yoga

Elegant? A Reprise

Elegant

ELEGANT
el·e·gant
ˈeləgənt/
adjective: elegant
1.pleasingly graceful and stylish in appearance or manner.
“she will look elegant in black” (a reason why I always wear black, ha!)
synonyms: stylish, graceful, tasteful, sophisticated, classic, chic, smart.
antonyms: messy, unwieldy (hot mess)!

Oh yeah, I’ve talked about this. I cautioned you in the previous post.
We can aspire to it, aim for it, even pray for it, but enlightenment, spiritual awakening, whatever you want to name it, is rarely elegant.

And by rarely…I mean never.

There is a mine field of inelegance that surrounds becoming conscious.
You can side step the big stuff, like disaster and dis-ease, but you’ll still get your shoes dirty.
It’s kinda the name of the game.
If it was pretty; clean and easy, everyone would do it.

Take meditation for instance.
I can’t tell you how many friends have said this to me: When I started meditation, all hell broke loose.
It starts out all zen and blissful, with the breath and the inner peace. You will have that in your back pocket for life; but ask anyone who’s seriously meditated for a while.
Shit can hit the fan!
If you meditate every day, you literally change your brain…and your body.
You put the monkey mind in its place, and make your connection with source.

But source likes a clean link. It doesn’t like an old plugged up infrastructure, so it cleans and clears things out. When that happens, all your bad habits, your sabotaging self talk, your anger, hate, rage, lack of forgiveness, selfishness, greed, and jealousy, to name a few, are chased out of the shadows and into the light.

Get the fan.

This will set you free, but these guys won’t be graceful, chic or elegant.
They will give you the middle finger on their way out.
Meditation shook their cage, and they’re pissed.

Yoga is right up there too. A great practice, amazing for the mind and body, but it’s not just exercise, there is a spiritual aspect to Yoga that you can’t get around.
Yoga in Sanskrit means “the Divine Union”. Using the physical postures to bring the mind under control and join with the Higher Self or Source.

Uh oh.
Get the fan.

A regular Yoga practice will unleash all the usual suspects.
Anger will be released from your hip joints, sadness from your shoulders.
There will be heart openings, epic realizations, even tears.
It will free YOU as well…it just won’t be elegant.

Choosing the path less traveled.
Operating outside your comfort zone.
Mindful living.
Being of Service.
All call for making the tough choices, lots of “no’s” = Fast track to a more enlightened life.
Elegance…not so much.

The path may not seem the most elegantat first, but don’t loose faith you guys, elegance comes later. Trust me.
Choose wisely.

XoxJanet

Buddhist Prayer/Meditation For Fear

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Today I heard the most beautiful Buddhist meditation/prayer for fear.

It is recited by Colleen Saidman Yee at the end of her yoga classes.
I just love it and I thought you would too.

Here are her words.

“It goes something like this: Sit down and notice where you hold your fear in your body.
Notice where it feels hard, and sit with it. In the middle of hardness is anger.

Go to the center of anger and you’ll usually come to sadness.
Stay with sadness until it turns to vulnerability.

Keep sitting with what comes up; the deeper you dig, the more tender you become.
Raw fear can open into the wide expanse of genuineness, compassion, gratitude, and expectancy in the present moment.

A tender heart appears naturally when you are able to stay present.

From your heart you can see the true pigment of the sky. You can see the vibrant yellow of a sunflower and the deep blue of your daughter’s eyes.

A tender heart doesn’t block out rain clouds, or tears, or dying sunflowers.
Allow beauty and sadness to touch you.
This is love, not fear.”

Isn’t that beautiful you guys?
Happy weekend,
xox

You can catch Colleen’s entire interview with Marie Forleo and hear her say the prayer on my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Theobserversvoice

Colleen’s new book:
Yoga for Life
A Journey to Inner Peace and Freedom

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Yoga-for-Life/Colleen-Saidman-Yee/9781476776781

An Open Letter to the Fat Girl I Saw at Hot Yoga in New York City

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Hey you guys,
Since its Saturday, hopefully you’ll take a minute to read this blog post by best-selling author Joshilyn Jackson about her love for the fat girl in hot yoga class.

It IS GENIUS! I LOVE IT SO MUCH I COULD WEEP!

Because here’s the thing you guys, it’s not just about the other fat girl in yoga, it’s about being the other red-head in class, the other divorced dad at Cub Scouts, the other forty something mom at Gymboree, or the other smartypants-nerd at the Q & A.

It’s about Fitting in — and the joy of being with other’s of your kind.

It’s about perfection and striving for something unattainable.

Most skinny girls think they’re fat;

Most girls with curly hair want nothing more than to wear it stick straight (guilty);

We ALL have our issues and I wish we could ALL just get over ourselves!

Enjoy your weekend my loves,
Carry on,
xox

An Open Letter to the Fat Girl I Saw at Hot Yoga in New York City
Thursday, 29th of December 2011 at 09:58:47 AM
Dear Fat Girl I Saw at Hot Yoga in New York City,

Perhaps I should call you OTHER fat girl at Hot Yoga, as I was there too, easing back into my Fat Down Dog, forward to Fat Plank, then melting and pushing up to Fat Cobra, etc etc, all the way through my big fat hot Vinyasa flow. (This should be a movie—My Big Fat Hot Vinyasa Flow—I would SO go to see that.)

Is it wrong that I am half in love with you? For being fat and at Hot Yoga? For shaving your legs and getting a GOOD pedicure and putting your big ol’ ass into yoga pants ? For unrolling your mat and claiming your space, a rounded duck standing defiantly on one squatty leg among flamingos.

Were you as happy to see me as I was to see you? I think you were. You kept PEEKING at me, under your armpit and between your thighs, when you should have had been looking at your Drishti, only to find I had abandoned MY Drishti and was misaligning my spine to peek at you.

We both tipped over out of tree because of it. But it was okay. We were a secret club of Fat Girls at Hot Yoga. We understood each other.

I miss you, now that I am back home in Georgia. I am ALWAYS the only fat girl at Hot Yoga. I am sure it is exactly the same for you—-You might think there would be more of us fat girls here in Quasi-Rural Georgia than in New York City.

Well, okay. There are, actually, but I am the only one in CLASS. We sometimes have one girl who THINKS she is another Fat Girl at Hot Yoga. She is not, God bless her. She is only mentally ill. At my Hot Yoga here, all the regulars are very beautiful and sleek, like otter puppies.

Yoga people. Honestly. They are long and loopy and bendable and glorious. I wish I was one, but I froth and churn and fail at cleanses.

They seem so at peace with their physicalness, living inside bodies that look like loops of strong ribbon. Meanwhile, I am at war. I am at war with my body.

Oh Fat Girl at Hot Yoga in New York City, are you at war with yours, too? Has it let you down? Are you angry with it? I am. Righteously furious, actually.

This stupid body has failed me in so many ways these last two years. It has been endlessly sick. It has required surgery and bed rest and vicious medication that got me well, but made me feel sicker.

I AM VERY ANGRY WITH IT for being sick, for getting fat, for not doing what I SAY.

But I am nice to it anyway, three times a week, at Hot Yoga.

Fat Girl, I saw you in New York, and I thought, GOOD FOR YOU. You are trying to find a way to be stronger, to live in yourself, to like your body enough to give it that seventy-five minutes of movement and acceptance. To just take care of the damn thing, even if you ARE mad at it. To treat it like an exasperating, ugly, ill-tempered little child—one you secretly adore.

At the start? Every time? I set my intention and it is this: For the next 75 minutes, don’t look around, don’t compare, don’t list all the ways you are not good enough to be here, and don’t hate yourself. Just Breathe. Just Breathe. Just Breathe. Just be in your body and remember how good a place it is to be, really.

For the first half of class, I remind myself that this body is not some shabby rental. It is home. No matter how mad I am, it is home.

By the second half, I always come to understand that it is more than home. It is more than where I live.

It is me.

I am it.

I remember my husband likes it. A lot. I remember it twice performed a function that was nothing short of miraculous, growing two exceptional babies entirely from scratch. My brain is a piece of it, and my brain is where the stories come from.

This is what I get from Hot Yoga, Fat Girl. I am not sure what you get. I hope the same thing. I wish ALL the Fat Girls would come to Hot Yoga and get this, get these minutes where we forget —if only for a little while— that our value as people doesn’t go down when our pants sizes go up.

And also? Selfishly? I DO wish at least one more would come, so I would have someone to peek at under my armpit, to give that little tip of the chin, that little nod.

Fat Girl at Hot Yoga Solidarity, baby. We aren’t perfect, but we are HERE, busting out of our yoga pants, ducks among flamingos, trying to take care of ourselves.

Namaste fricken DAY,

The Fat Girl You Saw at Hot Yoga in New York City

http://www.joshilynjackson.com/ftk/?p=1675

No Regrets

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I read something this weekend that touched me, and reminded me about those certain sweet aspects of our connections with each other that get swept aside because we think we have all the time in the world.

The man who I worked for in the jewelry business for almost twenty years lost his brother on Tuesday in a very sudden and unexpected way.

Damned heart attack.

That loss will reverberate throughout their family in untold ways and my heart goes out to each and every one of them.

I didn’t know him well, but having been to family birthdays and holiday parties over the years, I’d met his wife and kids and we’d had our share of kitchen duty and kid clean-up casual conversations. He was an active outdoorsman, family man and cut up.
He had the huge grin of a Cheshire Cat, and I always liked him.

I was hoping to find out if they were having any kind of service for him, where I could go and extend my condolences, so I checked the obituaries in the LA Times.
He hadn’t suffered a long illness, and was only in his early sixties, vital and active, so his obit reflected how hastily it had been put together. It was short and sweet.

I scrolled down to the comments and although not too many people have felt compelled to comment beyond their shock and sadness, there was one that was so personal and tender, it really touched my heart.

It was written by his yoga teacher.
Apparently he had had a regular yoga practice for many years, (which makes me like him even more) and he had been to class on Monday, the night before he passed.
She wrote that some people bring something special with them to class; and that she will miss his presence.
She explained that he fell into the category of students that made her happy when she came into the room and saw them on their mat, in their usual spot. She said that she had wanted to say goodbye to him after class, but often people are so peacefully zoned out that she doesn’t like to disturb them, and she regretted not having her last hello/goodbye with him that night.

That was the takeaway for me.
We all skip those little moments.
The simple hi or goodbye, maybe even a nod or smile or that split second of eye contact to let someone know that you were happy to see them.
We respect their privacy and skip the hug.
Then the next day- they’re gone.

Her simple words reminded me of something I think we all tend to forget.
Life’s too short and I hate regrets, so if I see you, I’m going to say hello and probably hug you.

Please feel free to do the same to everyone around you whose presence you’d miss…if they left the next day.

Love you all, big hug,
Xox

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

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