To offset the bummeritude of the post below, and to reflect my attitudinal adjustment after BRFIV: The Revenge: Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back To Big Rock Friday, I present the following inspired by Danielle Laporte of White Hot Truth, who consistently and regularly blows my mind:

What am I drawn to? (more…)

While driving back into town on Monday night, surrounded by sprouting, vaguely fungal glass condo towers and incalculably lavish consumer goods, M and I felt like Okie yokels on a trip to The Big City, with our fingers in our mouths going “derrrrp” after staring at trees and listening to birds all weekend. I know, I know; it was a long weekend, no great epiphanies there necessarily…but what if there was one? What if every time I feel that umbilical pull back to the ocean that got me here in the first place, it’s not just me being a sulky teenager who is distressed at the prospect of going back to school, but a true prompting from the universe? A Joy wakeup call?

And then it’s back to lovely Yaletown, which, while polished and fragrant and glossy, and prettier in every way than our tarp-covered shenanigans, is still all about the city’s pace and flow, which is getting too fast for me I think. Almost immediately I was immersed in the constant flux of details that tends to overwhelm and chunk up the simple beauty of the practice…in Eka Pada Adho Mukha Svanasana, which leg is considered the “front” leg and what significance does that have for the application of inner and outer spiral? It’s a great question and a fertile one, but I’ve basically been howling at the moon for three days, you know? I’m in no condition to figure stuff like this out. Normally I’d just assume that I’m slow and stupid from holidaying and roasting in the May sun, and get clever and quick again. But now I’m thinking maybe this frenetic mental pace is, as Salman Rushdie says, “derived…from [my] own fevered brain” and not “from blood and bone”.

(more…)

A holiday? For me? You shouldn't have.

Omgomgomgomg…only one more sleep until the our annual Victoria Day Weekend trip to Nelson Island, huzzah! Calloo, callay! A quick Wikipedia search would help answer my questions about why we even have Victoria Day here in the unwashed colonies but I actually prefer sweet, sweet Googleless ignorance on the subject i.e. I’m glad that I have a holiday and I don’t know why.

These Fridays that preceded spring/summer long weekends really put the urgency on creating Big Rock Fridays, as it happens. The amount of…zeal? Enthusiasm? Chutzpah? SHAKTI that was in my fevered brain and body on these Fridays would not sit still for Ganesha bhajans and pranayam practice. It needed to flail and writhe, and so BRF was born. I hope that in the ensuing months these classes have been effective for “bringing the party to the party” as M likes to say. We’ll be revisiting BRFIII tonight, quite possibly my favourite of the playlists, and kicking Vicki’s holiday off in style.

Last weekend was, according to my more astrologically-minded friends, a very important full moon. The days surrounding said full moon were fraught with import and strange events, and it was said [by the aforementioned friends] that it was a time when all of our spiritual practice would be called on; tempered in the fire, if you like. I can dig it. It’s not that bad things happened; it was just all very intense. And the intensity, although lessening somewhat, is still leveled on me like crosshairs as I continue to develop my teaching, finish my certification required reading [The Shiva Sutras are easily the craziest thing I ever read, and I made it through Gravity's Rainbow], and stay on this path in spite of many distractions and enticements elsewhere.

I don’t want to use a scary word like “mature” to describe my new approach to these challenges, but this tenacious me is definitely no me I would have recognized, even a couple of years ago. The balance of perfect transparency and unrelenting commitment has a good resonance inside my body and head, and I slowly begin to see what is meant by “self confidence” in the non-cocky-jerk sense. The only people who seemed self-confident to me were the people who could never hear a word of criticism or comment. And then of course the deeply insecure, such as myself, who were not so much drama queens as drama farmers [new fresh crops grown daily!] There were these other people, though, who were so alien to me they might as well have had 2 heads, who simply quietly went about their business, engaged authentically with others, solved more problems than they caused…I did not get those people at all. Srsly. Never had the foggiest notion how they could go through their lives without gnashing of teeth, rending of garments/flashy gestures and displays of dominance. Maybe this is how they felt.

Now when I get presented with a freshly harvested crop of drama I feel more like chuckling than anything else. I suppose that’s also the luck of the draw; I have a pretty sweet life right now, D.V. But there also doesn’t seem to be too much point to pouring emotional gasoline on life’s fires, you know? I can see little sparks and pops of human beings writing their life’s story, with good guys and bad guys, dragons and princesses, and I think those lobes of my brain have become underused in the last couple of years. I might be cruising for a hubris-bruising here even posting this, but I just wanted to report back from the Other Side of drama in case anybody is feeling pulled down by their story. Enjoy the spring this weekend and we’ll see you in the couple of days on the t00bz.

P.S.  If you’re looking to put some rad events on this summers’ calendar, check out mah retreats.  They’re going to be the perfect combination of getting-away-from-it-all and getting-into-it-all, you know?  I’ll remind you as they draw closer.