Ellen: You didn’t write it down it’s not a speech you just from – you just talked off the top of your head?

Graeme: No I came up there and I got up to the podium and I remember, huh I’m hungry– [audience laughter]

I think most folks would find that an endearing little line that a charming 14 year old throws in for a quick laugh on the Ellen show, but I think it’s a rather remarkable moment of enlightenment.

I have a Buddha figure in my life, who once said to me (paraphrasing), “whenever I start to get emotional or angry or upset during the day, I check to see if I’m hungry, thirsty, or have to pee. Usually I haven’t taken care of one of those needs, and once I do I feel ok.”

It’s easy to laugh at those basic needs in our complex world, but paying close, intimate attention to the simple requests of the body is compassionate, intelligent and, I think, profound.  When I think of the number of times I have recognized I had to pee, but completely ignored it, recognized I was hungry but punished myself for eating sins of days prior, recognized I was thirsty but figured I could go “just a little further,” and then I hear this startling, bold child taking a moment to check in with his body before he gives the speech of a 14 year long lifetime, I know I have a lot to learn from him.  The part of him that was able to listen to his needs, is the same part of him that was able to reach down and produce the brave, peace-inspired speech that he gave.

I’ve begun running recently. Or, rather, what I have dubbed “Jalking.”  The rest of the world calls it interval training. I like Jalking.  I walk till the idea of jogging sounds like fun.  I jog till jogging doesn’t feel fun anymore.  I walk till jogging sounds like maybe it’d be fun again; lather, rinse, repeat.  What I’ve found especially exciting about the process is not just the sheer fact that I’m jogging, after years of believing I couldn’t, but the constant process of “checking in” my little game requires.  I check in with my feet, I check in with my lungs, I check in with my knees, I check in with my overall system and fatigue level, and continually change my behavior based on my in-the-moment evaluation.  Instead of working with time intervals or prescribed distances, I work on consistently checking for evidence of “fun” or “not fun.”

This little whippersnapper’s ability to “check in,” is hugely inspirational to me.  I have this vague notion that the pains of my past, any struggles I had with body image, weight, exercise, food, will be the things that make me most successful, and most impactful on the world.  I’m not sure in what way exactly – performance, teaching, writing, some combination of all those things? I don’t know.  The only thing I do know is that the only way all of this will manifest, is if I can continue, over the course of my life, to constantly check in with myself.

I can’t wait to see what this kid does, and at almost-30, I hope some day to grow up to be like this 14 year old.

And crying.

I mean, like, practically immediately there were tears.

Partially, the emotion was from watching  the Achilles International runners make their way past me.  Whether it was a blind runner with their guide, a hand-crank wheel chair racer, or any other runner with a disability, those athletes completely blew my mind – not only in their own efforts, but in those of the able-bodied runners who would spend the marathon as their guide and assistant for the full 26.2.

But what made me most emotional was the support of the crowd in general.  Having the privilege of living in Brooklyn, I got to cheer with a crowd of folks who were predominantly NYC residents.  Not that I have anything against Manhattan tourists (ok… maybe when I’m trying to walk quickly to work I have something against tourists…), but they’ll get excited and enthusiastic about most anything in New York City.  But a street packed with Brooklynites, there for no reason other than to lend their vocal support to thousands of people running by that they don’t know, is something truly special.

One of the things I find most appealing about the iconography in Buddhist philosophy, is that statues and images of the Buddha are never supposed to be considered as presentations of gods or deities.  Rather, the Buddha’s image is intended to be a direct reflection of human’s highest potential.  Not that the Buddha is someone better than you, more special than you, who accomplished more than you, but rather the Buddha is just like you, and he was able to achieve enlightenment just like you can.

Perhaps it’s hyperbole, but I think marathons also exemplify the highest potential of humanity – not only in the Elite Runners banging out 2 hour races at the peak of “fitness”, but in the struggle of the first timer, the expectation-blasting efforts of the Achilles athletes, and the unconditional support of strangers cheering on strangers.  I can only speak from a spectator’s point of view (so far…), but I think there are moments during marathons where that concept that we are all one, that we are all interdependent and evolving as one whole, jumps off the Eastern Religions 101 text book page, and becomes palpable and tangible.

In this spirit, I thought I’d include here a little video of a friend of mine, Captain Quinn, from marathon day this year.  The unceasing, unbridled cheer-gasm he brought throughout the day is the best example I can present, of this epitome of the human spirit:

[Note: I can't figure out why youtube uploaded this sideways... if anyone knows how to fix it let me know]

I do the same thing with words.  When I was accepted to college  in 1999, I remember saying the name of my school over and over again in my head, trying to grasp what that defined me as.  And I know I’m not alone in saying my own name over and over, until it doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore.

So, recently, a number of people have been using a particular word to describe me – one I’d never thought anyone would use in reference to me – and the same pattern has emerged.  Apparently, a number of folks in my life see me as an “athlete.”  I actually laughed out loud typing that because it seems so funny to me.  But having received the title a couple times, I became very curious about the word.  Being a former  Linguistics minor, and having a supreme nerd-fixation on the origin of words, I decided to look up the etymology of “Athlete.”

1520s, from L. athleta, from Gk. athletes “contestant in the games,” agent noun from athlein “to contest for a prize,” rel. to athlos “a contest” and athlon “a prize,” of unknown origin…

I was interested, but not necessarily surprised, to discover that the concept of competition is fundamentally built into the word.  What’s more fascinating to me is the subsequent realization that we don’t have a word in the English language that means one-who-engages-in-lots-of-exercise-without-competing-against-anyone-else.

There’s no word for me!  So I’ve charged myself with coming up with one.  Any input from my various wordnerd readers will be much appreciated.

Some thoughts:

Fitnessite?

Healthophile?

Workoutian?

Fitnessite is growing on me… but it’s not the most elegant term.  Seriously – any suggestions will be happily accepted.  I like being someone who exercises constantly, for enjoyment, and who isn’t interested in competition.  And in so-being, I’m not an athlete.

I think coming up with this term will be a positive evolutionary step for our language.  Not that competition is a bad thing when practiced mindfully and in moderation, but that we can take steps to grow our language into one which includes more labels for non-striving behavior – more options for just-being.

A couple labels seem to be shifting more rapidly than I expected them to.  “Yogi,” for one, is getting a little hard to figure out for the time being.  I’ve not been interested in practicing lately, since other physical exercise activities have filled a fair amount of space.  I still teach, of course, and still enjoy and believe in teaching, but as far as my own practice goes I’ve found myself entirely uninterested.  “Buddhist,” however, seems to be holding on strong as far as labels go.

Another place I’ve not been feeling like I fit in much anymore is AA.  The fact is as far as the DSM IV, my therapist, my doctors, and I am concerned, I’m not actually an alcoholic.  I consider myself a “socially addicted” drinker, in that I couldn’t manage to not fall into social pressure traps of over-drinking to my own established standards of health.  But, as I’ve said before, even there I was drinking a lot less than a majority of folks I know, and my standards seem to be considerably different than the average 29 year old New Yorker’s.

With that in mind, I’ve been asked a few times in the recent past if I ever plan to drink again.  Though it still bothers me that it’s even an issue with people – that drinking is something so expected from us that someone choosing not to drink necessitates so much discussion (no one seems that interested in why I might choose to wear a purple shirt, and it is essentially the same question of choice) – but answering has helped me to better understand my own decisions.

There are three main reasons why I quit drinking.  One, as I’ve discussed here at length, I needed to render apart my dating/sex life from alcohol.  The only way to fully guarantee this split was to engage in a relationship with a commitment to absolutely no alcohol to facilitate that relationship (ps, still waiting on that relationship…).  However, by itself, this reason does not require total sobriety, just sobriety until I’m able to engage in a successful romantic life without alcohol, proving a separation of the two.

Two, as a Buddhist, I feel I’ve made a commitment to experiencing life directly.  Drinking one glass of wine is not diametric to this commitment. Getting drunk under any circumstance, however, I believe, is.  To drink even to the point of just tipsy-ness, is to decide to not “feel” whatever it is you would have felt unaltered.  Again, though, that does not necessitate complete abstinence, just considerable moderation, of which I have proven in the past I am capable.

It is the third reason, which has proven the most compelling to never drink again.  Though I’ve never struggled with depression to the extent other friends of mine have, I do have a natural tendency toward it.  Aside from struggling for a more extended period with anxiety in my late years of college, my depression has always come in what I call “episodes.”  I’d be fine in general, and then go through a period where for sometimes one day, sometimes two, sometimes a little longer, I basically couldn’t stop crying.  Eventually the “episode” would end.  But since about three months after I quit drinking, I have yet to have an episode.

For that reason alone, I think I should never drink again.  My therapist calls it a “toxicity” my body has with alcohol.  Yes, alcohol is a natural depressant, but a large percentage of people will never be noticeably effected by it if they drink in moderation.  But for some reason, whatever my molecular make-up, my natural predilection toward depression is exacerbated by even small amounts of alcohol.  The most compassionate thing I can do for myself, then, is to never touch the stuff.  And soda and pomegranate juice seems to be depressant free…

However, as I mentioned, I’m losing interest in calling myself an alcoholic.  I’m starting to think if my decision to not drink is to be “important,” that is if it is to effect the world positively in any tiny way, then maybe not identifying as an alcoholic, but rather someone who just happens to not drink is more revolutionary. It seems completely ridiculous when you think about it, but if people are going to continue to be conditioned to think drinking is a norm everyone should fit into unless they have a “problem,” then maybe me having decided to quit without any related “–ism” is vital to changing ideas.  Perhaps my decision can help remove the assumptive nature of the culture toward universal behaviors of mood-altering.

And again, I’m not saying any of you who do drink need to stop drinking, just to think when you meet a new friend, to ask if they drink, instead of just making the assumption that they drink.  They might drink, or they might not drink, and they might not like to wear purple…

As many of you know, I’ve taken up a lot of new physical activities in the last couple of months, namely rock climbing, biking and “boot camping.”  The latter of the three took a lot of emotional energy to commence.  Many friends had attended this particular group, with rave reviews, but I was incredibly reluctant.

The idea of fitness boot camp brought up strong, painful memories of gym class in middle school and high school, being any number of superlative inferiors: slowest, heaviest, shortest, weakest… I have vivid recollection of Mr. Cavanaugh reducing me to sobs one day when I misunderstood the instructions of a particular game, ridiculing me in front of the entire class.

My friend who runs this particular boot camp knows me extremely well, and intuited I might have some hesitancy toward the experience that wasn’t just the calendar-based excuses I had been giving.  He explained his process, the structure of the class, and the high level of support and encouragement the experience offered, mentioning modifications I could take in the solo stuff and the “fun” of the group activities.

That’s the thing, though. The solo stuff I knew I could handle. Thanks to a half-Eastern European background, I’m strong-like-bull.  I knew I’d feel fine in the strength training portions.  It was that group stuff… all that “fun” to be had… that made me want to curl into a ball and hide.

It boils down to dependence. The idea of someone – a “teammate” – depending on my physical ability for success is terrifying to me, even in so simple and unimportant situation as a little relay race.  I might be strong, but I’m slow, and subjecting that slowness upon others makes me miserable.

This has reflected itself in my unwillingness to bike with others, discomfort with climbing with others (though with top-roping you have to get over that pretty quickly), reluctance to attempt hiking, any number of group activities that I imagine I’d enjoy a great deal.  But to be the one to slow the whole group down; the object of disappointment?  I mean… it makes me want to cry just thinking about it.

And I think this vein runs even deeper into the mountain.  I think this fear of being depended upon – physically and otherwise – and disappointing, may be a wall keeping me from a relationship.  Granted, a big part of not being in a relationship is not having had the fortune to meet him yet (they don’t call it “getting lucky” for nothin’), but I do believe this is an aspect of emotional readiness that hasn’t yet been achieved.

The fact is you’re going to disappoint, and be disappointed.  This is hard for me to accept. I was never yelled at as a child; I was disciplined via disappointment. “We’re disappointed in you.” It doesn’t work with all kids; it worked like gangbusters with me.  So the idea of disappointing a partner, in whatever way, is – to entertain hyperbole – paralyzing.

My therapist made a really fascinating point when we were discussing this, and I share it here in the hopes that it helps someone else as well.  She suggested looking at being the slowest in the group as a gift.  That by being the slowest, you get to give someone else the pleasure of  not being the slowest.  I’m shocked to admit it works.  For some reason the thought of being the slowest so that someone else – perhaps someone who cares more than I do – doesn’t have to be, totally makes sense to me.  It’s made the various sports activities I’ve engaged in more enjoyable, and the idea of joining a bike club, a hiking club, etc., far more feasible.

I’m not quite sure how that particular lesson extends to my readiness with a relationship… maybe being the least experienced in a relationship means my partner gets the satisfaction of teaching? I’m not sure exactly.  But somehow it seems to help.

But.

There’s something about the juxtaposition in that phrase that hurts me every time I hear that particular commercial (which seems to be playing constantly).  Am I the only one?  Am I the only one who wants to throw balled up socks at my TV every time I hear even the insinuation that beautiful MEANS thin?

I’ve had exercise and body on my mind recently, because, as many of you know, I’ve taken up a couple new passtimes in the last week: biking and rock climbing.  It only took about a day and a half for me to realize that increased energy expenditure means I have to change how I’m eating.  I didn’t learn this the easy way, though; I learned it the hard way.  I learned it by not eating enough, or not eating at all, and attempting both activities to woeful result – nearly passing out after a bike ride, and becoming completely unable to climb after just one ascent at the gym.

I’ve learned my lesson – lots of small meals and tons of protein – but something came up in my mind a couple times during this struggle that is particularly disturbing.  It’s an old pattern from puberty which has emblazoned a pathway in my brain that will take a lot of work to repave:

“If I don’t eat anything at all, and work out really hard, think of how much weight I’ll lose!”

Believe me, I know that’s not even logical – metabolism doesn’t work like that – but it’s an old, recurring theme that’s reared its ugly, hurtful head. I’m grateful I have the tools to recognize this pattern for the conditioned response that it is, and to move on and get a Cliff Bar.  But I know I’m not alone. As I’ve recounted this story to women friends of mine, I’ve found both solace and deep sadness in the fact that, yeah, we’ve all been there.

When I was 13 I remember going to the gym regularly, and each subsequent trip I ate a little less, and a little less, in the hopes that take-in-nothing-burn-everything would help me lose the body I hated so much. Eventually, one day I got on a treadmill after over an hour of exercise on no food, and the black circles started to cave in around my eyes, the buzzing began in my ears, I lost my orientation, I started to trip on the machine, until finally I fell off,  managed to sit myself down and narrowly avoided a black out.

Today in therapy was the first time I told that story and became particularly moved by it, not because it was my story, but because it is the story of so many women.  So many of us have waged war against our bodies at one time or another in life.  It’s scary to me that that impulse still lives within me, no matter what I know logically.  That the echo of, “woman is thin; woman is beautiful,” still rings in the shadows.

Like I said, I get it. I get that this particular commercial isn’t actually claiming “beautiful is thin,” but I do believe it’s part of the insidious, incessant work of the entertainment and consumption culture to keep our internal wars waging – after all, isn’t the diet industry one of the most successful in the nation?  We can only be responsible for ourselves, but I think women need to realize we’re not alone, and that at some point, you have to just decide to stop the battle.

The point here is that suffering is something which occurs internally.  Suffering is caused by attachment or aversion to a particular set of feelings, thoughts or beliefs within us.  Pain can be caused by external factors, which is what I caused – what we all cause – but suffering is developed from within.

It’s an interesting and important distinction, both when we are the receiver and giver of pain, to know that the hurt occurs in the moment, but lingering suffering is produced by the Monkey Mind.  I’ve heard Sharon Salzberg talk a number of times about the mind’s ability to “collapse” in on a particular event. Like when we say something we shouldn’t have, or do something we wish we hadn’t (or vice-versa, have something painful said or done to us), how those words or that event gets repeated over and over and over.  The tape keeps getting rewound, sometimes with new endings, sometimes with the same, ad nauseam.

We’ve all been there.  That’s suffering. That is attachment.  And letting go is so effin’ hard.  It feels like we couldn’t stop replaying those events for a million dollars.   As far as I can tell, mindfulness is the only real solution.  Each time you see the thoughts returning to the painful event, making the conscious decision to let it go and focus on what’s happening right now is the only way to chip away at and eventually release that repetition.

Drinking definitely used to be my solution.  I mean, how many times have we all announced, “I need a drink,” in regards to a difficult moment in our lives?  Unfortunately, it’s usually only a temporary solution, and in the  morning I’m back to the repetitive thinking, or worse, I start building recurring patterns over time.  Deciding not to dissolve away experience means sitting with those compulsive thought patterns and seeking other relief.

The discussion made me question what suffering I’m holding on to, from previous pains.  Who am I holding as a static being in my head, unchanged from when the pain was inflicted to today?  They aren’t that person, and I’m not the same person who was hurt.  But on this relative plain it’s so difficult to see the people in our lives as dynamic, ever-shifting creatures.

Not surprisingly, former lovers came to mind first, most notably the one guy I actually dated briefly (now married), and wonder what suffering I’m creating, and if I can let that pain go now.  But the nice thing about this investigation was realizing how much I have, in fact, let go.  I have strong relationships with a number of men who hurt me at one time in my life, and that’s heartening.

I think about my best friend, one of my first serious crushes, with whom I had a contentious friendship in our youth, and who then came out of the closet in his 20s, and think how easy it is for me to see both of us as different creatures from when we met 15+ years ago – how fluid our relationship has become – and it gives me incredible hope for the future of other relationships.

So, retraction stands: to live is not to cause suffering. Just problems. A whole lot of problems. All of which are fodder for growth on both sides of the problem.

1. Life means suffering
2. The origin of suffering is attachment
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable
4. [The eightfold path is] the path to the cessation of suffering.

I learned, and always thought about the First Noble Truth as “To live is to suffer.”  There’s an innate passivity to this particular translation, though.  In my head, those words preach the inevitability of “suffering will befall you,” and leave out “you, too, cause suffering.”

But the sentence, “Life means suffering,” is a two-way street.  Life means suffering – in all its form, received and given.  From as small as the bacteria I destroy by bathing, to the greatest harm I can cause a loved one, I will cause suffering, no matter what.

I’ve spent the majority of my life seeing myself as an effect, instead of a cause.  When I was a kid it was an extreme: I used to believe no one – shy of my parents & grandparents – could possibly think of me if I weren’t in their direct presence.  If someone called me I was floored, if someone new it was my birthday, well forget it. I was awestruck.

This continued to make its residual appearance when I was in college.  When someone I had been friends with for 3 months already, used my last name calling to me from the back of a crowd, my jaw hit the floor that he had learned it. Three months. I know the full names of some people I’ve met once, just a week ago.

In my head, I didn’t really exist.

This belief is a symptom of a major world-view problem: seeing myself as an effect, instead of a cause.  It’s a power-sucking position to take, and one devoid of self-worth. If you believe you are only done-unto, then you can not do, and your actions have no merit. Or, more dangerously, your actions have no consequences.

Three years ago, this worldview allowed me to cause a number of people who are very close to me, a great deal of pain.  But if you don’t believe your actions matter, you don’t have to believe you could possibly cause suffering. You can do for yourself, and for your own advancement, and believe that either things will work out, or suffering will befall you, and that’s all there is to it.

Over recent years I’ve chipped away at this belief, but it’s only in recent weeks that I’ve begun to grab the steering wheel and finally throw the car into drive. My therapist is fond of saying, “The universe has a tendency to treat you how you treat yourself.”  Having started to take some power back, to view myself as someone who forges change, who is not just a climate-taking thermometer, but a climate-changing thermostat, it’s not surprising, then, that I would be confronted last night by one of the people I hurt the most.

With great reclaimed power comes great responsibility to one’s actions.

As my friend addressed me, calm, calculated, obviously hurt, I saw my old internal patterns rear their ugly heads: an out-of-body feeling, a distance from the experience, the thought that she was talking about someone else, because clearly I don’t cause these feelings in other beings… I had to keep acknowledging those patterns and coming back, over and over and over again, just as I tell my students to come back to their breath, until finally I was able to lock into it: “I  have caused deep suffering.”

Regret is a useless state of being, but remorse is a powerful tool for change.  I lay down an apology, and I’m well aware I have a lot of work ahead of me to regain the previous strength of our relationship.  Though I do feel incredibly sad, pained, remorseful for having hurt her, I’m so incredibly grateful for her strength to confront me as she did, showing me from the other side of the coin what it means to be a cause.

Critics of Buddhism often site the first noble truth as nihilistic, but I feel that knowing all life is suffering, that I’m not alone in my suffering and that every moment of  mindfulness erases a moment of conditioning, is hugely liberating.

I have a lot of continued work to do. And I’ll hurt people in my wake. But I’ll probably help a few, too. Maybe the same people.  But at least I’m starting to garner an understanding of my Cause, beyond just my Effect.

<<Cue game show “wrong answer” sound effect here.>>

So. The first major issue with the retreat was no one’s fault, but still set me up for a rough time.  Apparently I didn’t learn my lesson from my last retreat, where I didn’t spring for a single, and was placed with a woman who was awesome, and snored as loudly as she was awesome.  But this weekend’s  retreat center is a particularly expensive one, so I took my chances with a quad.  And I was placed with 3 lovely women…

…one of whom got violently ill the first night of retreat.

I mean, getting up to vomit/wretch/dry-heave/whathaveyou every 15 minutes or so from about 9:30 at night till about 3:45 in the morning.

Guess who had the bed right next to the bathroom…

Now, in case you don’t know this about me, I’m a vomitphobe.  Like. HUGE.  I hate vomiting, will fight it tooth-and-nail when I’m ill (to very negative effect, believe me).  So my body went into panic mode.  As a yoga teacher/anatomy nerd, I was sort of fascinated to watch all the symptoms of the sympathetic nervous response I had read so much about manifest in my body every time the bed squeaked and she went running for the Loo.  Point being, I was in a 6 or so hour panic attack, and only managed to get about an hour and a half of sleep the entire night.

It happened that the area of the Catskills where I was staying had had an explosion in the lady bug population, so our rooms were all covered with them. I found a few in my tea mug the next morning, and I honestly don’t know how they could have gotten in there.  Thankfully, they went to sleep when we went to sleep. Unfortunately, when the lights of the bathroom went on, it was ladybug party time.

I will now forever associate the sound of bugs hitting walls and racing for light sources with that of acute stomach flu…

That said, my first full day of the retreat was… rough.  But the retreat itself was incredibly frustrating.  Bob, Richard and John didn’t seem to have anything prepared for the weekend. They would sit down together, and Bob would head out on one of his typical academic Buddhist tangents, and they’d sort of make it up as they went along.

I didn’t pay close to a thousand dollars for them to make it up as they went along…

But what was more difficult to handle, was the fact that of the 65 or so participants, only maybe 5 of us were non-Ashtanga practicing yogis.  For anyone who doesn’t know, Ashtanga is a very specific form of yoga with set sequences or “series”, and with a built-in ladder system, where you are only allowed to advance to “second series” when a teacher deems you do so.

I won’t go into my issues with this system here. But… I got issues.

What was so unfortunate was that I felt like an outsider. I felt invalid, isolated, and like what I practice – what I TEACH – isn’t real yoga.  I felt like the weekend was not on the intersection of Yoga and Buddhism, but that of Ashtanga and Buddhism, and the lengthy, esoteric, confusing lectures made me question why I bothered with all this any way.  Why do I practice, why do I teach, if all this mythology and gods and “kidney wings” (yeah… kidney wings. What the fuck is a kidney wing? Beats the shit out of me. Ask Richard Freeman) leaves me not just cold, but frustrated and irritated.

My therapist, thankfully, reminded me of a sentiment Buddhism and AA have in common: “Take what you want, and leave the rest.”

I’ve discussed this here before, but somehow I need to keep typing it, keep talking about it so that I stop forgetting about it.  When the Buddha first began teaching, one of the most important points he made was that nothing he said should be taken at face value.  Every teaching he produced shouldbe tried, tested, experienced for the practitioner on their own, and anything that does not work should be discarded and disregarded completely.

AA basically says the same thing – something those of us in the Agnostic groups take to heart.

But somehow I keep forgetting this. I keep getting into situations like these – whether it be this retreat, or my training, or talking to certain yogis – and I can’t just let it go. I can’t just take from the experience what I can and ignore the rest.

It’s made me question if I were truly comfortable with myself, truly secure in myself as a teacher, as a practitioner, and as a person, would I get this frustrated around concepts I don’t find useful? Clearly, the answer is no.  So what is it that I’m uncomfortable with myself in these lineages that makes it so hard to relax? What prejudice am I holding against myself for being involved with these practices, and can I let them go?

I’m in one of those periods again where I feel like every corner I turn I see a new overwhelming brand of self investigation that needs to be done, and it makes me want to crawl into bed and go to sleep. But, as a friend pointed out, to call that investigation “work” – I had said to her I feel like there’s so much work I need to do – is to assume that there’s something wrong that needs to be fixed.  Is the answer, then, to completely relax? Stop caring that I have these hang ups and let the hang ups be? Easier said than done.

There was a whole other issue this weekend, as well, that Ashtanga practitioners have a tendency to share very particular physical features. Most notably, they are angular, muscular, broad-shouldered, have piercing eyes, and, in general, are quite thin.  And up popped the old wall I’ve been running up against (beating my head against?) year after year after 29 years… devaluing my body type over theirs.

At least now I have some awareness around this pattern – that I can recognize how my ego tries to assert its intellectual capacity over people with lean bodies in defense of ultimately feeling incredibly subordinate to them.   As GI Joe said… knowing is half the battle.  The problem is Joe didn’t tell us that the other half of the battle is a whole hell of a lot harder.  Shifting the thought patterns that have been ingrained over decades, and being willing to see what life would be like if I just let that prejudice go… well. Good friggin luck.

What’s begun to make the process at least seem approachable, is its implications outside of myself.  That me being comfortable and loving toward my body type is not only vital for my own mental and emotional health, but that as a yoga teacher and performer, my authentic comfort can help other practitioners in a similar position to no longer be stuck in this thin-favoring mindset our culture has beaten into us.

I guess if you want to get a Metta-studying Buddhist to do something, tell them it’s in the name of compassion, and you’ll see results more readily…

So, you bump into someone, or your yoga mat on your back maybe grazes them on the subway (my most constant problem), or you get in someone’s way, or maybe you’re not even in their way, really, you just have to walk around someone.  I wish I could say my phrase were to say “excuse me” but my knee jerk, what comes out of my mouth CONSTANTLY, multiple times almost every day is “I’m sorry.”

I think this is problematic.  If you look at this pattern closely, it means that I am in a constant state of apologizing. In context it’s for being in the way, but in the grand scheme, I think it could be translated as a constant apology for being at all. I’m sorry I’m here. I’m sorry I have anything to do with your space, I don’t belong here, my simple presence is problematic.

I realize this could seem like a big leap to make to some people, and I certainly don’t believe the above thoughts are ACTUALLY going through my head when I say this quick, common turn of phrase. But I think it speaks to an endemic problem, which I want to fix.  And fixing this wee locution, I think could aid in fixing the larger problem.

The other day at the end of one of my favorite yoga classes, I had to skip around a gentlemanly older fellow when our paths crossed taking props back to the prop closet. As per habit, I smiled and muttered “sorry,” and he responded, in a way only a gentlemanly older man could, “Why? What’dya do?”

I laughed at the response and immediately decided I liked him (by the way – immediately deciding I like or do not like certain people based on seconds’ worth of interaction is another habit I could stand to break) and his jovial ways.  But then I got to thinking – that’s sort of a profound thought.  What the hell DID I do wrong? Nothing. I was just there, in closer proximity to another being than I meant to be. There’s nothing for which to apologize, other than my presence, which should not warrant any apology whatsoever.

I’ve been going through palpable, direct and intentional change of late.  Change can be painful. It’s happening all the time, of course; it is, in fact, the only thing that’s happening, really.  But when you see patterns you dislike and make a pointed effort to change something, there can be a lot of exhausting effort and discomfort involved.  But if there’s one major thing that has to be altered, at any and all exhaustive and painful cost, it’s apologizing for my presence.

I, we, all of us, deserve to be here. No matter what. No matter what we’ve done, how we’ve harmed ourselves or others. There’s no reason to apologize for existence.