Category: * The journey so far

On shadows: What pain feels like

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I’m writing about pain because today was a tough day, so I might as well go all the way.

Writing about love, light, purpose, path – that shit is easy and it always feels like it writes itself. On the opposite side of the spectrum, pain in any form or manner is far from eloquent. Pain steals your words away, demanding you to feel, feel, feel. Without meaning to, it steals you away from the present – it’s just too big and ungraceful that it can’t help but overpower every single moment. Pain is like a kid who doesn’t know his own strength.

As I write this, I recognize that the light in me is still and always fighting valiantly. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even be brave enough to own this time and write about it. This is something I am so eternally grateful for, the strength to ungracefully cling to light with a fury.

Because pain feels like drowning. 

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On teaching: Passing the one-year mark, learning how to love

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So, I gave myself a year.

I knew teaching yoga was something I wanted to do, in a different way than anything I’ve ever wanted to do before.

It may not have been obvious to anyone and it definitely wasn’t obvious to me but, up until that point, I was actually living on a weird kind of autopilot. As teacher training went on, suddenly I remembered what it felt like to have goals, to have something that I genuinely wanted to work towards. Woah. It was a “WOAAAH” kind of feeling and I would say it’s a lot like waking up. It’s hard to keep on describing but for sure, it was a state of hopeful being I wanted to hold on to and so I gave myself a year to see if there was any way I could build a life out of this exhilaration – regardless of disastrous failure and possibly wasting 365 days.

I’m so so happy to say that, I couldn’t have been more wrong 🙂

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On teaching: The winding road back to White Space

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I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts and wrap my head around the fact that… it’s all happening. Despite my fears and the constant anxiety that’s been my companion this June, my life is moving forward.

The plan was to get a teaching job in a studio by the time I got back from Myanmar and when I landed late May, this whole idea was still ridiculous to me. Yes I learned a lot at Bahay Kalipay and my teaching changed enormously but still… Wah.

I suppose to an outsider looking in, once you get your teacher training the natural process is that you immediately start teaching in a studio and live happily ever after in yoga bliss. The reality is, it requires a little more hustle than that.

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The Rolling Stones and the reason I do yoga

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Why do yoga?

It’s an easy enough, three word question that has stumped the hell out of me.

Most people will expect an answer that includes toned arms, incredible flexibility, peace of mind, or some combination of all of that. Yes, those are definitely valid reasons why and I’ll eventually write about all that scientific stuff but today, I’ll say, it’s more.

The fact that I’m a new instructor and I struggle to put into words what yoga means to me bothered me, so I soaked in it. And I ended up with this age-old adage from the Rolling Stones, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well you just might find you get what you need.”

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