Category — personal life

I love yoga. I’ve been a half-assed student (which might be an asana, I’m not sure) for close to twenty years. I remember the moment I fell in love with the practice. It was at Kripalu. The teacher was Stephen (Kaviraj) Cope. The pose was trikonasana/triangle. Following Kavi’s precise verbal instruction and watching him model the pose with his beautiful (and beautifully human) body, I suddenly found that I was suspended in space in an unexpected way, my body draped into an unaccustomed but oddly thrilling design. It can do this, too?! I thought. How cool.

Kavi gave point-by-point instruction on how to find the proper alignment. Once there, we were encouraged to feel into it and then relax, including the awesomeness, including the oddness, the beauty, the discomfort, and the enjoyment of not knowing what it was supposed to feel like. His instruction to establish the pose but “relax around the holding” has served me to this day, on and off the mat.

From this, I learned that the first step in asana practice is precision. Each pose has a magical kind of integrity that is awakened only when animated by your body. Without alignment, the integrity goes away. From this precision, an opening of the energetic body is created. The pose then starts to animate you. And the third step, to let go—of expectation, judgment, hope, and fear—allows energy to continue flowing. In this way, honest transformation, the kind that transcends mere self-improvement, can occur.

Precision. Opening. Letting go. I had never related to myself in this way before and it changed the way I felt inside my body. I still love yoga for the same reasons, only more so.

Since then, I’ve been to like a zillion yoga classes: Iyengar, Ashtanga, Kripalu, Anusara, “Power,” Bikram, heated vinyasa, and on and on. I’m not a yoga snob and I pretty much like them all. As long as I shvitz, I don’t really care what the style is. Wherever I live, I just go to the studio closest to my house. [Read more →]

Me. Albert King. Another planet.

About 25 years ago, I was driving cross country for the reasons you might expect of a 20-year old who was utterly lost. Where the hell was my life? It had to be somewhere. It was not in the big city suburb I grew up in. Not in the rows of desks at that sheep factory called High School from which I barely graduated and not in any of the sheep factories of higher learning, none of which I bothered to apply to in favor of a succession of waitress and waitress-like jobs and hanging out in bars, and not in the telenovelas of the lives of those I met but had no way to connect with because no one spoke my language. Where was my life? Where were my people? Some hints could be found in books, yes. In music, certainly.

But what did art and music have to do with me? How could I find a life to relate to when I didn’t even know my own location? I could find no discernible roads, no apparent steps to climb, no conceivable destination to maneuver toward. Lost. So I figured, what the hell, I might as well drive around. At least that way my body would be doing what my mind already was, and there’s something oddly satisfying about matching those two up. I got behind the wheel and headed in the only viable direction for a music lover in Boston (or anywhere, really): South. And West. [Read more →]

September 12, 2011

There is a Buddhist meditation practice called Tonglen. In Tibetan, tong means “sending out” and len means “receiving.” So Tonglen is known as the practice of sending and taking, or of exchanging self for other. Instead of inhaling what makes us feel good and exhaling what makes us feel bad, this practice asks that we do the opposite. We breathe in the suffering of others by visualizing it as dark, hot, sticky, soot and smoke coming into our lungs. We breathe out what is positive in the form of air that is light, bright, clean, and cool. In this way, we volunteer to take in some portion of the world’s suffering and offer up to it whatever good we possess.

On this day ten years ago, I decided to drive into Manhattan. [Read more →]

I think I could turn and live with animals,

they are so placid and/self-contained

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself

Recently, I’ve been asking you lovely readers to let me know if you have any questions or topics you’d like me to address in a blog post. I’ve received some amazing, deep, and deeply heartfelt questions. Stay tuned to hear riffs on issues such as:

“How can I maintain hope and foster hope in others in difficult circumstances?”

“I am interested in the subject of empathy – and especially cases when empathy is so strong that some people’s emotions and thoughts trouble you for days after. What to do?”

“How to overcome the fear of loneliness with an open heart. I’ve been longing for love and missing the intimacy that I had with my ex since our relationship ended fifteen months ago.”

“Any tips on maintaining relationship w chronically negative people? I’m a pos person…they’re bringing me down!”

Great, great questions/issues. But thought I’d start off with something a little more personal. This one was from Angela: [Read more →]

Are you (or do you know) someone who is looking for an unpaid internship that will give an insider view of publishing, writing, and building a business to support your creative habits?

Building a business around my writing has taken a toll on my writing and I’m looking for an intern to work with me 10-15 hour/week.

We can work together in person and/or virtually, although Boston area is preferred. I will help you figure out how to get credit if you are in college studying related topics.

Tasks:

• Manage social media contacts
• Research best practices for self-publishing print-on-demand books, e-books, and audiobooks
• Research best practices for developing apps that extend the brand of my publications
• Stay abreast of current social media trends that could benefit marketing efforts
• Post my writing to the various platforms I use (Wordpress blog, Facebook, Facebook fan page, Tumblr, Twitter, and so on)
• Assist with administrative tasks relating to travel, mailings, database management, and so on

(click on image to play video on MSNBC site)

In 2005, I was on the TODAY show to discuss my now 0ut-of-print book, The Hard Questions for Adults and Their Aging Parents. For some reason, they just featured it on their site today and someone sent me the link, so I’m sharing it with you.

In the last few weeks, I’ve come across some articles (here in USA Today and here on CNN.com) about the necessity and difficulty of talking about death and dying with your parents (and/or your children). My parents have been kind enough to have such discussions with me and my siblings–about their wishes, fears, plans, hopes–from both practical and emotional standpoints. There is no question that entering into such a conversation is one of the bravest and kindest things a family can do together. My book captures such questions and offers suggestions for how to enter into this extremely difficult (and rewarding, moving, confusing, sad, loving) dialogue.

If you want to check out the book, you can find used copies on Amazon and the like, and you can also purchase a new copy from me. If you’d like me to inscribe it in any way, just let me know. I admire any and everyone who is willing to open up to this topic, even just a little bit.

I remember when I was 8 or 9 years old, lying on the floor of my bedroom, begging, pleading, gripping an arm to pull an invisible his ear toward me to say, Please. Make. Me. Pretty. Please. Pretty. Please. Lying there, thinking oh no, what if I’m not, what if I’m not? I don’t know where all this came from–from the ether, I suppose, the TV, the movies, music, all the venues where beautiful women were exalted, showered with love, wealth, power. Power. Power comes from beauty–for women. Now, with age, is power lost or can it finally be discovered?

Power granted isn’t actually power, is it? Power assumed, is.

Do you feel powerful today? Powerfully genuine, that is. Open. Fearless. Unapologetically passionate. Protecting and radiating your brilliance and tenderness with the power of a hundred thousand suns…that kind of power.

Turn on the pilot. Light a match. Drop it. Go. Assume the power.

PS Thanks to Danielle LaPorte and Susannah Conway for hipping me to this clip.

Hiro Boga, Jennifer Louden, Mahala Mazerov, and I have taken it upon ourselves to write on the same topic, and publish our work on the same day. This is the second time we’ve done this; the first time, our topic was writing. Today, it is home. Click on their names to read their lovely pieces. It is an honor to co-create with them!

When I was a little girl, I used to hide under my desk with a blanket and a book, pulling in the chair to erect an unseen gate, hoping against hope to go unnoticed for as long as it might take me to think my thoughts. (One day I heard a cough and realized that my brother, on the other side of the wall, was also under his desk…) This, I now see, was my first attempt to create a home, one where I could be who I actually was, although I would never have described it that way at 5 years old, or 8, or 12. This was just the beginning of longing for a place where the gate would swing open and I could safely emerge. By last count, I’ve tried to find a home in 20 domiciles in 6 different cities.  The last attempt was made just a few months ago when my husband and I moved from a house in the suburbs to a big loft in an industrial artists’ building.

This space suits me more than any I’ve ever lived in and so my desire for home is at a high pitch. If I can’t make it work here, then where? I like the big sweep of open space. The enormous skylights. The community of painters, sculptors, designers, and those who love them. (Or rent a room from them.) Most of all, I relish feeling the presence of others while being able to maintain solitude, which is a dream come true for one who loves people beyond all reason but is an inveterate, incontrovertible introvert. Given all the choices in the world, I will pick an apartment every time. I am a city person, there is no doubt.

I left my parents’ house in the suburbs when I was 16 and from that moment searched for a place for myself, with no frame of reference whatsoever. The only thing I knew was that it would probably be outside of conventional life—that I wouldn’t find it in an education, a relationship, or any lifestyle I had ever seen. So I didn’t go to college, didn’t create a household with another until I was almost 40, and have ended up with a job that requires/allows me to be alone all day long. (I really, really, really like being alone. I didn’t even live with my husband for the first 3 years of our marriage.)

From the outside, people look at my life and tell me how “brave” I’ve been for undertaking this search, for the risks I’ve taken, the stands I’ve made, the adventures I’ve been on. But I know the truth. I know exactly what has motivated me and it’s way more about fear than courage. I’m terrified of walking into my own home, showing exactly who I am, and not being embraced or even noticed; that the inner and outer noises will be so loud that I won’t be able to hear my own voice—and that if I am seen, am heard, I will not be loved. I’m terrified of finding myself in a place that looks like home but doesn’t feel like it, where the only spot that feels right is under my desk, unseen and not looked for, sunk in silence and not listened to, unrecognizable.

Today I sit at my desk not under it, but my posture is the same: I am poised in silence, listening for the opening of the secret gate. It is so easily missed.