Maggie is a college yogini, dear friend, and phenomenal teacher both in her vinyasa yoga classes and in conversation

Isn’t it ironic that the things we need to do most, and sometimes want to do most, are usually the hardest? Since I broke a bone in my foot in a West African dance performance three weeks ago  (consoled, at least, by the badass diagnosis of a “dancer’s break”), I have all but abandoned my asana practice. My mat, which has been my rollable home and 2D safe space for eight years, has suddenly become a place of fear and pain.

Yoga always has acted as a mirror in my life. Not the superficial “how do I look” kind – rather a breath-sending, edge-finding, self-searching, divine and, on occasion, necessarily uncomfortable force. Lately, I am finding this reflection beyond uncomfortable. Lately, I unleash my mat for meditation, but I am so frustrated by my inability to move freely that it receives no more than twenty minutes of attention each day. Let me be clear. By no means do I define yoga as simply asana. In my life, yoga means: pranayama, meditation, asana, reading, coffee with a friend (the creator of this blog especially), music, sleeping, praying, crying, dreaming, dancing, sexuality, and of course, knowing when not to “do” yoga – because, as my dear friend Shira has helped me confirm, yoga is lived, not done.

However, I am realizing how much I still define my asana practice and my yoga teaching based on my physical ability and moves on the mat. I long for vinyasa more than a long nap, dark chocolate, or a fantastic orgasm, but I have not been doing the footwork (no pun intended) to bring myself this joy. Why? Because I’m scared of not being as able as I want to be, which is always true, by the way. I’m afraid of challenging myself to change what yoga is in my life, and on the mat. And I’m terrified to start over.

 This morning, I woke up and I felt my left forearm, where I have my first tattoo inscribed. I chose it during my yoga teacher training, and it remains a daily prayer and spiritual challenge. Abhaya– fearlessness in Sanskrit— my arm reads. To me, this does not mean BeABadassBatshitCrazySkydivingDaredevilFool. To me, this means practicing courage in the face of fear. Emanating love, including self-love, rather than fear.

I thumbed the jewelry I wear on my ring finger. After reading The Red Book by Sera Beak, I bought myself a simple silver ring with a lotus blossom imprint as a reminder of my commitment to my divine spirit, which always resides in me. With this ring, I established my determination to honor it, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part (or until we are reincarnated)… The lotus blossom symbolizes potential out of darkness, spiritual development, and new beginnings. With these prayers in mind, I threw on some spandex (observing but trying not to become attached to my atrophied right leg) and a Wesleyan t-shirt, wiped the dust off my mat, and got ready to kick some asana (trademark Shira Engel!). Today that meant: modified child’s pose, modified vinyasa flow, deep stretching, core work, savasana (which sometimes I forget can be my asana practice-duh!) and lots of breathing. Breathing can get me through anything, even meaningful tattoos. My body and heart felt so at home. I lost track of time, forgot my surroundings, let go of labels (dancer, yoga teacher, broken…) and simple was.

While I still long for the days when I can do all I want to do, these days are a potent and beautiful reminder of non-attachment. I am not my yoga practice, and I honor my body. Today I faced the mat, and the mirror of self-awareness that it inevitably reflects. Abhaya. I also honored the meaning of the lotus blossom, and I believe that, although I am somewhat broken now (okay, pun intended), I will flourish again in a new and even more powerful way.

 a year ago today, i was in paris. my dear friend and i rented out a flat for a week and embarked on a trip filled with independence and svadyaya (self-discovery). there is nothing like being taken out of a familiar context to bring you inward.

well, we weren’t totally inward; our flat in montmartre had internet access. as i sat at a teensy fold-up table, i checked facebook, seeing what parties in new york i’d be missing in favor of a walk along the seine at midnight. as fate would have it, i came across laughing lotus’s apt facebook status: “in 2011, i intend to….” we were to complete the sentence.

at that point, i had gone to laughing lotus only a few times so it truly does seem like my yoga life is cyclic in that i am now enchanted by their style and pursuing a month unlimited. i suggested to my friend that we use their facebook status as a writing prompt. 

those intentions have been on the back of my mind, but i did not remember them specifically. they are tucked into one of my thickest moleskines, fattened by napkins from my favorite paris cafes and cutouts from museum brochures. 

but then, on wednesday, that friend i went to paris with came to visit. and while it wasn’t the same, we tried to emulate that journal writing session we had in our montmartre flat in the grey dog cafe in chelsea. we wrote out our intentions for each other for 2012 and then our own intentions for 2012. 

as i look into the future, i am prompted to reflect on the past. to see what has happened in my yoga life and in all the other aspects of my life that yoga makes possible. so today, the day before the new year, i look back at my intentions from this year and see what has become of a year of tremendous growth.

in 2011, i intend to be open to trying new things.

• this year, i have tried new yoga poses (headstand, side crow, forearm stand) that have mirrored all the new i have tried off the mat: teaching, jumping from a swinging rope into a pond (i’m a city girl, i know), and new relationships.

i intend to laugh uncontrollably.

• i have learned to value feeling deeply, feeling alive.

i intend to do my yoga teacher training over the summer.

• i did my RYT-200, with three sisters yoga at the yoga collective.

i intend to host a party.

• i hosted a yoga party when i finished my teacher training, by teaching a class in central park and then having a picnic on the hottest day of the year. 

i intend to read a lot. 

• just check out the post to come.

i intend to send handwritten letters to loved ones.

• me & that friend i went to paris with have been corresponding all year!

i intend to have intentions for every simple and complex act.

• sera beak writes in the red book that setting an intention is like applying moisturizer to your day.

i intend to journal in coffeeshops.

• so much journaling in cafe grumpy, brew bakers, & joe!

i intend to have long conversations and develop friendships with likeminded people.

• my teacher training rapidly transformed this intention into reality. by day one, i found myself in a room of twenty-three people who were interested in what i am interested in. we blossomed together with that shared interest. then, when i returned to school, that kula grew with the likeminded yoga teachers on campus i am privileged to share these practices with.

i intend to live a spiritual life. i intend to dream big.

• the ritual, the people, the singing, the Love in my life today are beyond my wildest dreams.

i intend to cry when i need to. i intend to be a being of light and hope for friends, family, and strangers.

• crying can be healing. but big lesson learned from 2011: try not to cry alone.

i intend to be a present sister.

• now, both my sisters do yoga with me!

i intend to keep in close touch with my mentors and to be unafraid to put myself out there, even when i seem intimidated.

• earlier this year, i reached out to a master teacher who transformed my practice. we now talk every week. i have been introduced to truly dedicated yogis through her. and i am learning. always learning.

in intend to be more of a minimalist. i intend to eat fresh foods and drink good coffee.

• i will always be learning what this means :)

i intend to smile a lot and to wholeheartedly embrace my quirks. 

• it is my vulnerability, my weirdness, that bonds me to others, and that gives me a unique offering and Dharma.

i intend to breathe. i intend to compliment other people and to have pow-wows. 

• i certainly breathe deeper now than i did a year ago. and it is through deep breaths that i am able to relate to others and it is through relating to others that i am able to remember to breathe in the first place.

i intend to have clarity and take steps toward a beautiful future.

• this was aided by my creation of a vision board.

i intend to study, to have fun, and to be fun by not taking myself so seriously.

The Traveling Yogini is back in action! I just returned to my university for a night of senior week after an amazing three days in Boston, where, unlike my last Argentine Traveling Yogini posts, I was doing a specific yoga tour. Yoga, in all senses of the word, includes asana (this is where the classes and yoga studios I visited come in), a sense of kula/community (the feminist-anarchist collective I stayed at), svadyaya/self-reflection (hello amazing amounts of journaling in adorable cafes), and lila (play, so…hanging out with the wonderful friend I had the opportunity to visit).

 This post documents my first day, beginning with a journal entry I wrote at Thinking Cup, a cafe I went to straight off the Bolt Bus when I missed the original yoga class I was planning on taking. This ended up getting way more self-reflexive than anticipated, but where better to post that than Tumblr?

Two summers ago, I was in possession of and possessed by the Yoga Pass Book, which provides passes to studios all over New York and in parts of New Jersey. This meant that, with an unlimited Metrocard and yoga mat, anything from Anusara to Jivamukti to Bikram was possible. It also meant that my primary interaction with each studio was with their front desk. In a sense, it limited my sense of community while giving me a phenomenal education and immersion in the NYC yoga world. The following summer, I did my teacher training and found a community I could travel with, no longer feeling like a yoga nomad as I traipsed from studio to studio. Then, during winter break, I got a glimpse into what it is like to be a regular someplace when I did a month unlimited at Laughing Lotus. Every time I stepped into those orange and pink doorways and that graffitied dance hall, a sense of calm and peace would fall over me, much like the sense of calm and peace that washes over me when I walk into Brew Bakers, the cafe I am a devout regular at in my college town, and hear the Putumayo music playing at just the right tempo.

Maybe it’s because I never went to church or because my family hopped around from New York synagogue to New York synagogue like Jews searching in an urban desert of concrete and sirens, but the feeling of returning to sense of familiarity is a new one for me. In many ways, this feeling is what my yoga practice has brought about lately. 

As a college sophomore, child of multiple households/divorced parents, and wanderlust traveler of cities, my life is in a state of perpetual transition. Maybe it will always be this way; I’ve heard, after all, that the only permanent thing in life is change. Yet, no matter where I am - in a college dorm room, the living room of my Manhattan apartment, a jam-packed studio, or in a belly dance center in Buenos Aires - every time I step on my mat, press my heels into downward dog, and inhale deep into my heart, I come back to the same internal space. I return home, to a sense of stability that is always there, even and especially when I am blindly searching for it.

My mat and I have been to countless cities, yet with it, I am not a nomad; my home just so happens to be two feet wide and six feet long. In the past year alone, I have proudly carried it to Toronto, where a lovely Ashtanga studio reminded me I was okay while nursing a broken heart, the stability of the primary series providing me with a sense of alright-ness. I carried it to Middletown, Connecticut, where it was used by my first students who didn’t have their own. I carried it back to my beloved New York studios when I needed to create my own retreats away from campus life. I carried it to Seattle during the biggest Northwestern blizzard of the century and, bootless, I trekked with it in the snow to the welcoming Anusara studio in Capitol Hill, right as the style’s big scandal hit the press. I brought my mat to a hot yoga studio in Ithaca, which stirred up some major tapas, and I brought it to a field of green that overlooked the Niagara as my baby sister slept in her stroller. I brought my mat to Buenos Aires where the familiarity of Sanskrit gave added meaning to the Spanish I was still learning. I toted my mat to New Haven where, backpack, coffeecup, and strap, I took the sketchiest two-mile walk of my life (this says a lot - I am from New York) to Fresh Yoga to make it to Dana Flynn’s Radical Movement for Yogis workshop. 

Now, most recently, me and my mat have traveled to Boston. And, not to overdo the personification, but my mat positively adores the rain, while I can’t say that for myself just yet. I am trying to embody the fierce and focused mindset that accompanies warrior poses as I walk the streets with just a backpack filled with dry roasted edamame, my most boob-enclosing yoga outfit, iPad, and headphones. I love cities because even though the Bolt Bus arrived at South Station half an hour late and I missed the hip hop yoga class I was planning on going to, there is another class I can make. So, in the meantime, I find consistency and home in an adorable cafe, which serves Stumptown coffee and quinoa sandwiches and where the baristas are singing happy birthday to someone, and I am filled with a feeling that everything is and will be okay - transitions, change, and all…a feeling I like to call Home.