I Have To Admit It's Getting Better

Very inspired and feeling loved. By none other than my OWN fuckin' self. Huh!

Getting ready to head out to meet up with my creative muse and dear friend, T. Lorae.

It's been a wild couple of weeks.

The screenplay competition deadlines are coming, May 1st being the first big one. June 1st being the next big one.  I'm 2/3 of the way through my third script, but I don't love it. At this point I'm just hanging in there to finish it. I write a scene or two every day, and I'm into the fifth sequence. So I'm gonna switch gears, put it aside, and rewrite my first script for the May deadline and then add my second script for the June.

Ya got that?

I am really looking forward to this:

http://homepractice.tumblr.com/events

WHAT:

“Everyday Yoga: Extraordinary Tools for Ordinary Life,” an all-day retreat 

WHO: 

RYTs  Liz Belile, Dr. Ellen Stansell, and Jenn Wooten

WHERE:

Casa de Luz,1701 Toomey Road, ATX 78704

WHEN:

Saturday, May 18, from 9 am to 6 pm.

HOW MUCH:

$99.00 (fully refundable until two weeks prior to the retreat) 

The Retreat is currently SOLD OUT. 

WHY:

As perfectly human yogis, teachers, creative types, and mothers of young children with busy schedules, we wanted to offer the kind of yoga workshop that WE wanted to see: a day of retreat for ordinary folk like ourselves. A retreat that affords time and space to not only to practice and commune, but to share process and explore yoga and community in a way that is rooted in the reality of our daily lives.

Utilizing our combined wisdom of yoga philosophy, experiential knowledge of the energy body, yoga therapy, writing and performance skills, musicianship, parenting wisdom and bodywork, we will be offering tools that make it easier to integrate yogic practices into every day.

Together, we’ve created a day of sharing, learning, practice and creative fun to inspire and reignite all our fires. You will leave well-resourced, with new ideas of how to celebrate being the yogi that you already are.

++++++++++

Let me explain a bit. We refer to this as "Everyday Yoga." We're not the first ones to use this phrase, I've found through the magic power of Google, and thank God for that. But for me it has a slightly different origin/meaning.

"Everyday Speech" is a phrase I heard while studying poetry. To wit: 

"Verse without formal meter or rhyme patterns. Free verse, instead, relies upon the natural rhythms of everyday speech. The American poet Walt Whitman was a pioneer of free verse (see Song of Myself). However, it was fellow Americans T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound who are generally regarded as the major instigators of free verse in English. Free verse is particularly associated with both the imagist and modernist movements. See also vers libre."

Uncle Walt is the direct forefather to Les Beats. As is T.S. and Ol' Ez. But mostly: W squared. 

Now, Allen Ginsberg mentioned it in the context of his buddy Kerouac's work, insofar as Kerouac modeled his writing on jazz, which modeled its rhythms on...you got it. Everyday speech. The inherent, informal, unglamorous glam of language we use to just effing TAWK. 

It all comes from a kind of deep listening, an honoring of the patterns of existence. The humdrum of daily life. Think of the repetitive riffs in jazz, in conversation, in a yoga practice. In a steady breath. In a forgotten breath. In the everyday patterns of LIVING. The routines. And think of the irregularity of everyday life, the informal up and down of an hour, or an exchange. The challenge in yoga and in life is to follow Ol' Ez's advice and "make it new." Life isn't inherently meaningful, they say; it is WE who give it meaning. 

The Buddha adored contemplating everyday existence and "ordinary mind."  As a somewhat depressive (still brilliant, though) mama who can barely scrape through an entire day sometimes I am deeply grateful and thrilled to have so many opportunities to experience and energize THE MUNDANE. 

Sweep the fucking temple steps. Chop the wood. Carry the water.  BE the practice. Stop chasing the elusive perfect parenting practice; IT DOESN'T EXIST. The elusive "better yourself!" yoga practice; IT'S A GAME NO ONE CAN WIN. It's like believing that there's an end goal to the journey, so by the time you get there you're been so focused on the WIN you didn't even know you were on a path. 

Don't you know poetry ain't just a bunch of pretty words in a book? It's in your phone calls to your sweetheart. To the bank. It's in what you say to your babies, your friends, your parents, the cashier at the gas station.  Yoga ain't just the super-pretzel pose demo'ed in front of 1,000 people. It ain't the years spent in the ashram, only to rejoin boring ol' everyday life and be a shithead to your fellow humans. It's the grace of you in the now. The kindness in your eyes. The thoughts you have. The words you use. It's how you are and who you are in everything you do. 

Now get to work. 

AND OH! 

PS! 

I am hosting my (fourth?) annual MOTHER'S DAY READING EXTRAVAGANZA at BOOKWOMAN again this year! With a bevy of really, really good writers and badass mothers. And musicians. Our  theme is "BEAT MOMS" or "MAD MOMS."  Should be funny, smart, ranty and cool.

On the "How" and "Presence"

Obviously my anti-depressant has knocked a hole in my writing mojo-worker. Oh well. I'd rather not be homicidally angry all the time than blogging and writing great novels and screenplays and magazine articles and poems anyway.

So where does the anger go? Well, April was "Anger Appreciation Month" so I reveled in it some, giving it space and letting it know I knew it was there and all. May was "Fear Appreciation Month," and that has been so exciting I guess I'll continue it into June. Giving Anger and Fear acknowledgment, putting those swelling emotions into words is, for me at least, a way to relieve them. 

I recently spent some time with two of my most influential yoga teachers, Mary Keator and George Purvis. Out of a couple of long conversations I got a couple bits o' wisdom to share with you:

1) When talking with George about the crazy "yoga scene" and the energy of students and in classrooms these days, he said something really quite profound: that people seem to come to class because they want to "do" yoga, not to learn "how" to do yoga. Yes! "Do" vs "How." Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just a very different vibe. There does seem to be a group fitness class mentality, which is cool, but the real work happens at home, in my opinion. In practice. There has undoubtedly been lots written about the distinctions between a) yoga CLASS and b) yoga WORKSHOPS and c) yoga INTENSIVES and d) yoga RETREATS and e) yoga HOME PRACTICE and f) yoga OFF THE MAT.  But I'll add my two cents, and take a look at it myself.

I remember when I was first learning to play guitar and bass, 24 years ago, my then-boyfriend was teaching me so I could play in his band. He taught me the difference between "rehearsal," which is what we did with the entire band, and "practice," which is what I did at home, on my own. (I made the mistake of saying we were going to "band practice.") And then of course, all of that was meant to serve the "performance."

So it is, I think, with home practice, classroom study, and _______. Group practice is another topic as well. I personally *want* and *need* my yoga teacher to single me out and give me adjustments and "corrections." To tell me to do more or less or whatever. In a big group class, like at my gym, the teacher never leaves the front of the room and therefore is never really observing and suggesting. Now don't get me wrong, I go through my phases where all I want is to hide out in the back and be anonymous so I can just get my sweat on, but that kind of class doesn't advance me in my understanding of yoga, necessarily.

Something I have realized lately is that I have a gift, as a teacher, of being able to SEE. I can truly see a tiny adjustment that needs to be made and I can work with that student quickly and effectively to change their pose, which then has the potential to change their life. I didn't realize that not all teachers can do this. I think it takes practice. I have always been keenly interested in John Friend's talk of "cultivating eagle vision," the practice of cultivating the ability to SEE both the big picture and the overall energy of a roomful of students and the details in the energy of the people as individuals right in front of you. Oh I love this. I recall a teacher training with Mary K, years ago, where we really focused on seeing the whole of a student, and sensitizing ourselves so we could pick up on old injuries, or the emotional state of the student. Now, it's a hard thing to do, because obviously the danger would be that we as teachers might project our shit onto our students. So it has to be practiced with great care and love, and not with a critical eye toward "correction" but more a loving eye, as John says, toward enhancing the shri or beauty that is already there.

Back to "doing" yoga in a class rather than "learning" yoga.

Yeah, I find that I want to impart teachings. And I want to learn how to do yoga. But sometimes I just want to exercise and show off.

Good to know.

On to Mary's wisdom.

2) As we were chatting with another old friend and longtime yoga practitioner, we were discussing George's comment, and how there was something troubling to all of us about the "yoga scene" and being part of a group that well, you just really don't feel all that much a part of. My friend's  comment was that she usually felt "invisible" in the group. So Mary asked her, "Is that okay with you, to feel invisible in a yoga class?" And her answer was, "Not really, but I just try to accept it." To which  Mary said, "Well, if it's not okay with you then you need to own that. Because yoga is not about being invisible. Yoga is PRESENCE." It's BEING HERE. NOW.

Doh!

So I've been contemplating that. The learning. The teaching. The imparting, the partaking. What it is to be SEEN. What it is to SEE. And the many ways in which we make others feel invisible, or stroke the egos of the more visible by putting them up in front of the others.

I got a funny look from a pretty young woman as I was sitting writing at the coffee shop tonight. It was kind of...sweet, I think. But I have been enjoying myself, knowing that when I was the pretty young woman glancing at the older woman in the coffee shop I felt sorry for her. Now I know, my day has come. And those pretty young things will all hopefully grow beautifully older, as I have, and their days are coming too.

Ah, wisdom.

There's more, like how I've been setting boundaries with my son. How I feel like I already have a teenager in the house, who says he's BORED. Says he doesn't want me, doesn't like me, doesn't need me. Hates his toys. Doesn't like his house. Wants to go home. Needs a new toy. And so on. I'm trying everything I know and feel, and still could not avoid a meltdown at the toy store tonight. But I was so hungry and needed to get home. And he was so eager for adventure, and wanted to stay stay stay and play with the smorgasbord of toys. So we couldn't compromise. And he cried, yelled out that I was hurting him, struck me repeatedly, sobbed his heart out and kicked at the doors as they closed behind us. So we sat on the ground in front of the store and talked about how I needed to go, how I had to cook dinner and eat, how he wasn't hungry, how he wasn't sleepy, how he really wanted to look at the dinosaurs, and so on and so forth.  I stayed calm and we talked, in the soaring Texas heat (101 tomorrow), on the hot sidewalk, in front of funky toy central, while his voice shook and his shoulders shook and I empathized and soothed and spoke honestly until finally we were able to get in the car, neither of us satisfied but resigned to the outcome.

My parenting guru says that this age is extra tricky. She says it's a good time to hire a sitter or have someone other than mom or dad come and take care of the basics, like bathing. Eating. Teethbrushing. Bedtime. Because these are the places where the battle lines get drawn, and where tired parents go crazy. I try to remember that whenever I'm getting bitten, when naked boy circles the room gleefully while I chase him down with a tiny pair of tightie whities, when he keens and clamps his jaws shut every time I get the toothbrush out.

I'm still worried about him. That he has such an intense need to know WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE. Always. Has to find ways to anchor or locate himself in space. His most heartbreaking complaint? "I'm LOST!"  And when he says it, he means it in the most profoundly poetic way. Like: "But if you don't sleep in the bed with me tonight I'll feel LOST." Or when he finally did give in and accept his fate at the toy store, he mournfully said, "I'm LOST." Oh it tugs at me!

But I'm hesitant to teach him all the specifics of how we mark time. I want him to experience the freedom of his childhood without the restrictions and regulations and false sense of linear reality that clocks and schedules and closing times, deadlines, and sunrises give us. At the same time, I want to show him the maps of the world, so he'll have a sense of where he is. Where he's going. A big picture for a small boy.

Okay, that's it for now.  I know, pictures must come soon.

On Vengeance and Action (as well as Inaction)

Well.

To say that I've slacked off on blogging is the understatement of the decade.

I feel somewhat reinvigorated to recommit to my blog, if for no other reason than to simply keep my arms and fingers moving in time with my brain. It's similar to yoga practice.

I just came across an awesome quote, via my mentor Susie Bright:

"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open."

— Muriel Rukeyser

 I feel like I no longer tell the truth about my life. And thus I have ceased to blog. The main reason I ever started to write and reveal myself in public like this -- or even long before this, before the public worldwide forum of the internet came into being -- was to stand up in front of a live audience and tell the truth. MY truth. I grew up in a family with a lot of secrets and lies. I know many of us do. I just felt determined not to have that in my own family, and in my own life.

But I also treasure this advice from Jack Kerouac, who said writers must keep "secret notebooks." I think what he means is that we need to be able to write with freedom from worry about what anyone else might think. He also said "Candor ends paranoia."

When I was a radicalized twenty-something and then somewhat less radical but still feisty thirty-something, I did not give a shit what anyone else thought of what I wrote and revealed about myself. I was determined to be as in-your-face with my words and my intensity as I possibly could. The thing is, I've never had to make anything up for my life story to be intense and meaningful to someone else who might happen to hear it.

So now I feel I can justify myself by saying, knowing,  that my words helped someone else.

Nowadays, it's not so much that what I have to say will harm anyone else, it's that it may harm me. It may alienate me from friends, from other mothers and yogis whose company I need and want. Truly. These days, I'm addicted to facebook and the false sense of connection as well as the true connections it provides me. But I rarely voice my true opinion of matters that everyone else is discussing in the social media world. I know where to start, but I don't know where to finish.

As I approach 50,  I am finding it easier to dis-engage, or to never really engage at all, from or in conflict. I have been practicing the fine art of  choosing my battles. Like really, do I want to spend a good amount of time trying to persuade people I love from belonging to organizations that I cannot ethically support? If someone were to ask me, "What do you think of this organization," or whatever, I would certainly give my opinion. But I trust people to make their own decisions.  Not to mention that what is wrong for me could be right for them. And I don't actively publicly loudly express my disdain for anything like that. Any more...

And if I'm forming judgments and expressing opinions that may harm others, there's that, but there's also the real possibility that my son could now be affected by me opening my mouth and telling what is on my mind. I worry that he is already affected by my tendency to isolate out of fear, and that one of the reasons so few friends ever call any more is because I've been so deeply depressed and stressed out. Ironically, this is the time I should be reaching out.

I was just reading Amy Ippolitti's article in the new (and amazing!!!) Origin magazine, the brand new yoga+art+culture+conscious living magazine our friend has published and founded. It is seriously incredible and I am SO excited to be part of it, and contribute to it. Anyhoo. Amy's article...all about letting go of our victimhood by freeing ourselves from, among other things, blaming anyone else for our failures. It's all about understanding the concept of Freedom as Radical Affirmation of  our living, or "Shri."

I unconsciously (or was it?) re-named myself Liz Shri when I signed on to facebook. I didn't want any weirdos from my past stalking me or being able to find me. I always thought "shri" meant "happiness." And in some translations from the Sanskrit, it kind of does. But what is true happiness? For me, it is Freedom. And not just the freedom to do whatever I want whenever I want, but to actually accept what life is offering me. I'm always free to choose to refuse.

I can't tell you how many missed opportunities I can now see that I've had. A LOT. Every day. But I can also see that, for whatever reason, I did not take them, and if I had taken them I might not, well, I certainly would not, be here. Right here. Right now. So.

I guess the biggest struggle I've got going these days is what has turned out to be an almost year-long injury, a "frozen shoulder." I will write more on it at length. Suffice to say for the moment, though, that it is incredibly painful and it sucks. Nobody is really sure what causes this. The factors may include diabetes, hormonal fluctuations, genetics, injury, etc and so on. I have pretty much all of the above, except diabetes, which I hope to avoid. I have little to no external rotation of my left arm. I can't lift it up over my head. The pain is...well, it's like there is scar tissue on my muscles. I'm not used to a muscle and a trigger point being continuously painful with no relief. I just started PT last week and I have only been twice, but I think it helps. My yoga practice has been severely limited, as you can imagine, but I am learning. A lot. With this particular type of injury/syndrome, the best approach is to go slow and not push through the pain. Interesting. I am definitely a push through the pain girl.

I have taken off this month of teaching to focus on the therapy and getting my shoulder back to somewhat normal. I can't demo poses, which is fine, but I also can't assist, which is fine but...ugh, so hard for me. So rather than tempt myself (and yes, I caused significant trauma to my shoulder a couple months ago demo-ing an arm balance, of all things, complete with collapsing and shouting out "Fuck!" Followed by searing, ripping, throbbing pain that took 48 hours to subside) I am trying to de-stress and write more and rest more. (It's past midnight now though.)

The resting part is SO hard because the most painful position for me to be in is on my back or on my left side, sleeping. I wake up several times throughout the night from pain.

So far I have refused my orthopedic surgeon's suggestion for cortisone shots, but I may yet succumb. Tomorrow I am having my second "double whammy" treatment of acupuncture followed by tui-na and I cannot wait.

Moving right along here.

Last night I heard the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. I have of course been glued to the news ever since, and reading all of my friends and their friends facebook commentary with great interest. Here is where I choose to refrain from spilling my guts, usually. But I do have some comments on it all that I would like to share here. I did NOT post this to my facebook.

My friend Susan wrote, in response to my update that simply said "I choose Love:"

”I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”— Martin Luther King Jr

2 hours ago ·

@Susan, I really appreciate this sentiment. King is paraphrasing the Buddha here. Seems like there are some discussions taking place on FB as to whether it is proper to rejoice in the death of OBL or not. I think a better question to ask ourselves is "why" we would have the impulse to rejoice or celebrate his death; and I really am interested to know "why?" anyone would personally rejoice in it. Is it personal? Does your heart sing and your body and mind know tremendous relief now that he is gone? I can understand that. But I also feel that it must go deeper than just "revenge for the lives lost since 911." What is it? What do the soldiers feel? It is my understanding that in order to evolve consciousness and bring about peace within as well as without we are to turn the other cheek, and trust the meting out of justice to (God and) Time. I know that some wars are just; but I also know that human beings and the system we have created to perpetuate war is not. So I don't have the answer. And I'm not saying we should never act, even if it means killing the bad guys when I don't believe in it. If I spend some time with the questions I might have some insights about it beyond these facebook threads. Hah! Maybe Time will prove that it was an act of Love and not Fear that put the operation into action. I have such limited understanding of karma and justice and peace as it is, I don't believe I yet have the right vision, the clarity, to say justice has been served. In fact, we may have now created a contagion effect that will bring about more pain and suffering, we just don't know yet because we are caught up in the immediate sense of gratification and the illusion of vengeance being within our control. There is also the possibility that this will cause consciousness to expand rapidly, and bring about true peace and enlightenment and understanding and compassion and all those principles we hold so dear. Even if the intentions behind these violent acts were corrupt and unjust, I still believe Love will win.

========================================================================
Okay, as I've just pointed out to myself that it's past midnight and I'm trying to take care of myself, I will sign off in a moment.

In case you're wondering, my son is a wildly creative genius who delights and infuriates me every day. We think he might be left handed.  He talks up a storm and says the most hilarious, frightening things. He is obsessed with blood, spiders, snakes, dragons, aliens, Star Wars (hasn't seen it, just knows it exists), and dinosaurs. He spends a fair amount of time ROARING at us and "making a mess."

I'm really into learning and practicing non-violent communcation as a life skill and as a technique for real connection and communication; it WORKS.  I've been reading this fantastic booklet, "Parenting from Your Heart," that is changing my life. To resolve our conflicts, I am operating from a very basic premise: How can everyone's needs be met here? So then I practice the formula of:

1) naming the needs of my son
2) empathizing with him...truly! "I know, I don't like it when someone forces me to stop what I'm doing either."
3) expressing as simply as I can my needs in the situation: "I know you want to keep watching a cartoon, but I like to show up when I say I will, so if we don't leave soon we will be late."

and then here is the magic key:

4) Use the words "Would you be willing to?" and I am telling you, nine out ten times, he says yes. "Would you be willing to watch the rest of the cartoon when we get back?" And if he says no, then I say "What do you suggest we do so you get to watch your cartoon and I get to leave on time to get there?" To which he inevitably replies with some sort of solution.

I think the key is that in order for this to work, I also have to be willing to compromise.

I'm also working with him and having a therapist friend do some play therapy with him to help express his aggression and anger in a supportive, safe place. As a family, we have begun to develop a nice dialogue around our frustrations and anger and getting what all of us want. I consider it a small and exciting miracle that my son can now usually tell us why he is angry, and why he bites or hits or whatever it is he does to express it to us. It is so powerful, I find, to be able to sit with anger and still love a person even when I am ready to clobber them.

And...

I think I've now permanently migrated to the kitchen table as my office space. I imagine there are many mothers who write at the kitchen table. Great things.

More to come. As well as my thoughts on the intense commercialization of Yoga, if you want to know.