Thank you, 2015

Thank you for an abundance of food, clean water and a roof over my head. Thank you for keeping me safe.

Thank you for hopes and intentions turned wildest dreams fulfilled. For work and passion intertwining into what truly is a purpose driven life.

I laugh until my belly aches and tears roll down my cheeks nearly everyday with someone I’m madly in love with. Thank you.

Thank you mamas and babies, for inviting me into your most earthly and cosmic of journeys. You are, hands down, the bad-asses of the universe.

Thank you for the fear, sadness and lessons even when I resisted. Thank you for the wisdom.

Thank you to the artists, dreamers, local lovers. Thanks to this flavorful, colorful city I call home.

Thank you feminists, queers, racial justice activists, socialists, abortion providers and brave ones.

Thank you for sparkles, color, dancing, hula hoops, music, games, fun and limitless joy and gratitude.

Thank you earth, for your gardens, oceans, dirt, fire, rain. Thank you to the mountains, for always reminding me that I am small.

Thank you for this body where I exist, play, rest, receive hugs and experience comfort and connection.

Thank you meditation, goddesses, yogis, wise women, gurus, midwives and spiritualists, for a faith connection free of dogma, yet overflowing with hope, love and trust.

Thank you for the reminders that intuition and empathy are tools on which I can always rely.

Thank you family, friends, animals, loved ones, students, co-workers and neighbors for being a part of my village. 

Thank you for all this and more. 

Happy New Year!

When You Know Everything

My life has been blessed with options. From where to eat and what to wear to which job to work and who to hang with. Choices galore. Oh the places I’ll go! 

Blessings as curses anyone? 

Over. Whelmed! 

My plate looks like an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet, and I don’t know where to start.  And yet that’s not true, because of course, I do. Somewhere, in the pit of my guts, there is a knowing. There are answers. But my brain—the place where feeling and knowing collides with logic and action—is so blinded by tasks and thinking and what-ifs that I can’t see a thing. 

I think we sometimes get so caught up that we become paralyzed with how to proceed, so we either a) don’t or b) freak out until something forces us into submission. 

Al always says, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” 

  

I have no interest in eating elephants (i.e., I am not interested in making decisions, so I often choose option b. Except for when I opt for a). 

There’s a lesson here. I think it’s something like: Stop thinking and freaking out for a second and sit still. Listen to the inner knowing because it's always there. 

If this is true (it is) ... 

The question isn’t: What if I choose the wrong thing? 

...

The questions are: Am I willing to take responsibility for what I want? Am I brave enough to go for it? What happens if my choices hurt people I love? Do I dare to shine and show myself? 

I think that as we grow up, we turn the volume down on what we know. And I don’t mean about things like algebra or chemistry (OK, bad examples), but the real knowing, the inner gut wisdom. Quieting this isn’t necessarily a bad thing—it’s a survival skill—we silence our innate wisdom in favor of assimilation, cultural connection and being a part of a tribe. We learn the rules to play the games to stay alive. It’s called socialization. Or psychology. Or anthropology. Or whatever academic discipline you majored in and feel inclined to name it. 

It’s ironic that our intuitive nature has us silence our inner wisdom for purposes of survival. But intuition was never logical—it’s a far more dynamic. We’re not meant to understand it. It’s nonsensical. That’s the point. 

Can you imagine that you always have the answers? That you know everything? That there is a direct line to exorcising the drama? 

Imagine how vulnerable you’d be in asking for what you want. 

Imagine the courage it takes to be exactly who you are.
Imagine the responsibility that comes from saying you’re going to go for it. 

But. If you’re willing to dare: Get honest and know what you know. We always know. We know what we want to eat and what we don’t, we know who we love and when we’re done. We know what jobs we want and when it’s time to quit. We know when we want to see a friend and when we’d rather stay home. The problem is that we’ve spent 30, 40, 50 or more years muffling our inner knowing in order to play the game, make the money, love the person and go the places. We have so much at stake. So much to lose. So many to disappoint. 

But. 

What if we had so much to receive? So much to win? So many to inspire?

Opening into honesty isn’t easy, and I can’t promise you that it’ll keep you alive—though it will force you to live.  We make a hundred thousand choices on any given day. What if we chose more from a more honest place? What if we listened more? What if we released guilt or fear or anxiety or [your baggage here] in favor of embracing what we know to already be true?

Maybe if we all did that, we could make a whole new tribe. 

The next time you’re caught making a tough decision, see if you can connect with what’s already there. Drop your pros and cons list. Don’t look around. Just sit still and tap in. What do you know?

Receive your answers, not because you should, but because you can. They're already yours.

Balls to the Wall

I think writing is a lot like yoga. You don’t always want to do it, yet there’s this guttural pull that, if ignored, may chew you up and kill you slowly from the inside out. Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but maybe it’s not. 

It’s strange how much you can yearn for something—love it, worship it, need it—and yet sometimes, you Just. Can’t. Do it. There are days when you consciously skip it and others where you forget it as easily as you’d lose your sunglasses. Neither feel good. And to make things worse, no one will make you do it. No one’s going to pay you for it or give you a deadline or make you turn in your homework. Instead, when you reveal your shame for not writing/practicing, people offer flippant encouragement, “Oh, honey, it’s OK! Don’t be so hard on yourself.”  I don’t think that’s good advice. I think that in order to be a yogi or writer, you have to be hard on yourself. Really hard. Like balls to the wall. Steel or marble.  

Cracking the whip may make more sense for writing than yoga, but even the most seasoned yogis—hell, especially those of us who are seasoned—have had those feet dragging git-r-meditation-done moments. We’ve skipped our practice more times than we can count (so relax, new yogis, it’s par for the course), and have wallowed longingly after not stepping on the mat for a few weeks. There have been days when I couldn’t even muster the will to sit and take three simple ujjayi breaths. But then we come back. And we start again. 

The difference between writing and yoga is that with writing, you have to have something to say. Sure, there’s that incessant voice in your head that says all the things all the time, but that doesn’t make any of it worth writing down. With yoga, there’s always a breath or mantra or pose or place to sit. And if asana is your bag, you can stand up, start breathing and it will come (It will. Just follow the body). Writing’s not like that. You have to fucking sit down and type fucking words. You have to make the words happen and then put them together in sentences. You have to make the sentences over and over and over and over ad nauseam until something comes out.

Yes, of course both yoga and writing require discipline (or tapas, as the yogis call it). I mean, just because a meditation cushion is there for you to sit on doesn’t mean you’ll sit. Obviously. 

But I like to think that the day comes when you just write. And I don't know if this is true yet, but I’m toying with the idea that like my yoga practice, after all of these years of going back and forth and back and forth and doing it and not doing it and doing it and not doing it … one day it will just be here. And I’ll just be writing. Like that one time when, after 12 or so years of practicing yoga, I realized I was a yogi. And even though I sometimes skipped my practice, it was no biggie anymore, because it was just there and it's what I did. And all the shit went away and it was a part of me and everything made sense.

Do you think the day comes when writing is like that? Like one day you wake up and you're doing it and you're not arguing anymore? 

Pipe dreams are so pretty.

I guess to make it part of you, you have to do it and need it more than you don’t, which is like, the thing. You can’t fuck around with writing like you can with yoga (ex: I’m working but taking a mini break to breathe and do yoga at my desk, so yay! I practiced!). Writing is more concrete: Either you're doing it or you’re not. Either you have something to show for it or you don’t (even if no one ever sees it, which is also like, the thing, because most people will never see the half the shit we write). I think this is where I am now: I need it more than I don’t so I'm going to try harder than I did before. And I can’t say how or why that’s different than any other time, but it is. Because maybe now, if I don’t do it, it could eat me up and kill me slowly from the inside out. 

Sometimes I procrastinate by reading things about writing. Just write. I read about how others get through their blocks. Just write. I’ve tried Natalie Goldberg’s “ten minutes” practices and devoured advice on writing like a motherfucker by Cheryl Strayed.  Just write. (That Cheryl piece is good though.) I’ve stopped thinking about books and blogs and journaling and titles and first sentences. Just write. 

Just practice. Just write. 

Whether it’s yoga or writing, there’s one thing I do know. Once you walk past the resistance onto the page/mat, it gets better. Resistance fades into relief and ease like a stiff drink after a hard day, or the sun on your face after too much air conditioning. You never practice yoga and come out saying, “Well that was a waste of time, I wish I hadn't done that.” And you don’t finish up a writing stint and think, “I really wish I hadn't exercised my creative muscles and written that.” Or maybe you do. But really, you don’t. 

I’d love to imagine that from here on out, there’s just writing all the time. Practicing and writing, writing and practicing. Citti vrittis on a page, citti vrittis in sukhasana, resistance turning into unbridled flow. There’s a natural unfolding where it’s labor and pain and pleasure and earth and sky, and the birth of a new life becomes earth-side forevermore. Rebecca Willman, Yogi. Rebecca Willman, Writer. Rebecca Willman, Anything She Sets Her Sights On. 

We’ll see what comes, won’t we? A new day, a new moon, a new dream. Or maybe the same ol’ day,  the continuation of eternal cycles, and a dream long held. Either way.

The First Sentence

The hardest thing about coming back after a long hiatus is the first sentence. 

Oh, thank goodness that’s over. 

What a long, strange few months it’s been. Since I was last here I’ve worked myself to the bone, attended my moms’ wedding, polar plunged in the Atlantic, put on a rad conference for an even more rad reproductive justice organization, joined a yoga-teacher-training team, gotten a tan and played my guitar. I’m doing more birth-work, freelancing full-time and I've taught a lot of yoga. I’ve held space until there was none left to occupy, laughed until my cheeks ached, and cried until my eyes went red and puffy. I’ve edited a bunch of great writing and scored a few new private yoga clients. 

What I haven’t done is taken a whole lot of time off. I haven’t treated myself they way I would a pregnant mama or yoga student. I haven’t supported my own work and goals the way I support the dreams hopes aspirations well-being of others.

I don’t know if there’s something missing here about how I value myself or if it’s just, quite frankly, that I need the work (read: money). But what I do know: This is not sustainable. 

It’s hard to complain when your life rocks. Well, and because complaining is annoying and doesn’t solve anything. But there comes a time when things are hard and changes need to be made, so you name what you don’t want by saying it out loud and using it as a catalyst for change. Or so one hopes. 

Actually making a change is far more difficult than naming what we want to be different. Most of us approach change running at 100 miles per hour, gung-ho and determined, in hopes of getting it over with as soon as possible. Enthusiasm is a useful tool, but at that speed we're likely to stumble and fall, requiring us to pick up shattered egos, question our intentions and struggle to recommit. Some of us will do this many, many times.

(You know what I mean, don't you? What were those New Year’s resolutions again?) 

In my experience, this is where a lot of us get stuck. Bruised egos can suck us dry. But read my (blog) lips: the stumbling is a necessary part of the process. The faltering is the gift (yep, gift) where we can choose to try again instead of beelining it back to complaining. This is an integral part of our reprogramming. Breaking old habits is hard, but the good news is that we’re trainable. So when you stumble en route to change, pick yourself up and keep going, and rest assured that this is the simple irony of forming new habits. Without repetition, new patterns can’t be created. 

I could get real vulnerable here and tell you about what I’m looking to change, but I’m not sure if that’s where I am today. Today was really about the first sentence, part of my reprogramming, if you will. I can however, offer this glimpse through a quote shared with me by a wise and thoughtful friend: 

"What a long time it can take to become the person one has always been. How often in the process we mask ourselves in faces that are not our own. How much dissolving and shaking of ego we must endure before we discover our deep identity—the true self within...that is the seed of authentic vocation." - Parker Palmer

What a long time it can take. You know? 

I’m approaching my 38th birthday this year. And my life is extraordinary—in the way that the ordinary comes alive for me everyday. Today—besides writing the first sentence—I’m opening myself to more of that. I’m embracing the stumbling and moving boldly beyond. I’m holding space for myself too, or at least, figuring out what it would mean and how it would look if I did. 

Spring 2015 Teaching Schedule!

Happy Spring everyone!

I'd love to see you in a class soon! My regular teaching schedule is listed below. And don't worry, I'll be sure to update this page if/when my schedule changes and if I add any workshops or special events to the calendar!

If you're interested in a private individual or group session, please contact me directly!!

Regularly Scheduled Classes: 

      Black Mountain Yoga Center (BMYC) 

      Mon: 5:30—6:30pm, Mindful Flow 
      Thur: 5:30—630pm, Gentle Restorative 

      Sat: 11:00am—12:30pm, Yoga for Everyone*

(*Shared w/ Martia, I lead every other Sat. See website for dates)

      Asheville Donation Yoga Studio (ADYS)

      Tue & Fri: 1:30—3:00pm, Gentle Flow with Restorative  

      Asheville Community Yoga Center (ACYC) 

      Saturdays: 8:30—9:45am, Vinyasa Flow Level 1-2