Art Imitates Yoga

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For as long as I’ve been writing and posting – which must be at least twenty years – I’ve held the intention that I will post each week and each post will be a reflection on my experience as a yoga student and teacher. 

That has never come close to happening.

My last post was on September 9th, 2024, when I introduced the world to the incredible Tondu, the senior feline companion who moved in and filled the gap left by dear Brucie’s departure. After that post I found myself struggling to put together a few paragraphs describing the fear and anxiety so many of us are experiencing as our country moves toward a darker age. I finally abandoned all hope and hit the delete button.

Because I can’t write on command. Writing about a specific topic with a self-imposed deadline sucks any ability I possess to string two words together from my brain. I suspect that with discipline (if I showed up daily for myself and for my writing practice) the issue would right itself (pun intentional). But until I do that I’m going to have to be content with writing when the mood strikes.

Which makes me question whether, at the dawn of 2025, I want a writing practice as much as I wanted it in 2010. Fifteen years ago I wrote a full-length manuscript (90,000 words!) about a young woman eager to fly at the start of WWII. The story was inspired by a woman I knew who had been an WASP. In my story she falls in love with a neighbor boy who is Japanese and is sent to an internment camp. Forbidden love! Separation! War! Oh the Drama!

I was never happy with the ending. Do they reunite? Have they been changed so much by their experiences that love dies? Or is love the one true thing? Oh the Potential Heartbreak!

I was going through my own heartbreaking drama at the time and the joy I found living with these characters in my brain was lost. And so the finished manuscript sits in a dusty box, unedited. I always tell myself I’ll get back to it one day but that day has yet to arrive.

Practicing a visual art feels different. Maybe because, fifteen years older, I’ve learned to take myself less seriously. Or maybe I’ve learned to not make creating a competition. Showing up for my art practice is not a chore. It’s a joy. And although when I’m in the art studio I experience the same struggles and setbacks as I do when I write they are never enough to make me push it to the back burner. If anything I grow more determined to find a solution.

For the past two years I’ve been exploring encaustic photography. The process is this: I take a photograph with my camera. I edit the image on my laptop. I print the image on a sheet of tissue paper and then adhere the paper to cradled birch with encaustic medium, which is a combination of bees wax and damar resin. The tissue paper becomes transparent from the melted wax. I build on this with further layers of tissue paper on which images, texture and text have been printed.

Late last year I found the process becoming rote. I struggled with a few technical issues and when they were resolved I produced work like a robot on an assembly line. The process became a race to see how much I could create in a day. The idea of art as a practice was lost.

The truth is, since my intention is for my art practice to also be a business – in other words I want to exhibit and to sell the work I create – then my time in the studio should be both business and practice. But I was listing heavy toward ‘produce at all costs’. My art had lost its heart. 

So I put the camera, the wax and the tissue paper and I pulled out my scraps of fabric.

And yesterday, as I stitched layers of rust-stained cotton and dreamy organza together, I thought about yoga. I thought about the verbal cues I use with the women and men with whom I practice. I thought about how I ask them to move with care. To move with intention and to be thoughtful. I thought about how I ask them to meet their bodies where they are in that moment. How I ask them to be present with their bodies and with their breath.

Yoga is a practice. Writing is a practice. Art is a practice, too. And as I move forward in my art practice I’m going to apply all the cues I provide for others during our sessions on the yoga mat. I want the work I bring into the world to be intentional, not rote. I want the work to be thoughtful, not thoughtless. I want to remain present for the making of the work and not to be thinking about what comes next.

I believe this new awareness will serve me well. 

Still Shuffling, but is it Self-Care?

imagesYou might be thinking, “How’s the shuffling going?”

Not bad. Thanks for asking.

Our cat Bruce rises with the birds. These days that’s around 5AM. And if Bruce is up, I’m up. I’ve no complaints. To be truthful, it’s quite nice. At 5AM it’s dark and peaceful but there’s evidence of a patient dawn waiting to break on the horizon. The birds are stretching their wings and calling good morning to one another across the leafy branches but haven’t yet attacked the feeder on our porch. There’s a calm to this time of day that I love.

Around 6:15 I’ll head out for the shuffle. I’ll be honest, until my bones are warm it’s not far removed from plain misery. But after that, after I fall into the rhythm it’s…well…it alternates between misery and torment. Let’s be honest here – if you know me you know I’m not a gazelle. This is a real, fourteen minute shuffle I’m talking about. I’m moving fast enough for my steps to no longer qualify as brisk walking but too slow to be considered running. In fact, calling it jogging is generous. So why would I subject myself to misery and torment so early in the morning? Good question. 

Because it makes me feel good. That’s right. It feels good. I love the challenge, the fresh air, the improvement I can see from day to day. On my first shuffle about six weeks ago I made it one length of a block. What is that? Three hundred feet? And now I can shuffle a full mile before taking a walking break. My morning shuffle is a gift I give my body. It’s a gift I give my psyche.

But I wonder. Is my shuffle self-care? It depends. If by self-care we mean taking time to keep the body healthy and the heart ticking then yes, it’s self-care. If by self-care we mean engaging in an activity from which we derive some pleasure then yes, it’s self-care. But what if by self-care we mean taking time to find solace in the waking dawn?

In that case, listening to the birds sing at 5AM wins every time.

What does self-care mean to you? A warm bath? A long walk? A glass of merlot? More than ever, dedicating some time to self-care each day is important. It’s not selfish nor is it self-indulgent. It’s necessary. Especially now. The way our world has changed in just eight weeks is giving rise to a second pandemic of mental health issues. So, yes, self-care is necessary.

How will you define self-care and how will you bring it into your life?

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Don’t Dream It’s Over

The suitcases are back down in the storage locker, the laundry is folded and tucked away. The photos have been filed and the promise to have our favorites made into a Shutterfly book is written on that long ‘to do’ list.

fullsizeoutput_ccfIt’s like a dream. The only reason why I know for certain I was there is because of the sense of familiarity that welled inside when I saw images of the protests that occurred in Kerala in early January. A wall of women stretched the length of the place I had just been and deep in my soul I could feel the heat and hear the traffic and smell the layered perfumes of India.

I’ll be honest. I don’t want to be writing this. The deeper my last post about the backwaters of Kerala sinks into this blog’s history, the further away I am from that magical land. That’s how wonderful those ten days were.

I know plenty of people who look forward to their two-week holiday every year. Friends, students and private clients let me know they’ll be missing class or canceling appointments. They organize the cat sitter, hold the mail and stop the daily delivery of the New York Times. The kids are piled into the family van for a road trip or a race to the airport for a bargain priced flight to parts unknown.

glglq8tkrey3i1gqy+kx2aOur ten days in Kerala were a first for Ben and me. Over the past five years we’ve enjoyed time spent with family back east and long weekend breaks to Half Moon Bay and Arcata, but we’ve never had an extended holiday all to ourselves. Even worse, there’s never been a time when we’ve taken a so-called break and didn’t take work along as if it were a third traveling companion. (And if I’m being totally honest, on my first day in Bangalore, while Ben was finishing his business meeting, I worked on Samyama’s monthly newsletter, Prana Pulse).

I’ve always been a little weak in the self-care department and until December I didn’t understand the point of vacations. Time away from work for me usually means I’m attending an IAYT conference or taking another training. But to just sit still? Until December this was impossible. Which is pretty funny considering how often I encourage clients to be kind to themselves. I guess it’s sort of a ‘do as I say and not as I do’ situation.

Besides its gentle beauty, the biggest blessing of Kerala were the blissful two days without wifi.

fullsizeoutput_aa6For those two days my brain turned the volume down on the endless chatter, my body relaxed in a way I didn’t think was possible, and Ben and I had a chance to bask in the love we share. We engaged with life, with the world around us and with each other. During those two days I was fully immersed in the life around me – the colors, the textures, the sounds and even the silence. I engaged with life, not with a computer. 

I was very lucky to be able to travel to the other side of the world and I don’t know when I’ll have that opportunity again. No matter. Ben and I plan on taking another vacation this year. It might not be extreme or exotic or even that expensive. But after this experience, after really feeling what it means to renew and recharge, our next vacation will be designed with kindness and self-care in mind.