I live in a temple of love

Today Joe finished the new fence around the front of our yard, the fence that he started on the sneak on Valentine's Day. I was away at yoga all day, and when I came home that night, lo and behold my sneaky spouse had begun the first panel of the long-planned fence. Every spare moment since that weekend he has been out there making that fence, delighting particularly in working on it while I'm gone or when I'm not expecting it so that he can surprise me.

The fence project has been such a glory, such a pleasure. It's beautiful, of course, and represents hours of Joe's love and creativity and attention. And I know that although he does it for us, really he's doing it for me, delighting in adding elements that he knows I'll love, every board a loving touch.

And that's really something, knowing that what he does, he does so much for me. But it gets bigger.

For us the fence celebrates Joe's triumphant return, a spring like none other, made so much brighter after the nightmare winter darkness of cancer. Just as he used to -- but we forgot he was like this, cancer erasing what "normal" feels like -- Joe is up and at it from the moment it's light enough to see to the moment it's too dark to operate tools, clearing and beautifying and making this place where we live a paradise, a temple of love. In every room and in every corner of the yard, there is something that Joe has made. We are living inside our very own Taj Mahal.

Every time I look at the fence, I remember something Laurent said to Joe, when Laurent was very young -- "Dad, you're the bestest maker." I still say it, because really, truly, he is. Yes, we may now the nicest front yard on the block, but honestly that's nothing compared to what I see when I look at it: a life and love that just keep getting bigger and stronger and better, 20 1/2 years in.

Working the Austerities

We have been WORKING it in yoga with Laura since before the end of 2009, focused on keeping the fire of our new year's intentions stoked and burning bright. In January, we started working our way through the austerities, one every week or so, each one building on the last, a tidy little structure of yogic discipline.

The timing couldn't be better, since I really want this to be The Year that I realize a major transformation. As I wrote in my pitch for a blogger contest recently, "This year, my Year of Intention, I’ll be using yoga deliberately to stay committed to my vision and to jump out in a new direction, and documenting how a devoted practice is deeply transformative, on and off the mat." The emphasis on the austerities is so helpful in this regard, keeping me on the straight-and-narrow, bringing me back when I forget.

The austerities are described in the Bhagavad-Gita, 17:16, which reads:

manah-prasadah saumyatvam
maunam atma-vinigrahah
bhava-samsuddhir ity etat
tapo manasam ucyate

which means:

Peace of mind, gentleness,
silence, self-restraint,
and purity of consciousness
are the austerities of the mind.

So January 30th, we started with manah-prasadah, peace of mind. The big lesson I took away from this was using the body to calm the mind. During saumya week, we practiced gentleness, using only as much strength as necessary, backing off, being sweet in the poses. Mauna: we practiced without talking, listening to each other. Atma-vinigraha: self-restraint translated into muscle energy, pulling in to the core, in every pose cultivating a solid center. Finally, this week -- bhava-samsuddhi -- the cleansing of consciousness, letting go of negative thinking, seeing with Shiva drishti.

Like the universal principles of alignment, the trick is to eventually incorporate all 5 of the austerities simultaneously without having to think about it, so that it's just normal behavior. It's pretty easy to stay focused, to remember, when you're just doing 1 for an hour and a half in class. So as my own personal challenge, now that we've cycled through the 5 in class, is to roll out each one in a concerted way for a whole week at work, which seriously is the biggest area of challenge in my life right now. I sometimes pause and ask myself, before I speak at work, "What if my teacher could see me now? Would she be pleased?" I could do a lot better.

This transformation I'm about this year is not just external, not just wanting to break free of the job I'm in and be more creative day-to-day. It's not just creating the small urban farm I'm dreaming about, and making space for chickens in my life. It's really about whether I can, in a disciplined manner, use the tools that yoga provides, to make a happier life right now, not just when I've accomplished those goals. Right Now, every day, every moment.

And the only way to get there is through the austerities, through a disciplined commitment to my own self, to my own desires, to the unfolding of my own vision. This year is going to be great!

Thanks for reading!

So long, YogaWorks!

Today my unlimited annual membership at YogaWorks expires. I am not renewing. I've known the end was coming for some time, and have been thinking about my own use-patterns, the money, my values, and I think I've landed on the side of going to a small studio instead, supplementing with workshops and advanced trainings elsewhere. Today the little bar-coded plastic tag will come off my key-chain, sayonara.

It's a little bit sad for me, since I joined what was then Yoga Studio in September of 2005, which feels like much longer-ago than 4 1/2 years. Up until that time, Joe and I had a family membership at the JCC up the street from us, which was $105/month for both. We were using it only to take yoga three times a week. It was a pretty dreamy situation. We'd have breakfast, grab our mats and stroll up the street to class - sweet! In those days (don't know if this is still the case), the JCC would stop offering classes for the entire month of August every year, meaning we had to search elsewhere for our fix. That's what took us to Yoga Studio in Larkspur Landing in the first place. And the first time I walked in, it took my breath away a little. It's a beautiful space, and I loved being in a studio devoted to yoga (where I didn't have to feel rushed getting out of the practice room so that the frantic step aerobics people could set up). The cost certainly gave us momentary pause: $139/month each, which was an incredible escalation from what we had been paying. But we were in love, so we jumped and reveled in the number of available classes and teachers and locations.

Even as my own practice has changed, I have maintained that membership. I met and found I adored the owner of Yoga Studio, a brilliant creative woman with a genius personal style. I loved being in the space that she had made, inside of her beautiful realized vision. I made some great friends. Still, in 2007 I jumped off more into Anusara and started taking classes at Yoga of Sausalito, a one-studio space with lovely retail and sweet owners. At first, because I was doing an immersion there, my classes with my teacher were free, part of the deal. But soon I was hooked, and supplementing classes at Yoga Studio with classes in Sausie and San Francisco. I became a yoga nomad, moving between studios and across bridges, in search of the teaching I wanted.

Suddenly last year, after I'd made my annual unlimited membership payment to Yoga Studio, it was acquired by YogaWorks, a yoga giant with studios on the East Coast and in LA now expanding into the Bay Area market with the purchase of these three studios and the construction of another in Walnut Creek. I was suspicious of all of the anti-corporate chatter I heard about it, even as some popular teachers flew the coop, and hung in there. After all, I'd paid already, right? So I maintained my dual-citizenship, and slowly a gap opened up.

There have been some improvements. Certainly, the prices for memberships are lower: what cost me $139 in 2005 now goes for $119. But Yoga Studio was a place with great style and interesting, curious staff. Now I'm generally annoyed by YogaWorks with its neither fish-nor-fowl, pseudo-corporate but hippie-dippy vibe. The key-card is a great example of this. You'd think it would make signing in for class faster and more efficient, but there are longer lines with it than there ever were when we just signed in with ink on paper because you have to hand the key-card to the desk-staff who tend to be a little bemused. And slowly things have been slipping way. Anti-bacterial liquid hand soap appeared in the bathrooms. Then two weeks ago enormous Purell dispensers appeared both outside and inside the Mill Valley practice rooms. I know I might be more aware than your average bear of toxic, estrogenic chemicals in everyday products thanks to my work, but honestly: how do you put huge ugly sanitary towel dispensers with giant logos on them in a yoga studio? Gross! Yes, there are still some great teachers there, but the place feels to me too gym-ish now, stripped of spirit and style.

So I'm done with them, for now, and am saying good-bye. It was beautiful for a long time, but that part's over and I'm moving on.

Baby, I Love You

I planted seeds last weekend, the first of the season. And darling little Arugula already emerged, 5 days later, sweet baby leaves reaching for the sun. Oh Arugs, how I love you. In just 35-40 days, I'll be adding you to everything on my plate.

It's so exciting to have begun the spring planting already. Last weekend I filled our seed starter, 12 each of Arugula, Broccoli, Cabbage, Chard, 48 Gourmet Baby Greens. Might seem like a lot, but we'll be trading some and generally growing a lot of food this year, now that we have twice the plantable space we had last spring. Tomorrow, I'll be sowing Peas, Carrots and Radishes directly into the newly-amended soil. Thank you, languid long vermicompost worms, for the black gold you gave us in exchange for all those ends of bread, vegetable peelings and dog hair! It's such a remarkable process every single time, how something becomes nothing and nothing becomes something all over again. Honestly, why look anywhere else for miracles, Dorothy, when they're right in your own backyard?

Show Your Self, or May all Captives Eat Their Captors

I had a particularly crap day at work yesterday, eleven hours' worth of progressive demoralization. Really just utter crap. Woke up this morning after a night of stressy dreams with an incipient migraine (stress- and poor sleep-related), and saw again the newspiece about the SeaWorld trainer who was drowned yesterday by a captive orca. Now duh, of course, I know this story has nothing whatever to do with me, really, but it helped crystallize some thinking for me about wildness and freedom.

Honestly, my first reaction to the drowning was "Good." That might sound awful, callous, inhuman, but honestly, I instantly wished that all captive orcas would do the same, until we finally get the message and stop thinking we can keep them in the conditions we do.

And yeah, because I have a few powers of perception, I can see how that reaction is not entirely divorced from my lame, demoralizing experience of yesterday at work. I instantly went a little Orca myself and mentally took my own captors to the bottom of the pool.

At the immersion now two weeks ago, I kept coming back to one thought, which, of course, I see as a slogan on a t-shirt: Show Your Self. That seemed like the most important task we all have while we're alive: to be who we really are in all of our magnificence. And sometimes when we do so, we end up eating our captors.

[Since nothing is coincidental, I am also remembering that Martine relayed a blogpost from Zhenya late last week, relating the story of Kali eating the Raja Biktas. To read or listen to the whole thing, go here http://tinyurl.com/yz2h9ty Intense how the message just keeps getting louder until we pay attention, right?]

I'm late for work but this seems like the place I should be right now, working out this Thursday Orca mood, unraveling my desire to eat my captors, to break free, to return to my pod. Maybe we should all take advantage of this reminder to check in with who we really are, magnificent free creatures who should be doing only exactly what we are. Doing tricks might be entertaining, and it might bring in the cash, but damn, what a tiny little piece of how fierce and beautiful we truly are.