Dear teacher,

I enjoy our time together – but as I take more and more classes, I notice a few things that I wish you realized.

I know that you want to wait for every last person who wants to come to your class, because it seems rude to start before everybody is in place. But some of us got here on time. And we want to start our class on time. Please don’t make us wait because someone else is running late. It’s less disruptive to let someone roll out their mat 5 minutes into class than it is to hold up the whole class until they’re all set up.

I know you want to go where the energy takes you, and let the class unfold with its own rhythm, but please keep an eye on the clock. Some of us have places we have to be once class is over. Being late to whatever we have to do next will definitely kill our yoga buzz for the day. It will also make it harder to let go of the future the next time we step on our mat in your class. Sure, it’s important to give us the full measure of the yoga class we’re paying for. Start the class on time, and it all works out just that way.

While it’s nice for you to demonstrate the pose, don’t lose sight of the rest of the room when you teach. If you’re the only one in the room who can actually put your foot just there, maybe we should do a different pose altogether. While I know yoga is a sport now, it’s not like you’re training me for the Olympics. Your personal flexibility or strength has less to do with your ability as a teacher than you might think.

Most of all, honor the space we’re trusting (and paying) you to hold for us. Help to keep it clean (You might not see the mess from standing up, but when you’re an inch from the floorboards in chaduranga, the dirt factor becomes very clear to us.) Pay attention to the music (An up tempo, catchy soundtrack is not going to help my mind to be still. It’s hard to level my hips when they want to boogie with the music.) And don’t forget savasana. It’s a big part of what makes yoga different from other forms of exercise. Just because you aren’t talking while it’s happening doesn’t mean you aren’t adding value to our yoga experience.

Thank you,

Your humble yoga student

In my head, cats live for at least 20 years. It’s not an entirely unreasonable assumption. After all, every time you hear someone talk about how long a cat lived, it was at least to 20, right? Until I went to the vet and saw this poster on the wall that says the average life expectancy for an indoor cat is 15 years. Mine are 16, 15 and 12.

However, the exterior data made me think back about the cats we had when I was growing up. We would have gotten my mom’s cat when I was about 2, and she died when I was still living at home, probably 16 or 17. We got my cat when I was 9, and she died before I graduated college. So it’s certainly not personal experience that gave me that idea.

So sometimes there is a gap between what is true in my head and what is true in the rest of the world.

The gap has shown up in other areas of my life. For example, I grew up believing that family was really important to my parents. The fact that my Uncle Joe was dead for more than a year before my mom knew it makes me suspect that there’s a gap there.

I had a gap in the area of religion, too. I always believed firmly that the crucifixion must have been a deviation from God’s plan. Because otherwise it seemed to me that there was something a little off about that planning process. (Learning about that gap changed my relationship to Christianity pretty profoundly.)

Clearly, the gap is there to keep me from facing information I am not going to like. And there’s a fine balance between facing things and keeping a positive attitude. When I lose a cat, it’s gonna suck – no amount of knowing it’s coming is going to change that. And, while pessimists are more often right, optimists are happier.

So the challenge is to reduce the gap, to live in both the present and the real moment, without getting so overwhelmed or pessimistic that I stop enjoying the present, real moment.

I have not eaten processed sugar or bread in two weeks now. My husband went on a detox diet, and I decided to provide moral support by giving up sugar and simple carbs along with him.

I got on the scale this morning and discovered that I have lost 6 pounds. In a week. I am extremely surprised, and very excited by this development.

I have been surprised, actually, by the relative lack of cravings I’ve experienced here. It almost feels like when I gave up diet coke by going on vacation and not drinking it for a couple days.

Just like that incident, what I crave is the structure around food more than the food itself. I miss being able to just drive through somewhere in 2 minutes when I want something to eat, instead of having to actually prepare my own food. But I do think my healthier diet is helping me to feel better…and I know that I have quite a lot of weight to lose. So here’s hoping that I can keep it up on the diet front, and that adding in gym time will keep things moving.

I would very much like to think that I am the kind of person who, when presented with a choice between attending a book club meeting with people I like to discuss a book I recently completed and sitting on my couch catching up with my sitcom viewing, would pick the book club meeting every time.

This is apparently not the case.

I have had a very long couple of weeks. I am wrung out exhausted. I was planning to go participate in a 108 sun salutation class and then to the book club last night, and instead I skipped it in favor of television. And i have no question in my mind that it was the right decision.

Because, as it turns out, the level of intellectual stimulation in my life needs to be balanced with an equal amount of not so intellectual stimulation. Like sitcoms. And while it’s healthy for the brain to learn new things and ponder and discuss new ideas, it is also healthy to laugh.

While this little epiphany does slightly change the way I look at myself, it does not make me nearly as ashamed as I would have expected. Because I feel like it’s in line with who I am. There is still a big ole’ part of me that wants to decide who I should be and take action to make sure I’m living up to the related ideals. But I’ve also been playing lately with the idea that instead of putting effort into deciding who I am, just maybe I should put some of that effort into instead discovering who I am.

Deciding who I am feels like it is based a great deal on who I want other people to think I am. Discovering who I am feels a lot more like it’s about noticing the reactions my body has to the things I do, and doing more of the things that feel good. Like last night, when I thought about going to yoga and the book club, something I’d actually been authentically looking forward to just a day earlier, I felt really tired. (To be fair, I was really tired, and more than a little sleep deprived at that. It actually occurred to me that driving across town to the book club and driving home by myself late that night was probably not the safest thing I could do, given that driving sleep deprived is as dangerous as driving drunk.)

Once I’d made the decision to do what actually appealed to me in the moment, namely sitting down on the couch and taking control of the remote and catching up on the funny shows, I felt better. Still tired, but knowing that I could just doze off on the couch at any time actually alleviated the dragging sense of exhaustion. I had a very pleasant evening.

And as for book club, I do expect to go back in January. I have no reason to believe I won’t really enjoy it…in a week when I’m not so sleep deprived that it’s probably unsafe for me to drive after dark. I am sorry that I missed the evening, because it would have been fun. I still think staying home and going to bed early was just the right choice in the moment. Maybe I can just be a person who sometimes doesn’t know what decision she’ll make until the situation actually presents itself. I can be all right with that.

Over Thanksgiving dinner, talk turned to Heroes. Everybody at the table loved season one. Nobody loved season two (for which Tim Kring has actually apologized .) When it comes to season three, the table was generally trending…away-ward. The writing is too complex, and confusing…and some people argued that the characters are doing things that don’t make any sense. (And, for my mundane (non-geek) readers, it is NOT silly to complain when characters with superpowers are acting unrealistically. The idea is to create a different world and play with figuring out how those rules would work. But I digress…)

Now, I’m the sort of geek who gets invested in the characters of my shows. (I get invested in the characters of books too…when I grow up I want to be Anne from The Sparrow .) It takes a whole lot for me to let go of characters I’ve become invested in.

This season, in addition to watching the show, I’ve been following a couple of its stars on Twitter Now, I’m really only a midrange geek. By that I mean that I get into it enough to go to sci fi conventions, but not quite enough to dress up for them. (The original geek test has me at 24.7% geek… but I might get additional points for knowing that.) Still, I enjoy hearing the backstory behind movies, shows and books I like. I love long-format interview shows, like The Diane Rehm Show or Fresh Air. I like knowing the tidbits from directors commentary. That sort of stuff.

And, it turns out, I like finding out through twitter that Greg Grunberg is hoping to get Wil Wheaton a guest spot on Heroes. And that the stuff they’ve been eating in the scenes with the precog is not tasty peanut butter, but non-tasty bean paste. I like these things enough to wonder if it’s part of the reason I’m really enjoying the show this season.

That makes me wonder, just a little bit, what the implications of this are. I’m not going out and signing up to follow any and every celebrity on twitter. Only the ones I already had an interest in from shows I like. And I’m not actually watching the show in real time, either. It sits on my DVR until I have a chance to catch it up. (I’m currently about 2 episodes behind…but actively thinking about when I’ll have time to catch it up, because I am anxious to find out about Daphne’s backstory, which Brea Grant twittered was in this weeks ep.

Does this make me a hopeless sheep? Or just a geek 2.0? I’m not sure. But, if you’ll excuse me, I need to wrap this up so that I can get to the tasty treats waiting for me on my DVR.

Movie going hint for the 22^nd century …

In this day and age, particularly if the movie you are seeing is even the littlest big geeky, you should stay until after the credits. As often as not, there’s something at the end – and when there is, it’s generally worth staying for.

And what are ya’ll in such a rush for anyway? Pee right before the movie starts, and stick around the extra 6 minutes. It’s part of the theater experience that you’ve paid top dollar for, so savor it.

Just sayin’

I had an epiphany today about the power of forgiveness.

There are a couple of things in my life that I’m not very happy about. I have the power to influence, but not control these situations. There is a legitimate argument to be made that things that are causing me pain are not fair, and are not my fault.

There is also a legitimate argument to be made that I have had a role to play in creating and perpetuating these situations.

I have spent a lot of mental and psychological energy assuring myself (and several other people in my life, to whom I may owe apologies for being an insufferable bore on these points) that I have been treated unfairly, and that I am not to blame. It’s not my fault. It’s not fair. I have a lot of anger over these points.

The anger, by the way, is getting me exactly nowhere. The frustration, also non-productive. It occurred to me today that I could just let it go. Leave it behind and move on with my life. The only problem with doing that is it means laving behind the need to be right – to be the wounded victim. It means letting go of what James Redfield would call my “poor me” control drama.

It would also mean forgiving – not just the other parties involved. That I can almost get behind…it plays right into the little martyred victim thing I’ve got going here. (Aso nonproductive, in case anyone’s keeping score, by the way.) The part that seems to be really challenging me is the need to forgive myself for the parts I have played in all of this.

To really forgive myself, of course, I have to admit to myself that I’ve been wrong – and that it’s not the end of the world. That I screwed up. I’m flawed. I’m a work in progress. So what. I need to let that go, too…to notice what’s instructive for the future, to just move forward with what’s helpful, chalk the rest up to learning curve, and choose to be focused on the positive and happy things in my life.

It botbers me that I am not sure I’m really entirely on board with this eminently logical plan. For now, I suppose I’ll have to simply take comfort in the idea that there is a plan.

I have been in major need of an attitude adjustment lately – and last night, I started my turnaround.

I was reading Martha Beck’s newest book, Steering by Starlight. I’ve loved Martha Beck’s work since Breaking Point, (Even though she barely claims that one at this point, it really made a difference in my life.) I’m only a little way into it, but I can already tell Starlight is going to talk a lot about phenomenon my friend Jeff describes as out in “the land of woo” (It’s all right, I tell him, I have a summer home there. I like it there.)

She starts, as she always does, with some very practical advice. Look at what you want. Not the things you want, not the stuff The Secret tells you can get, like the money and the new house and the new car. But at what you really want – the mental state you believe you’ll achieve with all the things you covet. Then spend a few minutes imagining how you will feel when you already have everything you want. Believe that you are safe and beloved and blessed with abundance and that things will always end up working out all right.

Instead of just reading the book, I made myself do the exercise. It doesn’t take all that long, just a few minutes. But it works. I could feel the shift in my energy. I could feel the difference it made, letting go of my fears and imagining that things were already okay. As Erich Schiffman would say, I quit hassling myself for a few minutes. And it made a difference in how I felt.

All day today, I fell back into those old habits – the old samskaras of worry and frustration that I don’t have any way to prove that things were okay. And all day long, I tried to simply entertain the notion that, just maybe, it didn’t matter what I could prove. Just maybe, things were every bit as okay as they needed to be.

Just maybe, it might just work.

Thanksgiving is coming up and I find myself thinking a lot about gratitude.

As I say at the close of almost every yoga class I teach, “There is so much to be grateful for”. It’s true. I am grateful for my husband. I am grateful for my cats, even when they annoy me, usually by wanting to snuggle when I need to work. I am grateful for my friends. I am grateful for the mint plant in my office, and the fact that I’m finally managing to keep some sort of plant matter alive in there. I am grateful that Gateway sent back my computer in working order, so I have my own personal laptop back.

Still, there are some things I know I should be grateful for, but I can’t quite get there in my heart. I know I should be grateful for my health, but in my heart I am pissed off that I haven’t been taking better care of myself. The truth is, I am still having trouble finding the balance in my life, and the things that slip are still the things that feel like they should float to the top of my list. Like taking care of myself, and staying connected to friends, both of which I’ve done a miserable job of the last six months.

I am grateful to have a couple of extra days off coming up next week. Now my challenge is to keep from being so tired and pissed off that I waste them. Wish me luck!

I got the nicest note in the mail yesterday. One of my yoga students had the kind and generous impulse to write me an actual letter, from a hotel in Hammond, IN where she was staying on a business trip, to tell me that she had thought of me that day and had really enjoyed the yoga class she’d been in the previous night.

I have a lot of kind impulses, but I’m not that good at carrying through. I want to change that. Writing letters to people to thank them is kind not only to those other people, it is a way to be kind to yourself. Expressing gratitude is shown to make you happier.

I saw another kind thing recently. My friend Kate walked out of a yoga class and spontaneously said to my friend Rhonda “Do you have someone in your life who tells you that you are beautiful?” It was a kind thing to say, and I bet it made Rhonda’s day. (It’s true, too, by the way…Rhonda is staggeringly beautiful, and she has this glow of positive energy around her that just enhances the effect.)

I have thoughts like that, but more often than not I don’t actually say them out loud. I am inspired to do more of this sort of thing. Sometimes the universe shows you examples just to remind you what you meant to do.