A blog written like I like my honey: raw and unrefined

The Last (crazy) Straw

This morning I woke up to give the boys glasses of orange juice for breakfast, and we started looking for their crazy straws. They had accidentally made their way into the dishwasher, and one of them melted out of its crazy shape and into another, different crazy shape. 


Have you ever seen that Facebook meme about “reasons my kid is crying?” Well, this would make it on the list of things that are seemingly little but that means so much. Instead of letting my kid have his small moment of sadness over the crazy straw, it was the last crazy straw for me. 


Parenting (Twins) is. relentless. Unrelenting. No amount of yoga or breathing changes the need for a deeper dig into the well of available patience and compassion it requires.

So, in these crazy straw moments, my mind starts contorting, and all of the events of the past five years come slithering toward me...in the most beautiful form of this fucking. crazy. Last. straw.

The incredible number of times I have been asked the same question, “how long did it take for you to recover from birthing twins?” My response is usually, “I am still recovering.”

I have turned into a crazy straw in a dishwasher, melting into and out of my original shape, mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally.

The straw took on the shape of the macrocosm.

The incredible sadness I experience when I look at what’s happening to Ma. 


Mother Nature… 


How pissed off she is…

{Pranayama Instructions:
Inhale: Oregon's banning plastic bags
Exhale: Oregon's banning plastic bags
     Inhale Exhale Inhale Exhale 
Repeat
 "Enlightenment is never as far away as we think. It's in the next breath. - Ram Dass}

The only book I’ve read in the last five years from start to finish is Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. The aspect that is staying with me is how much human beings have fundamentally shifted the planet. And now the planet is fundamentally shifting us; away from riverbanks and floodplains.

There’s no crazy straw big enough to divert the water... from an over abundance of crazy straws, changing the sea. 


None big enough to redistribute it to the (king of) carrot flowers.

One of my favorite texts from the Yoga tradition is the Saundarya Lahari. It’s a description of the form and sound of the goddess. Sometimes it translates as, “beautiful wave.” My teacher has translated it before as, flood. Inundation. No current moving so fast and furious, it’s not a conversation about sink or swim.

Some of the things I’ve been trying to let go of in the flow of incessant parenting, and bathe in the current.

They’re only five now.

I’m tired.

I have no reserves.

I am not a perfect parent. Neither am I a perfect partner.

Just because I find the words and tools to help people with their struggles , doesn’t mean I don’t have them. Struggles.

I am an imperfect human being.
And, father sky wisdom, Beauty can begin where perfection ends.

So I sit for a minute and watch the rain, listening to the crazy straw off my spine sing its nervous system sounds.

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1287545-2017-solar-eclipse



“Between the moon and sun    
This life is never done”   -- Trevor Hall

Two years ago my family moved out of the city, to a quiet little village in the Mohawk Valley of Western Oregon. Each day, as my children and I grow and change, we wake up to bird chatter, and, after the Spring rains come, at night we fall asleep to frogsong. It’s the slowest pace of life I’ve known in some time. It’s given me new eyes on the passage of time, and on the challenges of daily life. In Sanskrit, the term for a meditative vision of sublime light in moments of intense beauty is “darshana;” to see; to have insight.

After years of moving through [life and] yoga poses with a kind of ferocity, my mind in the books, biomechanics and philosophy of it all... a return to a closer relationship with Nature has given me new eyes on reasons for Hatha Yoga practice.

How many Sun Salutations have I done? What do they give to my being? Have I remembered to remember that traditionally, we face east to greet the mystical-normal-yet-daily rising of the Star closest to our planet?

This past winter, we ran outside to catch the last of the sunlight on the shortest day of the year, watching the sun paint the sky fuchsia, asking, What kind of awareness arises with this darshana, these eyes on the sun?

Then, with my back to the east, one of the kids shouted, “Mommy! Look at that big beautiful moon!!” We all turned around at the moment and saw a colossal full moon rising above the cloud forest, bringing forward the reflected light, ushering us into the darkness and inner work of night and winter. Asking again, what kind of awareness comes from darshana on the moon?

And what of moon salutations? How do these sequences of postures offer an opportunity to play out the celestial narrative within?
​
The workshop I’ll offer at Yoga Yoga in June, 2019, represents a focus on this deeper relationship to the stories and poetry of the language of Hatha Yoga, and to the movement of sun and moon within the matrix of philosophy, asana, mantra and the breath.


Here is a brief excerpt from the course material:
 
“In order to understand the purpose of practicing Chandra Namaskara, that is, the energetic and physiological benefits, let’s first compare and contrast the philosophical and metaphorical ideas of Sun and Moon in Yoga, subtle body anatomy, and later, in Indian mythology.
 
The sun is an embodied, living entity/energy/myth within the physiological practice of yoga asana. Heat represents the sun’s energy in the body. Much mythology refers to the Sun as a masculine-encoded energy. Awakening, in terms of solar energy, means movement toward the idea of enlightenment as an “up and out” model. The sun mimics the outward flowing energy of the heart. Or, rather the heart mimics the sun. Sun dominates the upper body, chest and arms.
 
The moon is also an embodied, living entity/energy/myth within the physiological practice of yoga asana. Cooling represents the moon’s energy in the body, and is feminine-encoded. Moonlight is the reflected light of the sun. As above, so below -- lunar energy dominates the lower body, the lower back, the “pit of the belly” (reproductive organs, womb), the legs and feet. Lunar practices move slowly, and in broad arcs, cycles or circles (mandala.)”

[October, 2015]

Two small boys, a new marriage, a wing, and a prayer to all the gods who would listen--my husband and I lit out from Austin, Texas, to Eugene, Oregon, to live with my husband's parents.

Husband's got a Ganesha tattoo, an expired massage license in the state of Texas, and a bikram yoga valedictorian's trophy. He's also got a coupla decades' distance from most of an undergraduate degree from a Christian College, where his father was dean and a Jungian, Evangelical Christian family psychologist, mother a devout wife... the mom and dad we headed off to see to receive daily help. We landed in Eugene in an empty house, new to the whole family. The next day I left for 66 degrees North Iceland for 10 days.

Ever heard of the 'planning fallacy?' My dear friend who recently graduated from Social Justice school took a requisite psychology course where, she told me, she learned of such a thing. It's likely familiar to you... things almost always take way. way longer than we think they will.

Flash forward. Winter Solstice 2017, and I'm standing with my two naked pagan toddlers in our new home in the Oregon countryside, miles from the suburban gilded cage we've been living in for the past 2+ years.

How can I begin to describe these years? Voila, an attempt at painting a picture.

I . have two small tattoos, piercings and ancient piercing scars, blood-red-dyed french sheepskin wool boas and runway stilettos, much of which I often wear while I'm singing OM in front of bronze statues that look like demons but are really divine mothers. Caked-on eye makeup, and an aversion to cake. tired eyes. Stacks of books about feminist art and yoga and giving birth under rainbows and waterfalls with unicorns. Photos of trips to India and photo albums full of memories of a past life with a beloved former husband and the friends who I lost when I left. 

They . have Big Lots nativity scenes and faux wrought iron lamps. Picture frames that hang empty on the walls, waiting for them to emerge from mourning the death of many friends and family, as they approach their golden years. Church every Sunday. Immense relief that Obama is no longer president. More than 50 years of marriage. Sons and daughters who are ministers at various and sundry megachurches. They're kind, funny and generous people.

So, we chanted to Durga in the toy room, and Gave Us This Day Our Daily Bread in the dining room.

... ... ...
​There is nothing wrong with me.

There is nothing wrong with me. 

I am healthy and whole. And a delicately balanced body mind. It took me nearly three years to admit to my family and my therapists that I had PTSD and Postpartum Depression. I take medication, and (now) I eat well, and practice yoga. And, I ask my circle of close friends, and my Bhairava husband, to Check Me if I get sleep deprived again as the boys progress and regress and get up in the night. Or if I'm feeling the stress of parenthood in general. Or, if I'm freaking out about the state of the nation and the planet. I call someone. I ask my friends and students to come to me, so I don' t have to drive or engage in the larger outside world, when I'm in anything resembling this liminal state.

Yoga is great. So is a vast and diverse network of healthcare professionals, Eastern and Western.

​While I did not know him, I was rocked to the core to hear about the passing of Buddhist scholar Michael Stone. His brother eulogized him beautifully HERE. I immediately sent the article to my sister.

... ... ...
About 8 months ago, I called my parents, my mom, to ask her questions about our female ancestry. 

Douglas Brooks told us one summer, as an introduction to our kula talks on Shiva Nataraja (the dancing Lord of Yoga and the dance of life, the universe and everything), "When you look into the mirror, your face is a museum. How many of us in the room can name all four of our great grandmothers?" They all had entire lives about which we likely know little.

What was it like for my mom before she went on mood stabilizing medication--after THREE vertical cut c-sections, 2 miscarriages and a brother who died somewhat mysteriously. of pancreatitis. in San Fransisco. at age 28. when I was just three months old? [He had become involved with Sufism, and my dear sweet New England Christian family was freaked the fuck out about the Sufis showing up to ask for his remains. I don't know that whole story.] ​

I had just read a book my sister (bookstore owner, and therefore my personal "drug" dealer) sent me, on a whim, thinking I might like it. It's called Ancestral Mind: Reclaim the Power by Gregg Jacobs. Simultaneously, my father just completed his book on our family's ancestry. 

I realized how little I really knew about my mom's early years with me. I asked, also, about her mom, my maternal grandmother, who also had three children. And a WWII shell shocked veteran husband who came home and baby boom my mom and uncle (who died). And a propensity for booze. 

My grandmother, my mom said, was given so much medication that she had enough energy only to lie sluggishly and dazed, on the couch while my mom and cousins played on the Lake in the summer.

I don't know a lot about feminist theory, and I can't quote you much beyond a bit from 1/2 of The Feminine Mystique (one on a very long list of books that I'm half way through.) But I can say this. We say women are hysterical and have a history of removing the entire uterus, to exorcise the hysteria. 

There is nothing wrong with me.

... ...
My job as a yoga teacher, teacher's mentor, meditation and mantra teacher has evolved over the years. In ways that astound me. I've started sharing more of myself and my personal digestive processes of the teachings given to me. And, I've slowly started sharing versions of this story in small settings like the Philosophy and Mythology course, where I've kept company with 8 or 9 people, intimately, over a period of months. And, you know, we talk. About stuff.

So, as I was saying, my job as a yoga teacher and meditation facilitator has evolved, and increasingly, I find myself in a position where people are asking me about their meditative experiences. "Is what I'm experiencing "normal"?" 

I AM NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST. I DO NOT HAVE A DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY OR A CERTIFICATE IN YOGA THERAPY. I DON"T HAVE A COLLEGIATE DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY.

My "papers" are : a studio art degree in figurative oil painting and dance; two halves of a graduate degree in art education which don't add up to a master's degree and a certificate in Waldorf high school arts teaching. My alphabet soup is, E-RYT 500. I've been to Iceland, France, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain, Germany, England, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium. I've lived in Pennsylvania, New York, Paris, France, Colorado, Texas, Massachusetts, Texas, and Oregon.

And I regularly travel into the cave of my own heart.

I've been everywhere, man. I've been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota...
Wait. What? Gods Bless Johnny Cash.
​​
So. I am a mom (and a wife, a sister, a friend, a lover, a daughter, a granddaughter, a teacher and a student.)

When I was 10, my mom got me this beautiful little art print of a cartoon cat. It says,

"I am me.
I am just me.
I'm a little like other cats.
But mostly I am just me."

(The best you can to is to become yourself;
because everyone else is taken. -- Oscar Wilde)


... ... ...
I can only tell you my own story, and say, I got expert care. From medical doctors. From a former yogic monk. From a college professor who likes to talk and travel with friends to India. From a psychologist who specializes in Kundalini Awakening experiences. From a shaman. From my mom and dad. From my husband. From my yoga kula and friends. It takes a village. Don't suffer in silence. 

I think I'm still a decent yoga teacher, even though I couldn't breathe/pranayama and chant my way through a hormonal and chemical imbalance, awakened by the birth of my children, and set in my DNA.

So. Check in with yourself. Eat and sleep well. Drink more water than you do booze. Don't sleep with your computer or your i-phone in your bedroom. Turn off your computer and I-phone sometimes. Surround yourself with great company. Take medication when you need to. Exercise and do yoga. Love yourself, and

         Love your life. As Appa ( through Douglas Brooks ) says,
                         "it's the only teaching."


Call me if you have questions. Or come sit on my toy room floor.
​Love.

(Photograph of the stairs at Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. Hafiz quote.)



With Gravitas, Witchez.
​​Friday, the 13th of October


​
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Boys and Girls!
Cats, Dogs,
Dandies, Dappers,
Mammas, Papas,
​Lovers,
Philosophers, Artists, Scientists, Musicians,
Ghouls, Snakes and Monsters...

Friends & Students
Old and New:

Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth!

It's a veritable

Circus On Fire 

and it's called

___

​
 YOUR LIFE

___

Samhain [SOW-win], All Hallow's Eve, Diwali, Trick of Treat, Harvest... is a time when, astrologer Chani Nicholas tells us (please read and see Huff Post article), the veil between realities--between life and death--is thinnest. This is a time when the Wind (Vayu) whispers the stories of our ancestors in our ears; when the ghosts of the past appear.

Now is a time to Bring Out Your Dead.

When the light outside fades and darkness comes, Yoga offers us a spectacular seat (asana) at the most spectacular performance around :

Body, Mind & Heart In Conversation

The birth of new things, from the death of past and possible future selves.

What's hiding in the dark?

We can shed light on things that we may not want to see in the "florescent light of an operating room." (John O'Donogue, Anam Cara.)

​Who are we when we're not lit up in pixels on [f*ing] Facebook and Instagram?

Some of us are Broke Down.
Sorting through the remnants of our genetic material and our old choices.
We need the shadows, the subconsicous places.

 tired parent with WWII vet dead grandfathers and dead uncles divorce lost friendships teenage trauma
​ bloody birth  postpartum depression scars half-finished paintings half-finished books 

(I'm asking for a 'friend.')

So, YOGA.
Cultivate a relationship with all every part of yourself. With all the selves you are.

And we must die to become someone new. 

​When you met the new you, were you scared? Were you cold? Were you kind? 
Yeah, when you met the new you, did someone die inside?
-OK GO, Upside Down & Inside Out [Hungry Ghost]
​

Yoga is a process,
said my teacher's teacher,
of radical affirmation:

"Every part of us that we do not learn to love
​ will become hostile to us."

Time to love.

And so, after several nights in a row,
trespassing into my unconsious (thanks for the poetry, Ji) :

Voila.

TWO BIRDS YOGA TRAINING
300 HOUR PROGRAM

No need to want to teach yoga to study yoga

But, if you want, we'll do our utmost to support you 
and each other
in becoming stellar teachers

With Love,

Libby and The Lightworkers, Witches and Yoginis


​

​

photo: Appa's Ganesha. India 2017
​OM GAM GANAPATAYE NAMAH

Maybe others will find solace in a personal story. Maybe I will. Here's something of what I haven't said, and why self-compassion and the [read brene brown] gifts of imperfection are stepping up to the plate in my own life.

I have a nasty. fucking. temper. And it's rearing its head. 

If I've never said it: I, too, am a survivor of sexual assault.



​

I live in a safe place, with loving people, some of whom voted for Trump. I'm a stone in coarse-grade sandpaper. But Donald Trump doesn't live in my house. My unresolved sorrows do.

While I will work toward compassion for my friends and family who voted for Donald Trump, I will not respect the decision they made to vote someone into office who attempts to normalize the rape-culture-boys-will-be-boys patriarchy, just to start. I will not and cannot respect that decision. I'm searching my heart for the next thing.




Ekabhumi Charles Ellik, upon receiving so many accolades from his Shakti Coloring Book told Yoga Journal that part of his elation on the publication of a book of images of wild goddesses in the yoga world is that it shows us that so-called "enlightenment" looks like more than what we perceive it to be in the media: 

             “The magazine about Yoga with the largest circulation in the world, Yoga Journal,
         just did a full-page spread endorsing the Shakti Coloring Book.
         WOW! This is especially exciting for me, because it's an opportunity to introduce
         sacred art as an intrinsic part of Yogic practice to a HUGE number of people who may
             think it's only about stretching and feeling calm.
            Though many of the readers may have some familiarity with a few of the goddesses,
           my hope is to expand folks' idea of what an enlightened being can look like (not just
             skinny and limber) and act like (not just gentle and calm)."

As I understand it, the word "Hatha" most commonly translates to "sun/moon", equals and opposites. My teacher also translates the word as "force" or "to strike;" to take us out of our comfort zone, to stretch and to grow. --- But for now, let's just say that Hatha means, "opposites," and Yoga means, "held together."

Tonight, I get ready to light out to France for a week... Away from my family, I am preparing to go on a different sort of adventure of heart and mind to my soul city, the formidable Paris.  I hold the paradox of two phrases of equal weight in my little world. 

L'habitude engendre l'ennui.
and...
Enlightenment is a practice of cultivating boredom.

May we all slow down enough to see the way things really are. –Judith Lasater

In my dance life, I learned early on that if I wanted to develop graceful movement, I had to learn to “fall” out of things slowly. Moving slowly meant I could study the moment where I lost my balance or my focus, and “ABC CBA” the process… look at it backwards and forwards and trace the movement patterns.  

Rudolf Steiner had a mental exercise at day's end for his teachers and students to reflect on the day, running through it backwards, especially the off-balance parts of the day. He called it "ruchshaw" meditation. I came upon the same process the semester I had a dance teacher who studied Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Body Mind Centering methods. We learned a piece of choreography, and then we would have to reverse it. Not just do the other side, but reverse the entire chain of movement, like videotape running in reverse. 

The key was to move slowly. 

Slow movement means more mindfulness and the ability to open up the process for close meditation and the development of muscle memory. It also means strength building.

“Falling” slowly out of a posture in yoga does the same thing. 
[Studying the moment of upset with a friend or a loved one does the same thing.] 

Study the moment where you lose your balance and it becomes an exercise in curiosity about the body moving in space, replacing any storyline where judgment and criticism may creep in. 
[Study the moment when you've lost your balance in life and the same gift of insight can happen.]

Even after years of practicing yoga, I still tell myself I’m not good enough, strong enough, practiced enough, dedicated enough; I’m not enough. 

Compassion is a process. 
Compassion happens in slow motion.

All your dreams will come true.
All my dreams came true.
[And then I had more dreams]
                         --Sonic Youth





I love life. It certainly hasn't been easy, and it's taken me some time to realize that I do, fully and presently, love my life. It's taken a lot of teary sea change. Laughter, exploration, deference, anger, dance, yoga, art, and unabashed-ness. The full spectrum. 
And, life now in Austin is especially great. I keep great company. I feel held and supported by an incredibly generous, curious, vibrant community. I have amazing mentors and friends. And, my family and I are moving to Eugene, Oregon in October. 
On one hand, it may seem strange to move at a time when everything is really working (with a lot of carefully orchestrated work and babysitting.) Maybe you can relate? I have made many past moves in my own life out of a need to fix something...out of a lack. This time is different. The more yoga I study, the more I recognize the paradox of freedom and security, and that, as my teacher is fond of saying, "life isn't a problem to be solved, but a paradox to be embraced." And: we're all perfectly and stubbornly happy being ourselves as we think we are. Sometimes the more comfortable we are in a place, the more the reason to expand. I'm curious to access more of myself, to purposefully make a change and stretch and grow into possibility.
We're moving to change; to learn things about ourselves yet to be discovered;  to experience a different pace and a different place. And we're moving to be near my husband's family of origin.
So begins our new adventure. When I get back from Iceland with One Yoga Collective in late October, I will assume my role as the manager of Eugene Yoga School's new location, right in the heart of the city. I will also pick up on a dream that's been adrift-- pursuing my Somatic Movement Educator certificate through a School of Body Mind Centering (BMC) at the Studio in the Woods. C'mon up and see me. 
I can't even begin to express the gratitude to our family of choice, here in Austin and the world around, for supporting us in birthing our family over the past couple years. Together we do what we cannot do alone. You have brought us food, seen us at our most sleep-deprived and epiphanic, watched our little boys so we could have date night, fielded the harried phone calls and emails of a new mother, given us clothes and diapers and money and and and. I never wrote a single thank you card. This from a woman who loves paper. For this, I ask you to forgive me. 
Thanks to a long and loyal relationship with the great folks at Yoga Yoga, I will return to Austin each summer to lead Hatha teacher trainings, co-teach the Devata mentorship in mythology and Tantric philosophy with the magnificent Ana Pilar Cruz, and participate in the birth of new projects. If you'd like to catch a class or a series with me before I go, Yoga Yoga and I have brewed up a number of options, including two different 4-session philosophy courses and a farewell class--the proceeds of which will benefit a future Yoga Yoga teacher trainee. 


The schedule and links are here.


So here's to more dreams, and to what we don't yet know what we don't know.
Here's to travel, and to family.
Here's to a full life.