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.
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.”
Very Personal Ads #41: brewed, not brood
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 Sunday ritual. Yay, ritual!
Let’s do it.
Thing 1: emotional and financial support with FUNBREWING
Here’s what I want:
Yes, I asked for support last week in a general sort of way. And got it.
And now I need more, and in different ways.
We (finally) announced our gigantic fun-brewing project this week. This is part of the Big Thing my pirate crew and I have been secretly working on since January.
And it’s to raise fun (yes, I am aware that other people say “funds”) for the the new Playground.
Opening a studio is exciting. And it also involves a lot of expenses.
It looks like we might be signing a lease this week, which is eeeeeeeeeeee! wonderful. And it also means we need stuff. For the studio. Quickly.
Like flooring, which is going to cost at least $1600. And all the materials for the stage we’re building. And screens. And curtains. And more props and toys for Old Turkish Lady yoga.
And a whole laundry list of other things.
So the fun-brewing needs help and support. And the monies. And I need patience and faith.
I need help staying connected to myself so that I can remember the essence of my mission, without getting overwhelmed by all the stuff around it.
Ways this could work:
More Shiva Nata to keep me in flow and deliver some serious epiphanies about this.
I can brunch some other products or at least put them in pre-sale mode.
Maybe we’ll throw some kind of party. Like a silly Shivathon dance marathon.
I can remind people about the fantastic Monster Coloring Book.
Fairy godmothers.
Miracles.
Surprises.
Unexpected sources of help.
Things I can’t possibly even imagine right now.
My commitment.
Again, to let myself have a meltdown if I need one.
To ask for help.
To breathe. To dance. To keep moving.
To sleep on it. And then sleep on it some more.
To brainstorm possibilities at the Kitchen Table.
To be open to being surprised.
Thing 2: Support for Guns N Rollers!.
Here’s what I want:
So Selma and I sponsor the coolest Roller Derby team in Portland.
You know that already. I’ve written about why Shivanauts love Derby, and of course really everyone loves Derby.
I know I have a ton of blog readers in the Pacific Northwest. A bunch of you in PDX proper. And I know some of y’all are Shivanauts.
Where are you guys? Selma and I want to see you at some of the bouts wearing pink and black (and maybe a moustache) and cheering for GNR!
I’ll be there with Shannon and Danielle and Cairene and Dana, and a duck. Nu? Are you coming?
Ways this could work:
I’m just going to ask.
And I’ll try to throw out a reminder on Twitter before the next bout sells out.
My commitment.
To keep harassing you about this, of course.
Thing 3: Caring for myself.
Here’s what I want:
There’s kind of a lot going on right now.
I’ve been pretty good about sticking to my napping regimen.
But I need to be giving myself some love while all the crazy is happening.
Ways this could work:
I’m not sure.
My commitment.
To pay attention to my patterns.
To keep my focus on taking care of myself first. And reminding myself that this is really the only way it works.
Well, it works the other way too but the price is too high. This has to be about living what I teach.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
Just to update you on what’s happened since last time.
I asked for support with the fun-brewing. And there was so much lovely excitement when I announced the monster coloring book. Everyone was lovely about it.
And it’s been a joy to see how enthusiastic everyone is about this new direction. So yay.
Then I asked for help with all the horrid things I didn’t want to do. And that went pretty well.
And I asked for stuff to work with the Vancouver trip. Not sure about that one yet.
All in all, it was a pretty good week. And I may be repeating some of these asks next time, with slight variations. We’ll see.
Comments. Since I’m already asking …
I am adding to my practice of asking 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:
- Reality 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.
I am committing to getting better at asking for things even when asking feels weird.
Thanks for doing this with me!
Friday Chicken #88: Fake Band Of The Week Showdown!
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, it is Friday. Again. Uncanny.
I have been Distracted Mouse all week. Lots of hard-to-explain hard. Lots of just-plain-good in the good.
Yes, I just said good in the good. And no, that’s not one of the Fake Bands of The Week.
Though that could actually totally work. The Good In The Good: drummer wanted.
The hard stuff
The usual.
More stuff that wants doing than time to do it in.
And then having to “prioritize” (bleargh). Talk about something that needs help from Metaphor Mouse.
Anyway. A lot of second-guessing myself.
Hopes and disappointments.
We’ve been looking at so many spaces for the Playground.
It’s crazy time-consuming. And every time we’ve thought something was going to work, it’s fallen through.
And then all of our Plan B backup spaces crashed too.
Hard.
Moments of cranky.
Often corresponding with moments of leaf-blowers and lawn-mowing.
Tough decisions.
Crossroads.
Not always trusting myself.
Being misunderstood.
Still the most frustrating, hard, unpleasant thing there is.
Bumping into everything that can be bumped into.
Mostly metaphorically but also literally.
So now I have bruised ribs, a sore back and a sad shoulder.
Lovely.
The good stuff
The gigantic Fun Brewing project is GO!
After months of behind-the-scenes work, hinted at in previous Friday Chickens, the Fun Brewing for The Playground went live.
We have a baby (that’s not actually a baby)!
We announced the monster coloring book!
And dropped hints about some other things. And it is all extremely exciting to finally get to talk about it and celebrate joyfully.
We may have found a space?!
Keep all extremities crossed, please.
But maybe maybe maybe maybe.
AND we found the perfect Plan B space that blew all our other Plan B spaces out of the water.
So there. Whew.
Punk Rock Shivanauttery!
I have never been this excited about teaching anything.
This is going to be the most fun thing in the entire world.
Must. Go. Bounce.
Lots of help, encouragement, magic and reassurance from Hiro.
Oh that Hiro. She is amazing.
I hired her to work with me on a bunch of different aspects of the fun-brewing, and it is just what I need.
Kneidelach!
The size of baseballs.
My gentleman friend is a prince.
Because if you have to do peach, you should at least get to go crazy with the matzah ball soup. That someone else makes for you.
Pesach being over.
And over-dosing on lovely, lovely chametz (and carbs!) the next day.
Starting with The Big Egg and moving on to mac n cheese. I believe bagels may have been involved at some point as well. It was chaos. But kind of hot.
Making an executive decision.
Well, making an executive branding decision on a tough day. Which was … going to bed with a glass of brandy. For some brand-ying.
Good call, me.
Napping!
Ever since that one Very Personal Ad where I committed to making this a practice, wow.
It’s been happening. Almost every day.
And while I’m definitely feeling the frustration of everything that’s not getting done, it is so obviously good for me in every possible way that I am appreciating the hell out of it right now.
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 we have two bands vying for Fake Band Of The Week. It’s a toss-up. Enter your votes in the comments please.
Is it going to be …
The Supreme Quart
Or do we give the honor to …
Ironic Deaths and Miscellaneous Shenanigans Department
Oh, it’s so hard to decide.
Weirdly enough though, the one thing both these excellent bands have in common is that they’re actually just one guy.
* Kiss to Steve (who is @sbspalding and really is just one guy) for giving me the name for Band #2.
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.
Eleven and a half insights that changed everything I do.
Note: these are all Shivanautical epiphanies.
Which means? That I came to each of these understandings after doing some Dance of Shiva (bizarre yoga-related brain training that makes neural connections and generally results in you being aware of all sorts of crazy stuff you hadn’t realized before).
The other bit worth mentioning is this:
The thing with epiphanies is that they tend to seem painfully obvious once they’ve landed. So it’s not so much the information they give you as the experience of getting it in a visceral head-to-toe-tingly way.
The story.
Some background:
This is about five and a half years ago. Just before I started my business.
I’d been through some pretty hellish stuff and I’d gotten past the scary and past the numb and now I was mad.
Really mad. At everything.
At … oh, the general fist-shakingly exasperating unfairness of the world in general and, mostly, especially, my world in particular. Among other things:
- The ear infection from hell that nearly killed me — and put me out of commission for the exact amount of time that was supposed to be my “finding a job so I don’t starve to death” time. Like my body had betrayed me.
- Being an unwelcome guest in an unheated semi-squat in East Berlin with a high-maintenance obsessive-compulsive drag king in the middle of winter in a neighborhood full of nazis may have its charm when you’re not deathly ill.
But
it wasn’t really all that much funall my stuff about not having safety and broken promises and not having a home outside of my head … was being reinforced. - My broken heart. Betrayal betrayal betrayal betrayal.
- A heart I broke that did not deserve to be broken. Betrayal betrayal betrayal betrayal. With a side dish of agonizing shame.
- The asshat owner of the yoga studio in Israel where I’d been a teacher for the previous six months. The one who didn’t pay me for that entire time, and then decided to pay me less than half of what he’d promised.
Notice that at this point I hadn’t even gotten around to being mad about the crazy sexual harassment, that’s how pissed off I was about the money.
And the betrayal.
I’d left the bar world for the yoga world specifically in order to avoid being around people like that anymore and it turned out to be the same world: the unsafe one, full of people who’d screw you over to save on cabfare.
- The people who didn’t take me in when I lost my job and my apartment.
- The people who did and whose friendships I lost.
- My ex-husband.
- The numb of all that pain.
And that’s just the start.
I was so mad there was nothing I could do but dance.
After all, Shiva’s dance was sometimes called the Dance of Anger. And I had a lot of that to dance about.
Including my anger at the Dance of Shiva for a) being so damn hard, b) making me feel stupid by not being able to do it well, c) bringing realizations that seemed obvious in retrospect.
And that’s when the hot buttered epiphanies started flying.
The hot buttered epiphanies:
Insight #1: the patterns are all right there.
Whoah. There’s a theme to all this.
This betrayal thing is a narrative. The motif.
If I were watching a film about me I would want to shoot the director for making the symbolism so damn obvious that I can’t stop tripping over it.
Insight #2: the pattern behind the pattern.
Oh.
Except THAT’S not the pattern. The real pattern at play is me seeing themes of betrayal everywhere and believing the truth of them.
The actual pattern is the perception of the pattern. The actual pattern is my ingrained belief that this is my only reality.
Insight #3: It’s all the same stuff.
All my exes? More or less the same person, if you’re just looking at my perception of how I get treated in life.
All my bosses? Not just the same person but kind of the same as all my exes.
And all my experiences have been reinforcing the same patterns of what is familiar.
Insights #4 – 8: What? What?! What!
What if I altered what was familiar?!
What if things can change?
What if I also found complementary patterns in my life? In other words, things that don’t suck that are going on simultaneously on a parallel course, along with all the hard.
What if noticing the good didn’t necessarily mean negating the pain of the first set of patterns?
What if it was all just additional information that expanded both my brain and my experience? What if my inner and outer world could talk to each other?
Insight #9: People are kind.
Or: there are kind people.
Like the friend I made who decided to help me before any of the yoga studios in Berlin would work with me.
He’d squatted an electric company building right after the Berlin wall had come down, and turned it into a beautiful nursery school. And he let me teach yoga and Dance of Shiva classes there without charging me for the space.
And when that fell through, he and his wife found another space and brought me in, again without accepting money.
All that without knowing anything other than that I needed support.
Insight #10: Support takes many forms.
Even when your perception of the world based on your experience is that there is no support, there is still support.
Insight #11: The job of my anger is to keep me from being sad.
Wait. All this anger is covering up a ton of sadness and loss. And fear of experiencing it again. But mostly sadness.
And I promised you half an insight too.
It’s only a half because it was… just an inkling.
Nothing I could put into words. In fact, I’m still not sure if I can. But it’s something like…
Commit to a mission and stuff starts to happen.
And it was a start.
Why I wrote this.
I didn’t write this so that you’d come to my crazy Punk Rock Shivanauttery week (though that would be awesome). Or throw yourself into the Starter Kit.
But because there are so many things we know and don’t realize. So many times when the pieces come together and you go oh.
And there is something about the oh that changes everything that happens next.
I guess I wanted to share some of the sense of that whole-body-perception. That lovely crackling sound of possibility.
And to plant some hope.
Because the thing you want (whatever that is or means for you) may not happen overnight, but getting ready to feel comfortable about getting there can happen more quickly than you’d think.
In those times of pain, it was yoga that kept me sane, and Shiva Nata that gave me the understandings I needed to learn whatever needed to be learned from.
So I could get from where I was to the next understanding.
Lots I could say about that. But mainly:
Possibility.
That’s what gave birth to my business, even before it had a name. Possibility.
A lot of things are possible. More than your monsters and your walls know. And even with the loudest monsters and the tallest walls, there’s always an opening. In fact, there are all sorts of openings.
And … comment zen for today.
We all have stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We try to not step on each other’s stuff.