For me, food is everything. i have a very delicate relationship with food. It directly represents how when why and in what way I can nourish myself, and those in my sphere. Are we surprised that in my new to New York haze I cant seem to find the one thing that tastes right? or cooks well? ok, i did find one thing that tasted right. No, two things. my morning warm beverage and chocolate.

My other issue is being highly sensitive in an environment that is over stimulating. Everywhere I look I see buildings and people and am auditorally assaulted with noise. Those sayings "look for the good" and "look for the beauty". That was child's play in boulder. Easy peasy compared to this shit. i get it now because if you do not find the one inkling of hope and faith in a sliver of beauty everywhere your eyes go you will literally die inside here.

Yesterday I sat down to eat with Elliot and we barely made eye contact the entire time, which was disturbing. I noticed every single person around me had their iphone out on the table like it was a napkin. If they didn't have it sitting next to them they were either talking on it or checking something. When I tried to get a break from this and look out the window all I saw were more people on phones.

New York might be the rawest place I have ever experienced. Everywhere I look I see the desire to connect and need for contact with little of it actually happening. Which is weird because everyone is going somewhere to see someone at some time in some place with some strategy of self-preservation and protection.

Ok, I’ll reframe so I am not projecting...

I feel the rawest I have felt in a long time. I want connection and contact but amongst the scarves and hats and glasses and ear buds and attitude carefully put on each morning with my clothes its sort of f-ing hard to make that happen.

Look all you shiny happy unicorns in Boulder; I don't even want to hear you complain that it is sunny too much or that your whole foods parking lot is a bitch. I have seen the sun one day since I got here and whole foods here is a death wish. The moment I walk in there, or to any store for that matter, my brain literally shuts off because there are so many people I can’t think about what I need.

The natural world is such a gift my friends. It makes spirit much easier to grasp. But when spirit comes in honking horns, over-sized squirrels and darting pigeons you really do gain a new perspective. Its a complete reframe. I literally have no schemas for some of what I see. I literally am a fish out of water. Or the person off their mountain.

It’s easy to be at the top of Maslows hierarchy of needs when the bottom layers are simple to achieve. When the basics are hard, your third eye gets a twitch. The antidotes I presume are practices that bring us back home to our own bodies. Oh right, I know those.

It is far too easy to be a character--to be the strategy one has built--in any town. It is easy to give up the practices that seem out of place in the context one is in. Yoga, meditation, dance and somatic practices of self-regulation and resourcing should be employed everywhere one goes.

The greatest teaching of yoga I am resting into currently is that we are adaptable creatures with unchanging, unscathed cores or essences of being. Structures and strategies change.  Environments change. Circumstances change. The only thing that we can contact that is true for more than a split moment is the deepest essence inside.

The irony of course is that we contact change in a sustained way. We contact our essence though in moments and flickers. When we live for the thing unchanging moment by moment. The changing moment does not matter as much or cause as much pain.

Well, I better run. I live in New York time now.

I think this has been one of the most significant, beautiful, joyful, sorrowful, wretched, ecstatic years of my life.

Somehow almost every nasty coping mechanism I invented early on came rearing its head. Somehow I learned that love is real and actually the only TRUTH. This is the year I have had to come into right relationship with my WILL.

I buried my last living grandparent this year and changed my last name. That one felt huge. Huger than huge.

I also decided it was too painful to stay quiet and am trying with courage to say something, do something, be something of whatever teaching lives in my soul. Hence why I have started Applied Psychology for Yogis. I feel so committed to the enlivening and re-membering of the lost parts of us as students, teachers and practitioners.

I started using the word God a lot this year. I learned that I have an even deeper level of emotional regulation than I ever thought possible. I learned I am pretty good at counseling after all. I was tested in so many ways from the deepest core to the most external of circumstances.

I also scored on my yoga mat. The pose of the year was hands-free lotus. Success!

This is the year I had to learn that I really must always choose life--always affirm life. I had to make choices that forever change the course of my life. I found a total new independence. I started talking to the angels. In the last few moments of this year I am realizing, I am far more spiritually inclined than I ever believed.

So all in all I really full year of goodness but with so much pain. In the coming days I am going to lie this year to rest.

I have never felt so pulled to the earth inside my skin.

I also had to give up some of my darkness. I was forced to say ‘enough for now’ and move on. I was reminded it is ok to be joyful, juicy, enlivened and that life is just as authentic and meaningful when you are not shoveling shit (so to speak.). 

I am far less interested in analyzing others and myself. It actually is not that productive. I am interested in being with people. Sitting with them. Sharing with them. I am most interested in being cracked open repeatedly and letting the world shape me and smooth my rough edges.

I was a bride this year and in so being I discovered the truth of Mary Oliver’s brilliant words. “I want to be a bride married to amazement.” So pose of the year this coming 2014 will be sitting in amazement. I want to be amazed over and over and over again. My deepest prayer is to find the light of amazement and wonder in everything. I want to be curious and open and welcoming. I want to receive the world, myself, my beloved, my work, all to the fullest.

~~~

Blessings to you as you transition between the calendars. May your retrospection be fruitful and productive. May your prayers and wishes for the future be courageous and bold. May the good Grace of Life fashion itself in such a mysterious way that those prayers come to fruition. 

This is a piece I wrote a while back but it is worth posting again. I suppose my christmas wish is a deeper sense of connection and authenticity in every way possible. I think one of the hardest pills to swallow and make use of is one's privilege. 

~~~

The other night strolling along downtown Boulder after sushi I witnessed something truly touching. No, that’s not really the right word. Maybe it was enlightening. Maybe it served to remind me of kindness. I think it reminded me of human being-ness.

We passed a man with a sign who was asking for money and the sign said it was his birthday. Elliot stopped, let go of my hand and walked up to the guy.

“Hey man, I don’t have any cash or anything but look, happy birthday.”

The man’s face grew a big smile and his eyes had the glimmer of something--recognition, maybe hope--something where he felt of personal value I think.

“Thanks.” He said back.

“Yea, sure. I hope its great. Happy birthday”

And then just like that, Elliot retook my hand and we walked on. I looked back at the guy like I was five years old or something and he was smiling at us and nodded at me. I turned and kept walking hand in hand with Elliot proud to be his fiancé. Shit, I was proud to be his friend.

A while back he said to me that the worst thing to do when someone on the street is asking you for money is ignore them. I know you know what I am talking about.

The person blatantly asks you as you walk by for nickels and cents or a few dollars and you walk on like you didn’t hear, like you magically went deaf temporarily. Eye contact in those situations is almost impossible and so you walk on.

I think Elliot said to me that it’s the worst thing to ignore someone like that when he saw me do it one evening stroll. He saw my awkwardness, my momentary lack of sensitivity. I suppose I decidedly walk on because I tend to not have cash in my wallet (enter the world of universal plastic) and so I feel badly I don’t have anything to offer, or at least give them what they want so I just ignore the whole situation altogether. Also I think I just feel like I can’t help. And so in that powerlessness I pretend like I don’t care. In fact, he explained, it is not even about the money.

Anyway, so he says to me that even if you don’t have any money you should at least make eye contact. You should at least acknowledge their presence and need. You could even say: “Sorry dude (or dudette) I don’t have any but I hope you take care.” Just words or body language to acknowledge that they are there on the street is something to give. The worst thing is to pretend its not happening. The worst thing is to ignore. The worst is to let them slip through your consciousness like a waking dream of no consequence.

Note to self: We all want contact. We all want to be seen. We all want to be acknowledged for simply existing in a body as somebody. It is not always easy to see things as they are. To see the truth in all its painful beauty is a skill cultivated through acts of kindness in simply acknowledging presence and existence of whatever is present in one’s field. 

May kindness find its way through each of us, in the biggest and smallest of ways.