The Budding Optimist

    In the preface to Night, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explains that after liberation, he did not know how to write his account of surviving Nazi horrors, of turning his back on his own father, of becoming one of the walking wounded, because words had ceased meaning what they used to mean. There were so many words -- chimney, gas, smoke, selection -- whose meanings he'd understood differently before. But how do you function in a post-apocalyptic world where the words that other people know mean something so catastrophically different to you now? And how do you communicate your experiences to people who cannot begin to fathom the atrocities those words might hold for you? I would not have had the strength or courage to survive what Wiesel experienced. But when I read that about the failure of words, I understood it. Words are my life -- reading them, writing them, teaching students to use them more effectively, how to manipulate words to win arguments and persuade audience...

As we enter the last 25 hours of our 200-hour yoga certification, I can say it is probably one of the hardest voluntary experiences I've undertaken in quite sometime (although still a far, far cry from almost being eaten by bears at Wheaton).  A few weeks ago, we had to sequence a lesson using the nearly 500-page book of poses we'd been working from. The list of requirements was extensive. Still, it didn't seem that hard until I considered that the primary goal should be to leave the practitioner feeling really good; or, failing that, at least not injure them. I recruited Cara and her daughter Aubrey for my students. All was going according to plan until I got a series of break-up texts mere seconds before I was due to teach. I literally cried my way through the entire introduction, like a lunatic. And since Cara and Aubrey are empaths, they cried too...while it was being filmed...to hand in as evidence of my great progress as a yogi. It might not have been so bad, but then...

  One of my favorite stories from the OT is what happens after Elijah defeats the prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel. Following his massive and unqualified victory, Elijah is so full of endorphins that he runs 15 miles back to Jezreel, where all his endorphins promptly leave him and he asks God to kill him. (And God is like, "No. Here, eat a sandwich, your blood sugar is low.") I mean,  what?  If this is not a clear case of what we would today define as bi-polar mania and depression, I don't know what is. At the very least, it's mood dysregulation. I feel like that prophet right now. After 15 years of trying to find a high school English position, I quit my job in a massive blaze of glory and took a leap of faith on a one-year-only position that -- I suspect -- I was probably the only person to apply for. This fall I will teach people older than 14 for the first time since the student-teaching days of my 20's. And now I want to die. Yesterday, I taught the first yoga ...

   "Yoga Elsa told me it would be okay if I quit training, that no one would think less of me. "But I thought you said it's normal for it to be this hard and for everyone to get injured and for us all to feel like we're dying right now!" I wailed. "It is. But you have to think it's worth it. There has to be something worth it in this for you. If you are just miserable the whole way through, it's okay to stop." Yoga Elsa is pretty badass. I am not sure why this training seems to be so much harder for me than for the others in my class. I'm sure part of it is the failure to rise above my job situation. I think part of it is also that most of the others have someone supporting them -- a partner, or a spouse, or even a studio. I'm climbing Mount Everest on my own here and hoping my oxygen holds out." I wrote that weeks ago now when I was afraid I would quit. It hadn't even occurred to me to quit until Yoga Elsa said that I could, an...

We are nearing the end of yoga teacher training -- done in August! I don't yet feel like I can teach or sequence, but I  did  have COVID and then a killer migraine when we were doing that part of things. Or maybe yoga is one of those things like teaching English where you don't actually feel like a teacher until you've been at it for 5 years...  The last  niyama  of yoga is  ishvara pranidhana -  surrender. Well hot damn, they saved the easiest one for the end! J/K. This one's hard af.  After you've done all the non-stealing and non-excess, after all the self-discipline and self-study, what does it mean to completely surrender? In  The Yamas & Niyamas , Deborah Adele writes,  "We can be so busy feeling cheated or victimized when life doesn't go the way we want it to that we often miss a new opportunity life is offering us in the moment" (165). Well, that's a gut punch. I was talking with someone recently about online dating. We went ...

   Here is a riddle: Without putting too much thought into it, write down 5 words to describe the world. Go on, I'll wait. Do it quickly before you forget. Now, pause and look at the words. Each is more a projection of yourself than a true indicator of the what the world is like. Alarming, isn't it? I spoiled this exercise for some of the women in my yoga course by telling them all about it a week before they were supposed to read the chapter on s vadyaya . It turns out that a downside of reading a million books is that you can't remember what you read where, so you excitedly tell everyone half of everything in an effort to make connections. Even so, here are my words: broken, beautiful, tainted, complex, natural Freud would have a field day. I got to the chapter on self-study and thought, "If there is one thing I do not need help with, it is self-analysis." The 29 journals piled up on my bookshelf can attest to the fact that I am very familiar with myself. This i...

TAPAS The Heat The third  niyama  of yogic philosophy is  tāpas , or self-discipline. I don't think it really means self-discipline as we know it. It means something more like friction, aggravation, unease, and the heat of discomfort. It is what we feel when Life rubs up against us in ways that are unwanted. The concept asks us, "Can I persist through the pain of this terrible thing that is happening?" Or perhaps more accurately, it is the practice of preparing for those times. Of all the  yamas  and  niyamas  in yoga's ethical code,  tapas  is probably the one that I intuitively understand best. It is also the one I like least. They say that the pose you like the least is the one you need the most (Dolphin -  barf ). It is the one that creates the most friction and chafing in your mind and will and discomfort in your body and breath. Your very desire to avoid this pose is the reason you should do it: it is necessary and important work t...