turns out he’s a shaman…

shan
March 7th, 2010

Turns out he’s a shaman.

One of my favorite yoga memories is actually sitting in a lecture in the Jungle of Costa Rica, on retreat, listening to Douglas Brooks.

“Life is a gift and Yoga is the blessing,” The moment he offered this short pithy statement, I knew I would continue to unpack it for a long time to come in my heart mind, body and work in the world.

I was right. If you had asked me about the definition of “yoga” at about the same time I heard the comment, I would have had one thing to say. Today, years and years later, I have something else.

Then I would have said, “union.”

Today, I say, “relationship.”

Yoga is my full way of being today and everyday. Operating the studio in the day today requires a full attunement to the relationships it generates: teachers, students, staff, master presenters, competitors, passer bys, and even the random man off the street who wanders in for directions.

On and off the mat we share, we talk, we weave and interweave meaning and experience into one another.

Last week, a man came into the Boulder studio, while waiting for the bus that picks up right out front. He was timeless in age, incredibly well-dressed and carried a lap-top and pulled a small suitcase. His tie was perfectly jointed at his neck and his gait was somewhat stiff. We smiled as he entered and he mentioned he was just browsing so I let him have his space. He mused through the books, through the class schedules and finally across our wall of upcoming colorful events.

He turned to me while smiling and said, “Yoga?”

I said, “Yes, are you familiar with yoga?”

Turns out he is a shaman.

Turns out that this straight-laced man is a spiritual warrior. Turns out his path of spiritual connection and his practice of hiding himself in plain sight in a world of high finance and international travel make him one of the most sought after mediators in the world. Turns out he never shares his spiritual leanings in the boardroom, EVER.

His concealed self and deep connection to the human heart inspires an unseen gift to heal relationships and cultivate a “win/win” state of being. By aiming the parties away from solely the personal into a pulse of the personal and universal aims, he directs and redirects relationships in difficult negotiations. He pleases both sides by allowing them both to feel heard, met, and connected.

He values the relationships we, as human beings, create and recreate above all.

He shared in a few sentences thoughts and ideas that were so big, they blasted ideas abounding in my skull.

He asked me how I felt about relationships and business and people and time and history and dreams and who I was going to be when I grew up.

Different beings, fast friends for five minutes, we wove a small sharing into a tiny, microcosmic friendship. It seemed all too soon when his bus arrived and he dashed outside, after giving me a quick hug and telling me, with all sincerity, that he was glad to meet me and loved our town.

With a glint of his silver hair, he stepped on the bus.

Life is a gift. Relationships are the blessing.

That’s Why the Chicken Did Not Kill Us…

shan
March 3rd, 2010

Love and Intention…

That’s why the chicken did not kill us.

My husband and I have many levels on which we bond. We love yoga, we love Rumi, and we LOVE food!

We were recounting the other day, the styles of cooking our mothers each exposed us to while growing up. They were very much the same, casseroles, mac and cheese, the occasional pizza and of course, chicken. There was always a plentiful amounts of chicken.

Meat and ethics was not our topic this day, as we eat very little meat if ever. Simply, we discussed it was how it was prepared, with what, how often and how boring.

We recognized, as we recounted similar mental images from the past, that we each escaped near death, as out mothers BOTH used the SAME wooden chopping blocks our entire childhoods to cut up everything: meat, vegetables, fruits, quick breads, you name it… it was cut up there. It was ALL cut up on the same wooden, porous, dangerous, plank of bio hazard~!

Both of us ended up straight out of college in the restaurant business, he as a chef and I as a sommelier. We have seen things in the restaurants that make us hyper vigilant around cleanliness in the home. Joe has a cutting board for EVERYTHING and of course I am delighted to label and store them prettily.

In our conversation we marveled at the sheer miracle that we did not each die at the age of seven from some severe strain of home born death ecoli faction. This marveling took us into stories of our moms in the kitchen and wow.

Each of us then recounted how some of our favorite childhood memories involve familiar smells from the kitchen, mothers at the sink and sounds of home abounding in the early evening family setting.

That’s how. It was love. It was love and life and solid intention.

Our mothers loved us so much in every simply meal that Ecoli did not stand a chance. There in lies a huge lesson about food. Love your family. Love your sense. Love your body. Love your friends. Think of love and devotion while you prepare a meal and health is nearly a guaranteed windfall of abundant memories to marvel upon.

To all the chicken that has come before us,

Shan

In-powerment

shan
February 28th, 2010

IN-powerment.

My mother would laugh at me as a child and marvel at my sense of creativity with language. I would sometimes hear words as I heard them and offer them the definition to which I felt made contextual sense. I would make words and their definitions my own.

“Empowerment” was one of those words. I remember hearing it and in the conversation it seemed clear to me that the power in question was something that made a person feel good on the INSIDE. I began to use the four-syllable word in the everyday, feeling really, REALLY, really big in my little boots.

Only, I was saying, “IN-powerment.”

My mom asked me to qualify it once, cocked her head to one side and said, “You know, I think you are right.” So she did not correct me. In fact, she NEVER let on at all. I do not actually remember who DID finally point out the snafu but it kind of stuck with me my whole life and I think about it every once in awhile when I feel small, contracted, or a little uninspired.

Who does NOT like to be powered on the inside? Who does not like to feel lit up and in the seat of solid decisions and following truth, joy, inspiration, and intuition?

Everyone can operate from a sense of internal power. This is actually the sustainable state. It is like GREENING one’s decisions and life-lived patterns. When we live without this, our energy falls, we push ourselves to the limit and burnout, exhaustion, fatigue, and depression are not far behind.

Power is something very different from force, though both can be internalized and can find a strong presence in the day to day. We can force ourselves to sit in front of a situation and take it in. We can force ourselves to show up in a situation where we are diminished or told we are not enough, screwed up, somehow not quite right. We can force ourselves to act as though we feel a certain way to attain a certain outcome. We can force a decision to feel right and righteous. We can simply force for the sake of force.

OR, we can soften and listen to the questions we are asking inside. We can soften and listen to the vibrations of grace we are answering to ourselves on the inside. When we soften and tap into the way life and love and energy moves through us, we realize that it is our nature to live in connection to an expanding universe and in lining up to that pulse of expansion and remembrance, placing ourselves in tandem to universal embrace, we too power up from the inside.

We find ourselves IN-powered.

When IN-powered, we are much less likely to make a decision for a small outcome. When IN-powered we don’t really feel the need to push a single agenda. When IN-powered, we look for grace and goodness and cause and pause and a win-win in service to the expansion of the universe herself.

When we live in a state of IN-powerment, there is less fear, there is more creativity and there are rows and rows and rows of more love blossoms blooming. When we are IN-powered, we give unconsicou permission for others to do and live the same.

So the exercise is to sit, to soften, to listen, to re-spond rather than re-act and therein lies the work of a lifetime. However, the power certainly out weighs any sense of force, leverage, or sense of unsustainable lack.

Make a list of all those activities you have in your day to day that lift you up. Make a list of all those people in your life who make you feel held, safe, and present. Do you realize that these people, places, things all live in the vibration of yourself, your memory, your body, your capacity to connect? At ANY one time, you, me, we can turn within and see them, feel them, know that they are part of us from the inside out. We are, therefore, constantly, IN-powered by those and that which we love.

Here’s to living IN-powered,

Shan

“Salad Days”


February 27th, 2010

Every few months it is time for me to fly to South Florida, not for a vacation, but to visit my 90-yr-old father. It isn’t easy to make the transition from my real life in Colorado to his world in Florida. His retirement community has an eerie quiet to it, where the palm trees blow, the lawns are perfectly manicured - with no signs of a dropped bicycle or a forgotten football. His neighbors only have little dogs - no big dogs anywhere. Although he lives in a busy community, few neighbors are ever outside. The excuse is often the heat but for my visit, “It’s so cold, somewhere in the 60’s, don’t forget your coat dear!” he advises.

My father describes his later years as his “salad days.” He tries to explain that his days aren’t all that important anymore, no longer the “main course.” In reality “salad days” refer to a time of youth and carefree innocence. Actually there is a childlike quality to him as he ages where his wife has to care for him more and more.

“It is so hard to be so dependent,” he confides.

He loves the sun and finds such comfort in its warmth. Our conversations are the easiest when we are not sitting face to face but instead talking with our eyes closed, tilting our faces toward the sky. Like driving my kids somewhere, we safely swap thoughts without eye contact. I bring up my concern that he and his wife have recently had a procedure that injects fat in to their cheeks to soften their faces.

“Dad, I don’t think that is very good for you.”

“I know, but it makes me feel better not to look my age.”

I had just heard a radio commercial about “turning back the hands of time” with cosmetic hand surgery. He now lives in a world where plastic surgery is the norm and over consumption is celebrated. Sadly it looks like such a comfortable lifestyle, yet so many people seem to be so uncomfortable with the inevitability of growing old. A strange dichotomy exists where the elderly dominate the community yet looking old is shameful. Eastern cultures have such deep respect for the elderly. Wrinkles hold wisdom in their folds.

I leave my father by the pool, needing to find myself again. My husband gave me a wonderful gift of a traveling yoga mat before I left. I found my way to a nearby yoga studio in time for their noon class. I stretched and breathed my way in to the comfort of at times uncomfortable positions - so similar to being with my father. Family is like that, both comfortable and uncomfortable. Rolling up my mat at the end of class, it was a relief to realize we all have “traveling yoga mats” that ground us even surrounded by the smoothed out faces of South Florida.

And fortunately my father’s smooth tanned cheeks can’t hide his wisdom or take away his dignity in the eyes of his daughter. My father’s greatest challenge seems to be learning to depend on others. As he leans on my arm and shuffles slowly with his cane, who am I to judge? Accepting my father is living out his “salad days” in South Florida finally learning to depend on others is one of his greater accomplishments and teachings.

Crossing Over

Elle
February 24th, 2010

Whenever I hear the sirens of an ambulance or firetruck, I always feel the urge to cross myself.  Catholic-style.

I’m not Catholic.  Trust me.

my view from busIt goes back to when I lived in Dublin, Ireland.  I spent a semester at school there, working a crummy job at Hard Rock Café to make a little extra pub-money.  Each day, I took one of those double-decker buses into the heart of downtown always going immediately upstairs in hopes of finding a spot right by the front window.  It made the trip seem like I was taking a spaceship, hovering just over the bumper-to-bumper traffic and making it possible to take in all the sights.

From time to time, the bus would have to scoot and wiggle its way as far toward the curb as possible on the narrow city streets to make room for a wailing ambulance to hustle on past.  When this would happen, nearly every Irishman and woman on the bus would spontaneously cross themselves.

I took a road trip some time later with a friend of mine across the green quilt of somewhere-in-Ireland.  While driving down a rainy road through a small town, a firetruck raced past, narrowly missing my friend’s car.  He crossed himself before putting the car back in drive and continuing on.

“Why does everyone do that?” I asked, although the answer seemed obvious.

He looked at me, puzzled.  “Do what, so?”

“Cross themselves when an emergency vehicle goes past?”  I looked over my shoulder to see if the large truck had made it all the way down the narrow, stone-walled streets.

“Ah.  Well, someone’s in trouble, right?  Just a bit of a way to share a prayer of safe returns and may God take them, I suppose.”

Ever since then, I hear the sirens and I feel compelled to make the Sign of the Cross.  Because it’s not a habit for me, I can never do it without thinking of the pneumonic someone shared with me once – “Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch…” and by then, the firetruck is on its way and I’m still fumbling to show a sign of respect, love and prayer.

I have yet to find any other way to send a prayer that I feel is truly working.  But we all have ways of sending our love to exactly where it needs to go – whether it needs to go halfway around the world to a loved one on deployment, to your little ones on their first day all by themselves at school, out to an entire nation of people in crisis that you’ve never even met, or simply back into your own heart.  The simple nod of acknowledgement and honest sense of love is the most potent prayer ever uttered.

When I hear the sirens, I feel that it is not just me that is sending a prayer out to whoever needs it most – I feel that it is the practice of everyone I encountered on the buses in Ireland.  If that is the case, then it is every single person in each of their lives that they’ve learned it from… and everyone they learned it from… until suddenly, my awkward fumble of symbolic prayer is charged with the collaborative prayer of more than just my humble self.

Next time you hear the sirens, try it.  Send an anonymous prayer out and offer it up to whoever is in need of it.  Notice how it makes you feel.  And know that when you’re praying, I’m praying with you - and beyond that, so is the rest of the world.

Changing the Grey in the World


February 17th, 2010

Changing the Grey in the World

It’s the New Year and I always feel it is time to make important changes, like hair color. Buried in the rubble of earthquakes, health care, and the economy, it seems selfish to focus on grey hair as I read that the number of deaths in Haiti is close to double the population of Boulder. But there seemed something comforting about being able to change one simple thing on a cold Sunday afternoon. I turned to my daughter who is the expert on such things.

“Easy Mom, I’ll pick you up a good brown at Target.”

As my daughter handed me the box decorated with a beautiful brunette and the color, “dark ash,” in the corner, I started to lose confidence in my newest hairdresser. I was hoping for something a little snazzier than “dark ash.” But the risk outweighed our present financial situation and I was looking forward to some bonding time in my daughter’s bathroom.

It wasn’t exactly bonding time as my daughter donned her plastic gloves and started glopping the awful smelling hair dye in to bunches of my hair. Tired and sniffly, dying her mother’s hair wasn’t first on her list. But we got through it and with clear instructions to keep it on for exactly 20 minutes, no more, no less – I diligently sat hands crossed watching football with my husband trying to ignore the unbearable odor. I also had just read about the odor of the dead in Haiti and quickly got my priorities in order. Relieved to rinse it out and rub in sweet smelling crème rinse, the moment in the mirror had arrived. I had my brown hair back and I probably looked at least a month younger. My husband tactfully commented.

“Looks good to me, but I didn’t really notice your grey hair.”

I don’t think he notices his either and actually I find something comforting about his grey hair. We’re getting old together.

Great Clips was having their annual $7.99 sale so exactly how I clean the house before the monthly housecleaner arrives, I felt ready to get my hair trimmed. Now they wouldn’t say, “you know you could rinse that grey away and it would look great!” So along with a lot of men and young children I waited in line at Great Clips. The wait was longer than the haircut and with a snip, snip, my “do” was complete. I decided to ask if she saw any grey, just to see if my color was looking like the real thing.

“Oh you have nothing to worry about dear, I see no grey hairs!”

I wish that were true, that there really is nothing to worry about. The Dali Lama believes it is we as western woman who are core to changing the world’s problems. Our collective power will make a difference if we work together spiritually and politically to take action. So whether it is taking a yoga class, a run or washing away the grey on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps a bit of self-care is not so selfish. It reminded me that simple changes that make us feel good continue to be important since we as women have a big job ahead of us. There is hope for this world if we take it one grey hair at a time.

two sides of one coin.

shan
February 17th, 2010

If I AM who I AM… and simultaneously NOT who I am… who can I be?

I was just updating my facebook status. As I sat there, before my altar, in my heart, feeling tender at this dawning new day, and someone what melancholy in my mind and heart and body; I felt a wave of relief roll over me… and not leave me. I felt it blanket me and hold me. I felt held in relief, still tender, but held. I felt unafraid of all the hopes and dreams in my heart.

I began to think, to wander in my mind. I remembered, in our Anjali Restorative teacher training week or so ago, we talked, as a collective, about our unique gifts and curses. As we each spoke, we say two sides to one coin became wildly apparent in each person. Each gift is simultaneously a curse. Each quality existed in simultaneity in each woman. I marveled at the bravery as each woman spoke.

One woman’s creativity was her gift, but her inability to carry through to the end her curse.

Another’s curse was her grief, yet it served as a way to finally learn to feel and connect to others in a real and honest manner.

Yet another’s gift was her strength. Her gift was finding some pleasure in hurting herself and others when her feelings became to much to bear.

Layers of understanding rippled from the centers of hearts in the tight knit circle and the room lit with comprehension, compassion, and a richness of trust and understanding. I felt each woman FEEL held.

At a certain point, we learn to DO to get through and to accept. This can sometimes exchange that for BEING, for feeling, for participating in the unfurling of our selves through time and space.

I think this is why I have had an aversion to the word, “surrender.” For a longtime, I feel as though it felt like letting go in a manner of “giving up” or “giving in.” Today, blanketed in relieve I am awash with creativity and hopes and dreams. I am looking into the dreams and painting them and drawing them and writing them on the pages before me through my love of words and wandering.

My dreams are bigger than they once were. They are growing up. They are changing. They are allowing. They are inspiring me to be held and to surrender to what comes next for me.

Surrender, perhaps, means to feel. To really feel and then to allow that which is presenting itself, “change, “to give one “choice.” Choice is empowering. Feeling is empowering. Being instead of doing, wow, deeply empowering.

Change may be deeply painful sometimes, scary, and radically uncomfortable. However, its seeming curse is also its grace and its gift.

So now, here I sit, held, and truing myself towards what IS and feeling deeply. Today is the day, as is everyday, to choose.

To the richness of choice,

Shan

Happy Mahashivaratri and Valentine’s Day!

Elle
February 14th, 2010
Dear Loves,
I am deeply sorry about the cancellation of class this morning!  I was truly looking forward to spending a very special morning with you.  I thought maybe you might like to share at least my contemplations for class this morning.
As yoga springs from the inside out, we can open our heartbeat in radical ways without ever having to bend backward!  It just may not be as much fun!
Today is both Valentines Day and Mahashivaratri!
Both a celebration of the heart…  The first, a celebration of the way in which we connect with others of meaning in our lives, the second, a celebration of the deep, wild, unpredictable heart of the center of the Universe which pulses in our own heart.  When we listen to our heartbeat giving life, we are listening to that same drumbeat which structures, orders and creates the Universe and is a reflection of those things in our lives which bring us great meaning.
This morning, I look to the origins of my heartbeat, not just to the great origins from which all unfurls like the petals of a rose, blooming in the sun, but to the source of my physical heartbeat, my mother, father, grandparents, great grandparents.  I look to the lineage that has carried this rhythmic dance from the infinite and into me.  I turn toward those in my life that make my heart dance faster, spinning out of control into a lustrousness, and to the Teachings which let my heart slow, to the pace of deep clarity.  I look to my mother, whose words have always been, “Follow your heart, son.”  And I look to the words of the great Sufi sage, Ibn Arabi, “Seek the guidance of your heart, no matter what the opinion of others.”
What does your heart say?
How do we listen more to our hearts than to the opinion of others?
What does the heart have to offer us?
Perhaps, just perhaps, the first step is to follow further in the wisdom of Arabi, “stop doing what disturbs you and turn to what does not disturb you!”  Move from a calm and settled place, from a place where your heart is soft, your breath undisturbed.  This is the place where the mind is the most sensitive to the heart, where the mind falls in love with the heart.
When we are guided by the heart we are in a state of alignment, as when we come to a beautifully aligned posture, pain clears, injury heals and we become wonderfully steadfast and serene, even in the midst of wild abandon.  The state of being in the heart is unquestionable, ineffable and supremely lucid, filled with delight, wonder and expansiveness.
What does the heart offer us?  Nothing. Except connection, and in that connection, everything.  We all seek to be touched by those we love and to reach toward them.  We all seek connection to our source and the source of our heartbeat, to those who turn our heart wild and those who turn our heart buttery and smooth.  In contact with those whose measure can be felt inside.
It is said, that when we become familiar with someone, we cease to perceive them and only see our perceptions and beliefs about them.  Today of all days is the day to remind ourselves to start fresh, to see those we have loved over these years, breaths and decades in a new way, to allow them to surprise us and tantalize our hearts.
Maybe today, make an investigation into what and who calms your heart and what or who whips it into a delightful frenzy…  To be more sensitive, move from a place of calm breath, and skillfully approach your hearts longing, whether it be your beloved, a hot bath scattered with rose petals, the catch of a snowflake on your tongue or the catch of your tongue on your beloved’s!  Move from a place of a softened heart, and see what your heartbeat has to offer.  Soft or wild, it will delight you.
Know that I truly would have loved to spend this snow filled morning surrounded by your wonderful hearts!
Thank you all so much for your dedication, time and effort.  It is appreciated in all days and in all ways!

May we be authentically connected, may we be deeply touched, may we be sustained and remember the sources of our own heartbeat.

All my blessings on this Auspicious Day!
from Chris Muchow.

Colliding Worlds

Elle
February 14th, 2010

A light snow was falling when I began my run early Sunday morning. It was my husband’s turn to run with our golden retriever which would allow for a quiet solitude without leash and attention to our puppy’s wanderings. With ski hat and mittens I began running with more trepidation than usual. It was the morning after two planes had collided mid-air in North Boulder - falling to the ground in a ball of fire. Tragically, there were three confirmed deaths. I was uncertain how close the crash site was to the trail but presumed yellow tape would protect the privacy of a shocking and sad investigation. As I crossed through my familiar tunnel taking me east of Broadway, I was welcomed by police cars, ranger trucks and news station vans. It was a startling contrast to the usual scattering of other runners and hikers enjoying the quiet of their early morning meditation.

“Excuse me!” shouted one of the rangers, “How did you get here?”
I sheepishly apologized, “I’m sorry, I just was running.”
We had a quick conversation about the need for yellow tape as I explained my route and how many people would likely innocently come upon the scene. At 7AM they hadn’t had time to cordon off all routes but my arrival seemed to add something to their “to do” list which was likely a bother given the serious realities at hand. I offered to place the yellow tape farther back on the trail which he politely declined. In a naïve way, I also added that a group of runners could search the area rather quickly if that would be helpful. Like in the old fashioned days when a community would ban together to find lost children, outlaws or raise a barn, I pretended there was something I could really do to help piece together the devastating events of the previous afternoon.
“No thank you, we have it covered,” he politely answered - likely wondering why I would offer something so ridiculous.
As I turned to run back from where I’d come from, it felt strange to realize that sometimes being helpful is actually just running in the other direction. The snow was heavy by the time I returned home an hour later. The search for plane parts and the remains of the dead would be a challenge. It was just a month ago when I stood next to a friend who passed away as they gently covered her in a white blanket. A blanket of snow was now covering death once again. Individuals were suddenly lost who had likely just hoped for a day of recreation in the beauty of the Colorado Mountains. Like coming upon the scene on a morning run, the contrast makes us all gasp and mourn. So much recent tragedy close to home and across the world reminds us there really is no yellow tape to protect us from the truth of our powerlessness in the face of death. I wanted to reach out in one small way, so I did deliver brownies to the police at the end of the road, keeping onlookers away. I don’t know if they needed baked goods, but somehow it made me feel better. I guess we all must find our own way to help and heal so we aren’t left to feel we just ran in the other direction.
Priscilla is a student at om time Boulder.  Her new book, “Room to Grow” is now available at our boutique!  Stay tuned for details about an omlove book signing at our studio in March!

Announcing om time’s February Teacher of the Month: Meaghan de Roos!

Elle
February 2nd, 2010

Meaghan de Roos

Meaghan de Roos

Meaghan de Roos is one of om time’s phenomenal up-and-coming young teachers. A student of Seane Corn, Meaghan is very dedicated to inspiring her students and fellow yoga teachers to taking their yoga Off the Mat, Into the World through igniting a desire for sacred activism.

After years of struggling with self-image issues, including an eating disorder, Meaghan discovered the practice of yoga – and her mat became a sacred space for practicing the art of living. Meaghan’s classes are empowering, uplifting and challenging, set to a funky soundtrack of music – including, but not limited to some of her beloved reggae jams.

As regional representative for Off the Mat, Into the World, Meaghan works to inspire fellow yoga teachers in finding their passions in life and moving towards becoming a leader in the community. Meaghan teaches a 7-week intensive workshop at om time yoga, open to all yoga teachers. Stay tuned for details on the next round here at www.omtime.com!

For the month of February, all of Meaghan’s regularly scheduled classes will be at a rad $10 drop-in. Come and play!

om time Boulder

Saturdays 10:!5 – 11:45am

Sundays 12:15 – 1:30pm