What Have You Been Learning Lately?

It's important to me that you know that I'm not separate from you, somehow set apart because I teach contemplative practices. I'm not removed from the human condition. Nah, man. Sometimes I'm still made miserable by the world shrinking, life sucking myopia of depression. Even after all this time and growth and change, that is still a place I sometimes go. I've been in a slow, subtle down slump for a while now, made slow by me doing my best not to be. After years of learning to sense the on come of The Sads like you can sometimes feel the on come of a cold, I've been throwing all my best practices at it. We're exercising and reaching out to friends and washing our hair and eating enough calories and getting good sleep. We're doing our yoga and meditation set every single day no matter what and taking our vitamins and making lists to check off for cheap dopamine hits. We're stopping to smell every rose on our walks and flirting with the flirty cashiers...

Shame is such a sticky, deep, murky feeling. I'm struggling to write this because I'm wrestling with a sense of shame. I feel embarrassed to share the things I'd like to share with you because it means coming clean about ways I've failed and things I've been learning that feel so obvious, but for me have been a revelation. One thing I know to be true, though, is that it's important and worthwhile to be honest, even if it isn't easy. Last month I spent a couple weeks in a bit of a hole. It wasn't a deep well of sad , but enough of a hole to derail my focus and certainly my enthusiasm. Truth be told, it's been a really difficult year for me. My living situation has been extraordinarily stressful, and activating to my deepest core wounding. Out of desperation, I crawled back into therapy and because of this have at least been able to make good use of some of the more painful moments. This chapter has been highly uncomfortable, and also clarifying, heali...

The most difficult aspect of adult life for me is understanding that our societal identity is formed around a bunch of agreements which mask as Absolute Truth yet tend to shift over time so they often feel extremely arbitrary. Interracial marriage was still illegal in parts of the US until 53 years ago, and it took a Supreme Court ruling to overturn those laws, but sure, everything we believe now is totally moral and true. Of course we won't look back 53 years from now and shamefully shake our heads at all those people who refused to wear masks during a pandemic. Surely not! It's not that we've hit upon some perfect way to live. It's that, as a species, humans tend to fear and mistrust what's foreign, and nothing thrusts us into the Great, Foreign Unknown more expediently than change. And yet we do change! There are innumerable agreements which we have reevaluated and reformed. In the US, discrimination on the basis of race or sex is unconstitutional. Slavery is ill...

Not Your Beatific Goddess The Netflix/Spike Lee Joint, She's Gotta Have It , opens with a third-wall-breaking monologue by main character Nola Darling. She faces the camera and states: "I would like you to know, the only reason I'm doin' this is 'cause folks think they know me. They think they know what I'm about, and the truth is, they don't know me." The series goes on to chronicle Nola's explorations of Self through her art and relationships. I love a lot of things about this show (the soundtrack alone! oh man.) but what I love best is how nuanced the characters are, particularly Nola. You can't help but root for her and her success, even while wincing a bit as she sometimes unskillfully fumbles her way through sticky interpersonal moments. She is imperfect, and she's allowed to be! She gifts herself the space and grace to try things and make mistakes as she learns herself in new, deepening ways. This has been a strong source of...

Human relationships are both what give life so much of its rich meaning and also hazardous minefields of difficulty. Most of us are walking around with wounding we can be unaware of, and when someone rubs up against it, it's easy to interpret something innocuous as a major offense. It's common, we've all reacted in this way before. Life is full of let downs, and humans are some of the guiltiest culprits of each other's disappointments. We persist in living among one another because our kind wasn't built for solo cave dwelling. Even as we age, we continue to have  healthy attachment needs to meet in order to remain optimally well; we need to feel safe, to be seen and known, to be comforted when we're in pain, to feel valued, and to receive support for our best selves. Ideally, all the relationships in our lives would provide that kind of presence, but I've learnt that it's a rare enough occurrence that when you find someone with whom you can share a ...

The sad that lives in my body waxes and wanes, but it's never left me. Even when I'm at my most happy, calm and clear, sad is just beyond the edge of the horizon, out of view and still as much a part of me as anything else. When others learn this, it tends to come as a surprise. The way I present and the role I play is most often the cheerful, bright light. It's a large part of the story, but of course it's not the whole story. No one is just one way. The picture on the left was taken at the end of the year, at the point of deepest pain I recall ever feeling. I had been crying everyday for awhile, and I would stand on the train platform fantasizing about leaping. I used to volunteer on a suicide crisis hotline  and I still remember my training. I told people close to me how I was struggling, and made promises not to hurt myself. I knew the intent wasn't really there, but I was aching so badly that it was impossible not to desire its alleviation. I was at the bot...

Imagine that you approach a fun-looking roller coaster and without knowing a lot about it, you buy a ticket. As you run through the line to get to the front, there are signs informing you about elements of the ride worth noting, but you only briefly glance, convinced as you are that it's the perfect ride for you. You get strapped in, the car jolts forward, and you realize after the third nauseating loop that this was, in fact, not a great decision. Hunter S. Thompson wrote "buy the ticket, take the ride," and Dan Savage quotes this in a talk he gave about understanding and getting good with what you're buying into when you enter a relationship. I'm just as guilty as any fool of rushing into love, signing the liability waiver without so much as a skim of the fine print. There's a myriad of possible reasons for this; we live in a culture dominated by a monogamous relational model which passes some toxic mythology off as fact. For instance, under this model ...

When I began to write this it felt familiar, so I scrolled back and discovered that I've written three similar pieces in the last two years alone. They all have a slightly different flavor , but the same salient central theme: the importance of learning to deal with your shit . In a previous version of my life, I was crying in therapy because I'd recognized but couldn't seem to overcome my preternatural attraction to unhealthy men. Like Ebeneezer Scrooge, I've often found myself confronted by the ghosts of life past. Most of my "self-work" has been operated under the naive assumption that once I'd learned something, I was done! Got it! Every time I'd find myself revisiting a theme, I would read this as a personal failure and be awash in bitter shame. One of my favorite teachers, Paul Weinfield, wrote this supportive, apropos note today: 'Try to see your life as a spiral, circling around the same issues, the same problems, the same feelings, ...

At the end of the first week of my first "real" job as an adult, my manager checked in with me to see how it went. I looked her straight in the eyes and with bewilderment in my voice said, "I have to come here everyday." This didn't last long. In retrospect, I see how this early exposure to professional work left a sour taste in my mouth. I was employed by a for-profit education corporation that tasked me with keeping students in school even if they really needed to be, say, going to rehab (many of them did). The school also encouraged students to take out large loans that they would never be able to repay with the low wage jobs they would be qualified for upon completion. Despite working with some excellent people, the environment was predominantly unhealthy. It took less than a year for me to jump ship for massage school and a helping career that didn't involve shoes or a cubicle. In the 10 years since, I've done an eclectic smattering of work th...

Anthony Bourdain was my godfather of gregarious adventure. I admired his raw honesty, open mindedness, and the way he sought to expand understanding and appreciation of other cultures. He inspired boldness in me to reach out into the world and eat everything. This feels a bit like the loss of a distant but beloved mentor. I will miss his perspective and mourn the work he'd yet to create. When I was in university, I spent a year working San Francisco Suicide Prevention's crisis hotline. I needed volunteer hours for a class and picked the hotline because at one point in my youth I'd found help through a similar resource. When I tell people about my experience, they expect it to have been depressing. While there were certainly very difficult, haunting moments, the work was largely heartwarming and entirely rewarding. Most of our callers were experiencing suicidal ideation but were not actively suicidal; they didn't have a plan, they were just lonely. They found comfort...

On the Friday before I left, I woke up with a fire to do laundry and repack my bag. I didn't yet know I was leaving, but the desire to go home had been clear and present in me for awhile. I drew out the decision for as long as possible, encumbered by the ego drive to not yet  "fail"  at traveling for the whole year. What would it mean to give up on that dream? An authentic, persistent desire cannot be suppressed, though. When I finally gave in, I was relieved and happy. My very sincere need for a total overhaul of my plan overcame my expectations for myself and my fear of other's perceptions. When I told my best friend I was coming back, she invited me to Portland and the thought lit up all my cells with Hell Yes. Just as clear as I'd been about going home, I was now sure of this. All the pieces slid easily into place and I made the leap into a brand new plan. Trusting the wisdom of my desires doesn't come naturally. I'm inclined to be wary of follow...

Being found wrong or imperfect ignites in me a cornered animal savage snarl. I don't know if failure is a common nightmare among children, but for as long as I can remember it's been my greatest fear. A quiet agreement rattling around in my subconscious asserted that my worth was tied to perfection. Maybe at the end of a semester of straight As, as soon as my thighs gapped, when my hair was smooth and tame, as long as I never ever said or did the wrong thing...THEN! Then I would be worthy of love and respect. My whole life has been spent gripped by the fear of Fucking It Up. This didn't stop me from being passionately curious and eager to learn, but as soon as things got a bit too challenging and the possibility of failure loomed, I would bolt. I honestly expected myself to be good at everything, even things I was just learning. When caught in a mistake, my gut reaction was fear-fueled resentment and rage. I have had no resilience to the experience of being seen as unma...

It's the last day of school and the most sublimely beautiful, early summer day in New York City. My charge is at the park with a pack of his best friends, there is an endless supply of pizza and sweets, and I've just given him permission to play in the kid's water fountains in his school uniform. Because childhood. Because summer. Because get dirty. Why not? He sprints away before I can change my mind, bursting through the water with unreserved, joyful abandon. This goes on for hours. I watch with wonder at his full presence in the moment and his total commitment to the task at hand: having the most fun possible. Right here. Right now. Later on I've moved into my evening and my own version of fun: Breathe-In, a movement and meditation event held monthly by two of my favorite teachers in New York. Before class begins, I'm laying out quietly, dissolving the day and trying to arrive fully to the moment when a question drifts up clear and strong from my deep cente...

These photos were taken on the same day three years apart. One might expect that "progress" would look like a foot on the head in an even deeper backbend. Alas! In the interim, I've become the inhabitant of a whole new body. An as-yet-unhealed injury to my right shoulder makes Urdhva Dhanurasana extremely painful to come  into and limits my mobility in the pose significantly. Yes, this is still a deep full wheel, but I can no longer pull my chest forward with perfectly straight arms. I can no longer do the full expression of the pose and as a result, I totally suck. I'm a terrible yogi and an even worse person. Sorry. Jk! In the age of social media overshare, it's easy to compare ourselves to others in many different contexts and feel less than. The full reality behind the perfect photo is rarely divulged. When those "30 day challenges" started rolling out on Instagram, I did ALL of them. I would spend part of every day forcing my unwarm body into p...

When I was young and I would tell my father "I love you," he would reply "Thank you." As human communication continued to devolve, if I wrote it in a text, his reply was the smiling emoji wearing sunglasses. Seriously. My father would be quick to point out all the terrible things he *didn't* do, as if one should be rewarded for not doing things that you shouldn't be doing anyway. No, sir, you do not get a medal for *not* beating your wife and children. Physical assault is illegal. Your prize for avoiding it is not going to jail. Nice try, though. 349 days ago it became abundantly clear to me what an unsafe man my father is to have in my life and I cut him off. No longer would he be allowed to mishandle my tenderness, tearing my wounding open again and again. This is the beauty of adulthood. We get to thoughtfully filter who and what we let in. We get to erect firm boundaries for self love and preservation. It is our most powerful responsibility to ours...

He bought a gorgeous aboriginal throw as a memento and as the space for our afternoon work. We took it over the railroad tracks, down the winding, sandy path to a quiet place on the dunes, removed from the beach below. I lay down and he set to his task rhythmically delivering the most profound healing work I've ever received. Honestly, no hyperbole. I reeled for days after, tremoring, laughcrying in yoga, swimming in the ocean, rolling around on the floor, writing pages on pages all in an attempt to integrate the way my mind and heart had just been blown wide. It was a glorious surprise, by far my best travel souvenir to date. The last time I experienced such a deep inner earthquake was nine years ago when I was diving into Kundalini yoga, and, as I like to quip, Kundalini made me quit my job, my relationship, San Francisco...etc. In a word, this practice was destructive. Anything that wasn't fully in alignment with my truth and well being had to go. And this saved my life. ...