the B.I.T.C.H. is back

B = Brave
I = Intelligent
T = Tenacious
C = Creative
H = Honest

"Embracing your inner bitch...means that you're being strong and honest with yourself and those around you, and I think that's a good thing."

Thanks to Tabatha for that!

Yeah, you heard me. I'm back. But on a very limited basis.

Since I stopped writing in February I can't tell you how many readers left comments on Facebook or wrote to me asking me to start writing again -- or to write for their online yoga mags. It seriously overwhelmed me. Goddess bless you all!

I've decided to reopen this blog to post about SPECIAL TOPICS such as my upcoming trainings in teaching yoga to trauma survivors, a weekend with Gary Kraftsow, a week with Mark Whitwell, and a weekend with Erich Schiffman.

We'll see how it goes, but I'm no longer into the blah blah blah of the modern yoga scene. It bores me.

The ayurveda teacher in my last training at the Mandiram said that a yogi is one whose prana is contained and doesn't let it leak out with unnecessary blah blah blah (among other things.) Hence, "shut up and do your practice." So no more snaps of my tats. Hey, I SAID TATS!

Others can write about the usual yoga suspects. Like Lululemon pants, how yoga makes you sexy, or a celebrity doing yoga on the beach. Whatever.

I remember what Kausthub Desikachar told us: if we do not teach others what we have learned we are nothing more than thieves.

I'm no thief. I'm a B.I.T.C.H.

Stay tuned.

the best writing about yoga in a long time

I've been writing this blog since 2005 and I've come across many yoga blogs over the years -- some great, some not so much, some to which I am indifferent, i.e., those I read once and never return. We all have our tastes and I know that this blog is too snarky for some, maybe not foo-foo-peace-love-dove enough about yoga for others, and that's fine. I've been criticized for not sugar-coating my words, for not being "yogic" enough, for being too bold and brash, and frankly, for being too me. That's fine because I know that neither my yoga (not hard enough) nor I (not gentle enough) are everyone's cup of chai in the blogosphere or in real life. At my age, ask me if I care.

But today I found The Magazine of Yoga and I am hooked.  Maybe some of you know it already, but I can't stop reading the articles.  I especially loved this post about teaching: Tired, Uninspired, and Teaching Yoga. Some pithy remarks from the post:

"In teacher’s everyone life there are times the problem is more intractable or more existential, sometimes both at the same time.

My personal prejudice about this is that if you are serious at all about teaching, it’s going to happen to you. I have never had a bad teacher ask me what do about boredom, exhaustion, or doubt....

....If we are ever going to develop the emotional maturity to rise to our full potential as human beings we’re going to have to go through feeling abandoned, mistaken, dubious, and afraid."

Holy Shiva, did that sentence resonate with me...the times I have felt abandoned and mistaken on this path are more than I care to count. I have felt so alien in my local yoga world you can call me ET. So reading these last two lines...

"'Get up and go out in the world,' she [Eve Ensler] said, 'and do what you came here to do.'

Because there’s more to the practice than asana, there’s life."

...recharged me.

As did a new private student today...because there’s more to the practice than asana, there’s real life, yoga warts and all.