It's Thanksgiving Every Day

Hi, Boomers,

It's that time of year again - the beginning of the holiday season. Off to Vegas tomorrow at 5 am for the weekend; only this time there will be only one son in attendance and none of my daughter- in-law's side of the family. I like a bigger crowd on this holiday. It's easier to embrace the joy when there is more to spread around. So it's #1 son, my daughter-in-law and the three grandsons - oh, and did I mention my ex-husband. He'll be along, too. "Back together again." Not really. He has no place to go since his wife has Alzheimer's and I always head east when there is a holiday. I'm not brave enough to face Thanksgiving or Hanukkah or Christmas alone. Single is great but not around the holidays.

I was reading in my Yoga Journal today about gratitude. We yogis know that gratitude is a natural companion to a yoga practice. In every class I teach, I we take a moment of gratitude for all of our gifts, especially the gift of yoga. It's is as natural as breathing to take that spiritual moment to be mindful of cultivating gratitude. Gratitude is also important for health implications, including better sleep, fewer ailments, and a greater ability to cope with stress and anxiety. Gratitude elevates, energizes and inspires. It can also transform a human being into a kinder, gentler spirit because it fosters a greater level of awareness. Gratitude helps us stay present.

Gratitude is an attitude of realizing what is in our present - what is real and what we surround ourselves with in life. The contrary of gratitude would be to grasp for something that is not there instead of embracing what is. One of the things that helps us connect to what is real is to embrace the interconnectedness of all beings as a path to gratitude. In a sense, gratitude is interactive every minute of the day if one is consciousness and mindful of everything that goes on in our waking hours.

It is Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, and my burg was full of endless lines of cars. I pulled out of the drugstore parking lot and thought it would take me a half hour to drive two blocks. I had to cut into an inlet to make a U turn, and while I waited for the car in front of me to go, I saw that the man driving the SUV had not jammed into the intersection to block us from making a left hand turn. Could it be, I thought, that this man might let us pass in front of him? I absolutely couldn't believe it when he let the car ahead of me and even myself go before him. I had such gratitude for his kindness and I felt such a connectedness to this man I will never know, that I waved to him, mouthed a thank you and drove off feeling uplifted. It was a moment in time, so brief that I could have quickly jumped to the next thing. But I couldn't. It was too important to cherish the moment.

Gratitude is the path of yoga and gratitude is the way in which we ground ourselves in life. Cultivating daily gratitude gives us the ability to transform and appreciate joy.

Gratitude comes in big and small packages. It's everywhere. It's in an email from a friend I don't always hear from on a regular basis but embraces my life with joy. It comes in a phone call from a friend I really wanted to hear from. It comes with knowing I helped my client this morning find inner peace in her practice even though she is almost in her ninth month of pregnancy and is looking past her discomfort. It's expressing joy that my law school yoginis have been searching for an alternative room so that we can practice in the winter quarter and keep our class going. It's embracing a friend who has been working so hard the last couple of days to feed the homeless at St. Matthew's parish in the Palisades and finding joy in her efforts. It is organizing a dinner to say farewell to a dedicated yogini who is moving in a week. Gratitude is everywhere. All it takes to cultivate it is practice.

I am grateful this year for my growing family - two more grandchildren added to the bunch - for the tenacity and dedication of my sons in their professions and in their roles as fathers and to their supportive and loving wives; for my incredibly loving brother; my devoted yoga students; for the opportunity to continue to teach yoga; for my tenacity to once again publish a book that I had no idea would find an audience; for the new friends I've made and the old friends I cherish; for the ability to forgive; and for the ability to embrace my universe unconditionally with surrender and acceptance.

Happy Thanksgiving, Boomers.

Namaste

Joan

Leading With The Heart

Hi, Boomers,

I had to make a rather big decision last week. It involved matters of the heart.

As a yoga instructor, the overriding emphasis in a practice is the opening of the heart. Yoga is a heart-centered practice. The symbolic nature of the heart is its generosity of spirit, it's aspect of forgiveness, its ability to understand and create compassion and empathy for the human spirit and its aspect of gratitude and universal love. That is not to say that our heart centered practice concerns romantic love, although one can't have romantic love without an open heart. An open heart implies a more spiritual aspect of love.

If my heart is open and I am conscious of leading my life with heart centered intention and I am mindful (present) about listening to my heart charka, (i.e., the energy in my heart), then I hope that all my decisions that involve the heart are truthful.

I think about the heart every day when I teach yoga. I think about it so much that when some experience in my life actually takes me to my heart, I am often so surprised that I am rendered unconscious.

I was going to visit a new friend, a tango friend, and over the last couple of months a man who has become someone I got to know in a more intimate sense through emails and phone conversations. I had met this man in Los Angeles several days before he was returning to his home city. In the course of our conversations, we both thought it would be fun to meet up in his city, dance tango and explore the beautiful city where he resides. He would be coming to Los Angeles to spend four months during the winter with his family as he does every year and so we would get a head start on knowing each other by spending time together on a couple of occasions before he arrives in southern California.

It all sounded perfectly logical until several weeks ago. I realized that email and phone conversations were the most imperfect way to understand and acknowledge another human being, especially someone of the opposite sex. It began to feel like an artificial situation whereby we both have to always be on our best behavior. I was so busy being accommodating that I was losing track of feelings and emotions. What exactly were my feelings and my emotions in regard to him? I didn't have time to breathe and reflect upon our male/female situation for any length of time. The emails kept coming; the information kept arriving; the time frames of voice conversation was shrinking. Mix messages multiplied. Confusions set in.

In the past, the younger Joan would have said, "screw it, " I'm going anyway. What the hell! It's only a week. But a week in my life at sixty-six is a precious week. Besides, walking into a "maybe" situation is fraught with the possibility of conflict and struggle. We didn't actually know each other for long enough to make a decision about spending a week with each other. But because we were excited about a new friendship, we wanted to spend more time exploring our relationship. So we jumped the gun and pulled the trigger and made reservations.

Were those decisions made from the heart or from the adrenalin of meeting someone new and with potential possibilities? Hormones make us do the darndest things. And most of the time the things we do when we are excited are manifestations of our unconscious nature. We are going into the lizard mind, the limbic system where pain and pleasure receptors reside. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! I want, I need, I desire.

I don't think my situation with the potential male partner was a conscious response to my open heart. But I think my canceling the trip to spend a week with him revealed a conscious intention of listening to my heart. My heart said stop, wait, patience, listen to your breath.

One of my yoga students asked me why I wasn't taking the week off as I had indicated I would to my students - preparing them for a substitute and letting them know I would be away as a point of courtesy. I told her that I was not sure it was the right thing to do because my heart didn't lead me to this man at this time. The yogini smiled at me as we both took in the silence.

"I want to be just like you when I get to your age," she said.

"Why?," I asked her.

"Because you are not afraid of life. You are not afraid to say it was a mistake. And you are now moving on from that decision."

I told her I was able to do that because my heart was open and clear and full of energy in this moment. It's all about taking my yoga practice off the mat and applying what I have learned from my practice to my life. I released the struggle; I released the negativity. And I brought myself back to balance.

Namaste

Joan

Musings on the Tao

Hi, Boomers,

In the middle of my busy week of teaching yoga, I found myself musing on my tao, that is to say, my life's journey. Here I am, post 65 years old and reflecting on what it means to follow my bliss by staying present and grounding myself in the power of now while not succumbing to my fantasies or daydreams. The good part of being my age is that I have relatively few off the wall fantasies. Yet, I understand that fantasies are good to have as long as we don't get stuck on them. Fantasies and daydreams expand our minds and provide us with energy as we put one foot in front of the other and, as people in recovery say, "show up." But the real work on self is done in the present.

My journey has been an exquisite blend of teaching, either acting or English as a second language or yoga and attending to my family. It is a full life with lots of consistent behavior and lots of surprises. This journey of mine is a gift and I honor it with daily gratitude.

However, my daily challenge is not to resist my tao. Non-resistance has been a mantra I have been using in my yoga classes this week. Resisting is one of the primary ways we trip ourselves up in life. In effect, our journey stops dead in its tracks when our minds resist staying present; or in yoga, when our bodies resist embracing the asana or posture we are working on in class. This mind/body resistance prevents growth and transformation and we find ourselves locked inside our heads, muddled in struggle, unable to find the joy.

Most of our thoughts during the day are negative. If we ask ourselves whether we feel we are a positive person or a negative person, I'm sure we would all say we are positive in our outlook. However, if we truly reflect on our thoughts, we will discover that we are intoning negative resistance most of the time. It is a moment of challenge when we discover our negative bent. But the opposing force of the negative is positive so we can actually program our thoughts into positive reflection. Check out what you are thinking about before you fall asleep at night. It's amazing to discover what a negative track our minds run on.

Yogis stress mindful awareness in thought, word and action. During my yoga teacher training class, one of my teachers suggested we use a timer and set it for every ten minutes so that we can reflect consciously on the present and then express gratitude for our gifts. This practice of reminding ourselves to be mindfully aware directs us into our joy, our bliss and infuses us with non-resistance.

Something to think about.

Namaste

Joan

Yoga And The Art of Body/Mind Maintenance - Part 2

Hi, Boomers,

I was teaching class yesterday at the Math and Engineering building on the UCLA campus (Boelter Hall). The class is held on the 8th floor of the building and is literally referred to at "The Penthouse." It's hardly a penthouse. It's a meeting room on the roof. My first impression of the scene was one of "OMG" - I can't teach yoga in this place. It's gross.

Amazing how a group of men and women assembled to twice weekly practice yoga changes the atmosphere from an old classroom, designed as an after-thought decades ago to accommodate special lectures and classes, can morph into a really exciting yoga room.

What I should explain is that on the campus of UCLA most of the buildings host yoga classes once or twice a week to staff and faculty. I really expected that faculty would be the dominant group in attendance; to my surprise, my students in the buildings on campus are mostly administrative staff, researchers, and grad students. I teach in the medical (Semel Neurological Institute), the law school, math and engineering and CNsI (or the California Nanosystems Institute). I can truly say I have the most intelligent, tenacious, dedicated students that any yoga teacher can imagine. I also teach at the John Wooden center and those students and some faculty are also truly incredible beings.

We are at the end of our room booking at Boelter Hall and there was a moment when no one was in charge of the yoga program. I announced this to the group last week and asked if someone could step forward and be in charge of booking The Penthouse. The next class, as I put the students in resting pose, I saw one of my students, a woman in her late 40's, early 50's, walking off of the elevator. She had some papers in her hand. I walked outside on the roof to meet her. Julie had taken care of everything for us. She booked The Penthouse until September, listed the dates we were not going to be able to be in the room (we practice yoga on the room outside in these cases in the glorious summer days of August), and told me not to worry about a thing.

"You're amazing," I said to Julie. "Thank you for your efforts."

"Are you kidding, Joan?" she retorted. "Yoga has saved my life. It's more important for me to be in yoga class than anywhere in my life. I'm a cancer survivor and now I have some fibroids in my body and yoga is the saving grace. When I told my doctor I practice yoga, he gasped. I told him never you mind. Yoga is the antidote to my cancer and whatever is in my body." Then she added, "I'm going to cry now."

I hugged her (tears in my eyes) and felt that my yoga bond with my students was the most precious gift after my children and grandchildren that life has given me. Julie's story is just one story in my yoga world. I have heard many stories like that. One woman in my class was so resistant and stiff when she entered my class that I thought she wouldn't come back after her first class. She has come to class religiously ever since. She jokes with me, she teases me, she tells me I'm cruel, heartless, then laughs and continues with her challenging body movements. She is my angel in class; she is the heartbeat; she is why yoga exists for us.

As we yoginis and yogis move through our resistant minds and bodies, as we practice non-judgement and non-attachment, we move through our lives with grace and divineness. We transcend our expectations, we discover there is continued personal growth; and we are amazed by our resilient natures and our consistency and dedication to our open heart practice.

Namaste

Joan

Yoga And The Art of Body/Mind Maintenance

Hi, Boomers,

Every day I give gratitude for yoga, especially today when I gave my son on the morning of his 38th birthday a yoga class. This is the second time he asked me to give him a class since I have been spending the week with my family. Yesterday, my daughter in law also asked me for a class. They are both awesome yogis.

Years ago, when my life seemed to be in a downward tumble, my son and to-be daughter-in-law asked me one Sunday to go to their favorite yoga studio to practice with them. I was beside myself with glee. Because I was living in Venice at the time behind Muscle Beach, I had been practicing at my gym down at the Marina. It was a small class and not very inspiring but it was yoga nonetheless. But to practice with my family made me really happy.

Thus began a ritual of Sunday practices either at Maha Yoga in Brentwood (where I now live - really west LA next door to Westwood and UCLA campus) or in Venice at Yoga Works where our favorite yoga teacher gave a class that could kill a decathlon athlete. We would come out of the studio, sweating and exhilarated, and go to a favorite breakfast place on Main Street and talk about the what was on our minds at the time. It was a simple moment in our lives and we don't have that kind of simplicity much any more.

My second son and his wife are also yogis. Although they don't practice much anymore, their hearts are opened and they spread the positive joy. My intention is to give all of them together a yoga class in the not too distant future.

The lives of my adult children and their wives are so much more complicated and stressful at this moment than I could have possibly imagined. I thought I'd be sailing over smooth waters at 66, but I am still that parent that my sons rely on to give emotional and psychological support. I am hitched mentally to their well being and their happiness as they try to put one foot in front of another and live their lives to the best of their ability. Both the men and the women in my family are terrific parents, devoted, loving, embracing and understanding and I am extremely proud of them as divine beings and professionals.

But what yoga adds to their lives is extraordinary and they are well aware of yoga's benefits. The birthday boy just left the house this morning telling me how fantastic he feels, how clear and joyful is the beginning of his day. He went out the door playing "Tool" feeling positive and hopeful. The success of my family rests on his shoulders.

Yoga is a mind/body experience that is connected by breath. In Sanskrit, the word breath is prana or life force and it is considered sacred. Yoga is a practice that creates joy and a positive attitude; it centers the self by emptying the mind, for it is truly a meditation whether the yogi is moving or siting in silence. Yoga/meditation has an impact on the way we think (more positive) and the way we feel (more joyous). It gives the body more energy as it speaks to the spiritual center of our being. If this is the gift I can give to my children, I am content and fulfilled. Nothing else matters.

Namaste

(The divine in me recognized the divine in you)

Joan

Happy Birthday, Jonathan

FINDING MY INNER ELMO

Good Morning, Boomers,

      I love being a grandmother in my 60's.  I'm headed to Las Vegas tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn to take care of my 2 grandsons and attend the 1st birthday of my third grandson.  My daughter in law will be away attending a college reunion of friends from her Tulane days.  My son, Jonathan, and I will take care of the kids.  This is the best part of being 60.

     Text message last night from my daughter in law, Carli:  "I know you'll be so excited to know I got tickets to see the Elmo show at the Thomas and Mack Center."  Carli knows I won't be excited.  She was laughing at me when she sent it.  I went into a deep depression when I read it just before teaching my 4 pm yoga class at UCLA.  Way to mentally prepare myself for a positive yoga practice.  

     I've done lots of things as a grandmother, some good and some not so good.  The bad things are related to losing my temper when my grandsons begin to play with food and I get the stern witch voice going so I scare the holly crap out of them.  But I do love to hunt for books at Barnes and Noble with my oldest grandson, 4 year old Jordan, and we do like to play in the part and swim together and those are part of the great fun of hanging out with the boys. 

 

     But Elmo!!!!!   I hate Elmo!  I don't like the way he looks or talks or moves.  I don't like anything about Elmo.   Both my grandsons love Elmo and so I have to look interested in their fascination with the creep.  Thank God Jordan is on his way of love with the guy, but Luc is right on track developing an addiction to him or it.  

     I can endure the birthday parties this weekend, especially Greyson's 1st birthday party; I can endure eating out with them and watching them play with their food.  I can endure the craziness at bedtime and the screaming when they don't know how to share toys.  But I cannot endure Elmo and, yet it seems I have to.  This is my inner child screaming for a way out and there is no out.  There is a way out of cleaning poppy diapers, a way of sleepless night, waking a baby grandson for an hour at 2 am, a way out of coaching them to eat when they have no interest in food, a way out of distracting them from dangerous behavior, but I believe with all my heart, there will be no way out of my Friday night meet and greet with Elmo or my name, Gran, will be mud.

     I don't feel bad about this negative feeling even though I am a yogini and teach yoga all day in the positive light of the universe.   You see, Elmo isn't real.  Elmo is a made up character in Seasame Street so he doesn't have to touch my heart or my mind.  This really gets me off the hook because it doesn't relate to my karma in past lives or on earth.  Now, I'm free to really despise the big guy.  Take that, Elmo!

     Now I feel better.

     Namaste

     Joan