Bernie Birney: It's About Yoga

A Love Letter to my Teacher

 

 

My teacher never lets me call him guru. 

Sometimes I secretly wish he would because I love him so; because he appears to know more than is humanly possible to know and that awes me; and because I sometimes secretly long for an all-knowing, wise, guru-dude to give me the answers when I don't know them. 

But no matter how I may try to insist, or inveigle my teacher to stand on that guru pedestal for me, he will not.  When I call him teacher, he calls me bud.  When I look to him for mandates, he gives me back my freedom. 

And of course I love him all the more for it.  The only teachers you should ever offer your sovereignty to are  the ones who will never take it. 

In the yoga traditions, gurus are a big deal.  They are revered, and likened to the sun.  Like the sun, a teacher's wisdom generously illumines the student.  The student is as a moon--reflecting the light of knowledge that has been bestowed by the teacher.

Today is Guru Purnima, the guru's moon.  Tonight, the full moon is at its brightest, thus most fully reflects the sun's brilliance. Today is a day marked for honoring teachers. 

Parents.  Various teachers.  Friends.  Lovers.  You have been guru to me.  Thank you.

As for my teacher?  Almost everything good in my life today can be directly traced to his feet.  Sound melodramatic?  It's not.  My passion, my profession, my friends, the direction I have chosen for my life--all results of a meeting ten years ago that, oddly, I just can't remember.  

Today, for just this one day, I knowingly disregard my teacher's preference, lay it all at his feet, and call him guru. 

Sri Gurubhyo Namaha. 

Salutations to the gurus.

 

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

~Steve Jobs

Note to Self

"Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

~Steve Jobs

10 pm Friday June 17th, 2011

Dear Diary,

From start to finish, today was the best day yet!  I woke up with the bedroom windows wide open to the summer rain.  The boom of the thunder made snuggling under the covers with my husband even cosier.  I didn't want to get up but I'm glad I did. 

My class at Blackbird Yoga was high energy.  There were a couple of welcome new students who become regulars. 

The first Elements Yoga hosted CT Anusara Yoga® teachers gathering was an enormous success!  Getting the CT peeps together was magical.  Everyone was warm, open, friendly and happy to be there.  We bonded as we practiced together.  We were all co-operative and productive as we creatively brainstormed a beautiful, bold vision for a very on-purpose CT community.  Being in a room full of incredible leaders was inspiring. Today we planted positive seeds that will continue to bear fruit for a long, long time to come. 

Afterward, I zipped home, and my commute was traffic free!

I put in a solid hour on the book.  Taking it in a new direction was so the right call.  I know exactly where I'm going with it, and the writing is fluid and easy.  I am so in the flow.  I actually can't wait for my scheduled sessions, and even finding myself stealing time to work on it.

Then it was time to relax. I put on some music and just chilled with the husband.  We had some wine on the patio.  He grilled.  Damn, my man is a great cook.  Uber romantic. 

(This paragraph is censored.  No offense, Diary.  As much as I like to share, some things are best left private.)

Okay, Diary--it's just about time to turn out the light.  It's late, and I need some sleep, but I wanted to write it down because it truly was such a perfect day.  In addition to what I've written, great things that I hadn't even imagined came to pass!  I have the reflection that--even in the face of some current challenging realities and uncertainties--I really love my life right now.  I am lucky. 

Oh, and tomorrow is going to be just as perfect, too!

That's all for now.  'Nite.

XO

What kind of day are you going to manifest?  I want to know!  Putting it in writing will make it more real. Leave me a comment below, and manifest a perfect day of your own. 

(Enormous thanks to Laurie Gerber and The Handel Group™ for showing me how to design my day.)

 

 

Mad Mission

Take a look all around you. 

Go ahead--look straight ahead.  Look up; look down.  Look to your right then your left.  Swivel around and take a look behind you. 

Every single thing you see?

Will be gone someday. 

Everything changes.  Nothing stays the same.  Sometimes plans don't work out.  People are not always loving and loyal.  These are life's givens. 

Think they don't apply to you at your own peril.

In the end, our triumphs and our failures probably won't matter all that much.  Whether or not we stuck handstand in the middle of the room will fall away; as will the items both checked, and unchecked, on our To Do lists. 

What shall remain is the love we've given away. 

It's a mad mission.  In a world of impermanence, we continue to make plans.  In a world of disappointment, we dare to hope again.  In a world in which someone might not love us back, or enough, or the way we wish they would, we continue to fall in love, and to love mightily. 

Every day, we take on the insurmountable.  That makes us heroes in my book.

 

 

 

This Again?

Last night I dreamed I was back on my old college campus.  It was September--the first day of classes.  When I arrived at my dorm the other side of the room was empty as a bottle.  The unoccupied bed was bare, and the industrial, blue and white striped mattress vaguely accusatory.  Where was my roommate?

Oh, right--we'd had a fight.  Maybe she wouldn't be coming at all.  Maybe she’d decided to room with someone else.

I’d have to straighten it out later.  My first class was beginning any minute.  I ran a hand over my pocket, triple checking that my class schedule was still in it.  It was.  Good.  Last year I’d forgotten it, and as a result had spent the first day standing on line at the registrar because I couldn’t remember which classes I’d registered for. 

There was somewhere I was supposed to be.  Time to go.  My first class was an English class in Building B.  Wait--where was that, again? 

I wasn’t a freshman.  I knew the campus well, so why couldn't I remember where Building B was?  Aware there wasn’t much time, I picked a direction, and just started moving.

Campus was alive with clusters of students, exuberant hugs, and high-pitched post summer vacation reunions. Nobody else appeared to be lost. Nobody seemed concerned about getting to class.   

I kept moving, and turned down a corner I’d never turned before.  Weird, I’d thought I already knew every route across campus.  A few steps down an unfamiliar path, it inexplicably became a highway.  Traffic whizzed past, barely missing me.   

How had that happened?  I had to get off this road or I would be hit.  Disoriented, and uneasy, I turned back toward the direction I’d come.  How had I gotten so off course? 

Clearly I had made a wrong turn somewhere. Back on campus, I couldn’t shake my unease.  Where the fuck was Building B?  Signs indicated Building A, Building H, and Building I, but no Building B.

I remembered that some of the buildings on campus had connecting corridors.  Maybe I'd have better luck inside? I walked through the first door I saw.  There were no windows.  Just brick walls, and the faint buzz of industrial fluorescent lights. 

There was a clock on the wall, and just enough jaundiced light to make out the time.  My class was already starting. At best I would be late; at worst I’d entirely miss it. 

I broke into a run but then stopped. 

I wasn’t going to make it. I would not find my way. I would not get where I needed to go.

It was too late.  

That’s where panic always wakes me up.  In my classic, recurring anxiety dream, I never find the class.  I never slide into my seat just before it begins.  It's not always college.  Sometimes it's high school, or somewhere that I need to be for work, but the underlying theme is always the same:  trails are always unmarked, and I am perpetually lost.  I fail to get where I am supposed to be.

Do you have a dream like that?

It's no coincidence that I've been having this dream again.  I've been stalled on a big project (otherwise known as THE BOOK), unsure of where I'm going with it, and so feeling at a loss to navigate.  Like the dream itself, this difficulty choosing a direction has been a recurring theme in my history.

A couple of days ago, I was chatting with president of The Handel Group™, and life coach extraordinaire, Laurie Gerber.  She asked how my project was going. 

"Not so well.  I'm reevaluating the structure.  I could go in two very different directions.  I don't know what to do, and I'm stalled.  I feel stuck.  I don't know where I'm going, or how to get there."

Hmmm.  Sound familiar?

Then she game me some great advice.  "It doesn't matter which direction you pick.  Just pick one.  Either one.  You can always go back and fix it, and the road not taken becomes your next project.  Just keep going."

That's exactly what I'm going to do. 

Do you have a recurring dream?  Can you recognize it as a recurring theme in your life? 

Feeling stuck?  Join Laurie Gerber and I for a one hour call on June 16th at 8:00pm.  Learn how to design promises to keep you moving forward, and how to actually keep them.  Use code "JUNE50" to participate for only $10.  Trust me on this one--it will be worth your time. 

 

 

 

Now I Become Myself

Could this be any more tantric?  It's so perfect.

Today is a most excellent day to become yourself.  XO

 

Now I Become Myself 

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

by May Sarton

 

Taking My Own Advice

During my call for the Yoga Teacher Telesumit--you can access a recording here--I advised teachers to stop trying to sound like yoga teachers, and just get better at sounding like themselves. 

I was really happy with the content I offered. 

Since I also advised yoga teachers to occasionally record their own class, and give it a listen, I decided to take my own advice.

Eek!

Why is a woman who loves words so much (me) using so many fillers when speaking?  Maybe it was just because I was speaking into a telephone, which requires a bit of getting used to?

I asked a trusted friend, "Do I always sound like that?  Do I always say "um" so often?"

"You say it a lot."

Who knew?  That is not at all how I imagined myself sounding.  In my head, I sound far more polished. 

I started listening for the "ums" and sure enough--they are easy to hear now that I'm paying attention.  The funny thing is that the only time I don't do it is while I'm actually instructing asana.  The Anusara certification process is so rigorous, and so effective, that there's not a single extra syllable in my instruction.  In the instruction of asana, my language is surgically precise.  Good work, Certification Committee!

It's merely all the rest of the time that I "um" all over the place.

How embarrassing!

But no more!  I am coming after that "um" habit. I'm being asked to speak more often, and I want my presentation to reflect the value of what I genuinely have to offer, damn it!

So--every time I'm caught "um"-ing, I owe one push-up. 

Please feel free to bust me on it.  Do not think for a single moment of letting me off the hook.  I shall consider it a favor. 

Honing myself to a finer edge is fun.  Not only am I going to be "um" free--I'm going be so buff. 

What habit could you stand to lose?

 

PS:  That was taken in India, and those are two of my very most favorite people on the planet. 

 

Maya Shakti: On Becoming a Demolitions Expert

I have a confession:

I have a long standing tendency to consider my point of view to be The Truth. 

Do you have that same tendency?  I'll bet you do.  

Until recently, I never bothered to challenge many of my most fundamental points of view, and beliefs about myself--and the way I operate in the world because of them. 

For example, here's a short list of things I've believed to be true:

• That I'm fiercely introverted
• That I'm horrible at math
• That I don't have the discipline to be a writer
• That I'm good at teaching yoga but bad at the business of yoga
• That I have to chose between personal fulfillment and financial success

I have regularly repeated these "truths" to myself as though they're gospel.  They have shaped my mind.  For better or worse, they've shaped my ideas about myself, and my life--and they're simply stories that I made up. 

I am always making up these kinds of stories, and so are you.  Do any of yours leap to mind?

Modern neuroscience tells us that every time we think a thought, a particular neural path is strengthened.  The more times a mind travels a neural path, the more likely it is to travel that path again, and so a single thought becomes a tendency to think in a certain way.  A neural pathway that starts out as flimsy as a scant traveled deer-path in the woods, can become a well established super-highway with as much traffic as I-95. The structure of a brain is literally altered by the way it's used. 

I am both the shaper, and the shape of my terrain, and so are you. 

The yoga tradition calls this shaping the power of Maya Shakti, or the power of illusion.  Nothing that I fashion from Maya is an absolute truth, but it might feel an awful lot like one. 

Many times, I have heard my teacher, Douglas Brooks, call Maya "the architect of consciousness."  Maya will give shape and structure to both my brain, and my experience.  Maya will either be the crummy experience that I'm compelled to have, or the fantastic experience that I get to have.  Or, it might be just another Thursday. 

Without an understanding of Maya, I'll engage it in an unconscious way, and just keep telling myself my same old stories.  I like some of my stories, but some of them really fuck me up, and keep me playing small.  If I want to, or if I don't know any better, I can use Maya to build a little box to crawl inside of.  I will have to inhabit the cramped space inside those "truths".  They will seem as solid, real, and confining, as brick walls. 

Or, as Lauren Zander likes to say, I can become a demolitions expert, blow that shit up, knock down the old Maya, and put in a new deluxe kitchen. 

I am beginning to understand, in a much deeper way than before, that it really is all me.  I am creating my experience all the time.

I am god in my world, and so are you. 

Maya is built in.  There's no getting rid of it, and you wouldn't want to.  The point isn't to get rid of Maya; the point is to get good at it.

I understand that I am not an island. As I create my experience, I'm also impacted, and imprinted upon:  by chance, by the world, and by the people in my world.  However, it's up to me to decide how receptive to be, and to whom.  It's up to me to choose wisely.  It's up to me to process my experience.

It's exhilirating to heave a wrecking ball into what appears a solid structure, only to find thin air.  Some "truths" that once felt dense and substantial, now seem far less so.  Some are so flimsy I can almost poke my finger through. 

For example, it turns out that I'm not (quite) as introverted as I'd thought. Who knew?  I'm also better at discipline, and my business acumen doesn't suck nearly as much as I'd feared.

Demoliton gives me goosebumps.  In the good way. 

 

Note:  I'm forever grateful to Douglas Brooks, and to The Handel Group™, for teaching me how to  become a demolitions expert, and architect extraordinaire.

 

 

Let's Talk About Leadership

I became certified to teach Anusara yoga® in March 2005. 

It's a big deal to become a certified Anusara yoga® teacher.  In all this time, there are still under 400 teachers who bear this title.  My certificate is numbered 132.  I'm proud to be in such elite company.  

In 2005, the certification process concluded with a telephone conversation with John.  I was far too dazzled to be speaking to John Friend to say anything coherent, let alone intelligent, or witty.  At the end of the call, he congratulated me. 

I was certified.

I hung up the phone, and sat, primly, on the couch, for what seemed like a long time.  There was nobody home to celebrate with, and I wasn't sure what to do with myself. It had been a long process, and I think I'd half-expected lotus flowers to fall from the sky upon my official certification.   

I think I'd thought that becoming certified would make me somehow--different.  Better.  But I just felt like plain old me, and to be honest, I felt a bit blue about that. 

The certification process prepared me to tell people how to use alignment principles, and how to take their thighs back.  It gave me a solid understanding of tantra's power to free minds and crack open hearts, but it didn't prepare me to lead.

I didn't then understand that it would take time to grow into the role of certified teacher. 

Fast forward six years. 

There is now a robust Anusara community in Connecticut, my home. I am awed by the deep roots that have taken hold. Sometimes I feel like I must have planted one of Jack's magical beans.   

Yoga communities often spring up around around certified teachers, with the certified teacher becoming a sort of hub.  Ready or not, these certified teachers are thrust into the position of leadership. 

In my own case, I had no idea what it meant to be a leader.  I had zero life experience preparing me.  In fact, I'd spent most of my life dodging commitment and responsibility, and making sure that no one held me accountable for anything.  I wasn't even particularly good at leading myself, let alone anyone else.  

I have had to get a lot better at it.  Recently, there have been ample opportunities to do exactly that, as a fair amount of local conflict has come to a head.  I believe that I was at least partially responsible for  some of those situations, even if only by being absent. 

It feels good to step up, roll up my sleeves, and take some responsibility for both conflict, and resolution.  I'm grateful to everyone who was willing to sit down with me, and have conversations that weren't necessarily comfortable.  Thank you for helping me grow.  Thank you for being essential to the CT community. 

Consequently, I feel passionately that fellow teachers, and students, have the right to expect things of people, including me, in leadership positions.

I believe it's fair to expect leaders to have:

• Commitment to a vision for a local--or global--community with room for everyone to contribute, co-operate, flourish, and grow
• Clear, frank and skillful communication
• Ability to receive feedback
• Insight as to how, and when, to offer loving guidance to those who haven't yet walked quite as far down the path
• Good conflict management skills 

I used to have an aversion to being called a leader, but no more.  Now, I aspire to continue to grow into my role.  The work I've done thus far with The Handel Group has been of tremendous value to me in this arena.  I would love to see leadership training included in yoga trainings, so that we can all be more effective. It's important.

Recently I read that leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.

I am all about that shit.