Ketchup, for the Good Times

Actually, it's a quick CATCH UP.

Hyuck, hyuck!

So the "Everyday Yoga" retreat was a smashing success. Our moment of truth came when one student said she realized that she hadn't been practicing because she'd been waiting for the perfect moment, which of course with two small children never EVER, ever  comes.  And that for her, practice was merely a way to stay connected to herself because, as she put it, "I don't have the luxury of working on toning my butt."

EXACTLY.  And sometimes you don't have the luxury of perfecting a pose by practicing it over and over. Unless that pose is downward facing dog or uttanasana...

When did yoga become gym class?

I ask this as the person who takes almost all of her yoga classes at the gym. And loves it, but that is mostly because 1) they have child care 2) each class is a sweatfest 3) each class is an hour 4) nobody is checking the labels on my clothes.  Thanks for that new phenomenon in my precious spiritual discipline and community, overpriced yoga store whose name shall not be mentioned. The other day in gym yoga I was surrounded by chubby, grey-haired, inflexible sweaty yogis.  Perfection. Tattoos that were older than even mine. But everyone leaves with a smile. Anyway, I was a little gymgoer as a tween, and a swimmer as a teen, so I love the locker room and the sweat and the clang of the equipment.

So I rewrote two scripts to submit to competitions. And I did enter one of my scripts into the Austin Film Festival competition, with plans to submit it to several others. I am having a lawyer look at my other script to make sure I'm not asking for trouble, it being "based on a true story" and all.

The story of my Dad's life. Fucking fascinating, and important.

In Child News: the boy finished preschool!! Talk about bittersweet. And we finally decided on where to send him for kindergarten and beyond, a small community school that meets part time and offers curriculum for home schooling. I am so excited about it! With his sensory issues, and his AMAZING imagination and wild creativity, I have been loath to send him to a large public school. Honestly, the curriculum is not the issue, the student:teacher ratio is IT.  When I saw one teacher working with 22 students in a small, enclosed room, I knew my little mischief maker would never make it. And the hours seem inhuman to me. Our community school is an experiment, but I think he will thrive in small, multi-age, kid-led and project based learning groups. Plus I just got newes that one of his teachers will be...well, an incredible badass lady.

He's got two loose teeth!

He just moved up to the next level in his martial arts class! And we did the first class today...he loved it. Super challenging, and he stayed focused. And today, later, as we were chatting on our way to get something to eat,. he said (apropos of something I've forgotten) "Never give up." WHAT! Wow. That is his sensei's mantra for him, he says it to Bodhi every single class: "Don't give up, Bodhi!" It is beautiful.

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.

In which I commit the ultimate crime

What if you were once a very beautiful young woman, and you committed the ultimate crime?

You got fat.

You went all heteronormal and married a dude and you were monogomous.

You had a kid.

You lost interest in your job/life/passions/pursuits/hygiene/shopping etc. due to hormonal changes in your body and the grueling death of your father

followed by the betrayal of almost all your family members

and many friends.

And then, worst of all, you aged.

You were fat, old, depressed and then you got

injured.

You might be bitter.

You might not.

You might ought to pick up and leave.

You might ought to issue the ultimate "fuck you" and drop out entirely.

You need glasses.

You can't eat wheat.

Put down the cheese, friend.

Drink the water.

Put your blinders on.

Then move on.

This isn't quite me, but she makes many brilliant points.

2013, WTF?

How did this happen?

I think most of my writing energy has gone toward writing THREE mother f'in' screenplays (yay! clap for me!) and a manuscript of poems, and 7.2 million facebook updates.

That's a lot of creative energy.

And I think I finally have a kind of magic supplement/herb/regimen/whatever balance to keep my cycles regular, and to mostly keep my depression at bay.

So what I do is:

1. an hour of yoga every day (cumulative if necessary)
2. five minutes of writing and meditation - minimum
3. bodywork at least every two weeks
4. actually TALK to my partner about things that are bothering me
5. weekly family meetings so we all know what is coming up and how to handle childcare/meet individual needs
6. sleep before 11 at least twice a week (this is the hardest on the list to get to!)
7. daily doses of vitex, levoxyl, D3, omega 3s, DHEA, DiM/indolplex, multivitamin with probiotics
8. monthly doses of progon/progesterone pellets...I take 2.5 of them from day 12-24. That's my cycle, 24 days. though lately it has been 26.

Ideally I'd be getting Mayan Abdominal Massage every month, and I'd be performing the self-care massage on myself every night. I do it about once a week. But I do use castor oil packs with heat during my cycle and right before it. SO good.

But the premenstrual stuff is BRUTAL. I become equal parts angry, bitter, sad, and fearful. I have started taking an extra couple of DiM's -- the indolplex, which is an estrogen regulator -- and it REALLY helps. Also right before ovulation.

If our military could harness the rage of premenstrual, perimenopausal women, there would be no more war. Our enemies would be far too afraid to attack.

Plus I am already an ornery, fiery, mouthy l'il bitch. I was born that way.

I'm also very kind and extremely empathetic and compassionate. Generous to a fault. But I carry grudges for DECADES. Once someone has betrayed my trust, it takes me FOREVER gain it back. Usually I can't. Such is the psychological makeup of an adult child of alcoholics. Defensive, Critical, Self-Loathing, Swaggering, Charming, Pathetic.

Luckily we human beings have one quality that the other dumb animals don't: Consciousness. This defines us, and it makes us 100% responsible for ourselves. So if we fuck up, we have nobody else to blame. Or balm.

I'm getting ready to announce a big yoga project I've been cooking up with some other wonderful yoga teacher lady friends of mine.  Basically it's our creative response to the rockstarization and the Walmartization of yoga that has taken place in the past few years, and I'm looking to share some wisdom gleaned from the everyday experiences of picking up toys, resentfully washing dishes, preparing meals, cleaning up the daily poop of so many different species of creatures it's unreal, stealing an asana practice in the middle of it all, dreaming big, living bigger. And being awesome and fucking loving myself more and more all the time...even with a fat belly.

Soon you will know.