Notes on a Scandal

On Friday, February third, two things happened that couldn't have possibly pulled my heart in two more opposite directions.

Ever since I started my novice yoga teaching career just shy of two years ago, I always said I wanted to give the practice back to communities who perhaps wouldn't have access to the teachings/public yoga classes. Friday afternoon saw me on the 49 bus up Van Ness for a meeting with case managers from La Casa De Las Madres, an organization that serves women victims of domestic violence. We are moving forward and I will teach one class per week to the residents at one of La Casa's centers. I start this Wednesday.

That same day, immediately before clocking out of my day job and hopping on the bus, I learned of a crisis in the Anusara community (for those of you who read this and don't know what that is, it is a method of yoga/spiritual practice that I have aligned my entire life with). I am not going to link to any information here as I do not wish to contribute to the online brou-haha, but suffice it to say, it rocked me to my core and I spent the weekend investigating my thoughts, feelings, and initial reaction to the news. In a nutshell, unsubstantiated allegations were made against the founder of Anusara, and it is rattling the community as we patiently wait for the truth to come to light.

The juxtaposition between the political drama of what in the West is an elite system (yoga) and spending an afternoon with women, most of whom are old enough to be my mother, who are at-risk homeless, living in single occupancy rooms without even a bathroom to themselves, effected me all the way down in my bones. My emotions ran the gamut between heartbreak, anger, disappointment, anxiousness, disgust, fear, annoyance, bewilderment, and uncertainty.

What a brilliant opportunity to practice.

In yoga, the first step is to remember the bigger picture; take a step back, breath fullness into the back of your body, listen, and allow for a little space. We practice this subtle attunement on our mats again and again, day after day, week after week, so that when challenges arise in our "real" life, we learn to respond in a conscious way instead of being held captive by habitual patterns of reaction. This doesn't happen overnight. I doubt there is anyone living for whom this level of presence is a permanent state! Think about it as a well-worn dirt road; regardless of your intention, it is really difficult at first to steer your wheels in a different way when they are so used to just grinding down the same old grooves. But with practice, it is possible to shape a new and distinct path.

If the moment, ahem, shit gets real, I bail on all practice and training and insight and growth I've been supposedly committed to for the past near-decade of my life, then what is the point? It is easy for me to default to the anger that used to so easily rage out of me, that for years now I have been training myself to channel into higher forms. I take this practice so seriously, and the hardest part for me is how with all the online back-and-forth, speculation, and full on vitriol, it is relegated to mere tabloid fodder. I am not over exaggerating or lying when I say yoga saved my life--my early twenties were spent throwing myself so fully into the void just like so many of the ones who came before me that I am grateful every day to be healthy and safe, and even better yet, happy. 

So I guess what I'm saying is practice more. The last thing I will do is claim to have all the answers; I am still young and have so many more experiences to come. All I know is it is on my mat that I feel the anchor that connects me, that connects all of us, to the source. It's the only place where that bigger perspective grows; tuning in to the universal, we are brought back down to earth.

Amen Hallelujah Namaste and a big dose of LOVE
x
See you on the mat, where the rubber literally meets the road (;