There are definitely some times in life when you feel like, even just for short brief periods, that things are truly going your way. Call it riding the winds of Grace, being in the flow, having Lady Lakshmi in your corner, or whatever. What you seek comes to you easy. You feel like a manifestor, and like every bit of yoga-speak: set-your-intention-thoughts-become-things-OTG-etc etc is speaking some truth. And yes! You feel it! It happens!

I affirm that experience, ten fold. It does happen, and sometimes it does feel supremely easy, filled with just enough effort to make it so. It’s true, but more than just wishing it so. You really do need to apply effort, and I finally see that I become the great creator of my life when I do so. It takes work though!

You almost have to think of yourself as an engineer, a creator, a designer. What I learned to design though wasn’t just my intentions and wishes for a good life, but designing the way my mind and self receive information. I design experiences based on how I perceive them. The result comes purely from my own mind and its process. If my mind is soiled and stained (yes, I used those words) by old, tired, worn out (yet well used and practiced) ways of seeing myself in the world, than that soiled mind is going to take whatever comes into it and throw shit all over it. That’s a type of design. By design, you can wreck things, ruin even the most beautiful, thoughtful, meaningful, and highly intended for good, things/people/words/actions that come into your realm. Yup, as a designer, you can do that too.

As a designer, I created some really beautiful messes out of this soiled mind, and things definitely didn’t feel like they were going my way.  Yet they were! They were going exactly as my soiled mind was creating! I’m sure I’m not alone in this experience.

I’ve been on and off in therapy for 20+ years, and deeply embedded in a very uplifting and empowering yoga philosophy system for 10. I’ve learned a lot. What I love about yoga though is that it can speed things up. My process has begun to move much quicker since I’ve become more awakened to my power and skill as a designer. Meditation has helped tremendously with this, I slow down, and my mind clears and cleans out whatever is that nagging old festering untruth about my being. I consider myself a baby-meditator, maybe toddler age, but the results have been very palpable to my experience. I feels like I’m processing the world as it really is these days, not through such a soiled lens.

That’s where I come full circle. When my mind clears through practice, I feel Lady Lakshmi in my corner, as she’s always been, breathing down my neck all the time, breathing as the winds of Grace. My reactions are totally different than they were a short time ago, so the design-your-life-wish-list is now possible. Opportunities have opened or re-opened that not too long ago, I never thought would. 3 years is a long time, but 3 years is also not a very long time at all when it comes to making real lasting and sustaining shifts in your being. 3 years is kinda a quick recovery and transformation. 3 years, just about to the day of being asked to depart Virayoga, I was asked to return.  That was also by design. I start May 2nd, Advanced Practice 9:30-11:30.

 

This past weekend I was thrilled to practice with one of the best teachers. Jimmy Bernaert was visiting Abhaya Yoga in Dumbo for 3 wowzer classes. What I love so much about Jimmy’s teaching is his simplicity in language and direct pulse to the heart of the matter, and heart of everything. He also kicked our buts in serious 3 hour practices both Saturday and Sunday. So direct in his style, just boom, boom, boom; pose, direction, breath, change sides. Amazing and very deep. He’s one of the greats for a reason.

I’ve known Jimmy for about 10 years, and he and his wife Ruthie were my first teachers for an Intro To The Principles class at the original Yoga Mandali over there on Laguardia Place. A tiny, tiny studio, the room fit maybe max 25 people. Jimmy and Ruthie were stellar first teachers of the methodology of Anusara for me, and stellar examples of difference and how it can balance. He being nearly 6’5″, and she a petite 5′ somethin’. Married, co-teachers, co-parents; they’re just so lovely.

Jimmy and I reminisced about a funny moment we shared some 3 years ago at a Therapeutics training with John Friend in Miami. A pretty intimate group of 50 or 60 gathered, and John did as he always had done – had me stand up for a demo of how to spot a drop back (standing, dropping back into full wheel) with the nearly 6’5″ Jimmy. Ruthie was in the room and the first thing I thought was ‘don’t drop him in front of his Ruthie!’. I was a little nervous. John prompted me, nervous or not, and I held Jimmy’s pelvis, rooted him down as HARD as I possibly could, and despite that momentary shift in weight from the student where the teacher BEST be tuned in to root them steadier where I ALMOST lost him,  he went down smooth on his hands. Then I picked him up too. He said it was the best drop back assist he’s ever had.  I felt relieved I didn’t drop my dear friend Jimmy in front of his lovely wife Ruthie, and proud I found the strength inside myself to do it.

This sweet story reminded me of my first TT with JF, back in 2002 here in NYC. I was fresh out of my first TT at Virayoga, bubbly and excited. When we did drop back assists, I dropped my co-student, Esther Peyron. I love Esther! OMG, I dropped her. On her head.

John saw this and came over immediately. Who knows what he really said, but what I remember him saying was something like “You don’t ever drop anyone. Ever”. Truly, when I think about it now the image of him at that moment is totally distorted, like in movies when they try to show a delusioned person’s viewpoint, his face all jello-like, like I’m tripping or something. Either way, John came over, said something like “don’t drop anyone, ever” to me, and picked Esther up and proceeded to do the drop back with her correctly. (Later, I learned that doing that helps the student quickly shift away from the trauma of being spotted incorrectly, so long as they’re not injured or dizzy).  Needless to say, I ran to the bathroom sobbing, feeling terrible that I hurt my friend Esther, and that I had fucked up so bad in front of my teacher.

From that day on, every time I did a John training or workshop, it didn’t matter what side of the US we were on, he called on me to assist the biggest guy in the room in a drop back, and later it became Handstand. I always got so nervous when the wave of the class got to drop backs or Handstands, cause I knew he’d call on me.

It took me until this past weekend with Jimmy to realize that John was teaching me all these years. Despite me feeling insecure, like he was picking on me or being hard on me. He was training me. Yes, teaching me to be a good teacher and learn how to balance my small frame against someone else’s larger frame for challenging assists like back-bend drop backs and handstand. Talking with Jimmy though, it finally hit me. He was teaching me, training me, to be big, be strong, stay firm in my heart and legs and well, ME. He’d been teaching me that all along from that day in 2002. Which by the way, was the first time I’d met him.

I have never dropped anyone in a drop back (or Handstand) since 2002. Ever. That’s a record of 1-in-ten.

Why did it take me till now to realize he was teaching me, not picking on me or trying to criticize me? Because now I see him as human. Well, actually I always have seen him as human. Looked up to him? Yes. Deify him? No. He’s let me down equal measure to the times he’s supported me as I’d hoped. Again: Human. We’re both Human.

Sometimes you don’t realize when you’re being taught something. We’re human. It means ‘mortal’, but also vulnerable, fallible, imperfect, compassionate, humane, tolerant. As a noun it means individual, soul, earthling. Yup, we all are that. Yup, we all are being taught something. Yup, we will mess up again.

But I will do my damndest to hold onto my record of 1-in-ten.

 

*Inspired by conversation with Alicia Mathewson today. Thank you sweet friend and great songstress.

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about what we leave behind, especially here, on the internet. Sometimes known as consequences, I prefer to think of it as Legacy. It has always scared the daylights out of me to become a blogger, knowing that what I put into writing becomes more real, and even permanent in the fabric of space-time. Not only is it permanent, but everyone sees it, and lately I’ve seen it can be ripped to shreds. Very little of the good remembered, but the ‘bad’, woa. Sometimes ripped to shreds with pretty words at the bottom (blessings! light! i honor you!), and its been painful to read that yoga folk each think they know what is Right.  Ah, the opinions of the self-righteous.

So I’ve been quiet on here. Many have praised my quietude. Maybe others have silently called me names, fit me into one camp or another, continuing the urge to group, classify, and predict the future. I do appreciate being noticed (I am a Sadge, after all), and noticed as a voice that’s missing, but I’ve been silent for real reasons, personal reasons, and because well, I’ve been inside my heart. Listening to my real wisdom while working out pain, frustration, and disappointment has been one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done for myself.

I see a bright future though, for everyone. That’s all I’m going to say about it now.

 

I leave Tuesday for 3 weeks in Bali, and 1 week in Singapore. I’ve not gone away from home for this amount of time in several years, and its both exciting and anxiety provoking. Tying up loose ends in all aspects of my functioning here in New York, making sure I have a good cat sitter, etc, is no easy task.

I’m also hugely aware that I leave a bit of myself behind when I travel and take time off from teaching the classes that have become so beloved to me. I was so aware of it this week that I infused every class with the inner poetry of the Legacy of Grace, learned only by turning inward toward it, to be drenched in it fully.  Teaching students to become more aware of their own inner Legacy of Grace and that upon visiting this inner Legacy that has already been gifted to you, it seeps outside into your life is the Legacy you leave on others. Maybe that’s what others have noticed in me these past few weeks.

I trust in my heart more than ever before, and its only because I now know how to really get there, and sit there, and listen. I see what clouds my heart, and I let it go, I burn it off, I let it move through me. I want only to leave behind the parts of me that are Grace. I can’t erase the past and the shitty things I’ve done, so, I ask for forgiveness. And, I offer forgiveness, to myself and to anyone else that has left shit all over me. A tall, tall task, but I’m a practitioner, after all, and I’m willing to be just that. I will practice.

oh, and the anxiety? I think I’m going to be teaching wearing a mic at the Bali Spirit Festival. Maybe the new Legacy will be Grace I know more intimately that fear and cold sweats will not be my reaction when the word ‘microphone’ is mentioned. ugh. Back to practice I go.

Blessings! Light! I honor you!  For reals, I’ll be back April 8th. Contact me through email or fb. Enjoy your practices. I have wonderful subs lined up for all my classes at YW and BnB.

With Great Love,

Julie