Confessions of a Yoga Practitioner, Part 2.

 Seeing the past and progressing inward. This part is not on the map.

One of my Shiatsu classmates was an Ashtanga Yoga teacher who saw my natural athleticism and enticed me to the highly structured yoga lane. I have to remind myself it was my early twenties during those three years of study in Boston. I practiced everything I wanted to become good at and charted my daily practices. Having read Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin in high school, I adopted the habit as a way of "refining my character". The columns on my practice sheet included martial arts, yoga/stretching, QiGong/Tai Chi, and art.

I noticed that on weeks closer to my moon cycle I wasn't able to attend as many marital arts or yoga classes, but did more drawing & art, and QiGong/Tai Chi sessions. This internal focus, I learned much later, is a natural direction for women. Probably my most productive years for art.

These foundational years set the tone for this current practitioner lifestyle.

During the Boston years boyfriends came and went. I thought about partnering with women but was too afraid to get into anything so intense. As mentioned in the previous post, I didn't know how to be a good person & wasn't prepared for the level of healing a woman would catalyze. Men would give the attention I wanted, have sex with me, and let go when I broke it off. They were all good people who I wanted as friends but didn't know how to have intimate friendships at that point. Considering how promiscuous I was in this phase it amazes me that I didn't get pregnant or STDs. 

None of my sex partners were intended for long-term relationships partly because I knew Boston wasn't my right place. I longed to be in Colorado with tall peaks in view. High altitude, fewer tall buildings and people was the environment my soul had learned in childhood. Divine Grace stepped in again in the form of a boyfriend/biking partner. The classmate who first lead me through Ashtanga connected me with a friend who wanted to relocate from Manhattan to somewhere West. When he asked "you want to bike the Colorado together?" I said YES!

The three month bicycle trip of 1999 is etched in my memory as the transition into professional Shiatsu practice, and the dawning awareness of just how hard of a person I had become. 

In the next two years I took regular doses of the "spiritual path Kool-Aid". I studied astrology, continued my Shiatsu education with every possible training, learned Organ Cleansing QiGong, and switched from karate to Aikido. Looking back on my 27-year-old self I see the fight my ego was in to release it's distorted perspective. That boyfriend took me to Thailand on a 4-month volunteer trip which completely turned me inside out. Upon returning to the US, Thanksgiving of 2001, I could not envision a future in that relationship. We were at his mother's house in upstate New York for the holiday. The Shiatsu classmate who had brought me to Ashtanga and his current girlfriend were there. It was the last time I saw him to date.

Just as I was deciding to embark on a deeper dive into yoga, Kettlebell weight lifting came in the form of a husband. This was how I ended the previous relationship. I needed the spiritual focus of the man I married, which the boyfriend was adamantly committed against. Apparently I wasn't ready to give up hard-core strength building yet and ending up with certifications to teach weight lifting rather than yoga. In 2006 I learned Ashtanga Vinyasa Primary Series from Annie Pace in Crestone, CO. 

Living in Crestone for 3 years was the ultimate healing gift for me. Situated at the foot of 3 huge mountains and just north of the Great Sand Dunes, historically this is a place of spiritual and healing retreat. The mountains themselves create sacred presence, combined with the mystical dunes and natural hot springs just to the north, Crestone emits the energy of high spirituality. 

Crestone is so off-the-beaten-path that only those intrigued by it's mystery would venture in. Settlers eventually created infrastructure and built homes, though very few were able to live there all year. It truly had a spiritual magnet, which I felt tangibly. It pulled people in for healing and awakening and then spitting them back out when the time had past. Very few couples survive the Great Cleansing that Crestone dishes out.

By virtue of my marriage partner I was able to engage with a medicine community for most of the three years. This was the actualization of a vision I had before Shiatsu school. I was aware that my mind had too many warps to be an effective helper of humanity. Shiatsu school showed me just how deep were the wounds in my ego, but there was no talk therapy method I trusted to help me untwist these knots. I knew it was a plant medicine cure that would help me emerge. I was convinced that the ceremony was vitally important, held by a group in a sacred container. Indeed, this is what I needed, the path of Grandfather Peyote in the Lakota tradition.

When the marriage broke in 2008 I returned to Boulder as if exhumed. The medicine had shown me my character flaws, how I had used them in shadow aspect to damage myself and others. I was on the narrow path of recovery from the multiple addictions I had cultivated. 

Clients and dojo mates welcomed me back. There was support for me to reassess my bad habits. I quit marijuana, which had been the primary glue that held the marriage bond, and took self-guided yoga practice as auxiliary to weightlifting. I got into a one-year group therapy program which provided tremendous tools and a container to view my ego through. There was still so much resistance and denial to be broken through.

I certainly wasn't good or confident enough to teach yoga, but had weightlifting down pat. So began the Years of Steel. 

After deviating on a 7-year competitive kettlebell weightlifting stint I found myself sitting in an all-night ceremony asking Great Mystery how to make my body feel less miserable. It became as clear as ever that night that my life is not my own. Shiatsu and the study of natural healing had remained my primary work, supporting the addictions to intensity and perfection that took me so deeply into competing. I also allowed me to study physiology, engage in deep cleanses that had highly educational effects. The morning after that ceremony I quit lifting steel competitively. It was 2017. A major identity crisis ensued.

This story has to have another part. To be continued.

Blessings,

Christian

Confessions of a Yoga Practitioner, Part 1.

Discovering the path I was born to travel.

At some point between age 14 and 16 yoga came into my awareness. It both fascinated and intimidated me. Asceticism and self-discipline were the words that stood out. Born in the early '70s to parents raised in Texas, USA, there was little for me to draw on, though it seemed to me that these words also described the life of Christian monastics. On first glance I saw that the background culture of yoga is polytheism, thus I remember it being labelled "heathenism".

I was deeply pulled toward spiritual life, but remember thinking that I wanted to try out other options first. I believed that devotion to God was an exclusive proposition. Sex for pleasure rather than as spiritual communion struck me as non-devotional. A career that was not of direct service to humanity, travel for leisure rather than a pilgrimage... these seemed the epitome of worldliness. Somehow I knew that it would never be too late to follow the spiritual path, so I would try as much of the social norm as I could take.

The transition from high school to college gave me an opportunity to do just that in the most awkward of ways. Coming from a childhood marked with a series of unsettled transition beginning around 9 years old, my attempt at gaining status and standing was an extremely bumbling pursuit. Though very natural for my peers, a "conventional" career path didn't last me all the way through my twenties. It felt like a lie, and everyone around me knew it. I was fascinated by ancient wisdom, longed to experience earth-based ceremony, to touch the Higher Mind. Nature-based healing techniques pulled my interest. The Hermit and Hierophant archetypes fascinated me, both solitary, wandering mystics. 

Just before the mid-point of my junior year in college a homeopathic remedy (a "constitutional dose")  brought me home with a crash. After my fourth yoga class ever the remedy kicked in and I could no longer pretend to be part of the mainstream. The truth of me could not be ignored: the academic world would crush my soul. In my heart I knew that my life was meant to serve others, and I could not pour myself into any study found in the halls of academia. I left a full-tuition scholarship with all my possessions, including pocket sized Tao Te Ching & Bhagavad Gita, to embark on self-study.

I soon came to martial arts. Right away it became clear that this is a practice of discipline. My soul perked up when I heard "if you want to make progress, practice three hours on your own between classes", guidance that echoes the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: progress will be seen in proportion to the level of effort given to it. I continued to travel but learned martial arts avidly. I took all free and introductory classes I came across, gathering fragments of different arts, and practiced them in a park.

Self-study eventually required funding. I got a job waiting tables in Harvard Square, Boston. Divine Grace opened my awareness to the Boston Shiatsu School after a year of passing directly below it from a taekwondo school to the restaurant. It was 1997. Thus began my commitment to Shiatsu Bodywork, the earthly partner of my Spiritual Path.

Sometimes I think about what a "hot mess" I was during these days. I tried to be a "good person", but was emotionally volatile, easily triggered, and identified more with the archetypes of science fiction than any human in society. As I moved around the country I encountered people who had stabile homes, lived near their families or close to childhood people and places. This was totally foreign to me. I didn't know how to behave in society. Seriously, I had no understanding of social politeness, and I'm fairly certain I was the wildcard at any gathering.

My friends didn't know what to expect from me. My constant companion was a sketchbook, which I schlepped everywhere to unload the contents of my subconscious. Anyone who asked about it was given access to it. It was the only way I knew to communicate with myself.

Martial arts helped me find focus, acknowledge the effect I had on others and learn to follow. Shiatsu pulled me out of aimless wandering and started the long process of becoming a person. It was not only a safe landing place, it was the school I had been seeking. I began to see the deep and wordless journey I had been on.

To be continued....