Sunday, November 28, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Old Shit
I have so much bullshit surrounding my body.
I haven't been a good blogger because I've been deep in Yoga Teacher Training for the last month and even deeper in excruciating knee pain. I have got so much bullshit surrounding my body. I left the first weekend of teacher training giddy. I felt that I had found a body-based community that celebrated all bodies, stretchy or stiff. I felt that my work in yoga was around unlearning the body hatred I learned in dance as well as decriminalizing my spoon-shaped feet, boulder filled hip flexors, and forward curving shoulders. There has been a month between that weekend and this weekend, which is the second intensive training pod, and in that time my knee injury has switched faces (literally there is a new pathology) and doubt has swum so entirely inside of me. I am in constant pain and the list of poses I cannot put my body in has more than doubled. This weekend is so much harder for me in so many ways. I feel I'm the worst yogi in the room. I feel that this pain and this overuse injury (what use?!, I'm barely moving it) are my fault. I feel that I'm supposed to know how to fix my knees myself. I feel that if I had better facility in my body I wouldn't be in this pain. I feel that my teachers don't think I'm physically good enough to be a yoga teacher. This is some Old Shit.
Though I have never had an injury that is this mother fucking painful before the feeling that my body is an obstacle is nowhere near new. Here is the Truth (with a capital T) - I can dance like a mother fucker. I get the magic. I can communicate through the perceptual vehicle of dance. I'm a good mother fucking dancer. But I have always been a shitty technician. Put me on a stage and I'm in my element one-hundred-percentipede. Put me in the studio and I'm a laundry list of inadequacies: no core support, bound up little feet, hyper-extension (which I worked for, by the way, because everyone else had it), very tight and bound up hips... blah blah blah. Who's fucking joke is this that I should have this shitty body and only want to move it? I know that I would take the magic over the facility any day of the week. I know that there are cattle call auditions bursting with killer technicians who don't have that magic authorship of the body that makes dance artists captivating. But God dammit, can't I just have a little of that? If not that can't I at least be pain free? Please, God?
I left training today and got right into Adam's car and sobbed. Sobbed and sobbed. Sobbed for the physical pain, the mental pain, and for the fear and confusion of it all. Is this pain yoga centered, or would it have still shown up if I hadn't started practicing and kept dance as my body intention? Is it just a joke to think that I could even teach, let alone get good at yoga? Isn't that not very yogic of yoga?
I am so full of doubt and I miss my friend Paris. The yoga sutras tell me that doubt is an obstacle. They offer that meditation on someone who has transcended what I have not can be beneficial. If I can't have faith in myself, can I have faith in someone else, with myself (and even further - someone else who is also me)? I know my mind is so tricky. I can watch it spin off into the vrittis. I know that no matter which thought starts the train it will inevitably end up in self doubt. There is no thought that I can't view through my own fear that I am not worthy of it.... So it's me and Ghandi on the couch tonight. I've got ice on both knees, a pillow under my bruised tailbone, tears on my face, and ghandi on my computer screen. Soon it will be me, and Ghandi, and whiskey - because Ghandi can do whatever he wants.
In honor of old shit and to remind myself that I have always embraced the grit, blurred edges, and non-polished aspects of being human because I know that we need them in order to bond with each other, I offer two things. First some words from Lenard Cohen that my Teacher Beth Award read in class at the exact moment I could most receive them and second, an old DIY film I made at my mom's house in california with her point and shoot digital camera.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen
I haven't been a good blogger because I've been deep in Yoga Teacher Training for the last month and even deeper in excruciating knee pain. I have got so much bullshit surrounding my body. I left the first weekend of teacher training giddy. I felt that I had found a body-based community that celebrated all bodies, stretchy or stiff. I felt that my work in yoga was around unlearning the body hatred I learned in dance as well as decriminalizing my spoon-shaped feet, boulder filled hip flexors, and forward curving shoulders. There has been a month between that weekend and this weekend, which is the second intensive training pod, and in that time my knee injury has switched faces (literally there is a new pathology) and doubt has swum so entirely inside of me. I am in constant pain and the list of poses I cannot put my body in has more than doubled. This weekend is so much harder for me in so many ways. I feel I'm the worst yogi in the room. I feel that this pain and this overuse injury (what use?!, I'm barely moving it) are my fault. I feel that I'm supposed to know how to fix my knees myself. I feel that if I had better facility in my body I wouldn't be in this pain. I feel that my teachers don't think I'm physically good enough to be a yoga teacher. This is some Old Shit.
Though I have never had an injury that is this mother fucking painful before the feeling that my body is an obstacle is nowhere near new. Here is the Truth (with a capital T) - I can dance like a mother fucker. I get the magic. I can communicate through the perceptual vehicle of dance. I'm a good mother fucking dancer. But I have always been a shitty technician. Put me on a stage and I'm in my element one-hundred-percentipede. Put me in the studio and I'm a laundry list of inadequacies: no core support, bound up little feet, hyper-extension (which I worked for, by the way, because everyone else had it), very tight and bound up hips... blah blah blah. Who's fucking joke is this that I should have this shitty body and only want to move it? I know that I would take the magic over the facility any day of the week. I know that there are cattle call auditions bursting with killer technicians who don't have that magic authorship of the body that makes dance artists captivating. But God dammit, can't I just have a little of that? If not that can't I at least be pain free? Please, God?
I left training today and got right into Adam's car and sobbed. Sobbed and sobbed. Sobbed for the physical pain, the mental pain, and for the fear and confusion of it all. Is this pain yoga centered, or would it have still shown up if I hadn't started practicing and kept dance as my body intention? Is it just a joke to think that I could even teach, let alone get good at yoga? Isn't that not very yogic of yoga?
I am so full of doubt and I miss my friend Paris. The yoga sutras tell me that doubt is an obstacle. They offer that meditation on someone who has transcended what I have not can be beneficial. If I can't have faith in myself, can I have faith in someone else, with myself (and even further - someone else who is also me)? I know my mind is so tricky. I can watch it spin off into the vrittis. I know that no matter which thought starts the train it will inevitably end up in self doubt. There is no thought that I can't view through my own fear that I am not worthy of it.... So it's me and Ghandi on the couch tonight. I've got ice on both knees, a pillow under my bruised tailbone, tears on my face, and ghandi on my computer screen. Soon it will be me, and Ghandi, and whiskey - because Ghandi can do whatever he wants.
In honor of old shit and to remind myself that I have always embraced the grit, blurred edges, and non-polished aspects of being human because I know that we need them in order to bond with each other, I offer two things. First some words from Lenard Cohen that my Teacher Beth Award read in class at the exact moment I could most receive them and second, an old DIY film I made at my mom's house in california with her point and shoot digital camera.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen
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