Day Twenty-Nine - Time to digest

Me practicing Galavasana in third series.  I seriously thought this was physically impossible.  My teacher always believes in me more that I believe in myself.  The challenge of it makes the whole world disappear.  No thinking, just being.  

That last post on yoga teaching burn out took me a minute to digest.  A lot of things do.  That is something that I am noticing.  It is like when you eat breakfast and now it is time for lunch but you aren't hungry yet.  You still have not completely digested breakfast but you eat anyway and so it is just stuff on stuff on stuff.

We all need a minute to digest, process, absorb nutrients and eliminate toxins and waste.

I notice this need for time and space -- for pause -- after I host an event or gathering or teaching... the world feels as if it is moving so fast...  Everything spinning.  Like someone has two handfuls of glitter and then tosses them into the air.  They float for quite some time and then slowly begin to settle on the chair, the table, my arms, the floor -- or not at all.  They keep twisting and turning in the air and new handfuls are tossed up too and it continues on and on.

Life moves in cycles and spirals and waves.  I can remember times of great stillness and silence and moving from some sort of sage-like tranquility.  I can remember the exact opposite.  It isn't just one thing that tosses the glitter again and again.  It is always shifting.  Age, hormones, life circumstances, relationships, food, political climate, weather, where we are in asana practice, so many factors that are constantly changing and shifting all around us.

I am arriving on the beach after a riptide and a hurricane and general stormy weather.  I wanted to swim but I can't actually live in the water.  The morning ritual is there -- a steady, reassuring hum like the sun rising and like gravity.  I wake up and I am no longer wrapped in anxiety.  Things are changing.  I wake up and I get ready for my yoga practice and I feel joyful and I am covered in glitter inside and out -- almost.  The magic is coming back.

It is the day that is the trouble and the night.  I forgot my systems and rituals.  Space for new ones arriving.  I guess it is time.  I am rounding another 7 years in this body (kind of) and it makes sense.

The seeds for the rituals for both day and night are the same.  So many threads that can easily be remembered from years of yoga philosophy study ...  Effort toward steadiness of mind.  Yoga is the non-identification with the thought fluctuations of the mind. maitrī karuṇā mudito-pekṣāṇāṁ-sukha-duḥkha puṇya-apuṇya-viṣayāṇāṁ bhāvanātaḥ citta-prasādanam. व्याधिस्त्यानसंशयप्रमादालस्याविरतिभ्रान्तिदर्शनालब्धभूमिकत्वानवस्थितत्वानि चित्तविक्षेपास्तेऽन्तरायाः.  Yet the challenge is what to do when we are in it, triggered and hooked.

1.  Get in the habit of observing
-Food diary
-Journal
-Screen time monitoring
-Budget tracking
-Meditation

2.  Notice subsequent habits that work in any moment to allow the glitter to settle before moving on to the next thing.  From breath to breath, thought to thought, meal to meal, encounter to encounter, and so on.

3.  Notice that it is a way of life.  Like a road.  And at times you accidentally wander.  Notice and realign.  Move on.  Move forward.

For people who don't have a yoga practice (or an Ashtanga practice in particular) it is hard to explain.  It is hard to explain why me getting up at dumb-o'clock, and going to bed early like a child and eating a specific way... why it is so important. It isn't about something outside.  It is inside.  It isn't like brushing your teeth.  It is more like flossing.  All the things I don't know how to process any other way except through the asana, the moving and the constant redirecting of focus... That intensity of sitting with the good and the bad, the easy and the hard, the comfortable and the terrifying.  I need that.  Yes, I have to get through the whole marathon even when I don't want to.    And yes, sometimes my digestion is great.  Basic input output system.   One in one out.  And then the practice shifts and it turns into magic and becomes something else where there's energy to give.  So much energy to give.  As tantalizing as that possibility sounds, we need both.  The struggle connects us.

I remember hearing a talk by Pema Chodron years ago.  It was something about how we all think enlightenment is this pyramid going up but we have it wrong.  It is a pyramid going straight down into the earth with slippery walls and we all slide down down down into the mud and into the shit and how important that is.  Suffering like that. We look around and we see that we are all there together.  We are all suffering.  That's where the compassion is.

We've got to simplify yoga.  Not because we are but because it should be just enough to let all that we are shine through.  And we have got to simplify our lives because we are so much more than stuff on stuff on stuff.



Exit: "Tinfoil" Rainer Maria

Day Twenty-Eight - Yoga teaching burn out

Me, up at 3:45am, practice before teaching, before a full day of work at the office.

Maybe they do tell us...but I never listened.  If you are teaching yoga, you have got to have a serious self care practice or you will get burned out.  I thought if I ate well, practiced with my teacher, slept decently, kept to teaching, read yoga philosophy, did my yoga practice that that was all I needed to thrive.  Maybe it is enough for you but it has taken me over a decade to realize that it is not enough for me to stay healthy, energized and happy.

Krishnamacharya would say that yes, you need the asana and the philosophy and the food and a good teacher but you also need counseling at times and every other holistic modality you can think of to support the unfolding of your process. I am finally ready to admit that it is true — we have to be open to our current state and to change, whatever that may be.

Teaching yoga was all I really ever knew.  Yes, I did other side jobs here and there but teaching yoga has been my main profession for the majority of my adult life.  When it is all you know and people aren’t telling you or you just aren’t listening or you just don’t think you have the money or time you forget about yourself.  And maybe you really don’t have the time and money to take care of yourself and see no end in sight...maybe teaching yoga isn’t the thing.  And that is ok.

Let’s be clear.  Burn out does not mean that I am just bored with yoga or teaching.  Absolutely not.  Burn out is when I am working so hard and pushing myself to the absolute limits without break or rest or care for so long that all systems begin to break down.  It is physical and/or emotional exhaustion.

In my 15ish years as a yoga teacher, here is what I have learned...

You know you are burned out when:

-You haven’t made the time to take care of your basic health (you haven’t had a checkup, seen the gyno, gone to the dentist, etc. in more than a year)

-You aren’t saving for retirement

-You don’t have an emergency fund

-You are always sore or tired or angry

-You have no life outside of work

-You aren’t doing your own yoga practice

-When people want to talk about yoga you need to leave the room

-You don’t have patience like you used to

-You aren’t enjoying teaching or practice

-You feel uninspired

-You are having trouble sleeping

-You are getting sick a lot



How to get out of burnout/avoid:

-Make good sleep a priority.

-Keep a food diary and consider seeing a nutritionist.

-Do your own practice first.

-Find local teachers you can drop into once in a while.  I get it, maybe there aren’t any teachers in your tradition locally.  Still, just getting in a class and letting someone else drive once in a while feels so rejuvenating.

-Find other body movement modalities to participate in once in a while.  Just moving in a new way can have enormous positive effects on the body and mind.

-Generate income outside of teaching yoga.  It takes the pressure off.

-Budget track.  This is basic self care.  We need to start talking about money.  Knowing exactly where your money comes from and where it goes is key to understanding what kind of income you need to generate and zeroing in on how you can be more efficient with your time.

-Save for retirement.  Yes, you should be doing this.

-Start emergency fund.  Emergencies will happen.  I fell in the shower a few years ago and sustained a serious injury.  I did not have an emergency fund and could not take time off from teaching.  Don’t do what I did.

-Take a break and a real vacation.  Teaching a yoga retreat or travel teaching is work.  That is not a vacation.  Everyone needs time to rest, restore, and decompress at the very least.  Rejuvenate is even better.

-Make and keep doctor appointments.

-Develop other skills.  This will give you a sense of confidence, self, and identity outside of yoga.  Diversifying is most always a good idea.

-Get body work done.  This might feel indulgent but as a yoga teacher and practitioner, you basically need to treat yourself like a professional athlete.  Because you are.  This might mean massages or physical therapy or energy healing.  Just find out what works for you and be sure to shake it up once in a while.

-Explore activities that help you relax.

-Explore activities that bring you joy.

-Explore activities that bring you energy.

-Learn how to say “no”.

-Check in with your emotions and how your body feels regularly.

-Read a book.  Give yourself permission to have true downtime.

-Make sure you are getting paid fairly and if not, negotiate a higher rate or walk away.  Time is something that you will never get back.

Me, blissed out on an actual vacation in Tulum with my favorite -  Paletas! 

Exit: “Light” San Holo

Day Twenty-Five - Obstacles

When you go to Mysore, India to study at the shala you have your morning asana practice, chanting some afternoons, and the rest of your day free to fill as you see fit.  On my last trip I took yoga philosophy classes (my usual MO) a few days per week.  A group of yoga students climb the stairs in the women's dressing room, grab a carpet square, and sit cross-legged on the floor in an amorphous semicircle facing our teacher.  It is usually fairly hot and humid with mosquitoes flying around and my legs fall asleep and my hips ache and I'm fairly certain all of these things only really happen to me but I don't mind one bit.  I love sitting there with atrophied feet listening to my teacher walk through yoga philosophy from an Indian perspective punctuated by the birds outside, honking and laughing in the street, and the perplexed faces of students trying to make out his accent or English in general (because some of the students don't speak English at all) and whether or not the explanations he makes and stories he tells are real.

But this one is an easy one.  Our teacher is talking to us about a monastery in the north of India and how things are done there.  How we kind of don't understand what it is like to be a student and how maybe this illustration will give us a little bit of insight.  Maybe.  At this monastery students go and they wash the floors and clean the toilets and do all sorts of manual labor.  They do this for the "first few years" he says.  Once they complete this stage, that's when the yoga teaching begins.  "How many years is a few years?" Someone asks.  "Ten or eleven."

Last year I had to get a new Visa to travel to India.  Incredibly, my ten year Visa had expired.  I thought I had too.  Washed up maybe. Too something.  But when I heard that simple story in the women's locker room in philosophy class, I realized that the yoga was just beginning.

Me, in the thick of practice (dwi pada shirshasana which is a posture in the intermediate series), photo taken in my last apartment in New York somewhere between 2008 and 2011.

व्याधिस्त्यानसंशयप्रमादालस्याविरतिभ्रान्तिदर्शनालब्धभूमिकत्वानवस्थितत्वानि चित्तविक्षेपास्तेऽन्तरायाः॥३०॥

vyadhi styana samshaya pramada alasya avirati bhranti-darshana alabdha-bhumikatva anavasthitatva chitta vikshepa te antarayah

“Disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, sensuality, false perception, failure to reach firm ground and slipping from the ground gained- these distractions of the mind-stuff are the obstacles.”

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1.30 translation by Swami Satchidananda

Exit:  "Million Dollar Bill" Middle Brother