God's Daughter coming through.

I don't know what came over me this week. I am reading a book about grief, focusing on long term grief for my own healing and eventually , for my work.
I sat on the living room floor every day, waiting , hanging out with my belly. Softening .
I thought for sure tears would come. Or at least a bit of melancholy overload.
No, not me!
My glare- the one I had in fourth grade when a mean girl did something, well, mean to someone else- couldn't be wiped off my face.
So I sighed more.
Sat and softened my belly more.
I took a couple of yoga classes. Is it just me or are some people that oblivious to their neighbor that no matter where I moved on my mat, the woman next to me just would not budge. Her fingers inches from my eyes, her foot  directly in my face, she just took no notice of my sliding forward on my mat, moving it back, moving it away, standing further forward- anything to be sure I wasn't poking her or moving into her space. A lady in another class,  to my diagonal right,  gave me sly stares pretending not to notice my prosthesis( I am always happy to be up front about it)  then wincing when I gave her the biggest warmest heart soaked smile in return.
It took a few days, but I got it. Grief takes many forms.
There is a kind of grief in being the one who tends to make room for everybody else and still try to maintain her own status quo. It can be exhausting. A girl can have nasty thoughts about what she really thinks about the woman who won't make space for her.
That's the loss.
How many times in your own life has a person made no space for you and you just "did the right thing"?
My motto for this week?
 "You move this time. YOU make space for me. God's daughter coming through."

Yoga for Amputees Founder, Marsha T Danzig- yoga without prosthesis

Remembering Mukunda Tom Stiles

I am, at this point, an "old school" yogi. I read yoga books,at the beginning of my teaching, and even before, that had no fancy covers, fabulous layouts or gorgeous photographs.
They were texts, thoughtful treatises with hand drawings of yogis demonstrating esoteric yoga practices that really, hardly anyone does today.
These texts, and the teachers who accompanied them, many of them still living at the time, described the hard/easy work of both practicing and living yoga. The layers of unreal drape themselves back around us so easily.
Spontaneous healing did occur now and again, but that healing was often the result of years and YEARS of plodding through the mud to finally feel light and free. Yoga awakening, the kind taught by these teachers, takes time, patience, commitment, enterprise.
I read Mukunda Tom Stiles writings with great enthusiasm. I downloaded his wonderful free offering of the Joint Freeing Series , practiced for myself and shared with my students so they too could  feel better and learn about this special teacher.
When I was wavering about whether to pursue a certification in Structural Yoga Therapy, it was not Mukunda's rep who wrote me back . It was Mukunda himself.
When I didn't understand an issue one of my students was having, it was Mukunda's books I went to first. I always found the answer.
At a large yoga therapy conference, I signed up for so many classes by so many "famous" teachers.
After the umpteenth famous teacher mentioning their new book or their interview with blah blah blah I was ready for someone and something real. A teacher whose agenda was YOGA. That class was with Mukunda, Not surprisingly, his class was the smallest, the most intimate , and the most sacred to me. He had nothing to plug, no upcoming trainings to push on us. He just wanted to help release someone's hip and hamstring. And he did, exquisitely.
 I am so glad I got to see him doing what he clearly loved to do- bring freedom from pain for those who were suffering.
Namaste, Mukunda Tom Stiles.

Class Act Already :Please Enjoy My Book

I love Downton Abbey. As Irish and anti- class system as I am , I have been sucked into the story line. It's not just the drama of love, loss and society "rules", it is the way they speak, and the way they convey what needs to be conveyed in the most subtle of ways.
Case in point- the Dowager responding to a woman accusing her of never being wrong. " I am not familiar with that sensation".
As I dive into the next phase of my life and career, I am looking once again, very carefully, at who I consider to be a class act, and who is pretending to be.
For example , I love when people are graciously honest and up front with me. If they are taking one of my trainings so that they can go off and develop their own, I want to know, up front. Don't  be afraid. I'll call you on my truth and yours and we'll all be better for it.
If people are "connecting" with me through Facebook , are they wanting to grow their mailing list or get to know me and what I do? I'm okay with the former. I just want them to be up front about it.
If  someone is writing an article about something they are an "expert " in so that they can "help" others, then spend the remainder of the article talking about their program. why not just tell the truth from the beginning.
There is nothing less classy than a shroud of false seduction blanketing the real truth. It's so time consuming.
I have ulterior motives. We all do. I want my business to succeed. I want my voice to matter. I want to create a meaningful life that fulfills me and helps others feel fulfilled. I just believe in stating it plainly, graciously , with humility and sometimes a little mischief.
You get the picture. We are all afraid sometimes. We scramble. We do things on behalf of our business that look altruistic.
I say own the scrambling . Own the fear. Own the times when we are being less then charitable.
Own our vulnerabilities. Own the truth of our real motive.
Own them and get honest.
PLEASE Enjoy MY BOOK.

What I think is wrong with America, 2014!

It has been a while since a man held my car door open for me. Now for some women I don't know , nor will ever care to know, the mere fact of a man opening a door for a woman is effrontery, a slap in the face of 100 years + of fighting for equality.
It has been a while since I got to practice my old school Hollywood banter.
It's not that I don't get the opportunity on a daily basis to have a door opened for me or an opportunity to charm the socks off someone. I do. it's part of my daily mission. It's just..
Is it safe to venture into the world of endless charm without feeling like I've crossed a line, or the man has?
Charm has nothing and everything to do with sex appeal. Sex appeal has everything to do with feeling fully alive. Who doesn't want that?
Charm, door opening, meaningless SMART flirting was rather commonplace not that long ago.
Here's what can happen now.
A gentleman wants to open a door for you, but he is concerned that you will be offended.
Not me!
You start up a chat with a very kind fellow while you are in line at the bank. You want to say something a little bit naughty, but not too naughty. Just enough to make the fellow think. Will he get the wrong or right idea and suddenly say something crude? Will I then be offended, disheartened, discouraged?
Probably.
Having lived in France for an extended period of time , I know that la bonne vie, the quiet smile, the door opening, the SMART flirting is just part of the scenery, like a strip mall is here in the US.
We are so numb to the barrage of  tasteless, charmless, unsophisticated media out there that some of us( not me , mind you) have forgotten the subtle art of  charm.
Charm is a way of living life that adds mystery, class and JOY.
My heart is full today. I got to experience the very thing I have missed for a while. It felt so good to be free . Free to be... me.
No strings attached.

A Christian Yoga Practice

A Christian Yoga Practice

Belief Entrenchment

How much of our behavior is influenced by beliefs that aren't even ours? How much have we "adorned" ourselves with  that which doesn't even belong to us?

I am asking myself that question daily at the moment. 
Sunday night I watched a story on 60 minutes that had everything to do with beliefs.
Pharmaceutical researchers, both men and women, had never thought to research the differences in side effects of drugs for men and women. They even studied mostly male rats. 
A PBS special on the Amish followed a number of young people who had left their Amish world to be on the "outside". This meant , in most cases, they would be shunned by their community , even their own parents, unless they returned. One young girl was convinced she might be going to hell for her transgression.
I am in the process of grieving. I have fought for so long to stay alive, stay positive, and simply STAY, that the time to really grieve the piles of losses just never came up.
I started to think- what beliefs are in this culture, even my ethnic background, that have prevented me from the very normal process of grieving? 
I've come up with a few ideas so far.
*American culture is so forward acting, so NOT in the here and now, so in the PURSUIT, that the practice of grieving is cumbersome, irritating, just "in the way" of that elusive happiness we are all supposed to be pursuing.
*My Irish Catholic culture has a few ways to grieve:

• A BIG party after someone dies with lots of booze and lots of dancing.
• And... "Get over it already. Don't you know there are people in the world who don't even have a ... place to sleep tonight, food on the table, a family.."
• Poetry

I am building an altar of new beliefs.
First new belief?
Stay open hearted when the critic comes to confuse me with its beliefs about how things should go.
Want more inspiration? Email me to read a piece I wrote a few years ago on HOPE. Hope it helps you if you are feeling like you "shouldn't" be feeling hopeless after chronic stress or grief.

A VERY SURPRISING LITTLE GIRL

Yesterday I signed up for a wonderful program in growing my coaching enterprise . At one point in the teleconference, the director opened the "floor" to take calls from those who aren't clear. I instinctively pressed the code and BOOM, she was talking to me.
I did not expect to be the one who was chosen to share .
As soon as I started to speak, it was as if the little 6 year old girl came right in to..
Shake me up?
Protect me?
Worry for me?
It was so strange and amazing to say what I really wanted  to so many people. I was right on the edge of crying.
That little girl still has so much to say. Nothing like now to let her speak.

Landing in the doorway of TRUST

How does it happen that I get up from my chair after finishing a delicious book, move towards the stairs, and find the first words that come to me are " I have landed in the doorway of TRUST."

It was as if some other part of me decided to take over for a while.
No, I did not hear voices. No , I am not a person with multiple personality disorder.
But this voice spoke very loudly into my overthinking head.

There is no turning back now. I have landed. Here's the doorway.
Door opened.......