Explore
Gaia Soulmates
 Advertising keeps Gaia free! Interested in sponsoring us?

My yoga mat, synchronicity, and Alan Watts

Posted on Jun 5th, 2008 by Kaius Maximus : muse Kaius Maximus
Becky
My friend, there is something I have found that means more to me than anything else in this world.

Wait, I said that I have found.  No, that's not right......  yoga found me.

A producer friend here in LA asked me a few days ago, What has yoga given you? I replied:

Um, like ALL the self esteem I have?  Seriously.

Let me tell you a story......

Thirteen years ago, I was managing Malibu Books and Company, Malibu's little independent bookstore.  And as always, I was reading as much fiction as I could get my paws on.  But I was living a life of escapism.

I hated my body.  I hated the fact that my emotions can be so enormous I am often left overwhelmed and feeling helpless.  I was out of my body all of the time.  Running away.

I was 19, and dating a musician who worked with me, a man whose voice just moved my soul.  I wasn't just in love with him, I wanted to BE him, if that makes any sense.  I wanted to move people like that.  But I was too scared, too shy, to embarrassed.  He played guitar.  I played another kind of instrument.  A dijeridu. I'm quite good, actually.

Cut to my fabulously hot narcissistic actress roommate, begging me for a ride down the hill from Topanga to Venice.  Pouring rain.  Middle of the night.  Who isn't a sucker for a beautiful woman asking you for something?  I drove her.  Let her out on the corner of Pier and Main.  A cassette fell out of my car (yup, remember those?) and this random stranger saw it, I didn't, and he picked it up from the gutter, stopped my car, Hey, Hey, wait a second, you dropped this! Hey lady!

He looked at the tape.  Alan Watts.  "I LOVE Alan Watts!" he said.  I smiled, concurred.  Who doesn't love Alan Watts?  The rain soaked his hair.  He had this great South African accent, I remember.  Unusual.  Young guy, mid-twenties.  Kind sloe eyes.

So the next week I was playing a gig with my lover down at this cafe in Venice that no longer exists, and we are up late, stoned, horsing around.  I wake up the next morning.  Shit!  I forgot my instrument.  Not only is it a rare antique, but it was my mother's.  I left it at the cafe.

I hop in the car, run back to the cafe.  Gone.  Nothing.  Nada.  I am forlorn.  I post a sign.  I get home, head in hands.  Why does love  stop us from thinking sometimes?  I had never left my instrument anywhere before.  But get me around a hot guy and suddenly I have mush for brains.  Still, it's an indulgence I adore.

A day passes.  Nothing.

Next day.  Nothing.

Day three, I get a call!  "Hey," says  voice, "I found your instrument, and I want to give it back to you."  We agree to meet that afternoon.  I'm chuffed!  (Chuffed is an English word that we don't have an equivalent for in America so I'm adopting it.  It's kind of like over-the-moon, only better.)

So I go down to meet this guy, and I come walking up, and there he is with my instrument, and we both cock our heads and look at each other, and at the same time we say, "Alan Watts!"

Yup.  That was Julian Walker.  He's here on Gaia, actually.  Look him up.

So, I sit down, and he notices I am a little disembodied.  Yogis pick up that kind of thing in people right quick.  So he invites me to take his class.  Just come be my guest he says.  I don't mind he stared into my soul for a second.  It's all cool.  

Cut to, me, in my first yoga class, sweating marbles, sliding all over the place, stiffer than some guys I know.  I mean, I was humiliated!  I was miles form touching my toes.  Miles from feeling remotely at ease, and to top it all off there was this giant mirror in front of me so I could stare at my thighs in spandex.  No thank you.  I had this image of how women are all supposed to be supple and lithe and bendy.  I have always had a certain natural grace, maybe that's the southern woman in me, but supple I was not.  I felt like I was trying to fold a 2 by 4.  Like I said, humiliating.

But there was Julian, soothing, suggesting we stop judging ourselves, just observe, observe the inner voice.

And something real happened for me.  I got quiet inside, quiet for maybe the first time since I was a little girl, sitting in a field of grass, and winking at the sun.  I got quiet, and a tear leaked out my eye.  I got quiet enough to hear the hum of my silly little thoughts.  I got quiet enough to stop obsessing.  And it was beautiful, and somehow worth all the humiliation in front of twenty other people who could do all that stretchy foldy shit.  And I was so afraid they were all judging me.  Ha!  I get the first prize for that contest.

I hated that first class, but I was back the next week.  And the next.  Then twice a week.  Then three times.  Not to get stronger.  Not to stick my foot behind my head.  I wanted that quiet place inside where I felt safe, and where everything was beautiful, even the pain.  I never imagined I would actually get stronger, and supple.  But I did.  Bonus!

God bless Julian for knowing.  For looking into my soul and seeing that I needed a sanctuary.  God bless Kaia for staying with something her ego hated.  Ah, temperance.......

13 years later, now I am a teacher, but I still study regularly, and so.  So.

Yesterday I was on my mat in Vinnie's class, just dying, so tired, hoofing it through the arm balances, and falling on my ass.  But even there, this incredible sense of safety.  Of not judging myself.  Of just pure acceptance.  I collapsed in fatigue at one point.  I wish I had some great excuse.  Dude, the pregnant woman behind me was kicking my ass.  And I realized.....

......This is how I want to grow old.  Falling on my ass while I'm trying to stick my knee in my armpit balancing with my legs crossed from a headstand.  Understand this is really tough to do at any age, much less eight months pregnant!  Hello, humility.

On the mat, humanity is in your face.  The guy next to me farted.  I could see the stretch marks on the back of the woman's rump next to me.  Some random guy behind me was spraying sweat as we came up for half moon pose which was a certain kind of intimacy I was not looking for.   Puddles of sweat soaked my towel.  Now, that's a beautiful thing.

Am I also disgusted?  You bet.  And I am sitting with that part of myself that is disgusted saying, Ah, here's the edge of my shadow.  Here's the place I run away from myself, and from everyone else, because I am just too afraid to let people in.

How fucking real is that?

How fucking real is that?

I'm thinking of you, Dan, right now.  You who won't let me back out of a hug.  You who look me in the eye when I'm running, when I'm standing right there but I can't make eye contact.  I love you.  I thank you for teaching me something.  Something important.  Vulnerability.

You know, I haven't been in a relationship in a long time.  LIke, a long time.  But there's one thing that I wish for when I do get in one.

I want to be with someone who makes me to stay when I want to run.  Someone who is stronger than me, and who, just by being himself, let's me know I can let love in, dammit.  I need a firm hand.  I know that.  I'm too fucking smart.  You know how many times I've gotten off the hook?  Christ.  I could write a memoir.

My relationship is on the mat.  Holding up the mirror.  Looking at what is uncomfortable in me, around me, and pouring pure acceptance into it.  Just trying.  Sometimes looking at ourselves is the hardest thing.  Listening to ourselves.  But I can't talk for you, just me.

I mean, a week ago, I was in this half lotus forward fold tree thing with my hand behind my back holding my foot, and my right knee was like, Um, no, this is not happening.  But my brain said, yes it is, we are already in the pose, it's just five breaths.  And my knee was like, um, no, this hurts.  Bad hurt, not stretching something hurt, tearing something hurt.  And my brain was like, just three more breaths.  No big deal, just stay.  Don't quit.

Dont' quit.  That clenched it.  My father's words.  Don't ever be a quitter.

So I didn't quit, and for a week I haven't been able to climb stairs without this twinge of, Ah, hello there!  from my right knee, like, I told you but you wouldn't listen.  I told you!  Hello?

So simple.  Isn't it?  It's so bloody simple just to listen to ourselves.  Why don't we?  I guess, like anything, it's a practice, and you have good days, and days where you fall on your ass.  It's ok.  Our knees speak.  Our hearts speak.  And we will spend a lifetime pretending we cant' hear.  Oh, the humbling practice of love.

The yoga mat is my sanctuary, my temple, my home, the place I can be naked with myself.  I keep one curled in the back of my car always, and it is always with me, right there.  It is the safest place I know.  I can cry there.  I can fail there.  I can bleed there.  I can be a human being there.  And all my imperfections are revealed, and there is beauty, so much beauty, in that.  Just to accept.  Just to accept it all.  Let it be.

I got a new word this year.

Vulnerable.

I want to be more vulnerable.  More real.  I am exhausted with my own walls.

Exhale, let love out.

Inhale, let love in.

Thank you Julian for giving me something I wasn't looking for that I needed more than life. Thank you Dan for forcing me to stay in a hug for ten seconds longer than I want to, and for letting me know I can trust you, you motherfucker ; )

I got another new word this year.

Trust.

I'm terrified.

Let go.

I want to.  I'm not sure if I know how........

Is it safe?  To practice love?  To fail?  To practice love again?  I woke up this morning at sunrise with that lyric from Paul Simon in my mind from his record You're the One...... 'Like plants the medicine is everywhere.........Love.'

As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita:

When he sees Me in all, and sees  all in Me
Then I never leave him, and he never leaves Me,
and he who in this oneness of love, loves in Me whatever he sees,
wherever this soul may live, in truth, he lives in Me.

Om bolo, sat guru, bhagavan ki, JAI!

God is the real teacher.  
_________
                   /     \
                  /       \    *
                /           \  _ _
               _ _____
      \      !
                       \      \
                       !        \
     /
  _____  _  /         SHANTI.
Access_public Access: Public 1 Comment Print views (202)  
Tagged with: yoga, Julian Walker, Alan Watts, synchronicity, love, truth, Bhagavad Gita, God, universe, teacher, yoga mat, healing, surrender

I'm really a rocket scientist.....

Posted on Jun 12th, 2008 by Kaius Maximus : muse Kaius Maximus
Images
I learned something new this year......

that people mostly are NOT what they do.

We always ask that question, you know?  The conversation goes, Hi, my name is _______, nice to meet you.  What do you do?

And God forbid you answer with something other than how you make money.  Because no one will take you seriously.

I discovered sometime last year, that practically everyone in the service industry, which means the people you meet every day who bag your groceries, take your order, and wash your car, really do something else they feel far more passionately about.

Only no one cares because they don't make money at it.  Tragic!

Today, I pulled up at Sony Pictures where I teach yoga on Thursdays, and they have a new security guard at the gate, who doesn't know me yet.

You gotta understand here, that F., who was the old security guard, and I, had this fabulous rapport, wherein we would tease each other and horse around, to the point he let me park in Judd Apatow's spot when the Man wasn't at work.    Um, ya.  I felt like such a rockstar.   And I love that guard.  He always makes me smile, and feel like somebody special.
Anyway, the new security guard, whose name is P., and I have been slow to develop a rapport.  Probably because each week I come at the same time and he still doesn't remember me, which drives me nuts, because I have a big fat healthy ego, thank you, and I like to be remembered, especially by NAME.

Anyway, today he writes my hall pass and says, "You know, I'm really a rocket scientist."
To which I reply, "Uh huh, and I'm Henry Kissinger in tight pants."

But he says, "No really.  I'm an out of work physicist.  Nasa had layoffs.  I haven't got my guard card yet.  But at least I have a job."  Then he gave me his URL.

My eyebrows shot up.  Does Sony Pictures know they have a Nasa scientist working their fucking guard station?  Christ.  The man has an IQ that makes the rest of us look like lab rats.  I was pretty impressed.

But then, his story belongs to each of us in some way, doesn't it?  

My friend Sasha runs a small print shop in Venice, and he has a PhD from Yale in finance, but due to a lawsuit and one well-written non-compete agreement, he cannot work in his field.  But he really wants to open a cafe.

And most of the waiters down on Main St. are really working on their degrees at UCLA.

My stepfather is an author, but sells real estate.

And I got a taste of the medicine a few nights ago when I was introduced around a table at a fine restaurant as a yoga teacher, when I think of myself as a writer, by someone who even knows about my book.

But hey.  We live in a country where you are what you do, and what you do is defined by what you earn.

I think this must be a cultural thing.

Because in Greece, I remember the policemen.  You see, they are not policemen at all, but men in costumes, who hang out on the street corners much like extras on a movie set, waiting to be called into a shot.  They gamble; they smoke; they flirt with the women.  But the second a crime happens, then suddenly they are all policemen, and go into action.

But here in America, you are your job.  You are not you.  And you are not your dreams.  And you are not what you do for fun, or in your freetime, or as a side-pursuit.  You are only what you are successful at.  And what you are successful at is defined by one thing:  where you get your paycheck.  And then, that isn't necessarily success.

This used to only be true for men.  You see, women get out of the deal with beauty.  If you are smokin' hot, and sexy, and pretty, you could be a meatpacker, and still be touted and acclaimed.  Ah, but if you are a man..... you better have the career thing happening, because it will affect your odds of sexual reproduction.

But now as women, we have both pressures.  Be pretty and successful.  Be beautiful and be unbeatable.  I think it's an interesting time socially.

Personally, I now pay much more attention to a person's dreams --the thing they are really reaching for, than to what they do to pay the bills.  I like to ask the people who make my coffee what they REALLY do, and see what kind of answers I get.  Because it's fascinating to discover layers of truth.

But, to be fair, I say that being completely hypocritical, because I think I want to live in this world where dreams are as important as reality, but if I met a really super hot janitor, who told me, Ya, I just do this to pay the bills because what I really want is to be a record producer, I'd be like:

Um, don't call me, I'll call you......... ok?










Access_public Access: Public What do you think? Print views (178)  
Tagged with: dreams, career, science, sex, work, life, irony, learn, yoga