why I love yoga

There are about 100 reasons I love yoga.  These are the top ten:

1.  Yoga clothes.  Stretchy, comfy, non-binding, mildly-flattering.  Say no more.

2.  Awesome pose names.  When my sister and I were little, we used to make up words by putting syllables together and saying them confidently, as if they were words.  Our best combos?  Plib-doo, snib-wad, dil-do.  Yoga brings me back to my childhood roots, with words like hanumanasana, eka pada rajakapotasana and dwi pada viparita dandasana (Upward Facing Two-Foot Staff Pose, if you must know.)

3.  Being with myself.  It's an hour and a half where I don't have to think about anything but whether my foot is in alignment with my knee.  Or if the stretch in my shoulder feels good or not.

4.  Having a bodily sense of humor.  I've been lucky to have yoga instructors who are not serious downers.  They've all been very gentle, friendly, easy women (hey! not that kind of easy!) who take their own practice with a grain of salt, and encourage us to take ours that way.

5.  Connecting with Lisa.  She's my yoga buddy.  Going without her feels different.  Not bad different, but I like it better when she's there.

6.  Dedicating my practice to something.  My instructor encourages us to take a moment at the beginning of class to pick something to dedicate the next 90 minutes to.  I don't know if I'm supposed to think about my dedication for the next 90 minutes (I rarely do), but I like the idea that the universe is responding to my issue -- kind of like the Prayers for the People that we did growing up in the Episcopal church.  But way less Jesus-y.  I've dedicated my practice to forgiveness, to Lisa, to my future boyfriend, wheresoever he is...

7.  Did I mention the yoga clothes?  I've lost my ability to dress like a professional.

8.  Savasana.  Corpse pose.  Basically, laying on the floor, dead-like for 10-15 minutes.  Letting thoughts come and go.  Wrapped in a blanket, rewarding myself for taking the time for myself.

9.  Using my mat.  I've had it for a hundred years and only recently started using it.  Now I feel better about the space it takes up in my apartment.

10.  Being done with yoga.  There's this nice, rubber noodle feeling afterwards.  Like I'm in a warm broth of happiness, relaxation, and peace.  And what am I wearing?  Yoga clothes.  Say no more.

more on beginner's mind

My last post mentioned the concept of beginner's mind, and I found an article that expands on it, pointing out 10 different ways to expand your perspective:

1. Take one step at a time.
2. Fall down seven times, get up eight times.
3. Use Don’t Know mind.
4. Live without shoulds.
5. Make use of experience
6. Let go of being an expert.
7. Experience the moment fully.
8. Disregard common sense.
9. Discard fear of failure.
10. Use the spirit of inquiry

Read the rest of the article here.  I enjoyed it and hope you will, too.

quiz-a-palooza!

Do you like taking quizzes and assessments? I do. I love knowing more about myself and finding new ways to look at my inner workings.

If you want to know whether you're authentically happy or not, what your biggest character strengths are, whether you have enough grit to make things happen, or how you're doing in terms of how much time you currently spend feeling happy, then visit www.authentichappiness.org and take an assessment or two.

Not only will you find out more about yourself, you'll be helping the positive psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania find out more about the human race.

And it beats a night of watching mindless television!

playing the end of the game before it's over

Watch out! I'm about to use a sports analogy. (Yes, you are at the right blog.)

I've been enjoying some World Cup games recently, and last week there was a match that reminded me of, well, life.

In final moments of the Ghana vs. Uruguay game (before penalty kicks) there was a melee in the Uruguayan goal -- a shot on goal, blocked by the goalie, then a rebound shot, blocked by a defender, and then a third rebound, blocked by a Uruguayan handball, which, for those of you as unsportsly as I am, is totally illegal -- I mean, so illegal that the guy who had the handball got kicked out of the game and would not be allowed to play again in the tournament.

So, while he blocked a goal, he was mortified because he earned Ghana a free penalty kick, AND he lost his right to keep playing.

As he walked off the field, you could see how sick he felt, knowing he had just handed the game over to Ghana.

However, things didn't go so well for Ghana on that kick. The ball hit the crossbar at the top of the goal and flew out of bounds, leading the game into a shoot out, which, in the end was won by Uruguay.

The best moment captured on video, in my opinion, is of the player who was kicked out of the game (and it almost looks like he's been kicked out of the stadium) for a move that in his mind lost them the game, when, in fact, it didn't.

The plain truth is, whether in soccer or relationships or job interviews or auditions or family gatherings or asking for a raise or taking a risk, whatever the situation, you never know how it's going to end until it ends. And there's absolutely no value to beating yourself up for something you've done "wrong" because the game you're playing may be much bigger than the one you seem to be playing.

For example, this is only one game in that Uruguayan player's career. Maybe it sends him to the bottom of the soccer heap, and maybe it starts him on a road to stardom. Who knows? What we do know is that the game did not end the way he thought it would.

And the chances are good that yours won't either.

on broken hearts

My friend John is a fabulous writer, and he recently wrote a piece about how to get over a broken heart. (The crux of his argument? Pina Coladas.) And, while his suggestion of bellying up to the bar isn't necessarily something I'd recommend to my readers (no offense, John) the way he describes the strength of the human heart really spoke to me, so I thought I'd share it with you:

"It helps to think of your heart as a piece of steel. Not chocolate or flesh or crepe paper. A shiny ball of steel. Which has a breaking point. But have you ever seen steel forged? It's heated in a volcano hot furnace until it glows white. It's so hot, the hard steel is malleable. Then it's hammered and hammered and hammered. Smashed into shape. Two pieces are clobbered to form one whole piece and then the steel is dumped into water. Once it's cooled, it's as hard as... well, you know. I've had my heart broken many, many times. And each time, I ended up stronger. My furnace? A Pina Colada. Maybe some Patsy Cline. A new friend, if just for that moment."

(You can read the rest of the article here.)

It's easy to think that you're not up to a challenge, or that you've been hurt so badly that you'll never recover. But keeping this image of an invulnerable heart in your mind, remembering that no matter what you throw at it, it will only get stronger... well, it works for me.

there is no such thing as delay

I went to hear Michael Beckwith speak recently, and if you're not familiar with who he is, he's a non-denominational reverend who is more into god than any particular manifestation of him.

(He's also a better looking version of Milli or Vanilli, take your pick.)

His topic was something like "Finding Your Soul's Purpose," and I went to listen because I'm feeling a little stuck these days. I was excited to hear what someone with a different (and famously motivating) perspective would have to say on the topic, except... well, he never really got around to talking about the topic.

Instead we were greeted with a number of things I didn't particularly care for in his presentation, including a ten minute segment from his "dance minister" who wore a gauzy dress and flailed herself around in front of a room of paying customers, and a twenty minute version of a song whose title I can only assume was "I'm So Grateful that I Just Can't Stop Singing -- in English or in Spanish -- I'll just Keep on Going Forever," but that's neither here nor there.

Despite my mounting frustration, I stayed and listened for whatever nugget I could take away, and what I got was this:

There is No Delay in the Universe.

Beckwith's argument was that the Universe is perfect. It's perfectly balanced energy, and we (each of us) occupy a perfectly balanced place in it. I am a Kate-shaped energy inside of a Kate-shaped hole in the universal energy. (Or something like that.) So if something in your life feels stalled or delayed, that's only your perspective on it. The Universe (he argued) knows nothing about delay. All it knows is that you don't yet have the skills or tools or support or energy or whatever you need to move on to the next level.

Now, while this is a little bit of a Super Mario Brothers interpretation of the Universe, I like it. I like the idea that the reason I feel stuck is that there's something I haven't learned or gotten or processed yet, and this lull, this slow-down, is an opportunity for me to catch up on whatever that is.

So if you're in a place where you feel stalled, trapped, stuck, or otherwise Not Moving, ask around and see if there's something you don't have or know yet that would help you move into your next chapter. You might just be surprised.

(Although if the Universe tells you to become a dance minister, I might not listen...)

An interesting test for finding your strengths

I was part of a roundtable today that focused on exploring the value of the strengths you bring to the table in your own, individual way. The test below is another way to identify your own strengths, and once you're more aware of them, you can play to your them more fully, and derive more joy from the use of them.

Turns out that I'm a weaver, with a secondary level of teacher. This makes good sense to me, as I'm constantly trying to connect people, and sure, I have a lot of fun when I can solve a problem, but even when I can't solve it, if I can point out someone else who can, I'm still happy.

It's free, so why not take the test?