The Sum Total
The more work I do in Yoga, the more I realize that my focus is to help people realize their greatest, most expansive & ideal selves…to permit them to dream bigger than they ever thought acceptable, and then to pursue those dreams with unflinching confidence and determination. Whether these dreams embody one’s desire to live free of insecurities, or whether one dreams of being on a stage in front of tens of thousands of people, the road to realizing our greatest hopes is the same. In this era of shameless self-promotion, driven by the irrational hunger for fame (often with nothing to offer in return once the fame is achieved), we are conditioned by society and the media to focus on our selling points…how absolutely fantastic we are…how marketable, how picture-perfect, how dumbed down we can allow ourselves to get in order to be adored and devoured by the masses. It is exactly the flipside to this approach that fascinates me and which I encourage those who hear what I’m saying to pursue…to focus on what makes us different, what is unique to each of us, often tapping into that which remains buried under layers of defense mechanisms and insecurities. The traits and attributes that are specific to us as individuals (and that may have at one time or another been a point of embarrassment and shame) will largely determine how we are remembered, and it is in nurturing these differences that our greatest potential often unfolds.
Without You…
The role of the students in our world of yoga is often discussed from the point of view of the students themselves, but rarely do we hear a teacher discuss it from their own perspective…so here I am 🙂 I know that on some levels, especially those that refer to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 2.7 & 2.8, the teacher should assume a purely objective stance in regards to his or her students, but to not communicate my thoughts on the matter would be doing an injustice to my students.
Raise Your Glass If You Are Wrong (In All The Right Ways)
Back to today’s class. I’ve decided that the way I can make a difference, and the way I’d like to think that I do, is through my blog and my classes. And so today’s class is dedicated to all those who have felt or have been made to feel like outcasts. The freaks, the losers, the geeks, the undesirables. I always felt like I was on the fringe, and I gravitated towards others who felt similarly. And understand this – without these people, the ones who strive to feel like they belong somewhere but whose left brains and society continue to convince them that there is no such place, we would have no art. We would have no literature. We would have no cinema. We would have no technology. We would have no beauty. These are the people whose desires to see truth and convey it, to push boundaries of what is deemed “acceptable” and “palatable”, make our world a better place.
The Whole Nine Yards
I’ve realized that it is, without question, my (at the risk of sounding redundant) responsibility and obligation to offer up all I can to those who are receptive, to provide tools to encourage and promote an examined life, one devoid of self-doubt and self-nagging, one that can demonstrate how even our most overwhelming and confidence-destroying insecurities are illusions…tricks to keep us down, to keep us from becoming our ideal selves. And how even those fears and worries are actually uniting…because no one on earth is exempt from these thoughts. It’s only those of us who understand that only by agreeing to those fears, by buying into them, do we let them win.
The Examined Life
The concept for the project has been with me since that first sleepless night, but has recently brought itself into the forefront of my thoughts and plans. Not only have I had repeat performances of that first night, with actual images of the project appearing in front of me, but with help from the Lululemon Ambassador Summit’s workshop on goal-setting and peer-to-peer goal counselling, I’ve been able to whittle down my vision. And so I now come to you all.
Blink
I’ve been home for a full week after having spent 21 days in Spain and Portugal, and the whole process of travelling and coming home has once again given me food for thought. Years ago, when I worked in retail and had an impending vacation approaching, I would find myself at the top the of the flight of stairs in the store thinking about how fleeting every moment was. In what felt like the blink of an eye I would find myself in England, or Greece, or Eastern Europe, long enough to have a series of fleeting moments (all of which I would make sure to store in my mind when I consciously took the time to be present and aware). Said series of fleeting moments would last long enough so that I would get used to my surroundings, and in the blink of an eye, I would find myself back at work at the stop of the stairs reeling from how quickly the events transpired and how much of an observer I felt like in my own life.
When Everything Aligns
Do you ever have those moments when everything seems to fall into place? When you suddenly look around and see everything that was there all along, but the lighting is somehow different…there’s a certain clarity or focus that brings everything down a notch, into a realm of peace and silence….I seem to be having moments like these more and more this year…moments where I feel perfectly connected to the sky above me, the ground below me, and the people around me.
The Newest (business) Model
The past week has been somewhat of a cross-country whirlwind for me…I left Montreal on Monday for Vancouver to attend the 1st (hopefully) annual Lululemon Ambassador Summit, an all-expense paid trip organized by the Canadian retail giant. Along with 119 other ambassadors from all over North America, I was flown out and put up at a gorgeous hotel in the downtown core of the city, where we spent the next few days attending lectures from keynote speakers and participating in goal-setting, social networking, and other inspiring workshops…all orchestrated by Lulu, all to ensure that we, as the faces of the company in our respective communities, were living our best lives possible.
Quickpost 07/28/2010
I know I’ve said it before, but humour me…it’s all about the breath. Without a long, even, steady, nourishing breath, the practice becomes a test in endurance, seeing if the body will carry us through the series of postures and sequences without giving up…and with an unsteady, erratic breathing pattern, giving up is inevitable. The body cannot function on a breath that doesn’t serve it, so this week I’m asking my students to try and tune me out. I’ll keep my instructions to a minimum, but will constantly direct everyone back to the breath.
In Our Hands?
Ever since I made the decision to delve into the world of Yoga as a career, I’ve found myself on occasion contemplating the concept of free will versus fate or destiny. When I worked in retail management, opportunities presented themselves to me as I first began making my way in that industry, and due to my age and inexperience, I assumed that life would continue to unravel in a similar fashion…I would continue to follow the paths offered by these opportunities, and all would be rosy. After allowing this philosophy to guide me through 13 years, I found myself lacking any sort of satisfaction or contentment from my professional life, at which point I decided it was time to retreat, regroup, and rethink my approach to my own life.