How I am violent, by Erica J. Schmidt

Since May, I have been taking an online course called, Embodying Ethics and Vows. It is with Michael Stone and Elaine Pierce. This week, our assignment was to write about how we are working with the precept of not causing harm (ahimsa) in our lives. Here's what I got:

How I am Violent, by Erica J. Schmidt

Instead of non-violence, I am thinking about violence. This makes me think of my relationships, especially with Simon and with my body, but with the Boatman too. Everyone saves their violence up for someone, for something. Actually, I have no idea what everyone else does.

It is hard not to tell the same old story over and over again. The story of Simon, my ex-boyfriend who I fucked at the Granola Party, on the biodegradable yoga mat. I was really drunk, and he wasn’t. Perhaps this should have been the last time. Instead, there was a big saga of alcohol, vomit, both passionate and ambivalent sex, and name calling. We wrote all this down in letters that were supposed to be published in brilliant books that were supposed to allow me to quit my three and a half low-paying jobs.

Simon used to say that I was like an eight-year-old sore loser tennis player. And I was always losing the match and so being with me was unbearable. He didn’t understand how the Boatman was able to stand me. Simon was probably more right about this than I was when I wrote,

“Sometimes I think that it would kind of be ideal for you to die.

Then our book would be a huge success.  I could feel somewhat sorry for myself, because a guy I fucked died and that is always traumatizing.  Everyone would look at me with odd sympathy. Especially if you committed suicide.  The sympathy would be immense.  Oh poor poor, Erica.  You slept with a sick and twisted soul.  Scarred forever.  How terrible.”

Highly mediocre writing, and unkind. This was from the second volume of the Little Savage and the Hermit. I wasn’t really into writing this book. Simon wanted the plot to be about how I finally got an orgasm. I felt like this was a dumb plot.

I am not the reason Simon jumped off his apartment building. I can just hear him say, “I would never jump off a building for you, you stupid fucking cunt!” His voice carries a tinge of love.

Simon’s most recent girlfriend gave me pictures and memorabilia from the funeral. When I first put the pictures on my meditation alter, I told myself that after a week, I was allowed to take them down. It has been awhile. They are still there. One of his photos is in a disposable coffee cup that is covered with the stream-of-consciousness poem I wrote during my French Literature Class in 2009. Simon kept this cup all the way until he died.  Those cups don’t biodegrade.

The alter, with spectacular lighting.

Simon once said that based on a study they did on rats in the 1970’s, I will never ever get cancer. The rats who expressed their stress by freaking out didn’t die or get any diseases. At this rate, I will live until I’m 98.

Not every day can be fulfilling and lucrative and productive. Some days are for melting down. Yesterday was a meltdown day. It was the first time I had woken up at 5 a.m. for a while. That could have caused the meltdown. I also don’t think I ate properly the day before. All the trivial and banal things tend to matter. Alas. I was stressed because I had this assignment to write, and Thursday is also blogging day. I thought that maybe I could combine the two activities, although I wasn’t sure whether or not the world should know that I told Simon it might be better if he died. As a creative practice, I have vaguely committed to myself and my four and a half fans that I will blog every Monday and Thursday. It started off being fun. Now I am starting to crap out.

Writing, with all its potential for redemption can also be violent.  Same thing goes for meltdowns.

My favourite person to have a meltdown with is the Boatman. No one can console and contain my eight-year-old sore-loser-tennis-player-self better than him. Plus I don’t really want to really want to impose this self onto anyone else. Some friends say that I should limit my contact with the Boatman. Otherwise, how will I possible get over him, move on. The idea of getting over anyone is so silly.  How can we possibly get over anyone?

Well, I suppose I am over the Vegan Life Coach. God bless the Vegan Life Coach, and his spirulina powder.

The Boatman and I talk once or twice a week. I try to make sure each time is not a meltdown. I try to ask him about his life. That was one of my goals when I began the ethics course. To ask people about their lives.

Yesterday, I called the Boatman in tears. “I can’t keep calling you like this. I will keep doing this forever.” For the rest of my life, for the rest of the world, I will compartmentalize myself to resemble a manageable and acceptable human being. Then when the eight-year-old tennis player appears, I will excuse myself to call the Boatman. I’ll be eighty years old, forty-nine years into a marriage, with seventeen grandchildren. Some blogging drama will emerge. “Excuse me, honey,” I will say to my geriatric husband. “I need to melt down to the Boatman.” The Boatman will be eighty-eight.

“It’s okay,” the Boatman told me yesterday as I fretted and wept about my lack of meltdown autonomy. “You can just call me.” Maybe they can make a special Boatman Meltdown App.

As for my body, well, I cannot believe the violence I have imposed upon it. Sri W. Ham Wrap was right. My yoga practice was super violent, and  I cling to things until they die.

People always say, “My poor body,” and/or “My body is not happy with me,” and/or my body is angry with me. I know what they mean, but I wonder who they are talking about.

Or what about, “my back was killing me?” My back was killing me the day I went to meet Simon’s girlfriend. Earlier I had spent two hours on my bike, to visit a friend. Now I was walking. I felt that if anything in my clicky, crooked eighty-year-old spine were to shift .035 mm the wrong way, the whole thing would surely collapse. Someone would have to wheel me and my body away.

"Jesus," I thought. People think about Jesus when their backs hurt. I remembered listening to Ashtanga teacher Tim Feldman talking about his herniated discs. He could barely move, but he thought about his guru, Pattabhi Jois, who said, “You taking your yanus.” So Tim started squeezing his anus like nobody’s business. Somehow this helped. Seemed a bit simplistic to me, or rather, perhaps too complicated. But what else could I do? As I walked, I brought my awareness to my anus and pelvic floor. I didn’t squeeze, I just thought about it. I considered how it was all connected to my feet that were touching the ground. And how my sitbones were also somewhat connected to my nostrils. And how the crown of my head sort of balanced on top of everything. There was still pain, but by the time I arrived at Simon’s girlfriend’s house, it felt like maybe things had shifted 0.035 mm away from me being in a wheelchair.

It is a good idea to try and keep your body happy.

This afternoon I’ll be taking a stab at my dream job. I am going to help a three-year-old learn how to use the potty. Very little is more grounding than helping someone else to take a shit.

The End.

The cup with the biodegradable poem on it
Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook

My name is Erica, and I love coffee
Simon Girard, 1979-2015
The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two
Not Separate From All that Is 
The Real Me 

Michael Stone Teaching




Simon

Slow Dance

So on Friday night, I went to a Slow Dance. It was organized by my new Facebook friend named Sherwin Sullivan Tjia, also known as Joe Catman. Sherwin slash Mr. Catman is a charming and exuberant fellow who devotes his life to organizing quirky events such as slow dances, cat video nights and strip spelling bees. He also writes books, including the interactive “You Are a Cat,” in which readers get to choose their own adventures from the point of view of a feline character. Sherwin’s versatile and fascinating endeavours offer many exciting options for everyone, including those who have recently taken a hiatus from time-consuming yoga cults and are looking to fill the void. As such, I had noble intentions to attend last Wednesday’s Strip Spelling Bee; however, I ended up opting out due to menstruation. Also, I felt as though my current underwear situation was rather unspectacular. Both mediocre and self-absorbed reasons. I will try and do better next time. I happen to be an excellent speller.

Despite being considerably less excellent at dancing, Friday night’s Slow Dance ended up being my very first Sherwin Event. I even volunteered to be a Designated Dancer. As a Designated Dancer, I wore a glowing item over my heart and committed myself to pulling wallflowers off the wall. Sherwin compares the glowing brooch of a designated dancer to a “warm taxi light in the middle of a blizzard.” I must say, Sherwin was an inspiring coach. He urged us to “dance with the ugly and the sad-looking. Dance with those who have a heavy, heart-worn energy, who look like the last place they want to be is there.” It is the “duty and peculiar joy of being a dd” to “dance the road less travelled.” I really liked my glowing brooch.

 

 

Me and My Glowing Brooch

One of the reasons I became a DD was so I wouldn’t become a wallflower myself. My high school dance memories that are not blurred by Mike’s Hard Lemonade are relatively traumatic. Actually, the Mike’s Hard Lemonade memories are also relatively traumatic:

The song is "Kiss Me," by Six Pence None the Richer. I am thirteen, younger than you are supposed to be in grade nine, and drunker than you are supposed to be at thirteen. This is all Mrs. Vanden Bosch’s fault. She gave me Gifted Child Syndrome in grade one. It is also sort of my sister’s fault, because she smuggled the alcohol into the student’s council room. She was the president. Anyways, a few slow dances ago, some nice tall boy named Matthew from grade eleven asked me to slow dance. Probably the song was "Iris," by the GooGoo dolls. “I’d give up forever to touch you.” I must have really enjoyed myself because when the chorus to “Kiss me” comes on I stand in front of Matthew. As I sing along, I start kissing the air. I suppose this isn’t that embarrassing. Life would become much worse.

When I pictured an adult slow dance, I imagined that we would all stand around hugging each other the whole time. As it turned out, many of the people who were drawn to my glowing brooch had some rather complicated dance moves up their sleeves. Some people seemed deeply committed to these moves.

“These are contemporary moves,” one gentleman informed me. Beads of sweat slid down his glasses. His fancy white shirt, now transparent, was peeled to his skin. You could tell he’d been enthusiastically practicing his contemporary dance moves all evening. He spun me around at a dizzying pace. I did my best to keep up; however, I’m afraid that I am much better versed in the less structured form of Ecstatic Dance and the low-skilled form of standing around and hugging. Oh well. I hope that no one felt as though my glowing brooch was false advertising.

At midnight, we were allowed to take our glowing brooches off our hearts and become undesignated dancers. Right away, the awkward high school moments increased. Without my glowing brooch, the dance floor was no longer a straightforward and mechanical task. While the glow had enabled me to pose as one of the cool people, now I was back to being thirteen, with no contemporary dance moves, or Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

I went to hide behind the velvet black curtain next to Sherwin's DJ table. If you are ever feeling overwhelmed at a slow dance, I highly recommend going to visit Sherwin. His presence is nothing but soothing and consoling. By the way, he had great hair and was wearing a gorgeous black flouncy frilly dress. A total knockout.

“The glow brooch gave me a structure,” I told him. “I love structure. That’s why I’m a good caregiver.”

“What does asking people to dance have to do with taking care of people with intellectual disabilities?” Sherwin didn’t get it and I couldn’t explain.

Back on the dance floor, the song was “Hero,” by Enrique Iglesias. I danced with some dude wearing a hat. He was pretty cute, if perhaps a bit drunk. As he buried his face in my neck, I couldn’t tell if he was kissing me or not. Around us lots of other people were making out.  It looked like they were having a wonderful time. I hadn’t kissed anyone in a while.

“You. Can. Take. My Breath Away,” sang Enrique. “I. Can. Be. Your Hero.” And the song was over. The guy in the hat lifted his face out of my neck. I turned my face and we ended up kissing on the lips.

“Honestly, I meant to kiss you on the cheek,” he said. Right. I wasn’t exactly feeling it, but I went along with a couple more kisses for the hell of it. The next song was “I’ll Be,” by Edwin McCain.

“Do you want to dance again?” asked the Man in the Hat. “I do.” Again, what the hell.  Except that within about thirty seconds I felt the insatiable urge to go hide in the bathroom.

“Need some air,” I said. “Thanks. Bye.” Smooth. I’ll be better when I’m older.

After hiding in the bathroom for a while, I went back to visit Sherwin.  I asked him how he came to organize mass slow dances and other quirky events. “Well,” he said. “I really love slow dancing, and when I love something, I want to do it a whole bunch.” Simple as that. And now there were masses of people dancing and/or clutching each other to the tune of “Wrecking Ball,” by Miley Cyrus.  

Sherwin and I had some lovely chats about drinking, kissing, dancing, and dating people from the Maritimes. The last official song of the evening was “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by B. Tyler. I wasn’t sure about how and when I should make my exit. Thankfully, Sherwin told me about this trendy and somewhat new thing called Ghosting.  It means that you rapidly leave a party or an event without saying goodbye. I gave it a try and it was quite a success.

On my way home, I picked smarties out of a bag of trail mix. As I walked down St. Laurent Street at 2 a.m., I considered how my life has changed.  

The End.

 

You Are a Cat!
A Pick-a-Plot series by Sherwin Tjia
Never Miss a Slow Dance or Strip Spelling Bee Ever Again:
Subscribe to Sherwin's Quirky Events

Also, add him as a friend on Facebook: Sherwin Sullivan Tjia
His statuses are delightful and entertaining.
Contact Sherwin at inconsolablecat@hotmail.com

Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook 
I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

Ecstatic Dance
Poopy Mango Baby Wipes and the First Day of Christmas 
Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz

 

The Benefits of a Vegan Life Coach

Long or short, every temporary source of sexual gratification leaves you with something that will follow you all the days of your life. The Vegan Life Coach was hardly an exception to this. Having long ago processed VLC inflicted pubic hair, forehead wrinkle and vaginal recorder baggage, I remain primarily and perpetually grateful to him for his following areas of influence:

1.       An unwavering commitment to the Ashtanga Yoga practice. When I first met the Vegan Life Coach, I was certain that six days a week was far too many. I was entirely set on taking every Tuesday off, for no particular reason. The Vegan Life Coach convinced me otherwise. Eventually the Vegan Life Coach was banned from the studio. Darby said that he caused too many disruptions. I, however, kept practicing as though my life depended on it. Perhaps it did. The habit stuck for seven and a half years.

2.       A fancy looking bottle of red wine that costs less than $12. It was called Borsao, and it had an orange label. I think it was from Spain. In 2007, it cost $11.45. When I brought it to parties, I appeared quite a lot more sophisticated than I really was.  At their first sip, my hosts would nod, so very approvingly. “Just pairs well with everything, doesn’t it?” I’d say. As though I had any idea.




Borsao, Very Fancy



3.       Excellent Guacamole Recipe. Today’s blog has resorted to a list. Will it also resort to recipes? No, absolutely not. But here are the ingredients, from most to least: Avocadoes, tomatoes, red onions, garlic, salt, turmeric and cumin. The Vegan Coach said that it was all very good for inflammation, and cold sores. I like to eat guacamole with corn chips which is probably also very fabulous for inflammation and cold sores. When I moved to Halifax to date slash live with the Boatman, corn chips became a food group. This was one of the Boatman’s many wonderful areas of influence. The big secret is that Restaurant Tostitos are actually much more delicious than any of the colourful organic types that come in biodegradable packages. We experimented extensively. I am going on a picnic today, in case you couldn’t guess.

Excellent Guacamole, from comfytummy.com
Perhaps VLC Guacamole looks like this.
Food Selfies are typically beyond me.



Not surprisingly, the last time I saw the Vegan Life Coach was at a vegan restaurant. His skin glistened with sweat, and he appeared rather thin. He demonstrated a polite and convincing level of interest in my life in Halifax, my job at the Montessori school, and my creative endeavours.

“So, what are you writing about these days?” he asked.

“Oh, well, a bunch of stuff,” I replied. “I still write about you sometimes,”

“Well, you know,” he told me. “What you write about other people reveals a lot about how you feel about yourself.”

I couldn’t make this guy up if I tried.

The End

Avocadoes

A note about avocadoes: Everyone has experienced the dilemma of avocadoes being either terribly hard or mushy and brown. Together, the Boatman and I derived deep wisdom about avocadoes. Hopefully, this will follow us all the days of our lives. I am sharing this wisdom with you now. Should you find yourself in possession of a hard avocado, put it in a paper bag. You can place it next to ripe or ripening bananas, though I myself feel that banana flavours morph into everything they touch. But the paper bag, this works. Once the avocadoes are soft to touch, put them in the fridge. There they will transform into a state of magical creaminess, and for quite a long time, this magical creaminess will remain available for you to spread across toast, or crackers, or to dice into salad, or mash into guacamole, or engage in whatever other applicable avocado activity you can think of.

Good luck.

Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook

More goodies from the Vegan Life Coach, which reveal a great deal with regards to how I feel about myself:

The Day Yoga Almost Gave Me A Stroke       
The Sperm Cleanse
(Ashtanga Yoga and Oral Sex was reverted to draft.)

 However you feel about avocadoes, you should definitely watch the Vegan Life Coach video at least once. I have definitely watched it at least once. OM.

 Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt
 

The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two

Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz (for those of you without a Vegan Life Coach)



 

The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two

A childhood friend who once peed on my play dough recently took up Ashtanga Yoga. In his wave of newly born enthusiasm he googled, “The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice.” Curiously enough, the first result was an article I wrote for Elephant Journal by the same name. I wrote it when I was twenty-five, about four years into my daily Mysore practice. What a darling I was. Let’s see how much has changed.

25-year-old Erica. The Darling.

Twenty-five year old Erica says,

“It’s easy to doubt your efforts when onlookers may see your practice as a self-indulgent, masochistic, tripped out version of aerobics. In order to relieve your doubts, I believe that it is extremely important to regularly evaluate the intention behind your hard work.”

Twenty-nine year old Erica: Indeed. Where does this wisdom and coherence come from? As fate would have it, twenty-nine year old Erica’s doubts are massive. Since the end of February, she/I have been relentlessly pulling out all kinds of blustering speeches about the Ashtanga Yoga method.  

Speech A: "After being coerced into weird extreme unnatural movement, for example, bending backwards until your hands grab your ankles, and/or your calves, and/or your knees as often as possible for five to ten to twenty-five years, it’s just not that surprising if some part of your body starts to feel terrible."

Speech B: “If I’m really honest, I feel like at least one of my vertebrae has slipped out of place and left all the joints from the left hip down grinding together at least once a week, and probably way more often than that. When did this start, you ask? I think somewhere between learning kapotasana and putting my legs behind my head every day.”


Kino's Spiritual Spine in Kapotasana

Speech C: “I just don’t think that very many senior teachers are being honest about what hurts, how much and for how long. There’s too much at stake for them. I can’t trust anybody.”

Speech D: “I mean, all my love to Sharath. Mysore was a delightful time. But, ‘don’t walk too much?’ Walking is not optional! Walking is a biological imperative. Sticking your face between your knees is not!”

Speech E: Something about rampant sanctioned eating disorders, social alienation, adrenal fatigue, Daddy Issues, superiority complexes and paralyzing neuroses. And how Kino MacGregor’s injured S.I. joint meant that she was a nun in her past life, but my clicky crooked eighty-year old spine is almost certainly not so spiritual.

And what would twenty-five year old Erica say to all this?

Your reasons for practising yoga will evolve over time. Everyone comes to yoga for different reasons and during different circumstances. The first time I did yoga was from a video by Ali McGraw that my mother had given me. At the time, I was a chronic exercise addict and I couldn’t get through the day without physically torturing myself as much as possible. My mother really wanted me to relax, but she knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop moving. The yoga movie was set in a bright white desert, where clouds hung low to the ground. In a flattering white leotard, Ali McGraw demonstrated sun salutations and some basic sequences of yoga postures as a man with a soothing voice talked me through it. When I got to the end, the man told me to lie down and let go of everything I didn’t need until all that was left was love. This seemed like a pleasant concept, but a little hokey and not very realistic. I quickly returned to my extensive and neurotic cardiovascular routine

Ali MacGraw, Yoga Mind & Body

Teehee. I was fifteen when my mom bought me that video. These were the days of the Stairmaster and running with ankle weights. No wonder leg-behind-the-head has been a washout. In fact, the first time I ever did yoga was in a psychiatric ward where I was admitted after an ex-lax overdose. The teacher was a tiny blonde woman who wore high heels and business suits. Besides yoga, she wanted to teach us coping strategies besides cutting ourselves or taking laxatives. On large chart paper at the front of the room, she drew diagrams about the cycle of anxiety. She highly recommended gardening.

During the yoga class, we mostly just breathed and lay down. While we were lying down, the teacher stayed sitting up, and I remember this made me feel safe. I was extremely tired from screaming and crying and begging them to let me out of the psych ward. Most of the time, I just fell asleep.

Rodney

Yoga Video #2 was Rodney Yee. Like Oprah, I felt that Rodney had a beautiful body. And he could go upside down, which was compelling and exciting. By then I had switched from Ex-lax to vomit. The ankle weights were still a thing. By the time I was seventeen, I was hospitalized again. For four months, I attended a Day Treatment program for teenagers with eating disorders. We got to do yoga on Mondays. The teacher’s name was Martha and she was very adamant that whilst menstruating, a woman should not tilt her pelvis. Barely any of us got our periods, so this was a moot point. Many of the other patients vibrated their legs compulsively as we sat cross-legged in some empty carpeted conference room.

“Inhale,” said Martha, and we followed her as she raised her hands above her head. “Exhale, shower yourself with love and compassion.” To this day, this remains one of my  favourite facetious catch-phrases. Another day, Martha had us take a long savasana. Over and over again, some new age skylark sang

"I will be gentle with myself,

I will love myself,

I am a child, of the universe,

Being born each moment."

I remember lying there, tears streaming down my face. It all seemed way too far-fetched. Once I was medically stable, my mother looked for other yoga classes I could attend. Somehow, she came upon an Ashtanga Yoga school in Ottawa. She called the instructor ahead of time, explaining that I needed something that would allow me to sweat, work hard and not get bored. The instructor told her that there would be lots of sweat and no boredom. He was right.

Twenty-five-year old Erica:  There’s only one way for me to summarize this experience: I really just couldn’t believe it.

This seems to be a motif in people’s Ashtanga Yoga Memoirs. In our first class, amid puddles of sweat, there’s this recognition that we have tapped into something unbelievable, indescribable, beyond words. What is it?

After that first class, it would be another four years or so before I committed to a daily practice. During this time, the mere thought of yoga was consoling, and the idea of going upside down seemed highly redeeming. I continued to dabble in led classes and videos, with the dream that one day I would learn enough about yoga that I could go upside down, and practice every day.

Twenty-five year old Erica:   Finally, at age 21, I found myself at Sattva Yoga Shala in Montréal, where Pattabhi Jois’ students Darby and Joanne run their studio. The shala was just down the street from my university. It became possible for me to go to yoga every morning before class. My previous tendency to obsessively overtrain no longer seemed to make any sense. Ashtanga yoga is definitely vigorous, and it provides undeniable physical benefits including strength, flexibility and the release of toxins. However, Pattabhi Jois was as correct as he was adamant when he said, “This yoga is not for exercise. Yoga is showing where to look for the soul – that is all” (Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, Puck Building, NYC 2001).

This is all very nice. I wonder where my soul is now. The thing is, under the disguise of very beautiful Ashtanga Yoga practice, it is entirely possible to go bonkers and back. My twenty-five year old self sort of agrees.

Certainly, yoga has not provided me with an unfailing cure for shit times, but perhaps yoga can show us where to look. For the soul, for God, for whatever is that is left “when you let go of everything you don’t need.” Whereas my former fitness endeavours served as an attempt to escape from my problems, yoga has given me the opportunity to meet with every single aspect of myself every single morning. Every day when I unroll my mat, whether or not I feel like merging with God, I face myself, breath after breath, posture after posture. 

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I am so earnest, so sincere and so convincing.

I believe that in simply showing up no matter what, I begin to rise above these insecurities. I stand on my head. My life is a mess. I breathe anyways. A really huge mess. Too bad, life. I’m still here. Maybe tomorrow, the mess will be a little less huge and when more mess comes, I will remember that no mess is forever. 

Very true; however, broken cartilage and ligaments, these take a rather long time to heal. The journey back from emaciation post misguided raw food fungus cleanse? Also quite extensive. Sorting out the Daddy Issues you projected onto your teacher? Lifetimes.

The remainder of “The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice” is there for you on Elephant Journal. I ended with another feel-good quote from Pattabhi Jois, who I never met, and with something about unshakeable peace. Unshakeable peace is worthwhile endeavour, though it hasn’t always proved to be available.

Bonkers and back. 29-year-old Erica likes this. Maybe I was more coherent when I did second series.

My childhood friend who peed on my playdough has already been immersed in a different yoga and meditation cult. He is not interested in surrendering to a Guru or in becoming consumed with a bunch of rules and rituals. He does his practice in the afternoons. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, he follows along with some nice lady who does half primary on a video. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he does kettle bells. It all sounds so balanced and civilized.

I think that people do themselves a disservice when they say, “If I didn’t practice, I’d be a total mess.” As though without practice, your whole life would crumble into a series of enormous mistakes. It will be you, vodka, Netflix and one inappropriate source of sexual gratification after another. All this, in addition to extreme and unmanageable obesity.

That’s what I thought. And yet, after over a month of taking a break, I have continued to exist. So far, I have even avoided devolving into debauchery. Although I did make a few free-spirited moves in Toronto, I feel as though all my choices have been quite reasonable. Plus I got to keep my biceps.

“Your life is not a series of mistakes.” This is from a Michael Stone podcast. I listened to it while I was in Mysore, the day after I realized that I almost totally hated Halifax, and would likely need to move.

“Just when you think your life is over, your heart has more beats.” Sharath said this during conference that week. He was quoting a Bollywood song. Nobody else remembers him saying this. I do. He looked straight at me. I was imagining leaving the Boatman. My Birkenstocks and spiritual pants would go in one suitcase. All the fancy clothes from my fake mother-in-law would go in the trunk. Where would I go?

My life is not a series of mistakes. My heart has more beats.

I hope yours does too.

Whatever your practice is, may it bring you unshakeable peace. May you learn to go upside down, and may this be exciting as you imagined it would be. May you always remain at least as wise as an Elephant Journal article. May your practice inspire you to give up Ex-lax, ankle weights and the stairmaster.  And Elephant Journal. May you travel to India, and meet masses of delightful people who have been to bonkers and back. May you meet as many people like this as possible. May you discover that you were a nun in your past life. May you develop unrelenting reverence for your breath, your spine, and the trillions of cells in your body. At the darkest of times, may someone tell you that your heart has more beats.  May you cease to view your life as a series of mistakes.

May someone watch over you as you lie down. And when you lie down, may you learn to let go of everything you don’t need. Until all that’s left is love, much of it for your mother.

When I wrote unshakeable peace, I couldn’t help but also think, unshakeable peas.

Much of the love is also for my father.

The End.



Me and Sharath, looking less than 25
The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, by Erica Schmidt

Unshakeable Peas
 

Shower Yourself with Love and Compassion
Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook 

Ashtanga/Eating Disorder Memoir Type Posts:

You Cling To Things Until They Die 
Are You Strong or Are You Skinny? 
Not Separate From All That Is 
This is the New Story of My Life

Michael Stone Podcast: MU (Your life is not a series of mistakes.) 

Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz (I'm a Royal Starfish)

Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz

In this navel-gazing world, it is important to take the time to analyze yourself through as many narcissistic illuminating lenses as possible. The benefits of personality quizzes are obvious. You would know if you'd had the opportunity to gain deep self-insight from the 2010 Granola Party Cereal Personality Quiz. If not, it is never too late. Either way, it is not necessarily useful to pigeon hole yourself as French Toast Crunch or Reese Cocoa Puffs for the rest of your life. For this reason, I invite you to dive deep into the sea of Ocean Invertebrate Personality types and expand your horizons of who you think you really are. Somehow, I have managed to scrounge together every ounce of my psychology and marine biology skills in order to narrow the ocean floor down to four main Ocean Invertebrate Personality Types.  I did it all for your utmost benefit.  May the quiz and its outcome prove to be life changing.

For best results, try to remain as open as possible to each hypothetical situation. Do not agonize or fret about your answers! The number of points allotted for each response are indicated in brackets. Please remember that as far as Ocean Invertebrate Personalities go, more is not always better. It depends.

1.      If I had to write a song, it would be about

a)      Arugula. (4)

b)      Phosphorescent Ass Cheeks. (4)

c)      Ulysses, flamingos and Peter LaVoie. (8)

d)      Pigeons, Alanis Morissette, and balcony tanning. (12)

e)      Elevators, vibrators and blueberries. (16)

2.      My deepest fear is

 

a)      Not that I am inadequate, but that I am powerful beyond measure. (12)

b)      Accidentally eating squid in my sleep. (4)

c)      Having someone make jewelry out of my bones when I’m dead. (16)

d)      That my poetry sounds as though I don’t own a vibrator. (8)

 

3.      In high school band class, I played

a)      Flute or Piccolo. (8)

b)      Clarinet or Euphonium (4)

c)      Tuba or Oboe (8)

d)      Trombone or viola (4)

e)      Cello or French Horn (12)

f)       Violin or Harpsicord (12)

g)      The Harp (16)

h)      Xylophones or the Saxophone. (16)

i)        Chimes or a Trumpet. (12)

j)        No fair. All we had were recorders. (4)

 

4.      Domestically, I display the highest level of competence in:

a)      Waffles.  (16)

b)      Picking the avocado stickers out of the compost. (12)

c)      Vacuuming. (8)

d)      Changing the toilet paper roll. (4)

 

5.   In my dreams, I am

a)      Making Waffles. (4)

b)      Menstruating. (8)

c)      Kissing Alanis Morissette. (12)

d)      Flying around with my harp. (16)

e)      Being handcuffed for carrying a spoon. (16)

6.      My favourite childhood activity was

a)      Hide and seek. (16)

b)      Monopoly Junior. (12)

c)      Mixing a bunch of kitchen ingredients into a mug and forcing my grandfather to eat it. (8)

d)      Cribbage. (4)

e)      Decorating a cardboard box and hiding in it for the rest of the day. (4)

f)       Making a hundred paper bag puppets and inflicting a tedious performance onto my family. (16)

g)      All I can remember is getting dragged across a sidewalk on a leash. (8)

 

7.      People are as happy as they seem on the Internet.

a)      Very True About Me. (12)

b)      Somewhat True About Me. (16)

c)      Rarely True About Me. (4)

d)      No. Absolutely not. (8)

8. The following Matt Wiviott’s Facebook status speaks to me the most:

a) The best way to commit shameless cultural appropriation is to transform yourself into the Prince of Darkness. The Princess awaits. The Time of Darkness will soon be upon us. (4)

b) Christ, I mean, it's even right there in the Zohar! You gotta become cognitive androgyny! (8)

c) The Magician makes her Presence felt, not so much with Magic as with Presence. (12)

d) The Anti-Christ is not something you are. The Anti-Christ is something you become. (16)

e) I am Matt Wiviott. #liveyogamusic (16)

Use your brain or iPhone to add up all your points. Then, Scroll Down!!!

Use your brain or iPhone
Photo Courtesy of Tiago d'Oliviera Photography and Film

 

Oh, hi Alanis!

Sad Recorder

RESULTS:

Did you score 32 to 55 points?

LIFE IS VERY EXCITING. You are a VAMPIRE SQUID.

Congratulations! You're a Vampire Squid

 

Journalist Matt Taibbi once compared Wall Street banker Golden Sachs " to a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." As it turns out, Vampire Squids are without blood funnels, and their antics are somewhat less dramatic. When Vampire Squid feel threatened, they strike a Pumpkin or Pineapple Posture, making them appear bigger and pricklier than they really are. Probably the Wall Street banker was more like a Brooding Anenome, but what do I know?  Beyond pumpkin and pineapple poses, vampire squid and those with its associated personality type devote a great deal of time honing useful skills that will help them to conquer life’s suffocating depths. As a Vampire Squid Personality Type, you are not the fastest mover; however, your stamina and efficiency lead to excellent results and a low carbon footprint. This combined with your extensive phosphorescence makes you extremely compelling to both friends and lovers. Unassuming and humble, nobody underestimates you more than you.  At times you suffer from a bit of a scarcity complex. Do your best to flip this around and view every rare event as a fortuitous blessing.

Pumpkin/Pineapple Pose, by the Vampire Squid

FAMOUS VAMPIRE SQUID: Kiera Knightley, Henry Ford, Emily Dickenson

Recommended Activities: Ecstatic Dance, Picnics, Pottery, Poetry

Potential Careers: Librarian, Undertaker, Truck Driver, Tailor, Novelist, Poet

Did you score 56-79 points?

LIFE IS VERY EXCITING. You are a BROODING ANENOME.

Brooding Anenome (Epiactus Prolifera)
I've had a thing for you since childhood.

I've had a thing for you since childhood. Quite often, the brooding anemone is born female, before later developing hermaphroditic qualities. Your lesson to the world is, “Why does everything have to be so fucking linear?” Like the Brooding Anenome, who harpoons toxins into passing-by organisms, you can be a little, shall we say, venomous when it comes to people who violate your space. Fortunately, your insatiable beauty combined with various redeeming qualities allow you to foster deep and loyal relationships with people who will generously commit to loving you just as you are, Special Person Syndrome and all. In fact, the people you do allow into your vicinity are in for a real treasure. Once you have established that people are neither obnoxious nor unreasonable, you delight in their company, offering quality time, service and uncanny wit. This is to say, everything will be fine. My only advice to you would be to perhaps save your noxious one-liners for special occasions.   

FAMOUS BROODING ANENOMES: Steve Jobs, Adam Corolla, Chip Wilson, Louis CK, Ludwig Van Beethoven

Recommended Activities: Ashtanga Yoga, Travel, Bowling, Riding in Cars with Girls, Riding in Cars with Boys, Gourmet Cooking

 

Potential Careers: Wall Street Banker, Crane Operator, Politics, Restaurant Owner, Stand-up Comic

 

Did you score 80-104 points?

LIFE IS VERY EXCITING. You are a ROYAL STARFISH.

You sparkle and shimmer oh so bright, the starfish is really quite the sight
Photo Source

You sparkle and shimmer oh so bright, the starfish is really quite the sight. With your invisible gonads, cardiac stomach and self-healing powers, what’s there not to like about you? Your ability to reproduce both sexually and asexually makes you impressively autonomous. At the same time, you radiate versatility, adaptability and a fabulous gift for synergy. For these reasons, you are indispensable to a wide variety of work and social settings. The Royal in your name is nearly your only pretentious part. At Lululemon interviews, when they ask you about your biggest downfall, you can honestly reply that in your great and natural tendency towards compassion, you sometimes fail to prioritize your own needs. As the Lululemon people say, remember that in acknowledging and honouring our fragility, we display the greatest strength. I say, nobody likes a martyr. Keep this in mind and your radiance and delight should serve you all the days of your life.

FAMOUS ROYAL STARFISH: Charles Darwin, Kino MacGregor, Princess Diana, Gwenyth Paltrow, Alanis Morissette

Suggested Activities: Softball, Musical Theatre, Psychedelics, Yurt Building

Potential Careers: Lululemon Ambassador, Princess, Philanthropist, Life Coach, Tour Guide

Did you score 105-128 points?

LIFE IS VERY EXCITING. You are a CUTTLE FISH.

True Facts About the Cuttle Fish, by ZeFrank at  Laughingsquid.com

ZeFrank says it better than me, but basically, Cuttle Fish are remarkable for their triple-heart circulation system, their ability to instantaneously transform into the colour of their surroundings, and their face sex reproductive practices. Depending on their gender, they have six to eight limbs.  I also heard something about their hearts being purple. In any case, if you have a Cuttle Fish Personality, your view of the world is extremely sophisticated and your love life is probably excellent. You can love three beings at once, or one being a whole bunch or whatever combination your purple hearts desire. If you do opt for a threesome or foursome, refrain from seeking advice on their internet. Maybe just call your big brother or sister, or Matt Wiviott, and then call it a day. Wear your favourite tights. In work and non-sexual endeavours, you possess the capacity to plan ahead, though you don’t always take advantage of this. Luckily, you are quite gifted at covering your tracks when you do mess up.

FAMOUS CUTTLE FISH: Dan Savage, Margaret Atwood, Matt Wiviott (TBD), Jane Fonda

Suggested Activities: Paper Maché Puppets, Comedy Improv, Synchronized Swimming, Rock Climbing

Potential Careers:  Marriage Counselor, Fashion Designer, Talk Show Host, Pilates Instructor, Painter, Live Yoga Music Harpist.

 

Life is Very Exciting, You are a Cuttle Fish. Photo Source.

 



Jane Fonda, One of My Favourite Cuttle Fish(es)

Photo Source.

And that's the End. Let me know how you did!

 

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