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
