oh boy, i actually have to write about this again? The phone calls, the emails, the worry in people’s voices.

No, I’m not resigning my Anusara certification.

I have no reason to. Zero. I totally align with teaching hatha yoga in the Anusara method. And until that changes for me, I’m stayin’. I’ve got the torch, along with so many others.

For those of you in the dark, or ‘living under a rock’ (to quote Amy), Amy Ippoliti, longtime Anusara cover-girl, super-star teacher, yoga visionary, and well, my first teacher of Anusara, has decided to resign her Certification.  As the visionary-super-star-sustainer-of-excellence in being a teacher of yoga, she’s simply moving forward on her own to continue teaching.  I bless her departure as growth, expansion, and evolution. It must happen! And I honor her as my first teacher, the one who inspired me to be the teacher I am today, and then some.

Yet with her departure, along with Darren + Christina, and Elena, I’m totally fascinated by my emotional response. I’m disappointed in these teachers and mentors of mine, who I’ve always looked to for advice on how to work through issues over the past decade. We’ve all been taught to ‘see the good’, and when I’ve been unable to do so, I have turned to mentors such as these great beings, and they’ve guided me toward a humble and open place of reason and Love.

So why couldn’t they? I’m disappointed they couldn’t find a pathway to connection, and instead chose disconnection.  But that’s where I’m alarmed at myself. Like, come on Julie – we’re adults. Sometimes you have to walk away. People break up! I’ve been broken up with, and have broken up with others, romantically and in friendship, because we just couldn’t see eye to eye and confusion and disagreement were the truth of the moment. It happens. Its life. so why am I still so disappointed?

Perhaps because what I’ve learned from my meditation teacher Paul Muller-Ortega. Paul teaches that what we experience outside as ‘worldiness’ or ignorance, blindness, contraction, forgetfullness, and conflict can be ‘cured’ by absorbing into the flow of Consciousness itself, where there is no difference or conflict. In meditation, we expand into the flow of it all melding together. I know that’s where we all connect, no matter what style of yoga is practiced.  What we’re in right now is worldiness, and we live in the world filled with contradictions of all kinds. Some cannot be reconciled, and I’ve also learned that they’re not supposed to all reconcile. Difference is another form of expansion.

In meditation, we invite all things into the fire pit of what he calls Great Consciousness and it works as a cesspool and recycling center, transforming everything into the one thing that is the common thread – Love.

Yet, emotionally, I’m uncomfortable.

I find all of my teachers, students, and beings in the fire pit of my heart and bow to their Grace. With remembrance of where we all connect, I bow.

Swaha.

Nearing the end of my day today, I realized it was pretty normal. Taught to a brave and willing crowd at my local studio Bend and Bloom, skyped with mom and dad (which is new for them and so thrilling), and did laundry. To think that 3 days ago, I momentarily thought my world would end when I heard that 2 of my Anusara colleagues were resigning their Certification.

I really did have a moment of panic when word went around that Darren Rhodes and Christina Sell were resigning. Both of them have been stellar teachers and mentors in the greater Anusara community for some time; Darren, as the exemplary practitioner of asana and model/co-creator of the famed syllabus poster, and Christina, a powerhouse as example of clear communication and deep commitment on the path. They are going to create their own “thing” or style of yoga, and I’m sure it’s going to be filled with everything they are.

That’s how I feel now, but that’s not how I felt Wednesday.

I felt like the ground beneath me was shattering, that all I trusted was being washed away. I saged my apartment, and myself. I needed grounding.

While sage-ing, I went downstairs and saged around my puja and even my Anusara certificate. Dated 5/16/05. #134. Swami Muktananda’s Birthday. Suddenly I was grounded. Grounded in the recognition of change, and then the comfort of change. I realized looking at my certificate from 6 years ago that I had changed, a lot, yet my commitment to the practice and service as a teacher was intact. So intact that I felt a hit of grace and comfort wash over me at the remembrance of that, and then I remembered aparigraha.

Aparigraha is sanskrit and often is translated as “non-clinging” or “non-attachment”. As one of the Yamas and Niyamas, it is seen as one of the basic behaviors you’d benefit from learning how to do if you want to lead a balanced life. Traditionally this is taught as a full releasing of all attachments to material things, and in an extreme sense of asceticism, it means to live like a monk. Denounce everything and everyone, except your loyalty through practice to the Divine, and you’ll only then have a fair shot at getting close to the Divine. Not really how we define it these days, or at least how I define it in my life or practice.

I’ve come to understand aparigraha as a lessening of a grip on how things should or shouldn’t be, expectations of others, and the like. It’s a teaching of allowing things – and people – to change. A hard one for me to learn, but one that comes up for me again and again. Being in the flow, right?

Being in the flow is allowing the transformation of the kula to happen. For Darren and Christina to follow their hearts and be as creative in the world as possible. If no longer holding the Certification of Anusara serves them, then it serves us all. Allow Anusara to change. What if this is an opening? For others to shine brighter as they did, too? What if this is about me stepping up into a brighter place, and allowing myself to change?

Transmutation is happening for me, daily. I’m shedding. I’m clearing. I’m getting more honest. It doesn’t mean the change won’t be painful, but fighting the change turns the pain into suffering. Allow. Aparigraha. Allow it to flow.

So this weekend, the entire east coast endured Hurricane Irene. She was definitely a ferocious and spunky lil’ thing, and New York (state, as well as just city) was thick in the mayhem of preparations for the worst. Definitely better to be over prepared, than under prepared, my mom used to say (Go mom).

I narrowly escaped by heading upstate to Heathen Hill Retreat center and farm, with 8 other valiant yoga devotees and those desiring a weekend out of the city. What a weekend we chose! Preparing up there as well for Irene to blast through included candlelit yoga, filling buckets of water in the bathrooms for when the power goes out, and making sure everyone had flashlights. We were kinda prepared for no power since there’s no wi-fi on the premises, but alas, we survived.  Call me crazy, but I was loving the adventure and it sorta reminded me of camp. Camp with a hot tub, plenty of wine, and the coolest counselor (Susan “Lip” Orem, you win hands down), and all your favorite bunk mates.

I love going on retreat as a student; the escape from daily life, being a student of yoga for two classes a day, time to relax, really meditate, read…but as the teacher of a retreat, I love it in a different way. I’m ‘on-call’ (happily I must add) for stuff that arises when you willingly step outside of your comfort zone and agree to live for a limited time with relative strangers, usually with only one thing in common: a love of yoga. This common thread goes a long way, and usually becomes the key to what I’ve seen form as life-long friendships. Again and again, I see connections made on retreats that are so bonding, so real, filled with such laughter that even if they don’t last, they open hearts and mind to such a degree that a revelation appears. That revelation over and over again is that life is good and we’re supposed to enjoy it. Together. We forge the bonds of friendship through this yoga, and choose to walk it together for as long as we do. It’s the teaching that I come back to again and again for myself, and one that puts a salve on old wounds in me about feeling alone, or being unworthy of connection with others. If anyone else gets that kind of salve, that kind of up-liftment or ease in their heart from being on a yoga retreat with me and making new friends, then I’ve done my job well.

Kula is a sanskrit word that translates to mean ‘body’, as in ‘collection’ or ‘structure’ and it refers to a particular kind of community where the connection runs a little deeper than just sangha, which translates simply to ‘community’. Kula are those you are simpatico with, and with whom you share a common belief or value system. The meaning of kula has more to do with the liberty inherent to choose who you bond with to form a woven ‘structure’ of support. We choose who to bond with, who to trust, who to count as ally, and then conversely, who to be a strong structure for.  In my nearly 10 years of teaching, what’s become most important to me is creating kula, as well as being in kula. To somehow be the connecting point for others to find each other is truly one of the greatest joys of my job.  Certification in 2005 felt like I took a vow to uphold particular principles of living, and one of them was to honor the Kula and what it stands for.  One principle of kula is that no one really gets kicked out. You’re free to come into the community and play, offer your talents, gifts, quirks, wit, voice and opinion, just as free as you are to leave when it no longer serves you.

We welcomed Irene into the kula this weekend, and she forged us together.