yoga

A Life’s Purpose


What if what I am supposed to be doing is exactly what I am doing?

I ask only because I read a blog entry of a friend who is searching for her direction in life. Or redirection. We can never assume, after all, that where we are, what we are doing or who we surround ourselves with is permanent.

Life is about change – at its core – not about permanence.

I was a teacher for twenty years. When I left, I can count on one hand the number of minutes it took for someone to ask,

“So what are you going to do now?”

As if emigrating to Canada, remarrying and focusing on my writing/blogging in addition to giving the stay at home mom thing a full-time go for the first time in the five years I’d been a mother wasn’t enough.

What are you going to do with your life?

So that it’s meaningful – in the eyes of the world – is the question behind that question.

But what if, maybe, I am doing what I am meant to do?

Given that nothing is permanent, and I can reasonably expect the circumstances of my life to change over the course of time, why couldn’t what I am doing … right now … be what I am meant to do? Right now.

And isn’t that enough?

Writing for blogs, studying yoga with an eye towards teaching a few classes – maybe having a studio one day – isn’t nothing. Though I recognize that like “having it all” or “having enough” it is an eye of the beholder thing.

Does anyone’s eye matter but mine in the assessment of what makes my life meaningful or gauging what I should be doing with my life?

I think not.

And a life’s “purpose” is more than what one does in terms of culture’s obsession with the idea of work and career (which, frankly, is the measuring stick in our Western world to an unhealthily large degree).

What if, what you are doing right now and where you are is “it”?

For now.

Taught My First Yoga Class


Jade, the owner of the yoga studio I frequent and my teacher, asked me if I would take her Wednesday drop-in class this week.

I hesitated not.

This coming weekend will be my final teacher training session. Tests, demo teaching, Sutra presentations – the works. Teaching for real was just the thing I needed to prepare.

Over the course of training weekends, we practice teach on each other. It’s not the same as having real students and reminds me of practicing on my fellow students back in university. During the run up to student teaching (I was an English major), we’d craft lessons that we’d present to each other as though we were actual kids in a classroom.

Yes, that’s just as empty of substance as it sounds.

In yoga training, practice teacher of other yoga teachers usually devolves into workshopping as we pull poses apart and share our perspectives with each other. Not that this isn’t valuable. It has value – just not as a way to gain teaching experience for the “real” world.

Yoga studios are so not the real world.

The drop-in class is 45 minutes of what is basically an abbreviated Ashtanga practice. Surya A and B, Standing, a wee bit of seated, maybe Bridge, possibly a twist or two and Savasana.

I started on time and ended on time. Forgot to start Surya B in Utkatasana the first time and got turned around on my left vs right a couple of times, but no one fell over, everyone sweated (people who come to Ashtanga expect sweat in an oddly Bikram sort of way) and at the end, some were smiling and everyone said “thank you”.

There was an older woman, who’d never been to the class before – and who only studied Hatha previously – who might not come back.

But otherwise?

Great success.

Why?

I was teaching. Like teaching for real. I didn’t hesitate. It felt homey and I slipped right into the role as though it was crafted just for me.

But I am a teacher and always have been and that’s a hard instinct to put aside. It was only a matter of time before I found my way back to it.

I don’t know that it prepared me in any way for this weekend’s testing. I feel over-full of yoga at the moment and am not certain I can access anything specifically or consciously, but I am not worried about whether or not I am a yoga teacher.

The photo is urdhva dhanurasana or wheel pose. I totally pulled my left levator muscle and irritated the hell out of my trapezoid at the same time coming up into that earlier in the week. I hurt as I demo’d in class despite having gotten there 40 mins early to warm up. Consequently, I won’t be doing the arm balance practice on Friday – which I could use because my arm balances suck (a very un-yoga but entirely accurate, in my case, term). But, I was psyched to get up into the pose on my own. I haven’t come up into a wheel since I was ten – at least.

What Kind of Dining Set Defines Me as a Person?


The unknown narrator, or is he Tyler Durden, ponders an IKEA catalog, wondering what his stuff says about him. But it’s not just stuff, it’s attitude about/identification with things and how what we wear, listen to, read and watch comes to represent us in the world.

Programmed from near birth, we come to view externals as part of ourselves and believe that they lift us or damn us according to society’s ranking of them and hence us.

Our musical tastes, for example, allow the majority to rule us. We are cool or not so much depending on our earworm preferences. Liking Nickelback and Taylor Swift earns scorn while pretending to get the deep meaning of Tool rates high social marks.

I like Nickelback by the way. Just plain old pop/rock and occasional boy band ballad-e-ness with a bit of growl. Pretentious? Perhaps. Lyrically challenged? Most definitely. Fun? In my opinion, yes.

I listen to Tool as well though I prefer Perfect Circle. It’s also pretentious, but it’s angsty in a discomforting way that allows people to pretend it’s more meaningful than Daughtry and therefore elevates the listener to some level the masses just “wouldn’t understand”. Forgetting all the while that music is poetry and poetry’s meaning is subjective and totally relative.

What kind of music defines me as a person?

And what does it say about me that I need external definition?

Yesterday was “cheer up, Keanu day”. Generated by a viral paparazzi shot of the actor morosely munching a sandwich on a park bench in a decidedly homeless guy sort of way, people with a soft spot of maligned movie stars decided to dedicate a day – and a Facebook page – to share their fond memories of his movies, music and their actual encounters with Reeves.

It reminded me of a memorial service.

For a man who’s not dead in case anyone missed that. Although maybe in a world obsessed with whatever one has done lately, a career not in full throttle is akin to a death of sorts. Even middle-aged men are put to pasture in Hollywood, however, but if I had Reeves resources, I doubt that I would be pushing myself very hard either.

Oh, wait. I am not pushing myself. Nevermind

What kind of movies define me as a person?

Can I be defined by the fact that I sometimes watch films just because the actors are pleasantly attractive? Or that I am sufficiently imaginative to be able to immerse myself in a story regardless of the quality of the acting and the CGI?

The latter perhaps is the more admirable quality but the former is nothing to hang one’s head shamefully over.

My fondness for Virgo men aside, I like Reeves the actor. I never have difficulty believing he is his character in a way that “better” actors like Tom Hanks, for instance, can never not be “Tom Hanks” regardless of the film.

Because I prefer to not wear make up, live in my yoga togs and forsake underwear, am I bohemian? Does being a yoga teacher/blogger make me trendy or edgy? Or does the fact that I’ve blogged for money blogs rob me of “cool” cred?

I’ve viewed people from way atop the bridge of my nose, but that vantage point didn’t put me above anyone as much as it revealed my own pettiness and superficiality.

What defines you as a person? Music? Movies? A dining set?

I’m still trying to find my true self. Excavate her, really.

But in the meantime, I like Nickelback and Keanu Reeves’ movies and buying my yoga duds at Sears.