some inner work to do.

I personally love receiving adjustments from my teachers (whom I thoughtfully choose, trust and admire) and I love giving adjustments to my students. At no time do I use physical adjustments as a crutch in lieu of being able to articulate what I am teaching through my words. I could absolutely teach a smart, thorough class without ever touching a student. But for many of us we appreciate some hands on touch from our teachers when done thoughtfully and well. In our ever disconnected world, often times a loving personal touch in a yoga class can be profound. Many times a quick touch can keep a student’s body safe from injury or inform a student the part of their body they are trying to access. Could these adjustments be done verbally? Yes. And then there are the feel good adjustments - a loving touch to the lower back in child’s pose, a lift of the hips in downdog, a savasana adjustment. These are not corrective, but rather they can create ease and space in an already beautiful asana. But not for everyone, and that is what we need to be willing to discover.

Some adjustments have to go. Their day is done. For example, there is no reason a male teacher needs to “deepen” a female student’s stretch in happy baby. There is no legitimate reason to place your hands anywhere near a woman’s chest or pelvis. And if you have seen any recent footage of the so-called adjustments by Patabi Jois, well, they speak for themselves. They appear to be a ruse so that he can mount a student and grope and grind a student who has put herself in his trusted care. Pushing someone in any way becomes a violent act when it takes them further than their body wants or needs to go. And even if their body is okay with it, maybe they aren’t.

We as teachers, especially male teachers, need to understand that any perceived or real power differential is not a thing to be exploited. Period. You are not the shit because you are a yoga teacher. Neither am I. Our job is to create a safe space and container for students to have their own transformational experience. We are not the reason they expand and grow. They are. 

In my over twenty years as a yoga student, I have only been in a handful of classes where I have either walked out (only once) or vowed never to return. I made these decisions after experiencing what I perceived to be a male teacher on a power trip. I could hear sarcasm, ridicule or shame targeting his students, and I knew right then and there, this is not a person I want to learn from. That was it. I left. 

But not everybody does. The lines of trust become blurred. 

I remain dumbfounded that anyone still practices or affiliates themselves with anything Bikram related after so many allegations of rape, sexual misconduct and just straight up assholedry. And if I see another #practiceandalliscoming quote after what we are learning about Patabi Jois, I may just throw up on my smart phone. Perhaps some of these men are considered by some to be the godfathers of yoga, but to me, they appear to be deeply fallible men with gigantic egos on a power trip and perpetrators of sexual violence. 

Am I leaning way into judgment? Absolutely. Is my judgment of others a character defect I should explore? Probably. But I will never stop judging a human who takes advantage of their position by harming someone who has put their trust in them. There is no world where I will ever agree that the bravado and free licence certain teachers take to manipulate another person’s body without freely given consent is ok. It just isn’t.

Being a yoga teacher is not free license to touch whomever you want however you want.

That said, I am fortunate to work with many incredible male teachers who take their role seriously and are committed to their craft. Being an asshole is not the norm, but the few bad apples out there are bringing to light deeper questions.

Even for those of us who have very clean and clear intentions, is there a need to ask consent?

Yes.

While I know my energy is clean and my intentions are always good, what I do not know is how my students feel or what life experience they are bringing into the room, whether a preexisting injury, life trauma, or just a straight up desire not to be touched.

It is none of my business, unless they want to share it, why a student does not want to be adjusted. But it is my business to get consent. 

If anyone wants to take this conversation further or let me know if you do not want adjustments, please reach out (and, yes, I know that most of you love them).

With love always,

Jocelyn

My cup, er toilet runneth over, Yoga Gives Back Gala, Mexico and more

Hey yogis!!!

I just wrapped up leading another 200 hour intensive month long yoga teacher training for YogaWorks. I did this same training format last August as well and around half way through week three last year, I became overwhelmed and burned out. Not this year, I told myself. That is not the plan. This year I am going to remember that I can only do one thing at a time, that I chose these things, that I love them. 

So I made a plan with myself in the end of July. I knew I was adding a lot to my plate. It’s never a convenient time to add two hundred more hours of work to an already heavy workload. I knew that in that same month that both of my daughters would need to get ready to go back to school and all of the logistics attached to that. I knew I was going to continue to teach as many of my regular classes as I could. The house still needed to be standing, functioning, trash out, clothes cleaned, dishes done, and all of the things. 

But I decided this time, I am going move through it all with as much joy as possible. 

But then… sure enough the end of week three threw me some tests. One of my kid’s school schedule was completely f-ed up, despite all the front end negotiating and planning I had done. One night the entire sewage system backed up into our house, creating a literal shit storm. All over. It was super gross. The dryer broke, so no way to dry the disgusting towels that were cleaning up the house. 

Unmanageable. 

Did I embrace the shit storm with joy? That may be a stretch.  Not exactly joy, but I kept my sense of humor and was fully aware that the problems I was facing were ones of abundance and privilege. I have a home with a sewage system. I have toilets and showers to back up. I have a home. 

I also kept my cool. I had decided that was how it was going to be. And so it was. I had a choice about how I was going to move through August no matter what. And I stuck to it. 

Not to mention that I fell in mad love with teaching these trainings all over again, found a new sister in my co-teacher, and had the sweetest, most open and supportive group ever. We created a community that was so curious and kind to one another. They truly embodied the idea in yamas of yoga philosophy of delighting in one another!!! My heart is so full. 

So despite that my toilet (and showers and sinks) runneth over, August was still the best month!

Namaste!!!

Fun things coming up!!!!!!

Yoga Gives Back Gala!!!!!
Also, please join me at a gala for Yoga Gives Back on September 29th!!! My bff and soul sister, Steph Crochet, and I have tables and very special rates of $108 for our students. I am an ambassador for this organization and every penny from your ticket price goes to create micro loans for women in India and education for children (mostly girls) in India. It’s going to be such a fun night and I would love to share it with you!!! You can buy a ticket in the below link!!!

https://yoga-gives-back.networkforgood.com/events/14603-ygb-ambassadors-jocelyn-stephanie-s-table-tickets-at-the-2019-gala

Bliss Out in Mexico!!!!

We have a few rooms left for our annual retreat to Prana del Mar Oct 27-Nov 1!!!!! Join us for five nights and six days of all the fun, yoga, hikes, healthy food, friendship and rest!!! See below for details and reply to this email if you’d like to come!!!

http://jocelynsolomonyoga.com/retreats-workshops

Big hugs always!!!!

Jocelyn

Sitting in the I Don't Know // Let's Not Know in Mexico

Sitting in the I Don’t Know // Satya v. Ahimsa

I work for Equinox and I am pissed. I am so angry that so many kind, diverse, talented, hard working people at both Equinox and Soul Cycle have been put in the position of having to weigh whether if they choose to keep their job, they have to compromise their values. Members and employees of this company have been blindsided by the information that Stephen Ross, the chairman of the parent company is not only a fiscal supporter of Trump but actively fundraising on his behalf.

Finally!!!! An opportunity to act! To have some way to use our voice. So many of us are feeling so angry and helpless by the current state or politics and the electoral process that we are crying out for a way to act. Any way. This dilemma provides us an opportunity. Is acting in retaliation to these circumstances going to make a difference? I suppose it depends on the individual. And can we respond in a meaningful way rather than gut react?

The answer is I don’t know. Not yet. And to not know is okay. It may be uncomfortable, but it’s okay not to know yet. To wisely gather information. To sit with it. To be willing to mire in the muck and make a decision when clarity comes.

Respond instead of react. 

And, yes, it was a blindside. Some may claim we should have known, but when I was hired to teach yoga for Equinox so many years ago, I was so thrilled to be given that opportunity (thank you Angela Leigh), I was raising two little kids, driving all over Los Angeles all day every day, and this opportunity fely huge at the time. It did not occur to me to do a political background check on the company.

Perhaps I should have. But I didn’t, and this was years ago, long before Trump. Long before the political climate changed to one where it now feels like political affiliation is a direct correlation to humanity or a lack thereof.

Mr. Ross can believe whatever he wants. He can vote for whomever he wants. But what I am sorting through is whether or not any piece of my efforts, labor and love are putting even a penny into that campaign. Not one penny of mine gets to funnel that direction.

And I just don’t know yet. I am hearing contradictory reports.

My gut instinct was to take a leave of absence (a slightly less permanent decision) to sort out the facts. I have the luxury to even entertain that option. But so many of my friends and colleagues do not. Equinox and SoulCycle are their entire livelihood. The livelihood of their families. Equinox is just one of the places I work, but it is a place I love. Equinox has long been a company that celebrates diversity, pride, love. It is a place filled with some of the kindest people I have ever known. I love teaching there. I love my students. I love taking all the classes. I love my bosses. I have long said that between the two places I work, that Equinox is like the good boyfriend, always available, always checking in to see how I am doing and feeling, giving raises as a general good practice, always professional, never flakey. So now I am worried if this incredible boyfriend has a deep dark secret that is suddenly been uncovered. Or if Equinox remains the gem it is that is dulled by the light of recent events beyond its control. Is Equinox, as  my friend Katie Horwitch has said, the innocent child of the bigoted parent?

Of course it’s not that simple.

I am most definitely a political person. I do not shy away from political debate and never have. Like it or not, I weave my belief systems into how I teach, and I am not afraid to get political in my classes. Not necessarily overtly, not to alienate anyone, but this is my truth right now. I have a strong, confident, powerful voice and I am not afraid to use it. I have said, if that gets me fired, then so be it. 

But what I am keenly aware of is that my students know me and trust me, and since Trump became president we have all grieved, become incited, meditated, cried, yelled, breathed and moved through some powerful times together. That is the space I strive to create when I teach. And that is why some people come to my classes. We all need a place. I would have died a painful spiritual death the last few years without the practice of yoga and without the fitness classes and instructors that have given me a place to move through so many feelings, to harness my anger, rage, trauma into something productive. 

In yoga we have a tenet of philosophy called satya and one called ahimsa. Satya is truth and Ahimsa means doing no harm. If I quit, am I harming innocent people - the staff I love, the maintenance crews whom I laugh with and practice my spanish with every day, the front desk, my managers, my students. Are people going to lose their jobs when/if the clubs suffer? And, if so, is that a necessary evil? Let’s face it, this Ross asshole doesn’t know me and never will. Whether or not I quit as an act of political defiance and expression of my belief systems will bear no weight to him.  

Is it important for me to reject the company I love as a whole or to stay and continue to create community and a venue for healing?

I don’t know. Yet. 

Yes, we take our practice off the mat. I preach it every day. I live it. But I am currently unsure of what that means and looks like right now. 

Am I living my truth? Am I walking my truth? And does living my truth mean that I walk away from any real or perceived affiliation with Trump? Or does it mean I use my voice and my teaching to stay put and raise my voice even louder against hate, division and oppression? 

My answer is I don’t know. Not yet. 

Something I do know - what is right for one person is not right for another. So anyone and everyone affected by this - may we continue to live the very best of Equinox - the inclusion, the strength, the joy, the community. I will not judge how you respond to this. And you won’t judge me. We know better than to let this divide us further, 

I will be teaching my Saturday class at the Marina club. We can not know together. 

You can also come not know with me as I retreat to Mexico October 27-November 1 at Prana del Mar. Details here. http://jocelynsolomonyoga.com/retreats-workshops

Legacy in Action

Today I am thinking about legacy. 

I am writing from our family land which rests in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, a space my family has come for generations and will continue to long after I am gone. This is a space where my soul is so full, so at peace, so aligned that god feels undeniable. I run and hike the hills and mountains every day for hours and often have to stop because I become overwhelmed not just by the expansive beauty but by the fact that when I come here I am able to listen better to lessons I need to hear. The lessons, the truths are so loud, so urgent, that not heeding them is impossible. They are palpable. 

This is legacy in action. 

I came here this summer on the heels of an exceptionally busy time, probably teaching too many classes, in addition to leading teacher trainings, managing a heavy load of private clients, as well as managing the lives of our family. I love every single part of my life, but upon arriving here, I realize I am spread too thin. I fell into a well over week long summer cold that had me floored. My body is talking, and I am listening. I am in a place of re-evaluating where I direct my time and energy. 

This morning I woke up from a dream that folded in my inner conflict of teaching yoga in an often diluted pool, yet striving to maintain the integrity of my teachings and the intelligence of the evolving practice. In the dream I was trying to teach a workshop about the natural curves of the spine, but the music was turned up so loud that no one could hear me. This is ironic, I know, as I am often the one to blast loud music in my classes. Tangentially, I looooove practicing yoga to music. I curate the playlists for my classes with thought and love as a compliment to the class, not as background and never more important than the sequence, but a beautiful sister component to the poses and the stories they reveal. But I never use music in my teacher trainings. The trainings are just that - training, study, discipline. Only once we truly have some level of mastery (of course none of us is ever a “master”) of the alignment, philosophy, sequencing, do we assess whether or not adding music would be an authentic, good choice. Anyway, the dream was a manifestation of my own inner conflict of teaching with integrity. I am sitting today with the lessons it reveals.

I woke from the dream to learn of the passing of Maty Ezraty, truly the mother of teachers and co-founder of YogaWorks, the home of my own practice, and now teaching, for over twenty years. She is my teachers’ teacher, and I have studied with her. Her voice is echoed in the words of my own teachers and thus in mine as well. I have studied and now teach her system of yoga to young, blooming teachers. Maty is a force of strength, integrity, and intelligence in the ever evolving yoga world. She spoke often of the importance of mentorship, and I heed that lesson as I mentor newer teachers and hold them to a standard that often times the studios and certainly social media has diluted, and even at times forgotten. 

Ultimately, this is about legacy. What we do, who we teach, how we teach, the lessons we learn and strive to impart on others. The best of Maty exists not only in so many teachers whom I know and love and call friends, but way beyond in their students and their students’ students and so on. Her legacy lives in the alignment cues I give my students and ultimately in the grace or freedom they feel as a result. That grace and freedom ripples out in to their lives, to their families, to their communities. It is infinite.

Legacy lives and breathes here in Wyoming where I write this. I sit here as a result of a grandfather I never knew, a man who died when my own father was just a little boy, a little boy who would grow up to return to this place and create a space for his own family to return year after year, long after that same little boy, my dad, would also die way too young. And now I come here with my own children and feel the presence of my father as palpably as if he was still here. I run these hills every morning, feeling as a part of them as I do my own family, feeling a state of connection which fills me up. I imagine my own daughters here with their own families after my time has passed, and I pray they continue to feel as connected to me as I do to my own father now. I am stunned with gratitude that we have this place to come and feel this way.

Everything we do, everything we say, everyone we touch has an effect. It ripples way further than we can ever fathom or could ever know. That carries with it a responsibility. 

Ultimately the legacy I choose is love.

Namaste.

Hey! May I Hold That for You?

Hey! May I hold that for you?

Recently, I was teaching my regular Saturday morning class. I love this class. I’ve taught it for a long time, and I have truly come to know and love so many of the people who take the class. Truth be told, I love all the people who take all of my classes, even if I don’t know them. I love them because they could all be doing a million different things, but they are choosing to practice yoga. Our lives and this world are made up of a million little decisions we humans make every day. And what I know for certain is that when we all roll out our mats, we are part of something good. This practice of stopping and noticing and breathing at the very least makes us feel better for a while. And when we feel better, we are better. And the world really, really needs us to be better. In recent years especially, I have been holding onto to those moments of noticing when we humans are part of something positive. They give me hope and remind me of the endurance of good.

Often times when I am teaching, you all take my breath away. I see you in all states - digging deep, feeling strong, beating yourself up, blissed out, distracted. But still showing up. Still there. Still breathing. And ultimately the practice of yoga is a practice of noticing.

So this morning as I was teaching, I felt a rush of overwhelm of compassion and gratitude (it happens all the time when I see you all digging deep). We all have a story. All of us. Complete with triumphs and tragedies, trials and tribulations, mediocrity and absolute moments of bliss. And we all also carry our stories with us. Stories that serve us and often stories that don’t. I have found that most of the time the stories that don’t serve us are couched in fear. Fear of something that is on each one of us to unpack.

But I also know, or believe wholeheartedly, that faith is not the absence of fear. They coexist for me almost all of the time. Two sides of same coin, often in an interplay between which one carries more weight, which one is driving the decisions. This is reminiscent of a passage of Elizabeth Gilbert discussing that fear always comes along for the ride, but doesn’t get to drive the car, or hold the map, or even touch the dial on the music.

I’d like to take it a step further and maybe put fear in the trunk. Or in storage. Or somewhere, fully aware it may be alive and well, but safely stashed away. Or even, hand it to your yoga teacher. Not driving. Not with too loud a voice.

So as I marvelled at the beauty of the students in the class, from all walks of life, I asked them...

“May I hold that for you?”

Meaning, I see you. I see you feeling all the things. I see you in the interplay of strength and overwhelm, grace and distraction. And maybe there is an old story there, a fear, a feeling that just isn’t serving its purpose any more. So I ask, “May I hold that for you?” Just for a while so you can feel what it’s like to proceed without it. So that you can feel that maybe you don’t need it anymore. I’ll hold it. I will honor it and why you needed it. And I will be more than happy to give it back.

If you want it back. But maybe you won’t.

It is moments like this that is why I teach yoga. Seeing you all prevail over old stories, being willing to be uncomfortable with grace. So if you have some old story, message, fear, perhaps let me hold it for you next time you come to class and assess if maybe you would prefer to be done with that story. In which case, I will lovingly dispose of it.

Spring Has Sprung!

I have quite literally been feeling like Mother Nature and Mother Time have handed me three more hours in my days!!!! I have reminded myself of my deep love of evening sunset hikes and have been scheduling them in as if as important as a life saving doctor’s appointment.

I DO NOT cancel on myself!!!

You can find me hoofing up the hills of the Santa Monica Mountains, singing along to my favorite music (sometime I just hit shuffle on thousands of songs and let the playlist be totally random) sometimes with a bestie and sometimes solo. I loooooove a solo hike but I can also chat for hours on end with a close friend for miles and miles and never be done figuring “IT” all out. Feel me on this?

I have learned to schedule in the things that make me feel alive and full of joy NO MATTER WHAT. Often I have to set these things out five weeks, even six, but they are on my schedule, and I guard them like a hawk.

And guess what? I do all the other things too. Like the dishes and pay taxes and show up for work and carpool and flossing (sometimes). I even make my bed most days (and then one of my dogs unmakes it). Take out the trash. All the things... Probably one of the greatest lessons, despite whatever may be going on, of recent years (and what I talk about in class a lot) is that we get to choose how we feel.

WHAT?!!! WE GET TO CHOOSE HOW WE FEEL!!!

Cue some eye rolling. I probably would have years ago. But once I truly realized that if I don’t choose, I basically let some other person or circumstance decide for me, I was like, “HELL NO!!!! I am going to decide!!!”

I was actually just totally going off about this with an awesome check out woman at my local Ralph’s (no, it’s not always Erewhon or Whole Foods. A girl needs extra big rolls to toilet paper and who likes unnecessary trips to the market anyway?). She was declaring, “You know what? I have had a hard life. Shitty things happen. But I’m happy!!”

So I said, “So you are choosing to be happy, even though all the shitty things???!”

And she said said, “I sure am!!”

Then the construction guy in front of me in line high fived her because HER happiness always makes HIS day better.

And then WE ALL had a better day. Even though the shitty things. Which are still there.

So life happens. Sad things. Hard things. Stressful things. And we definitely don’t bypass that. We feel it all. We don’t avoid it. But what do we shine a light on? What do we lean into? A good friend (actually an awesome woman who gave me my very first class at Equinox years ago - thank you, Angela Leigh!!!)  just recently said (okay, posted) something I love. She said (or maybe she was quoting someone else; you never really know these days on IG),

“Did you have a bad day?

Or did you experience 10-20 minutes of discomfort?

The discomfort became undisciplined thoughts.

Those thoughts became a bad vibe.

Come on you run this shit.”

I LOVE THIS!!!!!

We do run this shit!!!! At least our own shit.

We do get to decide whether those shitty or uncomfortable ten, twenty minutes, or even few hours get to determine the whole day or how we feel. You know the person (and maybe you have been the person; I know I have)  when asked how you are begins the long list of all of the stressful hard things? The shitty things? Like they are a badge of honor!!!

There is no honor in choosing to suffer. There are no prizes for having the most stress.

So despite all the very real stressors, I am choosing to meet them head on with a GODDAMNED SMILE ON MY FACE because things can always get harder, shittier. And despite all the things, life is beautiful. And, for now, my people are safe. Our health is good. And everything beyond that is gravy. Or maybe salted caramel sauce. Cuz yum.

I love you.

J.