Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

Happy (almost) summer!

Here's all the latest May news.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

I listened to this story last night as I drove home after teaching, and it broke my heart a little bit.

Just right there as I rounded the corner from Nicasio and saw the vastness of the reservoir and the night sky unfolding in front of me. The tears rushed and, before I knew it, I was bawling like a baby.

Give it a read. It's worth your time.

Made me think a lot about what it means to really show up in the world with an awakened heart and a listening ear. Made me realize how short and perpetually in flux this life is. And it reminded me a great deal of my years bartending and the unexpected intimacies that resulted from that ostensibly meaningless gig. And how we can make meaning for one another, simply by showing up well.

How powerful it can be to simply bear witness to a life unfolding.

There was a time in my life twenty years ago when I was driving a cab for a living.

It was a cowboy’s life, a gambler’s life, a life for someone who wanted no boss, constant movement and the thrill of a dice roll every time a new passenger got into the cab.

What I didn’t count on when I took the job was that it was also a ministry.

Because I drove the night shift, my cab became a rolling confessional. Passengers would climb in, sit behind me in total anonymity and tell me of their lives.

We were like strangers on a train, the passengers and I, hurtling through the night, revealing intimacies we would never have dreamed of sharing during the brighter light of day. I encountered people whose lives amazed me, ennobled me, made me laugh and made me weep.

And none of those lives touched me more than that of a woman I picked up late on a warm August night.

I was responding to a call from a small brick fourplex in a quiet part of town. I assumed I was being sent to pick up some partiers, or someone who had just had a fight with a lover, or someone going off to an early shift at some factory for the industrial part of town.

When I arrived at the address, the building was dark except for a single light in a ground-floor window.

Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a short minute, then drive away. Too many bad possibilities awaited a driver who went up to a darkened building at 2:30 in the morning.

But I had seen too many people trapped in a life of poverty who depended on the cab as their only means of transportation.

Unless a situation had a real whiff of danger, I always went to the door to find the passenger. It might, I reasoned, be someone who needs my assistance. Would I not want a driver to do the same if my mother or father had called for a cab?

So I walked to the door and knocked.

“Just a minute,” answered a frail and elderly voice. I could hear the sound of something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman somewhere in her 80s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like you might see in a costume shop or a Goodwill store or in a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The sound had been her dragging it across the floor.

The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she said. “I’d like a few moments alone. Then, if you could come back and help me? I’m not very strong.”

I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm, and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.

“It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.”

“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” she said. Her praise and appreciation were almost embarrassing.

When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”

“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.”

I looked in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were glistening.

“I don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I should go there. He says I don’t have very long.”

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

“What route would you like me to go?” I asked.

For the next two hours we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they had first been married. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she would have me slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. Without waiting for me, they opened the door and began assisting the woman. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her; perhaps she had phoned them right before we left.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase up to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You have to make a living,” she answered.

“There are other passengers,” I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held on to me tightly.

“You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said. “Thank you.”

There was nothing more to say.

I squeezed her hand once, then walked out into the dim morning light. Behind me, I could hear the door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I did not pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly, lost in thought. For the remainder of that day, I could hardly talk.

What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? What if I had been in a foul mood and had refused to engage the woman in conversation?

How many other moments like that had I missed or failed to grasp?

We are so conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unawares.

When that woman hugged me and said that I had brought her a moment of joy, it was possible to believe that I had been placed on earth for the sole purpose of providing her with that last ride.

I do not think that I have ever done anything in my life that was any more important.

— Kent Nerburn

Raw, idiom: 14a. in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw

So glad to see our WildSoul farm-to-table yoga dinners at Gospel Flat Farm featured in the June 2013 issue of Yoga Journal.

Kelle Walsh writes:

A few miles from California's cliff-hugging coastal Highway 1, past a tidal estuary and beyond a grove of towering eucalyptus trees, Gospel Flat Farm comes into view. Its roadside produce stand brims with lettuce, radishes, beets, and kale, and a cheerful sign announces, surprisingly, "Open 24 Hours." I'm here in the morning, under a bright and cloudless sky, but I'm tickled to imagine a midnight customer stocking up on salad greens at this tiny country outpost 30 miles north of San Francisco.

I've made the trek today along with 14 other city dwellers to participate in a new take on local farm-to-table dining. At this event, and at others like it held on a growing number of small farms across the country, yoga will lend a soulful aspect to the rich experience of eating a meal in the place where its ingredients were grown and harvested. A natural complement to the locavore movement, yoga expands our awareness of the subtle energies around us, deepening our connection to all that a farm-based feast offers—delicious food, a sense of place, and a powerful feeling of gratitude.

"Cultivating the land, creating a meal for people, practicing yoga—all embody the same lessons with different paths," says organizer Ben Crosky, founder of Wildsoul, a Bay Area company dedicated to creating yoga events in inspiring locales. Each action, he explains, starts with a singular focus—a seed, a recipe, an intention for practice—that is tended and nourished until it grows into something else: a crop that will feed a community, a meal that will be enjoyed with others, an experience of inner peace that allows for greater union with the world around us.

"In a world in which we often only see part of the story—we eat in a restaurant, buy groceries in a store, practice yoga in a studio—we become disconnected," Crosky adds. "When we move in ways that create more connection and understanding, we can become more fully present in living."

 Awesome all around. Read the whole thing.

And then join us next time!

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

This is happening right now at Urban Flow! Jump on the chance to power it up with Andrea, Neil, and me.

Tuesday and Thursday noons at UF are highlights of my week. Please join us one of these days.

Always great to see you on the mat.

The Anata Project: Modern Dance Meets Mindfulness

Just bought my tickets for The Anata Project's world premiere spring show this weekend, The Hush Hush Chronicles.

Cannot wait.

If you, too, dig art that melds bodies, movement, mindfulness, beauty, original music, and the sacred, be sure to check it out:

Based on the idea that everyone has a secret, The Hush Hush Chronicles tells of the twisted stories that carve pathways deep within us. Set in the late 1920's at the height of Prohibition, this world premiere explores the undisclosed elements we lock away, and sometimes spill along the way. With an original score performed live by We Became Owls, the seven dancers who form The Anata Project bond together to create their own secret society of misfits. Also included in the evening performance are The Anata Project's 659 Days of Ruby and Mr. S (2011), and a new work by Summation Dance from New York City.

Choreographer Claudia Anata Hubiak founded The Anata Project in January 2011. Hubiak, who was raised with a Buddhist background, based her company on the concept of Anata, or "egolessNESS" in Sanskrit. The word Anata, used in reference to the spacious and ever changing quality of the mind, serves as the backbone and founding principle of Hubiak's dance company.

Love it.

You can learn more about The Anata Project here.

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

I'm teaching 2 classes at MC YOGI's studio this Saturday. Bring yo' mama up to 

Point Reyes Station for a little 8:30am gentle flow, or 10am vinyasa instead. 

Either way, sweeeeet.

Lessons From The Boondocks

It's been six months now since I left the City and moved into a rustic little cottage an hour or so up the Pacific Coast.

Never ever ever ever thought I'd leave San Francisco. I was married to it, dude. It was home. It was my place. We were destined, meant to be.

My people were there. They thought the same way I did, they voted for gay marriage, they ate local arugula and wore stripes and walked everywhere when they weren't moaning and groaning about how shitty the Muni system was.

Alcatraz was right over there. I could run to Crissy Field in a heartbeat. The opera house was 8 blocks down the hill, fer crissakes. And my yoga studio just a few blocks further. Easy, obvious, perfect, duh.

But then I met someone. As one does. And he lived up Highway 1 in a wee little hamlet numbering about 350 in all. And he'd been there, done that, in terms of years in the City. And he loved simplicity and valued nature and spaciousness and ease and stillness a great deal, which was, of course, one of the many reasons I loved and valued him.

So after nearly a decade of wedded-to-San-Francisco bliss, I let go of my Lower Nob Hill garden flat and packed my bags and got rid of lots of shit and settled in up here (officially, full-time) on November 1st. Right at the onset of wet, dark, rainy season in Northern California. Just as the days got short and the skies got heavy.

Great timing, Rach.

Six months later, here we are. Savvier at dodging skunks on winding roadways, with a sharper eye for wayward deer, more tan, for sure, and better at sautéing vegetables, too. Maybe a little wiser. And lighter in more ways than one.

So, here, in no particular order, I give you my Lessons From The Boondocks:

1. Just sit in the sun and be still. Feel it on your face. Congratulations, you're alive. It will all be ok.

2. Wear sunscreen. This isn't the same sun you knew in the City. You're gonna be leathery by June if you keep this up. Put on some SPF 30 already. 

3. The stereotypes about people from Marin are (mostly) true. Love them anyway.

4. Life can be full and eclectic and vibrant wherever you are. At first I mourned the thought of leaving behind all of the cultural highlights of life in the City: walking up and over Nob Hill past the Mark Hopkins to have a cocktail at a speakeasy in the Financial District, hopping on the bus to the DeYoung, rolling down Larkin to the Asian Art Museum. But I've realized: you don't have to have the opera house down the street, or Grace Cathedral just up the hill, to find grace and art and inspiration. Those things are all still right there if I want them. Sometimes the richness just shifts, and it looks more like time to read an actual book again, or a killer hike to the beach just a few minutes' drive away, or the horses that serenade you every morning with an unexpected whinny, or the artist who lives down the street and teaches ceramics classes, or the old dude sitting next to you at the dive bar downtown whose family bought this land back in the 1920s.  

5. You really don't need to answer that email right away. Unless you're Barack Obama, it can wait.

6. Scent matters.  Living on the edge of the Tenderloin for all those years, I got, uh, real good at not noticing the inevitable smells of the City: human waste on the sidewalks, frat-boy vomit along Polk Street, rotting garbage in back alleys. It's cool; you figure it's just one trade-off for the benefits of living in urbanity. But, I tell ya what: there is nothing like the scent of stepping out of my car on a cool Monday evening after driving home from Oakland and taking in the heady whiff of so much lushness. Everywhere I turn, there are lilacs and jasmine and wild roses and eucalyptus. My scent experience has flipped 180 degrees. Where there was displeasure there is now sweetness. Cannot begin to express the grounding power of this alone. And a little manure along the way now and then, too. 

7. Quinoa is a wonder food. Especially when you no longer have a Thai place up the street that's open til 2am. And there are only three restaurants within 20 minutes' drive, and they all shutter at 8.

8. Gluten-free quinoa pasta is a double-wonder food. Especially when you throw some local mushrooms, a little garlic marinara, and some melty Cowgirl Creamery action on top of it. 

9. Your environment can affect your energy. I wish I had a dollar for every person who's told me, "Your energy is different. You're calmer, you're more grounded, you're more present." And it's true. My fiery Type-A pitta self has chilled out. My freneticism level has been dialed down 10 degrees. I sleep better. I move more slowly, more deliberately. And I listen more. The fast pace and callous anonymity of urbanity can seep into your bones. The stress of fighting for parking leaves you irritable and bitter. Even the experience of pounding the cement pavement versus walking on twisted, tangled dirt paths shifts you, let alone the sound of the crickets at night or an owl hooting in the distance. Much preferable to the sound of my neighbor clipping his toenails — or worse — in the bathroom on the other side of my thin apartment wall. Ahem.  

10. You can take the girl out of the prairie, but you can't take the prairie outta the girl. After 17+ years living on the East Coast, in Europe, and then in San Francisco, I've come full circle. No wonder this place feels so right. It's all big sky and spaciousness and silence. Prairie, anyone? Right at home, even down to the cows. But where's the corn?

11. Never speed by the Nicasio reservoir. There will be cops sitting right there waiting for you. Trust. They have nothing else to do. This, upon reflection, is a good thing.

12. Practice. Alone. As a yoga teacher, I've always had a decent home practice, though I have long been attached to my sweat and my sangha. Perhaps the biggest shift for me in leaving the City was leaving my regular (daily) practice at the studios(s) I called home. At first, dude — I cracked. I missed my people, I missed my regular hit of 95 degree sweat, I missed the fact that I could walk in and check my mind at the door. Now practicing with my peeps means an hour's drive on both ends, and either getting up waaaay early or driving home waaaay late. So I listened. I shifted. I started practicing at home, really practicing at home. Made a fire in the stove, got my Primary Series on, moved from an externally-driven practice to an internally-driven one.  I learned to kick my own butt.  I wore ratty old black leggings with holes in them and tank tops that hadn't seen light in 10 years. My arms got a lot stronger, my mind a lot quieter, and I got a lot better at listening, and sequencing, and getting lost in the practice. The result being that I felt a whole lot more self-sufficient, more present, less distracted, and much more empowered. And I am now in the throes of a full-on Mysore-style Ashtanga crush. Which reminds me how easy it is to get comfortable in our routines, settled into the familiar, and how sweet it is to be pushed (forced) into learning a new way of being. And what a gift it can be to be thrown out of the nest.  

 

13. Petaluma is adorable. 'Nuff said. 

14. Your most dreaded experiences can offer the sweetest gifts. I'd spent 9 proud years sans car. I walked everywhere, I felt like a self-sufficient badass every time I willingly ignored gas prices and hustled down the street instead. I was so afraid of the new commute; dreaded spending unaccustomed hours in my car, joining the thousands of other minions driving up and down 101 every morning and evening. And, as I mentioned a few months ago, that commute ended up offering me such a beautiful gift. It has created (and continues to offer) an ongoing opportunity for study in a way that I never expected. I've learned to love the silence, the solitude, the buffer of alone-time between teaching and home. And I'm in full-on podcast nerd mode. Learning endless bits of information in the 20 or 30 or 50 minute interviews with writers and teachers and scholars and farmers. Introduced to the wisdom of folks like Natalie Goldberg and Anne Lamott and Noah Levine and Michael Stone and Richard Freeman and Lodro Rinzler and Elizabeth Gilbert and I could go on and on and on.  Let's just say: never doubt the possibility that the most-dreaded change in your life could actually offer up the sweetest benefits, the most intelligent, informative windows into a new way of being. There is grace all around, if we have the eyes to see it. 

15. Fashion is overrated. Fuck style. Wear the same stretchy pants you've been wearing for the last two weeks. Put on a stretchy skirt instead when you go out to dinner. Be comfortable. You can't buy personality, anyway, and style is what you make of it. And it's easier to carry the firewood in when your bangles don't get in the way.

16. Let your body mirror the rhythms of nature. In the city, I'd drag myself out of bed in the dark of 5am, stumble down the street to a 6am class, wring myself out, spend the day teaching and then shake martinis til the wee hours, not stopping until I flung my tired bones into bed at 1am. Wash, rinse, repeat. It was a state of perpetual highly-caffeinated exhaustion. Moving north meant a lot of things, but most of all, it meant sleep. I quit my lucrative-but-energy-sucking bartending gig because I no longer needed the money to pay for an overpriced teeny-weeny flat in the City. I started going to bed at normal-people hours, and sleeping til the sun came up in the bedroom window. Now, when I feel tired, rather than pushing through and chugging another iced coffee, I sit down and take a nap with birdsong as accompaniment. I wake up 'cause I want to, not because I have 16 commitments before noon and need to build in an extra 45 minutes for riding the bus on the way. I've lost weight, inadvertently, really, just from eating well and sleeping well and living more in a grounded, listening kind of way, and not pushing my body to function 18 hours a day.

17. Put your damn phone away. You don't need to be plugged in all the time. Thanks to Sprint for the spotty cell service that's made that abundantly clear. 

18. Sun and sky can go a long way in helping you forget the City. Especially when it's 80 and sunny here, and 63 and foggy there. 

19. Good Earth in Fairfax is the Marin version of heaven. Go early, go often. And don't miss the deli. But do miss the dudes trying to get your signature on umpteen petitions outside. 

20. Just because it's quiet (remote, private) doesn't mean you're going to get any more creative work done. The silence helps the muses, for sure. But wherever you go, there you are — along with all your psychological "stuff." Don't rely on the stillness to do your work for you. The practice continues, daily. So get off your duff and into your art. That trumpet isn't gonna play itself. 

It's easy to romanticize this whole shift, I know. And I don't mean to paint everything with rose-colored glasses. There are things I miss deeply and regularly, for sure: having a mom 'n pop sushi place around the corner, hopping on the cable car for a Saturday morning farmer's market at the Ferry Building, meeting my girlfriends for a quick cocktail up the street, zipping down to the studio for a quick class with my peeps, popping into the Chinese florist down the block for a handful of tulips.

But now, instead, we make dinner at home (something I never ever ever did before moving up here), I walk down to the creek with the Mister for a sunset stroll around the barn, we go to Toby's for fresh vegetables and lettuce that grew up around the corner, I unroll the mat in front of the fire and get my homemade hot yoga on, without ever brushing my teeth or wearing a bra, and we collect handfuls of lilac and jasmine as we walk through the garden after dinner.

And the wild roses bloom in the yard, and the calla lilies pop up along the highway, and you can drive to the beach and get lost in the sun and the fog and the wind.

And it's all, always, everywhere, all good.

In which she writes from her kitchen counter. On Buddha. And blonde wigs.

Good morning.

For the last 9 months or so, Monday mornings have meant hustling out the door at the crack of dawn, packing a bag for the day with a couple of apples, a change of clothes, and my laptop, joining the rest of the North Bay morning rush hour traffic to cross the Golden Gate Bridge on Southbound 101, and spending the day bookended between teaching a 9am class in the City and a 7:45pm class in Oakland, with an opportunity for some sweat and some silence in between.

But my schedule has shifted a bit of late, which means this Monday morning in May finds me contentedly ensconced in my home office (read: perched on a barstool at my blue tile countertop with a wood fire raging to my right, a bouquet of sweet peas at 12 o'clock, and an empty coffee cup at left).

Ahhh, santosha.

Cannot complain.

For years, really, before I started teaching, Mondays were always my day off, and I secretly adored the fact that the rest of the world was dragging off to work, heads heavy, while I got to savor a quiet morning in my pajamas curled up with the Sunday paper and a bottomless cup of coffee. Now that life has come full circle and I'm settling back into that mellow-Monday rhythm, it feels pretty damn good.

Sixteen things I'd like to write about this morning, but the fire's flaring and I'm ready to launch into the Primary Series in a few, so I'll be brief.

(Speaking of, this is great. And true. Read it.)

We enjoyed a much-appreciated chill weekend for the first time in awhile; lots of sunshine, stillness, reading, and good friends. A few of whom are pictured above right, with our man Buddha himself. (This is the only photo in which I am not inadvertently grabbing Buddha's breasts.) Had the pleasure of celebrating our good friend Chris's 60th on Saturday evening (whilst wearing blonde Britney Spears wigs, another story completely), which meant a jaunt to Petaluma that reminded me how much incredible scenery is at my feet, right here in Northern California. Really hard to imagine living anywhere else — well, that is, except in those moments when we number-crunch the possibility of buying a house and I realize that Wyoming is really the place to be if you wanna be doing any buying.

The roses are busting out in the side yard. As of this morning, we've got brilliant red, soft yellow, a peachy-pink, and a yellow-pink-hybrid. Plus irises. Plus something else that I don't yet recognize.

Waking to crickets and stillness and an odd horse-whinny and the low buzz of oncoming summer lends a certain ease to the day. I find myself thinking often of Annie Dillard (Live like the weasels, Rach!) and Willa Cather, and feeling in their writing the deep knowingness that is understanding the ways in which our natural topography, the land, the life that thrums around us, can change our days.

We are thinking about buying a greenhouse.

(“People need to realize how powerful the transformation of soil can be,” he said, with a hint of evangelism. “We’ve gotten so far away from our food source. It’s been hijacked from us. But if you get soil, plant something in it and water it, you can feed yourself. It’s that simple.”)

My neighbor Peggy and her husband Jim (both amazingly inspiring teachers, yogis, and people) grow nearly all their own food, make their own honey, and are generally just rock-your-world quietly-incredible folks. I admire them so much. I aspire to their blend of authenticity and travel and wisdom and sauciness and warmth.

(“People in my neighborhood are so disconnected from the fresh food supply that kids don’t know an eggplant from a sweet potato,” Mr. Finley said. “We have to show them how to get grounded in the truest sense of the word.”)

Yes.

Get grounded.

I'm drinking homemade almond milk in my coffee this morning. (Thanks to the Mister.)

I'm not driving anywhere.

I'm listening, a lot.

It's nice.

You should look into the podcasts from Against The Stream. You maybe already know their meditation work as a subsidiary of Noah Levine's book, Dharma Punx. Both worth your time.

There is so much to learn.

And the more I know, the more I realize how little I know.

Clichéd, but true.

And you should hope that any and every teacher who purports to share "yoga" should feel the same way.  200 hours is just a toe in the water, my friends.

We've been reading Hafiz every day. This book, the one I recommended a few months ago. It's so great. Silly, light, wise, deep, sorrowful, endlessly joyful. Carefree, in the sense that it acknowledges the base of all that is sacred, the divinity and the ease that transcends, that undergirds, everything seemingly small or large in our lives.

Perspective.

It felt so good to celebrate Chris the other night. As a blonde, in a maxi-dress, with toy musical instruments all around. (Part-ayyyy!) He has done a great deal for so many; really is the heartbeat of this small community, and the love with which he was toasted was a direct result of the endless offerings he presents (oh-so-humbly) on a daily basis with no expectation of return. Ishvara pranidhana, my friends. Doing it all for the joy of doing, finding the perfection in the process.

(There's a new production based on The Gospel of Mary Magdalene this summer at the SF Opera. So excited. AND, it features Nathan Gunn, baritone-dreamboat extraordinaire. Do not miss.)

Yesterday after class a student came up to me and thanked me in particular for the short meditation we had done together at the end of class, before savasana. He said he'd had a meditation practice for 40 years and it meant a lot to him. I was struck by his gratitude and so happy to know he liked it. Because that brief meditation — a couple of silent breaths, in which we hold the stillness together in that refuge, that sanctuary of the breath — is one of my favorite parts of class, too.

If not the favorite.

Slipping together into that sweaty hushed silence, holding the stillness together, hearing the sirens blow by outside, listening to the sound of one another breathing, feeling the wet heaviness of the air, smiling tenderly when the inevitable errant cell phone rings. It's sacred. It's dear. It's a blip of stillness of our own creation in the midst of otherwise harried days. And I would not trade those few shared breaths for anything.

Start where you are.

Your life is the path.

Susan Piver writes in this morning's meditation practice:

In meditation, it is not helpful to be mad at yourself for the inability to be peaceful. Start where you are. Start with sorrow. Start with rage. Start with boredom/anxiety. Start with high hopes. Start with disappointment. Start with your very own body, breath, and mind. Your experience IS the practice. There is nowhere else to go. Within your own experience, the entire path can be found. Please give it a try anyway and see for yourself. I will try too. 

I fucking love that.

Yes, yes, yes. Start where you are. Atha yoga anusasanum. Assuming that you have everything you need, here, now, enough.

I don't really think of myself as a yoga teacher anymore. Lately, if anything, I think of myself as a meditation teacher. A moving meditation teacher. I don't give a shit if you can put your foot behind your head. That open hip, that stretchy hamstring won't necessarily lend you mental peace. I do care if you can follow the breath, if you can watch it rise, watch it fall, if you can witness your thoughts and know they are not you.

That's all. The body will come and go. The body is an illusion. The body that you know now as yours is nothing like what you were born into (soft and malleable and oh-so-hydrated), and is very little like what it might someday be (bald and wrinkly and arthritic and hunched over).

I have been aware of this lately, this sense of the body as illusory, as merely a fluid, ephemeral veil. Several of my friends are getting married around the same time I am, and they're in full-on diet/work-out/body sculpt mode, like, actively shaping a new outward shell. And I sit back and watch what they're doing, and admire their mindfulness and their deliberacy, and how sweetly excited they are about feeling optimally fit and healthy for their weddings, and a little part of me wishes I cared, but another bigger part doesn't, and I don't even wanna get on the same boat, because the body's an illusion, yo, and life is so short and precious and unknowable, so I put some water on to boil for pasta and open up the Mt Tam and pour another cocktail. The wedding's a few months away, sure, and if my belly hangs out a little or my arms are jiggly, sweet, dude. My dress is stretchy and beautiful and comfortable like a pair of velour sweats. And today, I want to have a gin fizz and eat cheese with my baby and enjoy this moment, this life, this day. Maybe because I know that the body I bring to a wedding day is just an illusion, just like the body we bring to any other day of our lives.

You are not this body. You are not your hair color. You are not your BMI. Or your BMW.

(Smiling at my own cleverness. That's a sharp one, Rach.  Good job.)

Ease. Go for ease. Go for comfort in your skin. Knowing full well that you are not even your skin. It will change, too. Someday, if you're lucky, you'll have liver spots.

Good job, you.

Good job being alive in this life that is all tired Mondays and sweet Saturday evening birthday potlucks and sunny morning visits from beloved friends who don't like to hike.

It's amazing to me how much easier life gets when you can live in a spirit that is unattached. Unattached to whether you buy a home or not. Unattached to what number is on the scale. Unattached to whether your job shifts or not. Unattached to what the next day brings, never naming it as "good" or "bad," just letting it be as it is, rooted in a spirit of non-reactive equanimity.

Just like that wise farmer, whose story I think of every time something goes "wrong."

("The yogi accepts a pleasant turn of events with equanimity, knowing that pleasure and pain never last forever....It is wise to give thanks for everything that happens, knowing that the present situation can change in an instant.)

Meeting every moment with what it has to offer, and seeing the God within.

Because it's all God.  Duh.

Sound said to me, "I want to be holy." And I replied, "Dear, what is the problem? You already are." 

Then sound quipped back, "What do you mean?" 

"Well, the wind speaks, does it not? And what about the refrain of geese? And what of the moo and the baa and the rooster at dawn, 

and the chorus from the sea and the rain, and the thunder? Is not all a part of God, thus sacred? 

I think God has surrounded us; we better give up, or God might bring out the heavy 

artillery . . . like just outright lifting His skirt everywhere. Think of all the sweet madness that would cause." 

— Hafiz

Raw, adjective: 10. not diluted, as alcoholic spirits: raw whiskey

Just ordered Lodro Rinzler's new book, The Buddha Walks Into A Bar: A Guide To Life For A New Generation, and cannot WAIT to read it.

Check it out:

"This isn’t your grandmother’s book on meditation. It’s about integrating that 'spiritual practice' thing into a life that includes beer, sex, and a boss who doesn’t understand you. It’s about making a difference in yourself and making a difference in your world—whether you’ve got everything figured out yet or not. Lodro Rinzler is a bright and funny young teacher with a knack for showing how the Buddhist teachings can have a positive impact on every little nook and cranny of your life—whether you’re interested in being a Buddhist or not."

Yes, please.

Pony Express, get that book to my doorstep pronto.

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data

Things You Should Be Reading:

This terrific new interview with Benjamin Lorr, author of the Bikram memoir Hell-Bent, over at RecoveringYogi. Joslyn asks such good questions.

Jason Collins' graceful coming-out essay in Sports Illustrated. So well-done.

Michael Pollan on his new book, Cooked.

This NYT review of Stefanie Syman's book on the history of yoga in America, The Subtle Body. Our May book club meeting is coming up soon, and we'll be discussing this book. I love me some nerdy Transcendentalist history. Emerson and Thoreau give me goosebumps. Always have, always will.

40 Inspiring Workplaces of the Famously Creative. 'Nuff said.

That's a start. Sunny-day love to you. Get outside already. And take yer book, too.

Raw, adjective: 8. brutally harsh or unfair: a raw deal

Today is the 8th anniversary of my dad's passing.

April 29th. Just another day. Just another Monday in spring.

But ever an auspicious day in the Meyer family. Bittersweet. Always a tug on the heartstrings, no matter how many years go by.

Remember that day? 

Remember how you were at The Grove with Sarah and your phone rang and you knew deep in your gut without even answering it?

And the house was full of flowers and the fridge stocked with fancy cheese for the cocktail party that was to be and then wasn't, and the flowers rotted, and the cheese went uneaten?

He was too young.  He won't be at my wedding.  He'll never meet his grandchildren. 

What would he be planting in the garden right about now?

Those are the kind of shitty things you think about on the 8th anniversary of your father's death.

Even when everything else is all roses, seriously, and the sun is perfectly vibrant and the air is clear and it is goddamned fucking spring.

Hell yeah. Bring on the freshness. Let it mingle with the ashes.

* * *

Gonna slink into Grace Cathedral for a few moments of stillness. That feels most appropriate. That, and well, maybe a cheap beer on the porch whilst wearing cutoffs. In honor, you know.

Last night we celebrated the life of our dear friend Greg. It was a perfectly Aloha-style celebration, an anti-funeral up on the top level at Waterbar, complete with ubiquitous Hawaiian shirts and gratuitous toasts and stellar views from right under the twinkly Bay Bridge. The weather even behaved on behalf of the party — no fog in sight. All in all a memorable evening, made achingly less so by the fact that Greg could not be there in body.

You could say I "officiated" the memorial. It was a new turn on the Rev. Rach "marrying people" gig, and I'll admit it left me anxious as hell. Got in the car yesterday morning to drive to teach in Oakland and had an unnameable knot in my belly. The pressure to sum up someone's life in a few brief words completely trumps the pressure of marrying a happy couple under a gazebo.

So I plugged in my iPod and dialed up the podcasts and figured Ram Dass would be a safe bet for some impending-eulogy inspiration. The first one listed was called "Swimming With Dolphins" and while it ostensibly talked about Ram Dass's experience noticing the deep consciousness of dolphins and their ability to understand human thoughts sans speech, naturally it ended up being quite a bit about death.

Naturally.

Ram Dass is exactly the guy you wanna be turning to when you're due to eulogize your old drinking buddy later that day.

And sure enough: my boy Ram came through.

He described Death as something so completely safe, so absolutely comfortable, so utterly spacious and expansive and vast, that the experience is like taking off a pair of too-tight shoes.

The Mister and me, not in yoga clothes, at the memorial last night

I thought of that feeling — one all of us know at some point or another, no doubt — and exhaled. Ahhhh. Indeed. Like taking off a pair of too-tight shoes. Slipping into ease, relaxation, fullness, unbounded.

I thought of Greg, happily shoeless, surfing the endless seas.

And I thought of my dad's passing, which we'd be noting again today. And how grief changes over time. How now it's less piercing and more dull, the awareness that no, he will not be there to officiate my own wedding; the jealousy in witnessing college friends whose children actually know their grandparents; the bittersweetness of stepping into his shoes as Rev. Rach last night and doing something of which he would have been quite proud.

I took off my shoes and exhaled.

And felt vast, and spacious, and just fine.

* * *

A lot of yoga teachers and yoga publications don't really talk about death. Which kind of blows my mind, given that we play dead at the end of every. single. class.

Nope. Pastels all around. Happy shiny people. Nothing dirty or messy or complicated. Nothing awkward, nothing sweaty, nothing gritty or sorrowful or dark or shadowy or any of that. Nosirree. Just perky and pretty and calm and well-coiffed. Everything RAINBOWS ALL THE TIME.

And, ok. I see where they're trying to go. I get it. Though I might contend with their methodology.

(SCREAMING RAINBOWS are not real.)

What I'm saying, I guess, is: yeah, I talk about death. And yeah, I'm gonna continue to talk about death.

Not because I'm some morbid death-fancying freak. But because death is as real and as sacred and as holy as life. Because suffering and sorrow are the necessary counterparts to ease and joy. And because I'm willing to bet that for most of us some kind of suffering brought us to yoga in the first place, whether it was pain in your knees or an ache in your heart.

Michael Stone makes that point well. And he also shamelessly, quietly, matter-of-factly comes out of the closet as someone who was once deeply, achingly, hopelessly depressed. I'm so inspired by his fearless authenticity. He talks about this dark period of his life with a certain kindness, almost a fondness, such that you really see the ways in which his struggle led him exactly to where he is now: serving, loving, teaching, quietly, patiently, presently.

And I feel grateful that a teacher like Michael is willing to speak and be real about the breadth and depth of human emotions that come with being in a body.

May we live like the lotus, at home in the muddy water. — Buddha

I think that as yoga teachers we owe it to students to be authentic. To be human. To encourage an atmosphere that lends to ease, fullness, and honesty. To say, "Yeah, I've felt that muck, that grief, and here's how to use the practice, these tools, to be ok, to hold that place of equanimity, to stay in your center." To teach students that they can trust everything they feel, that every sensation — whether it is pretty or not, socially-sanctioned or not — is a potential teacher, a beloved friend, a nudge, a guide. That every feeling is hallowed. And every thought is potentially holy.

So I will talk about death. I will talk about sorrow. I will keep that motherfucker on my left shoulder. I will talk about those moments of your life when you think to yourself, "Fuck, I give up. I can't take this. It hurts. The ache is unbearable, the task at hand intolerable, the confusion or the chaos or the uncertainty just too much to even name." Because we all have those. We do. Whether you want to slap a smiling Yoga Journal face on it or not.

Yoga is about learning how to stay. Learning how to sit. Learning how to be with everything that unfolds, watching it arise, change, and fade away. Staying with it, resisting the urge to numb it, using the breath, watching the newborn inhales rise and the dying exhales fall.

The world in a microcosm.

Ram Dass talks about how when you have Death sitting on your left shoulder, you're so much more present in your life, so much more aware of the little graces, the wind in your hair, the sun on your face. And you're better able to let the irrelevant nagging shit go.

Learning to drop the small stuff.
And then learning that it's all small stuff.

So we carry Death on our shoulders, knowing that one day the person missing from the party will be us, and we let it inform our being, our moving, our loving. And that sweet and willing proximity to Death allows us to dive more deeply into that which really matters, that which really lights our lives, and to softly, easily let go of the petty, the angry, the small.

Be in your life. Stand there under the twinkling Bay Bridge with your love on your arm and notice the sky, notice the sailboats below, notice the evening breeze on your neck, guzzle another glass of secret-stash winning Chardonnay, eat another plate of fries, and know you are love.

We practice Death on the mat every day. Savasana, corpse pose, that perfectly-structured opportunity to let go of our heavy shit and start anew. Keep practicing it. Don't be afraid of it. It's a gift, an opportunity.

Sometimes I look at my friends who've never borne a fundamental loss and I worry for their sake. That when the day comes the shock will be so much to bear. And I feel grateful to have learned early on what it is like to mourn, to be ok.

Gurus, all. I will never take an April 29th for granted. It reminds me of the preciousness of this life. It reminds me that each day is a boon.

Happiness is fairly easy to achieve. Buy an ice cream, sit in the sun, eat some good pizza, get the job or the car or the date you were wanting. Joy, though; joy takes more. Joy takes depth. Joy takes knowing the ache of sorrow, knowing the shadow side of life, the kind of deep knowing that makes joy so much more many-layered, more quietly regal, more gracefully true.

I'll take joy.

I'll take the ice cream, too, oh yes.

But gimme joy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Love to you, Pops. Love to you, Greg. Thank you for sharing your being.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Our retreat last weekend was held at a clothing-optional hot springs, and I tell you what: it made me appreciate the diverse beauty of bodies in a whole new way. Every body.

On that note, check out this brill article:

The Whole Concept Of The Beach Body Is Ridiculous And This Is Why

What if all you need to get a beach body is to GO TO THE BEACH?

*

(And the fab photo credit goes to Lori. This one's a keeper!)

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article on the social psychology of voice. Is your voice more Marge Simpson, Marilyn Monroe, or Justin Bieber — and how, in turn, does that influence how the world perceives you? More importantly, can you control it?

I have always been so intrigued by the nature of our voices. Are they destined from birth, are they products of our upbringing, are they total social constructions — who's to say? All I know for sure is, a voice has the power to unleash all kinds of judgments on the part of the listener: good versus bad, smart versus ditzy, powerful versus weak. No small potatoes, baby.

Read the piece and be sure to check out the fab graphic included, too.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Begin, stay, dissolve.

Today I'm wrapping new-baby gifts, buying a wedding dress, and writing a memorial eulogy.

Birth, middle-age, and death.

Gurus Brahma, Vishnu, & Devo Maheshwara, all in the same breath, this sacred cycle of life, whilst sitting on my sofa in sweatpants on an ostensibly mundane Wednesday in spring. 

YES.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Hi lovelies.

I promised you a few tunes and a quote or two from Bhakti In Bloom. You can find all of that below. Enjoy.

Be ground. 

Be crumbled, so wildflowers come up where you are. 

You've been stony for too many years. 

Try something different. Surrender.

Rumi

Friday evening's playlist: Earth

(You can find the Hafiz poem that I read during savasana here.)

Saturday morning's playlist: Fire

 

 The wound is the place where the light enters you. 

Rumi

There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Saturday afternoon's playlist: Water

 All things arise, suffer change, and fade away. This is their nature. 

When you know this, you become still. It is easy.

The Ashtavakra Gita

 May we live like the lotus, at home in the muddy water.

Buddha

Sunday morning's playlist: Air/Ether 

I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through.

Listen to this music. 

Hafiz

Raw, adjective: 2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture: raw cotton.

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”

― Alan Watts 

Peel the potatoes, baby! 

Whether you're a dishwasher 

or a designer, your work is sacred.

Raw, idiom: 14a. in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

Namastizzle.

Just back from the Sierras. Oh-so-happy, a little bit sunburned, and a whole lot full-hearted.

More pics and whatnot to come soon, but for now: this.

Love to all of yous. Feeling so blessed to get to do what I do with people like you.

Thank you.

Raw, idiom: 14a. in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

Bound for the Sierras.

Bags loaded down with bongos and bathing suits and only and ever the most comfortable, lived-in, unpretentious sweats.

Holler out for weekend escapes.

You may get a pic or two if I can manage to drag myself out of the sun.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Brings Life To A Field

Hafiz

It is not possible to complete yourself without sorrow.

Sorrow is a vital ingredient that shapes the heart and enriches it.

So endure sadness the best you can when its season comes.

That rain that can fall from your eye brings life to a field,

And on other days when you laugh, a sun takes birth in a sky you will someday know.

See how all the elements are inside of you.

See how your soul is a sire of light.

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

This is not politically correct.

But am I the only person who wasn't moved to tears on viewing that viral Dove beauty ad that's making its way around the interwebs right now?

Because every third person has FB'd or Tweeted or emailed it. And I gotta say: it just made me impatient.

Impatient that we live in a world where self-confidence is so rare.

Impatient that some of the most beautiful people in my life shared it, which meant they, too, related to feeling "less than," and that's fucked up.

Impatient that so very, very many folks waste so much energy worrying about whether or not they are "beautiful" when that life force could be spent in so many other incredibly life-giving ways.

Impatient because the more time we spend thinking about our appearances means the less time we're doing something meaningful or rich.

Impatient because who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks!!

It has to start right there with you.

* * *

"We would not concentrate so much today on looks/beauty, pay so much, die so much, seeing our 'beauty power' coming and going, never owned, never ours, if our look, our sense of self were owned.... 

The sadness on the streets speaks of how much we miss the look of people who looked at peace with themselves, meaning that we could relax with them and not try so hard, there being no competition."

— Nancy Friday,  The Power Of Beauty

* * *

I must've been about 21, a college kid in Delaware and just barely of legal drinking age, when a good friend of mine said, in that best of no-bullshit confident-brash-young-man ways:

Dude. Rach. Just be confident already.

And it was like: Duh! Of course. It's that easy. Just be fucking confident. Stop thinking so much and just be it, dammit.

[Once again that monkey mind steps in and fucks everything up. Thinking, thinking, always thinking. Chattering, analyzing, comparing. Chalk it up to just one more reason to meditate.]

And that was that.

So today, honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed and, well, stunned that I feel so irritated by the whole Dove video. I mean, it's so well-intentioned, right, and it carries a gorgeous sentiment with such a powerful, potentially liberating message: Know your own beauty. See it. Speak it. Own it, and certainly don't apologize for it.

So why does it annoy me so much?

* * *

When I was, yep, still 21ish, I had a strange curiosity for any and all theories about beauty. I wanted to know the aesthetics of beauty, the philosophies behind it, its history, what it had to do with religion, its relationship to power, the socially constructed nature of it all. I wanted to know what it really meant to be beautiful, what the implications were in the world, and who even decided what was beautiful and not.

So I studied it. Intensively.

I finished dual degrees in Sociology and Women's Studies. Read everything by Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem and Naomi Klein and Katha Pollitt and all of those other Second Wave feminists who ranted about the messed-up patriarchal roots of the Beauty Myth. I stopped wearing make-up and covered my mirrors with paper bags and handwritten radical lady quotes and felt generally like an EMPOWERED WOMYN!! I was gonna opt-out of that whole stereotypical feminine "must be beautiful" expectation and just be a walking brain instead.

Power to the plain ones! Janet Reno, patron saint!

And then, in the midst of a research grant the summer of 2000, I stumbled upon Nancy Friday's book on The Power Of Beauty (now published under the title Our Looks, Our Lives: Sex, Beauty, Power, and The Need To Be Seen.). Friday wrote as a self-proclaimed "ugly duckling" who'd grown into a great beauty. She preached about the power of sex and beauty and confidence and owning one's own Gaze. And it shifted things profoundly, that book. Talk about the power of one person's words. Friday turned my world upside down.

I stopped fearing that being attractive meant being perceived as intellectually illegitimate. I learned to recognize my own beauty. I stopped apologizing for being female and smart and attractive — qualities I'd long considered mutually exclusive. Friday's brash, bold, sexy writing changed the way I walked down the street. It opened my eyes to seeing, and to really appreciating, the criminally-unspoken spectre of male beauty, and gave me the words to articulate and celebrate it. My own paperback copy, hopelessly written in, circled, and highlighted, included a quote, one I scribbled down in that loopy college girl cursive, and one that I remember still: "Some of the most beautiful people in my life have no idea how beautiful they are."

How tragic, I thought.

I remember so clearly reading that and pausing, thinking of all the really stunningly vibrant and vital folks in my life who I knew very well struggled with even seeing themselves, let alone speaking their own beauty. And that realization pissed me off, and fired me up, and tangled my insides with deep compassion.

And I vowed, at that moment, after an (all-too-common) adolescence in which I, like every other teenage girl, fought desperately to become as small and quiet and stupid and tiny-voiced and feminine as possible (a culturally ubiquitous experience that Friday names as that "same turbulent, vacillating, and desperate cry for recognition: How do you see me so that I may see myself?"), to never again waste time worrying about whether I was pretty or not.

Because, fuck that.

I'd be my own and trust it and that would be that. Kali-Durga style. Fierce, wild, unbuffered.

And that commitment changed my life. It really did.

It taught me to drop the sweet-nice-white-girl-preacher's-daughter-from-Nebraska masks. It taught me to be real, unapologetically authentic, angry, true. It changed my friendships; I started spending most of my time with the confident, laughing, at-ease-in-their-skins, strong young men of my college community. It changed the way I wrote. It changed the way I traveled. It changed the way I interacted with male theater directors 20 years my senior. It changed the way I spent my evenings, and my mornings, and my noons. It changed the way I loved.

It changed everything.

* * *

"The truth is, the world is starved for people who are at ease in their skins.... 

Beauty has become what our lives are about, not the clothes and the seasonal fashions, but the rage, grief, a terrible sense of isolation that we get when we don't get back any good feeling from the money and time we invest in appearance. Appearance is everything, appearance is empty. 

People are Empty Packages, hollow souls desperate for expensive clothes, labels, jewelry, or fancy cars that draw attention." 

— Nancy Friday

* * *

So today when I see women who are yet 30, 40, 50, and onward, and are still so unable to see their own beauty — the kind of grounded, glimmering women captured in the Dove video — it generally makes me impatiently, impertinently, batshit crazy.

The insecurity, that is. The self-scrutiny. The self-imposed critical gaze.

I wanna grab onto their shoulders and shake them and say: Get over it already. Chuck the fear. You're so beautiful. You are a unique expression of the divine. You are luminous, glowing life force. So stop worrying about it and just get on with your life, ok?

Fuck constructs. Fuck "beauty." It isn't even a real thing. Everything we think of as "beautiful" now wasn't always. It's just a product of the times. Of the culture. Of the capitalism. Of the era. Skinny adolescent-boy-looking women. Collarbones jutting. Big eyes, big boobs, no boobs, curves, no curves, straight hair, kinky hair, all of it in perpetual constructed motion. None of it permanent. All of it societally and historically contingent. All of it an illusion.

So what a shame that that illusion should run roughshod over so many contemporary female psyches.

Be your own beautiful. Own your nose, your shoulders, your butt. Fucking OWN THEM. Stop wasting any more energy on worrying about how you look when you could be out there planting gardens and fixing cars and climbing mountains and playing an instrument and generally being a badass.

I have known very ostensibly "beautiful" people whom upon first meeting I initially thought exceedingly, breath-takingly lovely and who then within even a few quick hours or days, I kind of stopped seeing altogether. And certainly never again really thought of as beautiful. Not by any fault of their own. Even though they had the requisite big eyes or chiseled chin or sloped nose or high cheekbones or what-have-you. They were dry or barren-spirited or dead-eyed or boring or fearful or, gulp, insecure, so much so that none of that raw beauty showed through.

And I have known people whose bone structure or bodies approximated nothing even close to standardized homogeneous contemporary beauty ideals. And yet they were embodied and confident and fearless and vibrant and unashamed of taking up space. And goddamn, were they gorgeous!!

Beautiful. Alive. Vital. Their own.

SO please forgive my impatience, but seriously, ladies (and gents), enough already. Get rid of the fear, the shame, the self-criticism, and breathe good hearty wild life into your body. It's beautiful. It's a particular manifestation of the divine, goddammit. Trust that. Move and live and breathe ease into that knowing.

You're gonna be fine. You don't need a forensic artist to tell you that.

Raw, idiom: 14a. in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

"And now the old story has begun to write itself over there," said Carl softly. "Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

— Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

Raw, adjective: 8. brutally harsh or unfair: a raw deal

Heartbreaking news coming out of 

Boston this afternoon.

I turn to this.

*

"Because at one point or another we have all suffered, we know what it's like to be in pain, to feel empty, lost, confused, broken, fearful. And that knowing, that empathy, becomes the ground of our own compassion. When we're able to recall that heavy empty dark shadowy feeling within our own bodies, hearts, minds, we're better able to reach out to those around us whose own darknesses might feel too great to bear."

Raw, idiom: 14a. in the natural, uncultivated, or unrefined state: nature in the raw.

Holy amazing forecast for our Bhakti In Bloom retreat this coming weekend at Sierra Hot Springs.

We have a spot or two open if you want to jump in at the last-minute.

Just give us a shout.

Raw, adjective: 11. unprocessed or unevaluated: raw data.

Our May book club selection will be Stefanie Syman's The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga In America. We'll be meeting on Monday, May 13th at 7pm.

So flippin' excited to read this book.

Hit it!

Raw, adjective: 7. brutally or grossly frank: a raw portrayal of human passions.

Promised myself I'd blog for just a minute, as I'm trying to finish up our April selection for tomorrow night's book club meeting.

But I wanted to at least say hey, what's up, how y'all doing?

Sweet simple Monday here. Doing some work in a Nob Hill cafe between classes. Sun setting. Trying to ignore the fact that I can smell my own bare feet as I sit here in Lotus. Probably not appropriate for a cafe and the peeps around me. Oh well. What can you do.

In all seriousness — you should read The Science of Yoga. I'm devouring it. A must-read for any yoga teacher or student. I am so struck by the ways it's in fact much more about sociology than science; the social construction of reality, the ways we think about yoga, the "truths" we take for granted that are rather in fact utter mythologies. Intriguing stuff.

On another note, my good friend Heidi over at The Rustic Modernist wrote a really powerful blog today about infertility. Raw, brave, achingly honest. Read it.

(Excuse me while I peek down the street to make sure my car hasn't gotten a parking ticket yet.)

Also: please read this article from the NYT the other day. Really, take the time. "Diagnosis: Human" speaks to a number of truths that transcend yoga, meditation, Buddhism, suffering, and psychology.

Here's a blurb:

Ours is an age in which the airwaves and media are one large drug emporium that claims to fix everything from sleep to sex. I fear that being human is itself fast becoming a condition. It’s as if we are trying to contain grief, and the absolute pain of a loss like mine. We have become increasingly disassociated and estranged from the patterns of life and death, uncomfortable with the messiness of our own humanity, aging and, ultimately, mortality. 

Challenge and hardship have become pathologized and monetized. Instead of enhancing our coping skills, we undermine them and seek shortcuts where there are none, eroding the resilience upon which each of us, at some point in our lives, must rely.  

Diagnosing grief as a part of depression runs the very real risk of delegitimizing that which is most human — the bonds of our love and attachment to one another. The new entry in the D.S.M. cannot tame grief by giving it a name or a subsection, nor render it less frightening or more manageable.  

The D.S.M. would do well to recognize that a broken heart is not a medical condition, and that medication is ill-suited to repair some tears. Time does not heal all wounds, closure is a fiction, and so too is the notion that God never asks of us more than we can bear. Enduring the unbearable is sometimes exactly what life asks of us.

In other, less-depressing news, I've been on the wedding dress hunt.

Which is at once hilarious and trippy and fluffy and awkward and surreal and admittedly really fucking fun. The girls rolled up last Thursday with a bottle of pink bubbly and I tried on about 12 different concoctions. Found 4 that I really quite dug. One of which was boho beady blousy, another of which was pouffy and called "Consuela," another of which was boob-a-licious in a blindingly scintillating kind of way, and another of which just might walk me down the aisle.

We'll see.

Commentary from the Mister as we checked out online contenders last night was a particular joy. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. A few choice bits:

"Too nipply."

"The Martians have landed."

"That's what you wear to the Emmys."

"Hello, Charlie's Angels."

"Looks like a big doily."

Seriously, if you need a bridal consultant, this guy's it. Better fashion sense than I have.

My friend Frank sent this sweet piece along today. Not only does it ache with a poignant echo of Roger Ebert, but it reminds me of a useful guideline when in [fashion] doubt. Ask oneself: What would Audrey Hepburn do?

I dig the article's more dude-friendly suggestion featuring Fred Astaire. Rita Moreno's filled that slot for me from time to time in the past, along with Louise Brooks and Annie Dillard and Isadora Duncan. Badasses, all. Worth echoing.

(I dunno about you, but I make an effort to eat all morning pastries whilst wearing elbow-length gloves and a blingin' choker.)

While we're on the bridal fashion note: there's a lot of ugly shit out there. Whew mama. Who made the rule that every contemporary wedding dress has to be a strapless tulle-bomb? My eyes hurt from all the fake boobs and the dead-eyed corsetted-up fashion models.

Three cheers for originality. Though I will admit I am struggling to find such a thing. (What I would give to find a nice vintage-y piece with an Audrey-esque off-the-shoulder boat neck.) Again with the strapless ubiquity. Leaning more and more toward quiet, simple, elegant.

Are you a theater nerd? Head downtown tomorrow morning to catch a few of these beautiful remaining [FREE] 1925 theater seats. If we had the room, I'd love to lodge a few of these in our living room next to the woodstove.

Speaking of: we woke up powerless this morning. As in, zero power.

We heard it go out last night with a click; the windstorm raging outside took down a number of trees and left the car covered in gunk. 6am wake-up call meant cold leftover coffee, a few twinkling candles, and the romantic ambience of iPhone flashlights whilst showering. Haven't been back home yet today to find out if we're power-full yet or not, but I guess we'll find out later tonight when we may or may not have to hastily consume everything perishable in the fridge.

I listened to a fantastic interview with Noah Levine this morning on my drive in. You know Levine as the creator of Dharma Punx and a generally cool dude (with some very influential Buddhist teachers as parents) who ran a rough road for awhile before finally settling into a meditation practice while in prison. In the interview, he speaks so much authentic truth. Again, if I may: some raw and real schtuff. A fave: "Renunciation is a radical, rebellious, and revolutionary act."

Preach, brother. Preach.

That's the update from here. Spring's around the corner, if not here smack in front of my face. I feel it. I love it. And book club's tomorrow night. Roll up early for class at 5:15 to avoid the Giants game traffic. And feel free to come even if you've not yet cracked the book open.

Keep practicing being awake.