My yoga mat, synchronicity, and Alan Watts
Posted on Jun 5th, 2008
by 
Kaia
Kaia
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.
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Access: PublicTagged with: yoga, Julian Walker, Alan Watts, synchronicity, love, truth, Bhagavad Gita, God, universe, teacher, yoga mat, healing, surrender
alan watts
August 2008 
Amazing! That was beautiful and funny and brilliant! Father William Du Bay stated, “The most human thing we have to do in life is to learn to speak our honest convictions and feelings and live with the consequences. This is the first requirement of love, and it makes us vulnerable to other people who may ridicule us. But our vulnerability is the only thing we can give to other people.” Thank you for sharing.