What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Very Personal Ads #42: dancing up a storm
Personal ads! They’re … personal! Very.
So my itty bitty personal ads made me realize that it’s time to make a regular practice of trying to feel okay asking for stuff.
Even when the asking thing feels weird and conflicted.
Ever since I posted the first one asking my perfect house to find me, which united me with Hoppy House, I have been a fan of the madness that is personal ads.
And now it’s my weekend ritual. Yay, ritual!
Let’s do it.
Thing 1: ease and smoothness with lease-signing.
Here’s what I want:
As I reported on the Friday Chicken, we finally found the — gasp — perfect place for the Playground to live.
My wish/hope is that we sign the lease this week.
And that the whole process is simple and straight-forward, with smoothness instead of bumpiness.
It would be so great to just breeze through this thing so that my focus and attention can go to the crazy and fabulous things that are going to happen in the space, now that we have it.
Ways this could work:
I can keep reminding myself that we are in excellent hands. Hope, our realtor, is smart, competent, fun and as wonderful as her name implies.
And while I’m reminding myself of things, also these:
That, as Hiro says, what’s mine is mine.
That the space has found me.
That no matter what happens, it will be something that has good in it.
I can breathe. I can do Dance of Shiva on it. I can try to maintain play and silliness in the face of all this not-knowing.
My commitment.
To do everything I can to stay grounded and centered.
To whisper sweet nothings in the Playground’s ear.
To give it presents.
To remind myself of all those things I have trouble remembering.
To notice all the places of pain in me from past negotiations, and to talk to my pain and remind it of everything that is different now.
To be hugely appreciative of the ease and the smooth as it comes, and to learn what I need to learn from this.
Thing 2: adjusting that invisible crown again.
Here’s what I want:
I have been doing huge amounts of internal and external work on the sovereignty thing: doing my thing and not caring what other people think.
Standing my ground. Being gracious. Taking responsibility. Trusting my own sources of power.
Feeling everything that comes with the invisible crown.
And it’s been awesome. There’s a whole new depth and strength to my sense of what sovereignty is and how it works.
What I’d like help and support with now is maintaining that enormous sense of queenliness (and all its related qualities) that I’ve been feeling over the past few days.
Ways this could work:
Play!
I can stay mindful and still have fun with it. Introduce rituals. Make up goofy dances. Wear my hot red sovereignty boots and stomp around.
Magic!
It could just happen.
Intention too.
I can spend some time this week mapping out what this might look like. Doing some writing. Maybe some more personal ads.
My commitment.
To experiment.
To notice everything I can.
To plant seeds. To give myself reminders. To laugh. A lot.
Thing 3: Changes. Oh, more specifically than that?
Here’s what I want:
It’s really time to make all sorts of changes to the Shiva Nata website.
It’s gone through an incarnation or two since I first built it (hi, HTML) in Berlin, but it’s really out of date.
So: either I’d like to make a bunch of changes, or at least come up with a bunch of ideas about what I want to start doing with that.
Ways this could work:
I suppose — oof — I’m going to need to take a look at some of my stucknesses around this.
I can also brainstorm with my gentleman friend and other people who will be sensitive about my stuff and not propose seven thousand things that would be great but that I have no time for.*
So it seems like the main thing has to be just giving myself some softness around this.
Permission for it to take time.
Permission for me to be in avoidance.
* Yes, I know we need new videos. And a results page. And to rewrite every word on there.
My commitment.
Tiny little steps.
To dance up a storm until the epiphanies start streaming in.
To be hopeful.
To remember that I don’t have to do everything at once, and that little pieces count.
To notice when I’m not able to be patient with myself. And to be kind. If I can.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
Just to update you on what’s happened since last time.
The first thing I asked for was emotional and financial support with fun-brewing.
And while I got both of those, in many ways, the main thing I received from that ask was that I was asking for the wrong things, in the wrong way.
I had some huge realizations around that, and will write an explain-ey sort of post that goes more into depth about what I’ve been learning about support and asking for it.
I also asked about support for my Guns N Rollers and we’ll see how that goes.
And the last bit was about caring for myself. And I must say it’s gone really, really well. Surprisingly well.
All in all, good stuff. Hard to believe it’s only been a week.
Comments. Since I’m already asking …
I am adding to my practice of asking for stuff by being more specific about what I would like to receive in the comments.
Here’s what I want (just leave them in the comments):
- Your own personal ads, small or large. Things you’ve asked for. Or are asking for. Or would like to ask for. Or updates on last time!
What I would rather not have:
- Theories.
- Shoulds. As in, “You should be doing it like this” or “That’s not the right way to ask for things — instead it should be like x, y and z”
- To be judged or psychoanalyzed.
- Advices.
My commitment.
To getting better at asking for things even when asking feels weird.
Thanks for doing this with me!
Friday Chicken #89: Not just for zombies
Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
Yes, Friday.
I know. It’s weird how that keeps happening.
Anyway, here we are.
The hard stuff
#$@%.
So the joy of sponsoring a Roller Derby team is that I get to wear derby drag and scream a lot.
And then last weekend we lost to the Heathers (no, not those Heathers) in the most ridiculous loss in history of derby. Seriously.
We were up by about a million points at halftime. Brutal. I don’t even want to talk about it anymore.
Technical stuff.
Then WordPress, which is generally the only technology in my life that isn’t driving me batty at any given time, ate two-thirds of a post.
After I’d published it. And double-checked that all was fine.
All of a sudden, there was a third of a post up here. And uncommentable so you couldn’t even tell me about it.
Ugh. Annoying.
Pulled over at Canadian customs.
And grilled.
Absurd.
Had to make some tough decisions.
And say goodbye to some things I was looking forward to.
Sadface.
Just the tiniest bit sad.
But that’s just me.
The good stuff
A freaking miracle.
After all these months of not finding, and not being sure and almost-compromising, we found the most perfect place for The Playground.
About three hours before hopping on a plane.
All because Hiro looked at the address and said it looked really, really great.
This is the thing about hiring someone who is clairvoyant and always right (hmm I wonder if those two things are connected).
If they say something looks good, you are completely stupid to disregard it.
I am a bit odd but definitely not stupid. Also, I hire Hiro for everything. If you ever hear me talking about something that was a horrible mistake, that’s a sure sign that I didn’t run it by Hiro first.
Anyway, we thought this particular place had fallen through and anyway, it was supposed to be too small and we were pretty sure that it wouldn’t work because it was too something something.
But Hiro said. And when Hiro says, you have to go see it.
So I saw it. And fell crazy in love.
We’ll know in a few days if we get to lease it. Please keep all extremities crossed!
My boots.
They’re so hot I can’t even stand being around myself.
It’s outrageous.
It was a glorrrrious day!
Well, I don’t know if it was.
But we went to the now famous glorrrrious day cafe, the one I can’t stop talking about. The one that inspired Pace and Kyeli to sing the milk song.
So that was awesome.
Sweet Jane!
I really just go to Vancouver to see my darling Jane.
Jane!
Hmmm, could it be that my mad love for her might be why the Canadian customs people view me with such suspicion? No. That makes no sense.
Seeing Hiro!
Yes, that would be the same Hiro I talk about all the time.
She is wonderful.
In fact, Selma and I are sitting with her right now.
Also, I may have just talked her into teaching a class on Internet Hangover (like, how to cure it and how not to get it). Please ask her to do this because I want to take it.
Fabulous Shivanautical epiphanies.
I have been dancing up a storm, using Shiva Nata to generate brain-zapping insights related to opening the Playground studio.
And all sorts of other things have been happening as well.
It’s brilliant.
Our sourdough starter.
Is fantastic.
Best. Bread. Ever.
Thanks, backyard.
And … playing live at the meme beach house!
Yes, that’s a Stuism too.
My brother and I have this thing where we come up with ridiculous band names and then say in this really pretentious, knowing tone, “Oh, well, you know, it’s just one guy.”
This week’s band (thanks, Vancouver!) is …
Zombie Rainboots.
They’re big in Japan. And yes, it’s just one guy.
That’s it for me …
And yes yes yes, of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments bit if you feel like it.
Yeah? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious weekend. And a happy week to come.
Extremely brief letters to the (internal) editor
Among other things.
To my feet.
Dear feet,
I am sorry that I have neglected you. You must feel really tired.
Even though it might seem like I don’t appreciate you even slightly, I do.
Know that there is a warm epsom salt bath in your (very near) future as a thank you for moving me from place to place.
I get that a letter from me is hardly a substitute for some real attention. A start?
To my day.
Dear day,
Wow. Already here.
I must admit to feeling just the tiniest bit apprehensive about your arrival, given all the things that want doing and saying and thinking and deciding.
If there is any way you can offer me reassurances, yay.
Here’s what I would like. I would like you to be filled with trust and a sense of being grounded. Stability.
And I will do what I can to stay aware of where and when these qualities are showing up, as well as the times when I’m having difficulty connecting to them.,
Open to being surprised about all sorts of things today.
To my resistance.
Dear resistance to writing these letters, hi.
Yes, you have a place too.
Even though you worry about me becoming (more of) a hippie tree-hugging yoga teacher, I want you to know that you are not in danger of losing me.
You know me. And in all of the wild things that have happened over the past several years, you know that I have not lost my sense of humor.
I have not lost my sarcastic bitchiness and I have not lost my impatient eye-rolling. Right? It’s still me.
So even though you think that if I let myself write little letters to things that may or may not be able to respond, I will become someone who is gullible, easy to deceive, easily hurt …
This is not what’s going on here.
Thank you for trying to keep me from losing myself. And please know that all these things I experiment with are not intended to turn me into someone else. They’re helping me to get closer to myself.
And yes, I get that you think I might discover that my “true” self is an annoying, preachy, holier-than-thou person who wears white robes and speaks only in ridiculous cliches about how life is a blessing. Oh god what if that happens.
It’s not going to happen, sweetie.
I know who I am. And the essence of me — the core Havi-ness — isn’t going anywhere. I am allowed to contain contradictions.
Oh yes. I am allowed to be a yoga teacher and the Head Shivanaut and a bad-ass pirate queen and someone who writes letters to her day and someone who thinks this is stupid, all at the same time.
I hope this explanation makes it easier for you to let me write these, because I really want to write them.
p.s. I won’t tell anyone how much you like talking to trees when no one’s watching.
Trees.
Dear trees,
I love you.
Morning yoga practice.
Dear morning yoga practice,
I know you miss me.
Maybe not as much as I miss you but still.
Know that when I do a calf stretch on the stairs, or a lazy forward bend while standing in line, I am thinking of you and we are together.
Every piece counts. And yes, you are allowed to feel frustrated that we don’t have as much time together right now.
Working towards it. Coming home to you.
To my bed,
Dear bed,
Please hold me in love and comfort.
To my body,
Dear body of mine,
You are loved.
Even though you might feel pretty annoyed with me right now, I just want you to know that I am with you.
I will get you pillows and baths and yoga and time. And napping.
I will feed you and clothe you and whisper things to you. Sometimes we will fight. Because I forget.
And sometimes we will have long, unhappy discussions. And sometimes we will cry.
I’m with you. You are loved. Even when I say harsh things. Even when I cannot like you or myself.
This doesn’t have to make sense.
Tonight’s sleep.
Dear tonight’s sleep,
Help me feel safe.
If you could be restful, restorative and take care of me, that would be awesome.
If there is anything that needs processing (and I’m just going to assume there is lots of that), please let it happen gently and thoroughly, without disturbance.
Missed connection.
Me: Sleepy woman in her 30s. Green eyes. Wearing a purple dress and extremely hot red boots.
You: My afternoon nap. Skinny. Cute. Nice smile.
We looked longingly at each other but I had to catch a cab and then do a bunch of things. I wish I’d had the courage to just say what the hell and take you right there in the middle of the day.
That would have been great.
Find me?
Comment zen for today.
You can play too! Extremely brief (or long, rambling) letters to editors, internal or otherwise, are all welcome.
We don’t give advice and we don’t edit for each other. We respect the fact that we’re all working on our stuff and that sometimes it’s hard. xox
The Rule of Absolutely Absolutely.
Hmmm. This is going to need some explaining.
Okay. I lived in Israel for a third of my life. And in Israel posted signs work differently than they do in Europe or North America.
Like, if you see a sign that says “entrance forbidden”, you’re still going to hop over the fence.
Everyone does. You know it’s just a warning. A … general warning. Not a warning warning.
A suggestion.
Absolutely absolutely.
This one time my ex-husband and I were camping somewhere and we disobeyed (eh, disregarded) at least three different signs. Until we got to the one that said ABSOLUTELY no doing whatever it was we wanted to do.
And then I stopped.
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Oh come on, only one absolutely? That so doesn’t count!”
And yeah. He was right. Once we got to the sign that said “ABSOLUTELY ABSOLUTELY ABSOLUTELY no entrance” though, we knew they were serious.
Two or more absolutelys are worth paying attention to.
Back to the Book of You.
Remember the Book of You?
It’s where you write down those useful things you’re in the process of learning about yourself, your stuff, and the relationship between them.
Mine is full of things like how going to bed late makes me kind of crazy, and what to do when I get a migraine.
And why I am not allowed to call an end to Email Sabbatical — ever, just like I need to remember not to plan to teach a teleclass the day after a roller derby bout.
Yes.
So. The Book of You is a constant work in progress. It pretty much has to be. I’m always adding notes to the enormous book of Me.
That’s because you and what you know about yourself is always changing. We are dynamic beings. Our bodies and perceptions and experiences are always in flow.
So it’s not like anything in there is written in stone. And despite all that, I’ve found it’s really useful to have some Absolutely Absolutelys in there.
A couple examples from my own life.
New Yorker fiction.
In my own Book of Me (which right now is a sloppy binder and a couple of documents on my computer), there’s an entire section called: avoiding things that make you crazy!
One of the entries is all about New Yorker fiction:
Here’s a thought, sweetie. Don’t read it.
The best-case scenario is that it will get on your nerves, and it just gets worse from there.
Aside from having no point and being a complete waste of time and pushing all of your but I can write so much better than this buttons, this story will almost certainly contain psychological violence.
You’ll spend days if not years clearing that stuff out of your head.
I know you think that this time you’ll find something meaningful and beautiful like that one time.
History shows otherwise.
But then the other week I had to add an Absolutely Absolutely note to this one.
No more “this is something I’m working on and it’s better to try and avoid this” — time to say seriously, it’s not worth it.
Life is absolutely absolutely better when I don’t read the fiction entry in the New Yorker. So absolutely absolutely don’t pick it up.*
* Unless it’s a David Sedaris piece. Or Haruki Murakami. Or your gentleman friend screens it for you and tells you it’s spectacular.
Pack a sandwich for the plane ride.
This one has been in the Book of Me forever. I’ve moved countries three times. And Selma and I teach all over the place.
Traveling happens. As does crankiness.
Having food with me helps. We know this. It’s a firmly established rule.
But when I flew to Vancouver this week, I broke the rule.
You know, what the hell. It’s less than an hour on a plane. I’d have to go out to get food when I already had a million things to do. Blah blah hassle. Blah blah unnecessary.
So I skipped it.
Then the plane was delayed. Twice. And we got pulled over at customs for the special “no, why are you really here” grilling session, which took forever. By the time I actually got to the hotel, it was too late even for room service.
Dinner at ten, which is when I’d normally be asleep. Cranky, confused, bewildered me. I know how this works.
That’s why the Book of Me is full of useful stuff about why and how my routines and rituals help me stay grounded and centered.
But I blew off one of the things I know because common sense said this time it didn’t matter. And it did.
So I’m sticking an Absolutely Absolutely sticker on that one.
My love, no matter how short your trip, your sanity and general well-being Absolutely Absolutely demand snacks.
Just trust me on this one, okay?
Having an Absolutely Absolutely doesn’t mean you can’t change it later.
All information in the Book of You is open to change:
Open to conscious experimentation, open to new information coming to light, open to being edited, altered or rewritten.
Because that’s what we do with patterns. We rewrite them. We break down stuff into its components and rebuild. That’s the essence.
What is true for me in this moment won’t necessarily be even slightly true for me a year from now. My relationship with myself will have changed. My relationship with my monsters will have changed.
Lots of things will have changed.
And, at the same time, there is value in taking certain pieces of information so seriously that — just for now — they get an Absolutely Absolutely.
It lets you experiment with the things that aren’t as precarious. To use the absolutely absolutely to create some extra padding, extra safety.
Comment zen for today.
People vary. Our stuff varies. We’re all working on our stuff in our own ways. We tread softly with other people’s stuff. We don’t give advice.
You’re more than welcome to share your own likely entries for the Book of You. Or stuff you wonder about, want or need.
Big love to everyone. And kisses to the Beloved Lurkers.
Some thoughts on dealing with loss.
I said goodbye to some things over the past few days, and it has been less than fun.
And I’ve been thinking about loss in various permutations.
The loss of something that can’t come back.
Someone asked me this week what I did when my friend died.
And I didn’t really know what to say because it’s been almost two years since I found out, and I’m still not doing so great.
I still cry. A lot. I still talk to him. I still can’t listen to music. Or not look for him in crowds.
Also: I still do a practice that Sivan, one of my best friends (and my first real yoga teacher) taught me: naming things.
It’s a way of reminding myself to come back, a way of letting all that grief be legitimate while still saying I am here.
And so I name things:
I name the things that I see.
Wood floor, white clouds, large book, blank wall, tall tree, cracked sign, orange blanket, old clock. I am here.
Moving train, yellow box, strong wind, silver clasp, dusty floor, empty corner, happy tulips. I am here.
Morning light, crinkly eyes, red mat, brown mug, hot tea, wool gloves, crisp apple, hard ground.
Hey, guess what. I’m still here.
It doesn’t stop the hurt. But it brings me back to here.
I want to let both my pain and my need for the pain to subside be equally important.
Death is about as final as things get, sure, but there are so many kinds of loss that have that similar sense of being disconnected from what was.
Disconnected. No way to get back. Like breaking up. Moving away. Being done.
Everything that has been helpful for me while being in the pain of loss has been about two kinds of acknowledgment:
Acknowledgment of the pain. This hurts so much right now. And acknowledgment that things move/flow/continue in their different ways. I am here.
Naming things helps me bring attention to everything that is still here. Even if or when those things seem trite and useless. Back to present time.
This is what helps me do just one thing.
And this is what helps me give permission for things to be the way they are. To soften resistance.
To let both my pain and my need for the pain to subside to be equally important, equally legitimate.
And then there is “I could have done X but I chose to do Y.”
This kind of loss has its own seemingly endless variations.
Sometimes it’s the loss that holds regret:
Why didn’t I choose X?
Or it’s the loss that lives on in curiosity. The unfollowed path of parallel lives:
What might have happened if I had wound up doing X instead?
Or maybe it’s that not getting something you know you didn’t want is still a form of loss.
Even though I don’t regret my choice (I’m happy I went with Y, and I know there was nothing to be gained by X) — there is still the residual sadness of having said no to something.
The thing I keep learning about loss.
I don’t really know how to put this, but it’s kind of like this:
Loss is sometimes like our monsters, in the sense that when we acknowledge that it exists, the pain can … soften.
And, despite having learned this repeatedly over thousands of experiences of loss and acknowledgment, loss and acknowledgment, loss and acknowledgment … my tendency is STILL not to acknowledge the pain.
My tendency is to do whatever I can to avoid pain. Which is funny, because I know that acknowledging the pain lessens the pain.
So there’s the paradox.
I know what needs to be done: allow the pain to be painful, give it permission to exist, remind it that it will not always be a part of me, find out what it needs.
And I know that doing this will let me step away from it enough to get closer to myself. Enough so that the pain can begin to move and flow and find its way out of my heart.
But acknowledging the existence of my pain seems like such an uncomfortable thing to do that I absolutely don’t want to.
Where I go from here.
Permission to not want to.
I don’t have to want to acknowledge my pain. It makes complete sense that I wouldn’t.
And so I remind myself that it’s natural and normal to be in avoidance.
I remind myself that this is human. This is okay.
That I don’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of my comfort zone.
And that even though I don’t want to interact with my pain, I can acknowledge my pain’s existence without having to go inside of it and experience it.
I can give myself permission to not want to be in the pain. And permission to be a real live human being who has pain.
At the same time.
Slowly, slowly.
Slowly, slowly I get better.
Progress.
I can drink chamomile tea without crying now. See a kid with a guitar and it’s just a kid with a guitar. I watched a film and someone was hanging from a noose and I didn’t completely fall apart.
Warm tea. Concrete step. Old movie. Sad heart. Leaky pen. Crumbly soap. Scratchy towel. Sore shoulder. Dog-eared book.
I am here.
And maybe this whole life work-process-thing of meeting myself where I am, with all my stuff and all my hurt, is — at least in part — why I’m here.
Learning that things change. Learning how they change. Rewriting patterns. Deconstruction and new creation. Taking things apart and rebuilding.
Taking everything apart. Finding the essence. Building beautiful new things from the pieces.
Comment zen for today.
This is hard, hurt-ey stuff.
People vary. Grief varies. Needs vary. Here’s how we respect each other’s pain: No advice. And no saying “my way is better than your way.”