Don’t post perfection and then beg everyone to believe you are not perfect.

I have to be honest here, I’m getting REALLY TIRED of this trend of slim, beautiful girls who are owners of yoga blogs, yoga instagrams, yoga facebooks, posting hundreds of pictures of themselves in asanas and then being confused when they get less-than-ideal comments about them.

A few have gone so far as to write entire articles about how they “don’t understand” why people are writing mean or nasty comments or how people shouldn’t “compare themselves” to anyone else or how you just need to “love yourself” and you’ll be able to do backbends in your bikini on a beach and have hundreds of people following your every move.

Let’s get real here.  It’s great to love yourself.  It’s great that you are happy and comfortable in your own skin.  It’s great that you discovered yoga.  And I truly mean that.  I don’t want anyone to feel unhappy or uncomfortable or in pain.

But I’m calling bullshit.  You’re showing off.  There, I’m just going to come right out and say it.  You’re showing off.  There is something inside you that feeds off of the compliments and adoration of strangers on the internet.  Oh sure, you can call it “being inspired” by them.  But if that were true, some of the hundreds of bikini asana pictures would include real life pictures – pictures where you don’t look your absolute best, pictures that show your body in a less-than-glamorous way, pictures that you didn’t photoshop.  And you would OWN IT and say – this is me.  I am less than perfect, just like you are all less than perfect. 

But that’s not what the internet is.  People are drawn to blogs and instagrams where the person portrays themselves as picture perfect – because we as readers want to see that.  We love the fantasy that someone is perfect and maybe, if we do all the things that they do, we can be perfect too.

There’s a blog I recently came across where she stated she had 5 million visitors.  5 MILLION.  So I hunkered down to read her blog posts to see what this amazing, fabulous, incredible blog content she had that was drawing in so many people.  Know what I saw?  Pictures of her looking incredibly perfect.  Posts where her house looked incredibly perfect.  Posts of her family where they looked incredibly perfect.  ONE post where she admitted to having a crying “mommy moment” for about 1 minute and then felt better and went on to lead her perfect life.  And you know what?  I like her blog.  It’s inspiring.  Inspiring what?  Well, for me to be perfect and beat myself up about how… not perfect I am.  I don’t even hate her, because she doesn’t profess to be anything other than what she is portraying to the world.  She is perfect and she owns it, and she doesn’t beg me to believe anything other than that.

That’s where I have the problem.  Having a blog is like being an actor.  STAY IN CHARACTER.  Don’t post perfection and then beg everyone to believe you are not perfect.  We smell bullshit and that’s why you are getting mean comments.

To all the traps I’ve ever known – Part 1

The extent of my thoughts about losing my job have come to, “Shit, I had better make a dentist appointment before my benefits run out”.

Yup, I’m losing my job.  In August.  You would think I’m panicking, but I’m not.  I’m almost… observing myself, like watching myself in a movie, tense with anticipation to see what I will do.

In March I accepted a different full-time job with the same people who were laying me and everyone else off.  But before I even went to the interview I kept hearing a whisper getting louder and louder.  Now is the time, it said.

Now is the time for what?  But I knew.  I knew the universe was sitting back smiling and nodding, looking at me with expectant wide open arms saying “whatchu gonna do now gurl?”

I knew that finally, after 39 years of being on this earth, working so fucking hard to please everyone else but myself, now was the time to throw up both my middle fingers (yes, both of them!) to the world and give a big FUCK YOU to all the traps I’ve ever known.

So I declined the job that I had accepted, even though they warned me with a smirk that they couldn’t help me with the safe, bottom of the barrel “options” we were being given because we were being laid off.  And I looked right into their eyes and said “That’s okay, I’ve made my decision”.  And I swear I saw a look of… envy in their eyes.

If you think about it, work is like a religious cult.  I almost relish the reaction I’m getting now when people obsessively ask me about “what I’m going to do” when my job ends in August and I say “I’m not sure”.  I see panic in their eyes mixed with a hint of envy.  I say “I actually want to have a life so I’m going to try and do stuff from home and work as little as possible”.  They laugh uncomfortably and agree with me.

It reminds me of the time my father decided, when I was 7 years old, that we would simply leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Yes, we were JW’s until I was 7 and then my dad woke up from the cultish nightmare and told them straight up “I don’t want to do this anymore”.

But see, you can’t just waltz out of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  You have to be excommunicated.  We were excommunicated.  My dad shrugged his shoulders and said “whatever”.  I didn’t mind because that meant I didn’t have to attend boring meetings anymore.  My mother seemed fearful and questioned my father.  The Jehovah’s Witnesses actually STALKED us, hid in the park across the street on a Sunday with cameras to see if we were going to another church.  I’m not kidding, they did.  And when my father spotted them, he sneaked around the long way and came up behind them in the bushes and confronted them.

Then my father went rogue.  He decided if they were going to fuck with us, he would fuck with them.  So he went to the media and got in every newspaper, on every talk show, radio show that would listen to him.  He was even in a book!  I remember as a 7-year-old going to the radio show and sitting in the dark audience.  I didn’t really know what was going on, it was just something different and exciting in my world and I got to spend time with him so I was happy.

I think of that now, and the reactions he must have gotten from everyone, and how many glints of envy and fear he must have seen in everyone’s eyes.  And he shrugged his shoulders and simply said “whatever”.  He honestly didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of him.

And that’s how I feel now.  I feel like I’m going rogue.  And it’s an incredible feeling.  But with going rogue means having to gather every single bit of courage you have in your entire body, follow your intuition and know that you are going to be okay.  Going rogue doesn’t come without it’s challenges.  But I leave you with this incredible quote that pretty much sums it up:

“I’m not gonna sit around and waste my precious divine energy trying to explain and be ashamed of things you think are wrong with me” – Esperanza Spalding

Light life

So much stuff:

Loss of nearly 20 pounds.

Breakup of 7-year relationship.

Loss of job and got new job.

Huge life emotional breakthroughs.

And after all the above I’ve had a few weeks of rest, a true vacation and got kind of rest-y and complacent.  So today marks the day I’m back to work and putting my nose to the grindstone again.  Goal is to lose 15 pounds more by end of June.  And then 15 pounds more by end of year as I would like to reach my “ultimate” weight goal by the end of this year.

I would have to do an entire post on all the breakthroughs I have had, but I can say that I’m finally filled with joy and freedom and a sense of ME again.  I finally spoke my truth after 7 years and I literally cannot even express to you how fucking amazing that feels.  I made a committment to myself after that to NEVER EVER let myself be in a space where I cannot speak my truth EVER AGAIN.

Suddenly, life got a whole lot lighter.

thoughts of pigeons

Can I be honest with you?

A huge life change feels gross.  It may be good for you, but it feels uncomfortable, gross, and can even hurt – a little bit or a LOT.

In fact, change to me is exactly like seated pigeon pose in yoga.

http://www.heykiki.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/q4.jpg

You start in downward dog, comfortable and smug, knowing all you have to do is swing your leg up in the air and bring it underneath you neatly, shin on the ground, knee outside of your wrist.  Then you settle in, lower down, and start to get a little anxious that your butt and hip isn’t touching the ground.  You try pushing it down and your shin starts to slowly move from the perfect “L” shape you had it in to closer to your inner thigh.

And then it starts to get uncomfortable.  REALLY uncomfortable.

But you perservere and decide to put your forearms in front of you on the mat and lower your upper body down to the mat.

And then it starts to get gross.  REALLY gross.

Oh my god, is it over yet?

Literally 2 seconds have gone by.

Oh my god, I hate this, I hate my legs, I hate everyone, I hate everything, is it over yet?

30 seconds.

I am going to scream, I can’t stand this anymore, is anyone else going as crazy as me? Is it over yet? Oh my god why is she making us do this?  This is wrong, is this even good for your body? Who does this! Is it over yet?!!!!!!

45 seconds.

Finally, I start to breathe into the space that is bothering me the most and sink into the floor.  I begin to let the surge of emotions come up, just a little, and relax my neck.

I really start to relax by this point and when the instructor tells us to release the pose I feel disappointed, because it’s finally starting to feel okay and the agitation is diminishing.

Back to downward dog and my hips feel like fresh new hips.

And I realize, a huge change in life is exactly like seated pigeon pose.  It’s gross, it can make you crazy, you can resist it all you want, but at some point everything relaxes the way it is supposed to, and you end up creating space you didn’t even know existed in the first place.

And the fact that you didn’t know it existed is humbling.  Because let’s face it, you don’t know everything, even though you would like to, and even though it would make things so much easier.

I want space.  I want to fill my new space with new things, exciting and loving things that create healthy peaceful energy.   And sometimes, you just have to feel gross for a while, and uncomfortable to get there.

I am found

Just a little update – I’ve lost 12 pounds so far!  I know it doesn’t seem like that much considering I’ve been actively trying and doing WW since the end of October, but I decided to put exclamation marks in celebration of something I know I should be proud of… even though the perfectionist in me is not proud.

But if I think about all the “work” I’m doing right now in my life, the fact that I managed to dedicate myself and lose even 12 pounds is amazing.

I’m in the midst of such life upheaval, losing my job, my mom’s illness and the dynamic with my father’s insanity, going through a relationship crisis, my apartment acquired mice – I’ve been a nervous wreck, stress filling my every pore and every chakra I have full, tight and ready to explode.

But as I am lost in this upheaval and chaos, I am also found.

When you break something, you can see inside.  There is nothing hidden anymore, nothing you can ignore.  I cannot look away any longer.  It’s not just about weight anymore, it’s not just about going to hot yoga to “lose weight”, it’s not about simply finding another job or finding another relationship, it’s not just about my mom being physically ill.

It’s about the guiding force of my entire life and what that looks like to me.  It’s about examining what makes me tick, what propells me forward, why do I wake up everyday and what goes through my mind?  What do I look forward to and where do I want to go?

Losing 12 pounds is amazing and it has been hard work for me.  But figuring out how I got to the weight I am in the first place is where I REALLY need to go.  The weight is just a symptom, I can physically fix it.

And when you think of all the things you are unhappy about in your life as symptoms, you realize you can fix them all, but deep down inside you are ill.  It may be ill with your thoughts or behavior, but you are still ill.  And you need to get well.

Raw foodist Dara Dubinet says “just show up as you are” and I realize she is right.  If you just show up as you are, everywhere in every part of your life, things are just simple, become easier.

Ask and you shall receive.  So in essence, by choosing to go on a journey of weight loss, you are asking to become healthy in every aspect of your life.  I have been given a gift, and even though it hurts and breaks my heart, I needed to break open everything and examine what was inside.  I’m showing up as I am.  And right now that’s the work that I need to do and I’m okay with that.

 

I’m allergic to, oh, everything.

Guess what?

I’VE LOST 9 POUNDS!!!!!!!

yup, 9 whole pounds.  I have fought hard for every single goddamn pound.  Turned down so many delicious things, exercised when all I really wanted to do was go home and sleep (hello bed I love you), made my food every single day (stupid boring salads), kept going to my Weight Watchers meetings even on the days I wanted to run away and not weigh in and go to the mall instead (Sephora? Is that you?).

This process so far has been PAINFULLY SLOW and if I see another banana I will kill myself.

Just jokes, I won’t do that (sorry to all the 0-point bananas).

But yeah.  The most important thing about weight loss that I’ve learned so far is that I have a fucked up relationship with food.  Food is exciting to me, not eating what I want is BORING.

But it’s good that I have discovered this.  Recently I had a weird experience where I was washing dishes and all of sudden I was RAVENOUS.  I could have eaten the entire world.  As I did the dishes I thought about how my day went and why I was feeling so ravenous and all of a sudden I realized I had a SHITTY day.  Just a depressing, shitty, stupid day and I was miserable and I had a hole inside of me.  THAT is why I was ravenous.

I wasn’t really hungry, I had a hole that I equated was hungry for food, but really it was just hungry for a better mood.

What’s even weirder is that as soon as I thought this, literally like as soon as I made the connection, the ravenous hunger WENT AWAY.  It completely went away and then I was fine.

I have never felt this before, and it was fascinating to me.  Is it because I’m finally connecting my “mind and body” like they tell us will happen in yoga?  *tentatively raises roof*

Also, I have found this weight loss process a bit easier by pretending I have an eating disorder and I make up all these weird allergies or sensitivities to food.  Like, oh that hurts my stomach, oh I don’t eat onions, oh I get nauseous if I eat that, oh I can’t eat gluten, or meat, or… *insert excuse here*

I’m telling you, it really works!!  I got this idea because I am truly allergic to pears, and before I went out for breakfast one day I checked out the online menu of the restaurant and they had pear and coconut pancakes (omg!) and that item was like, immediately deleted from any of my choices because I know I am allergic to pears.  It sounded so good, but I knew what would happen when I ate the pears and it was absolutely non-negotiable for me.

So that got me thinking.  What if I could be that way about all things that were actually not healthy for me to eat?  Hence the pretending to be allergic or sensitive to everything.

Brilliant! I know right?  Hey shut up I’ve lost 9 pounds with this magic formula. I’ll come back to update soon!

Becoming unstuck

Oftentimes you read something that you declare “changed your life”.  Most of the time that means it changed your life for the 15 minutes it took to read it, and then it’s lost in the vortex of your brain.

Yesterday I read something that I think actually DID change my life, changed everything.  I had brain explosion after brain explosion of awareness, almost like trying to pry a jar open and that feeling you get when it finally opens.

Here is what I read.

I realized after reading this the answer to why I was stuck.  I was stuck simply because I wasn’t going anywhere.

Oh sure I THOUGHT I was going somewhere, and I WANTED to go somewhere, I had the car running and the gear shift in drive, but little did I know I had the emergency brake on the whole time.

All the “whys” of why I wasn’t reaching or even close to reaching any type of goal I thought I had set for myself became clear.  I actually didn’t have a goal.  Oh sure I had formulated a goal, but after read this article and having a huge awakening for the past 2 days, I realized I didn’t have any goals.  Any goals that I believed I could achieve, that is.  These so called “goals” I had set for myself were merely wispy, vague thoughts and dreams of what I idealistically perceived could be me, if only “me” was a different person! 

I reexamined my goals, looked inside of myself for the real truth that I was afraid to speak, and realized I never ever truly believed I could achieve any of these goals.  I couldn’t see myself there, I didn’t believe I was capable.  Maybe even thought that I didn’t deserve it.

One example of this was my dream/goal to be a yoga instructor.  In the past 2 weeks I had actually tried to reform this goal from “I want to become a yoga instructor” to “I want to get to the place where I could become a yoga instructor”.  When I really examined this reformed goal after reading the article I realized, I do not believe in my heart that I will ever become a yoga instructor. 

And then, after this seed of thought grew and I accepted the reality I realized it was no wonder I couldn’t get further in my poses!  I actually even spoke the words out loud to my close friends that after 7 months of what I considered to be diligent practice, I felt stuck in all my poses and felt sad and frustrated and even ashamed that I couldn’t get any further in them.  The very thought that I believed I wasn’t going to ever achieve my goal is the very thing that has me stuck in the same place.  I can’t progress in my poses because I don’t have anything to progress TO.  I have a goal that I don’t even believe in.  I don’t believe in myself or think I deserve it, so why would any of my poses progress to anything?!

Seems so simple, yet I’m sure we all have our stuck moments  or even, sadly, stuck lifetimes.

To be stuck is safe, and to be honest, I’m afraid to be unstuck.

And that’s the truth of it all.  I’m afraid to be unstuck.

Are you afraid to be unstuck?