starrywhorls

[starrywhorls]

The Yoga of Forgiveness

 "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." -- Buddha

I have a hard time with forgiveness.

My experience is that anger and forgiveness are intrinsically linked. Many spiritual and religious doctrines vilify anger, but like all things, it has a purpose that can even be healing in nature: self-protection and self-advocacy in the face of oppression and abuse.

 The problem arises when the anger comes from a place of reaction to something in the present that does not actually represent a threat of oppression or abuse. It is a reaction to what is perceived, rather than what is real.

In this case, it's a reaction to emotional pain, regardless of the source. And then the anger is turned inward, against the self.

I’ve seen so much shaming (on both sides) in response to the anger that others are expressing about the state of our country and the world. The fact that we’re angry is good: it shows that we’re engaged with the world and we are attached to something better, something more in alignment with our values and viewpoints.

But when anger is paired with dehumanization, it turns to hate.

This is the key to unlocking hate, and the call for the wholehearted social justice warrior to drop arms and move toward forgiveness. We must remember that those we are angry at are human, not monsters. They are confused at best, and in deep suffering themselves, at worst.

It’s not an easy task, even for those of us who are deeply committed to a regular mindfulness practice.  It’s not an easy task when there is still so much pain, suffering, inequality, hate, and violence actively infiltrating our lives and our media. It’s not an easy task, when forgiveness seems foolish, even irresponsible.

Forgiveness is a deeply personal practice, and to begin, we must be ready. We must be willing to recognize that some part of our anger is hurting us as we clutch it, rather than protecting us as we hurl it at others. If we don’t, then we aren’t ready. And that’s okay, we cannot make ourselves forgive if we are still suffering.

Often, when there are acts of hate and oppression, they come from fear and ignorance, and sometimes mental instability. These things are not evil and terrible in and of themselves; in fact, they are very human experiences.

Defusing anger is a practice, and one that for me is inconsistent at best. The best success I’ve had is utilizing pranayama (breathing exercises) and creating a habit of not personalizing the thing that is angering me.

When I assume something that has happened is a personal affront/attack (and one that was intended to goad or injure me) I go from 0 to 90 rage-monster in milliseconds. Defensive measures engage, and it’s hard to stop the momentum of anger before it overwhelms my limbic brain completely.  I can’t think or make rational decisions, then. I am all emotion and suffering!

The best and most effective antidote to anger and the signpost toward a path of forgiveness is mindful self-compassion.

What does self-compassion look like? How do we begin to work with it when we are so twisted up in anxiety, fear, or anger?

The first step comes with feeling, recognizing, and understanding how much suffering we’re experiencing when we engage in habitual reactions of anger, fear, or anxiety. We allow the feelings to exist without leaping to action, or doing something about it.

Our animalistic sides would like for us to leap into action! Jump into the fight! But this doesn’t serve our higher purpose. We want to make the best decisions we can to effect change. So, we abide with the uncomfortable sensations that arise without acting on them.

We give ourselves the experience of cradling our feelings of suffering, imagining the wound we feel as a small wounded baby animal. We self-soothe and open ourselves to fully allowing the emotional sensations to wash through us. We practice breathing in and through the emotional sensations.

Perhaps we find a safe and quiet place to emote, to cry, to scream and yell (not at others, but just to release the emotional tension).

We take care of ourselves and rest, take a break, go for a walk, work out,  play with a pet, talk to a friend, create art. Maybe we do something soothing for our bodies, like drink a cup of tea, eat some chocolate, take a bath, get a massage.

When the sharp edge of emotion has passed, then we can be curious about why it arose in the first place. We can bounce the experience off someone we trust, we can journal about it, we can exchange ideas with someone who may have had a similar experience.

This is the place where we can make our best and most effective decisions for change. Here, we can compare this experience to the past, and weigh for ourselves the best course forward toward healing.

At the end of the day, forgiveness is the call to recognize that the things we reject in others are often a mirror of the things we reject in ourselves. Perhaps it’s that we work so hard to overcome the qualities in ourselves that we see proudly displayed in others that bothers us.

Regardless, healing the world and our country starts with healing ourselves. And it begins with forgiveness.

[starrywhorls]

WYMTT - Gaga: Five Foot Two

What Your Massage Therapist Thinks - Gaga: Five Foot Two

I struggled (albeit briefly) to figure out how to stay in my lane as a therapeutic massage and yoga practitioner as well as mindfulness coach, but also to allow myself to be a multidimensional human being and share what inspires me and what is culturally relevant.

Hence the divergence from my typical topics: one I foresee becoming a regular installment and a break from the litany of purely professional blogs. I think of it as the in-depth philosophical conversations I sometimes find myself in during particular sessions with clients.

 I am human, I contain multitudes. So do you. And so does Stephani Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga. 

At first brush, I couldn't help but compare Gaga: Five Foot Two to its cultural predecessor, Madonna's Truth or Dare. Lady Gaga's cultural acumen and self-awareness is exacting, and cuts like her diamond heart.

Gaga addresses the comparison between herself and Madonna in the first ten minutes of the documentary:  "I'm an Italian from New York, so if I got a problem with somebody, I'm gonna fucking tell you to your face.  My problem with Madonna is that she's never looked me in the eye. Telling me that you think I'm a piece of shit through the media is like, a guy passing me a note through his friend. Fuck you! Where's your friend? I just want him to push me up against the wall and kiss me, you know? So, same thing with Madonna: I just want her to push me against the wall and kiss me and tell me I'm a piece of shit."

This transparency and raw bluntness is a theme that runs throughout the documentary, coupled with adroit shadowing and filtering of Stephani's deeply personal journey throughout the production of her studio album Joanne and culminating in her Superbowl Performance.  It reads like a professionally produced Instagram live, the conscious self-promotion screaming, "I'm authentic. I'm raw. I'm human."

Director Chris Moukarbel's style is at once bootleg and glossy; shaky shots interwoven with steady cam precision. The lighting is always perfect, the mood is sympathetic, empathetic, and at times, co-dependent. 

What's striking throughout is this mood. Aware of the medium of documentary's limitations, the content runs through the minutia of her life: creating music, acting on American Horror Story, promoting her album, prepping for the Superbowl. Her battles with her body's limits and Lupus are a major player as well as the conflict between being a strong, successful female pop icon and the impossible task of finding a mate who can stand the crucible of her fame and overwhelming work schedule. Her frustration with the latter is stark mid-film. At the apex of the film, over a dark screen, she sobs: 

"I just want to make music and make people happy and like, go on tour and have a family -- and I can just never get it all right at the same time. I'm always at a shoot with some fucking great news and my love life's imploded."

Her battles with her body and Lupus really came to the fore for myself, as a healer. I connected most strongly with her massage therapists, both personally and professionally. Due to the auto-immune condition, during times of high anxiety or systemic toxicity (which is the full content of her life as a famed musician: she drinks, she smokes, she takes drugs, she stays up late, has insomnia, has panic attacks, et. al.) Stephani experiences "flares" in her joints and muscles. Her whole body spasms and seizes, the muscles from her right hip (compromised from being broken three years ago) and pelvic floor all the way to her jaw and face lock down and squeeze, arresting her in blinding pain. During a particularly vulnerable scene, she lies on a couch in tears, covered in ice packs and self-conscious of how ugly pain is.

"Do I look pathetic? I'm so embarrassed. I don't even know what a childbirth will be like. Or if I can. I know, I think I can get pregnant. I just don't know -- what are my hips going to do? I don't fucking know." 

It's that sense of being betrayed by one's own body and being backed into a corner by the limitations of her high-powered life that struck my healer's heart. I ran through the litany of prescriptive advice in my mind and set it aside. Based on what I saw, she was in the best hands money could buy and was doing her best to do all the things, all the time. It's just that as fragile human beings, we can't always do as much as we will ourselves to do. At some point, we run up against limitation, whether it's self-imposed by our body's higher wisdom, other people's boundaries, or the rules of the game we're playing.

Lady Gaga doesn't do well with limitation, specifically her own. I'm sure no one else has this problem, and it's entirely unique to her, right?

I used to have a joke with my wife, who is also incidentally also an Aries, like Gaga.

Whenever I would give her license to accept the failure that inevitably comes from reaching her limits, I would say, "You're human. It's okay to rest."

She'd shoot back grumpily, "I don't say nasty things about you,".

I'm sure Stephani would respond similarly. But when you're dealing with a chronic illness such as Lupus, it's a game-changer. The way your live your life must shift, if you want to reclaim it. Part of Gaga's paring down to authenticity and transparency and her departure from high-maintenance costume and production seems to be part of this transition to "Spoonie" status.

In a way, Gaga: Five Foot Two is a coming-out story about her chronic illness and her battle to negotiate it just to live her life. In her transparency and vulnerability about this struggle, Stephani is at her most powerful, because we can all relate to being ill. But chronic illness is a different animal altogether, and her fame lends her a platform to educate people about this silent bedfellow that thousands and thousands of people live with and navigate every day.

Chronic pain and autoimmune conditions don't negotiate. They don't care if you are Lady Gaga or homeless. They don't discriminate between race, sexual orientation, gender identity, education, upbringing, past, creative talent, anything. They don't care. They just inhabit your body and demand that you pay attention, regardless of your plans. 

There's not enough that's said about this issue, both culturally and medically. We live in a culture where pain is addressed with pharmaceuticals first, and questions later (if ever). If you're sick, just rest and take care of it and get better. And don't talk about it, don't complain, just get on with life. It's hard for those who don't deal with these issues to wrap their minds around what it must feel like to live with chronic illness. But awareness needs to spread.

If you're curious about this issue and you want to learn more, read "The Spoon Theory" by Christine Miserandino.

[starrywhorls]

The Yoga of Failure

So, whenever I try new things, all of my buttons get pushed.

It's so soothing to stay in my comfort zone and do what I know I'm good at.

But conversely, there's a slow, bleeding line between comfort and complacency. And then a gradient between complacency and feeling checked out, numb to life, being a bit like the walking dead. 

And there's a corresponding bell-curve of a new direction: the thrill of anticipation between starting a new venture, the agonizing build to that first brush with understanding, the hint of mastery to come. 

And then the inevitable disappointment, the mistakes, the faltering and the falling, the failing that blossoms into deeper understanding and mastery.

I'm a recovering perfectionist. When I meet clients who are 110% invested in their growth and well-being, I warm to them immediately, because I understand wanting to go all in, wanting to check all the boxes, wanting to be the best at whatever it is I'm doing. 

But perfectionism has a dark underbelly, and that's shame and fear.  I give everything I have to a process, because I believe if I DO the things perfectly, then the results will show themselves in my BEING.

And so, if I can't DO perfectly, I can't BE the best. then where's the proof that I am inherently good enough, skilled enough, etc? 

I always want to skip the falling, the failing, the breakdown that blossoms into a breakthrough. Because let's face it: it's messy, painful, uncomfortable, and vulnerable.

But it's in our failures, in our risks and daring that we transform and truly level up.

That's easy to say, and even to acknowledge intellectually. 

But how do you embrace failure in the moment? How do you turn shit into gold? 

It starts with mindfulness. 

It starts with recognizing that the agony of failure and defeat, heart-rending as it is--- is an invitation to expand. Or to contract. And there's power in recognizing that invitation in the groundless moment right before your face hits the dirt.

If you don't fail, you're not risking. If you don't fail, you're not taking a stand for something. 

If you don't fail, you're not fully participating in life. You're not committed to being present.

It would behoove us to start celebrating our failures as much as our successes. Whether they're in the arenas of relationships, business, parenting, management, personal growth, whatever they are; the harder you fall, the bigger the lessons you've learned. 

What if we believed that the things that we failed at, we were supposed to fail at in order to become stronger, wiser, more resilient?

Think of something you've experienced failure with recently: what if that was somehow the best outcome, even if it doesn't feel that way right now? Can you tap into a bigger part of yourself that views that failure with compassion and love?

Failure makes us smarter, stronger, and more supple. And it's a necessary part of being a successful human being. 

[starrywhorls]

There's always sunshine after the rain... #spectrumyogatherapy #powerofpositivethinking #queeryogaaustin #rainbowlove (at Austin, Texas)

[starrywhorls]

–Albus Dumbledore

[starrywhorls]

This is the lucky clover cat. reblog this in 30 seconds & he will bring u good luck and fortune.

[starrywhorls]

*geeks out* #ayurvedalove #yogatherapyaustin 😍 (at Austin, Texas)

[starrywhorls]

I did the thing. #nottrump #thiselectionisajoke #vote2016 #politicssuck #gayinaustin #transintexas (at Saint Luke's United Methodist Austin Texas)

[starrywhorls]

Got to do some amazing work with @officialdaveywavey this morning. Stay tuned on his YouTube channel to see what we cooked up together! #gayinaustin #daveywavey #transisbeautiful #transgender #keepaustinqueer #gayyoutuber (at Austin, Texas)

[starrywhorls]

Dia de los Muertos

“Awakening is not a process of building ourselves up but a process of letting go. It’s a process of relaxing in the middle—the paradoxical, ambiguous middle, full of potential, full of new ways of thinking and seeing—with absolutely no money-back guarantee of what will happen next.” -- Pema Chodron

Today is my dead mother's birthday. The paradox is strange, and fitting that she was born on a day that celebrates death: Dia de los Muertos. 

She died this past April, with my grandmother following suit in June. 

There is a vast library of resources concerning death and grieving. I have only dipped my toes into the books, therapeutic groups, and friends who've had brushes with death, particularly that of a parent. It's a different experience, every time someone passes to the other side. Your relationship with their death is colored by the relationship you had with them in life.

And truly, you still continue to have a relationship with the deceased. It's an odd feeling, loving someone the same, even though they're no longer alive on this earth.

My mother's death was actually a doorway to a lot of deep healing for me. She was mentally ill, and it was a massive challenge being raised by her and healing from my childhood. It still is. Regardless of her shortcomings as a parent, I still loved her very much and did my best to forgive her for the mistakes she made, and her inability to be the parent I wished she could have been. I spent many years in talk therapy working on those traumas. 

With her passing, it seemed as if some of the old patterns I had held with my fear and pain began to loosen and relax. My self-doubts and flimsy boundaries around my self-care started to evaporate. My constant need to caretake everyone around me in order to feel lovable shrank. My shame around being such a unique person, as well as having definitive human needs gently began to dissolve.

As these things occurred, I began to feel as if I was waking up from a long hibernation of self-deprivation. An unprecedented amount of righteous anger and resentment flared up. I was seething, explosively upset on my own behalf for having made myself so small for so long in the face of my fears.  

I was angry at everyone. Literally every single person I laid eyes upon: my wife, my children, my dog, my neighbors, people in the coffee shop down the street, every single person driving on the street with me, friends, extended family, you name it.

I found solace in a friend who understood this kind of raging grief, and it was a balm to spend time with her and rage together, while simultaneously trying to find ways to numb the unpleasant feelings. 

It was hard to find other people, especially those close to me, whom I felt could really understand this mysterious grieving process. It was and continues to be, as Pema puts it, a beautiful ambiguous middle-ground, a groundless transient ocean of roiling emotion. Some days the waters are still, others they are churning. 

Before this, I've never fully comprehended the archetypal Death experience: that of complete annihilation of one thing in order to clear the way for another that is new, tender, green, and full of growth. 

We all know the groundlessness of grief in one form or another, whether it's the death of a loved one, the death of a relationship, the death of a job, the death of a belief, or a habit, or the death of some project. Everything comes to its natural end. And in the moment, it's hard to celebrate. What do we do next? And how do we do it? How can we dance when everything we have known before has been completely dismantled? 

In truth, when we encounter death, it is the perfect time to celebrate. We are invited to examine and release the parts of us which are no longer relevant. We are invited to change our approach. We are invited to surrender and stop struggling against the inevitable ambiguity of life. 

Death reaches out her hand and gives us the gift of the present moment, reminding us of our precious finite existence. She reminds us that all we have is now. That we are living on borrowed time, and we ought to make the most of each moment. 

[starrywhorls]

Ayurvedic Cleanse: Yoga Food for Thought

I am so tired of kitchari. I’m at the tail end of an Ayurvedic cleanse that I’ve kept to for the past 12 days.  For the uninitiated, an Ayurvedic cleanse is a period of about two weeks (or longer) that generally occurs at the beginning of the transition seasons: spring and fall. During this time, the cleanser eats only kitchari (a dish made of split or sprouted mung beans, basmati rice, spices, vegetables, and ghee), perhaps some steel-cut oats or other simple grain for breakfast, and fruit and nuts for snacking. Oh, and tea. Cumin, coriander, and fennel tea.

It’s not been one of my most disciplined cleanses. I’ve gone off cleanse for one or two cups of chai tea, frozen blended fruit (frozen foods are a big no-no when it comes to Ayurveda), granola, and one very contraband gluten-free bagel with cream cheese, which sounded better than it actually tasted.

Why would anyone eat the same thing for two weeks, you might wonder?

An Ayurvedic cleanse is more than just the sum of its parts. Eating the same thing every day definitely cuts down on decision fatigue. I don’t have to think about what I’m going to eat; I already know. Physiologically speaking, when you cleanse, or regulate your diet in a strict way, your body gets a rest. It’s hard work to digest the random assortment of things we throw in our faces on a daily basis. It’s especially tough for meat-eaters. It can take a few days to fully digest animal protein. It can leave us feeling fatigued, sluggish, and out of sync with our bodies and minds.

Ayurveda blames this state of being on a substance called “ama”. “Ama”, Sanskrit for “uncooked” or “undigested” translates not just to our digestive systems, but to our whole beings. Banyan Botanicals lists a pretty exhaustive list of habits and circumstances that can produce Ama:

A poor diet, which might involve:

Overeating or emotional eating

Improper food combinations

Especially heavy food

Fried food

Excess amounts of cold or raw foods

Highly processed or sugary foods

An excess of the sweet, sour, or salty tastes

A detrimental lifestyle (e.g. high stress, excess or inadequate sleep, lack of routine, excessive or inadequate exercise, etc.)

Irregular eating habits

Sleeping or eating before food is digested

Sleeping during the day (for some constitutions)

Lack of exercise

Repressed or unresolved emotions

Sound familiar? Me too. Hence the cleanse. A cleanse facilitates a space for one to digest not only the physical “undigested” aspects of our bodies, but also the mental and emotional things left undigested. It facilitates a space to rest and rejuvenate. Think of it as the ultimate “stay-cation” for your body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

Which brings me to being so tired of kitchari. My body is used to kitchari at this point, so it’s not a physical uncomfortability. And my tongue doesn’t mind it. In fact, though this cleanse, I’ve come to realize that my tongue actually has no preference whatsoever when it comes to food. Nor does my body, at this point. Occasionally I’ve fantasized about hamburgers or salad or cookies or ice cream. But at no point did I feel my body craving anything other than kitchari. I didn’t really crave kitchari, either. Especially in these later days! I’ve simply felt hungry or not hungry.

My taste preferences and cravings are all in my mind. For so long, I’ve used food and drink as an escape. I think it’s a common thing, this day and age. There’s so much to choose from. But these preferences or desires have nothing to do with the actual food or drink. It has to do with my beliefs surrounding what these foods or beverages will evoke in me. The belief that a piece of chocolate, or a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine will “take me away” from whatever is bothering me, or whatever I’m feeling or thinking. And it may, for a moment. But it’s actually the perception that heightens these effects, rather than the reality. At the end of it all, we are still back where we began. No food or drink can alter our circumstances, only our perceptions of our circumstances.

And that’s the key, of course. Altering my perceptions without the aid of sugar, or caffeine, or alcohol. And caring for myself in a sustainable way that actually supports a real shift of perspective and the resulting change that comes from it.

Whenever I broke cleanse and ate or drank things that were contraindicated, it had nothing to do with physically wanting or needing those things. It had to do with emotional restlessness, a phantom itch that distracted my focus. And after I broke cleanse, I didn’t indulge any feelings of guilt, I just observed how I felt afterwards. And always, the idea of the food or drink far surpassed the actual experience of it. I felt the same, afterward. And there were some days that I stuck to the cleanse, but ate more than I should have, in order to feel another sensation besides my evolving thoughts and feelings.

It's a dubious gift, to give oneself the experience of sitting in things undigested, rather than spending so much time (and money!) trying to avoid it. 

If you're interested in trying an Ayurvedic cleanse, schedule a free consultation with me to see if it's a good fit for you!

[starrywhorls]

Full moon feels, #cycling chases away those #scorpio crazies! #cardio #meditationtime (at Morning Star Trading Company)

[starrywhorls]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kelly Marshall (@kellymarshallatx)

#Repost @roaminggender with @repostapp ・・・ Meet Kelly! He's a white genderqueer transman, a yoga instructor, and "feminist as fuck". Check out Roaming Gender's first episode on our YouTube channel! (Link is in bio.) Don't forget to subscribe! #roaminggender #austintexas #atx #gendernonconforming #genderidentity #lgbtq #lgbtqia #queer #genderqueer #transman #yogi #feminist #webisodes #youtube #ftm #transgender (at Austin, Texas)

[starrywhorls]

Working out tight muscles from yesterday's workout with @workoutwithericanix. I'm kinda terrible at being an #instayogi, lots of strength nottalotta #rangeofmotion #queeryogaaustin #spectrumyogatherapyaustin #transformfitnessaustin (at Clarksville Historic District (Austin, Texas))

[starrywhorls]

#Repost @anipemachodron with @repostapp ・・・ "Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there's a big disappointment, we don't know if that's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure." #roomfornotknowing

[starrywhorls]

So grateful to be a part of this project! #Repost @roaming gender with @repostapp ・・・ A new episode of #roaminggender is up on YouTube! "How Has Your Gender Expression Evolved?". Link is in bio. Don't forget to subscribe! #trans #queer #ftm #mtf #gay #lesbian #culture #community #youtubechannel #lgbt #lgbtqia #agender #genderqueer #genderfluid #gendernonconforming #genderbinary #nonbinary #genderbender #bisexual #neutrois

[starrywhorls]

Tarot Cards during readings for others: Patience and understanding will help you get through this

Tarot Cards during personal readings: When 👏 will 👏 you 👏 learn