Recovery (May, 2012)

At the risk of sounding cliche, my brush with death this past winter, has given rise to the most exquisite spring. Ho! My healing here on Gambier Island is the best Yoga retreat of my life 50 years in!

There is nothing quite like stillness returning to the body and the mind. Maybe you imagine that when you are sick, you would be still, but it is not true. When you cannot move, that is when you are forced to move all the time and awkwardly with machines attached, or devices to be careful of. Then, once out of hospital, there is all the movement of getting to doctor appointments, and all the movement of the shifting with discomfort, and all the movement of the frenetic withdrawal off of powerful narcotics. My biggest sign of health returning was the incredible awakening to stillness. Ahhhhhhhh

I am most graciously away from the city, and in solitude. My partner Don has gone away, as he does every spring, doing the job I did when we met 27 years ago. Tree-planting. I miss him more than ever. Yet, this alone time is so clearly a part of my life that I love.

My days have a quality that I could easily call magical, because being alone really is that. There is nothing quite so heavenly as being the boss; the top dog, the primary Buddha so to speak. I mean there are all manner of ways to get it wrong, or muddled. There are all kinds of ways to recognize obsessive behaviours, or compulsive patterning, not to mention the clan of saboteurs that move in right next-door... in the prefrontal cortex of my brain. Choice is a persons’ best friend, when choice chooses to face down the saboteurs.

The big learning is coming fast and it really feels like I have GOT IT! Being in the flow, does not mean everything is going easy, it means that I'M EASY even if things are not exactly EASY. Some times the current takes this boat downstream, sometimes caught in the eddy round and round and round... and sometimes, I'm out of the boat before I go over the falls. Swimming upstream is part of the flow.

So I am not working for a living right now. Can I trust I will make a good master? Will I know how to keep structure and allow freedom? I might just spend all my energy earnings in one day, and then make the same mistake tomorrow. I might not ever learn to pace, or might not ever learn patience even? I might just eat cookies and drink tea...

Maybe, but...

You know, in your morning Yoga practice?... When some days you just CANNOT go wrong? Where every little move you make, every posture you enter is a win win, the perfect pitch of effort and release. It is so satisfying that not all the chocolate cake in the world could pull you out of that one place, that continued breath. Nothing matches the satisfaction!!!! Well, I have whole days of this kind of experience... in and out of chores and wanderings... total satisfaction! Splitting wood, digging earth, planting things, moving things, cleaning things, playing things. The opposite of yearning. So ripe that there is no time to even consider attachment.

I don't miss the city. I don't miss my job. I don't miss my cluttered desk or unfinished email lists. I know in Sept and just before I return to work, I will miss it all fiercely and be back on fire for what I love about teaching. But for now, the calamity that was my winter's fault has every silken thread coming together in a miraculous web of wonder. I love this phase of healing. It has no separation from gratitude.

Namaste,

Kate

A New Chapter (July 17, 2011)

I loved the Papoose II. Especially in the summer time. We lived aboard this boat for 17 years, and yet when we left the harbor for summer holidays; I’d think, “Are we forgetting anything?” It is hard to forget anything when you are taking your home with you. Don would keep that boat out floating around right until fall. I would commute back to the city to teach Yoga for a few days and then call him. “Where are you now Honey?” I would jump a ferry, or a water taxi, or even a floatplane to get back to the Papoose for some serious days off. I created the 26 shows of Namaste on my days off. I could take the dinghy and my Yoga mat and putt off in search of the perfect yoga bluff. I could do Yoga for hours and hours and then come back to find Don reading, cooking, or mending the ship, while bobbing away at anchor. Heaven.

Winters were not too bad. We had figured out how to spend one or two months in better climes, Mexico being a favorite. Otherwise, on very stormy nights we could crash at my studio. I remember how still (and even stale) that seemed compared to the boat.

A new chapter. We handed the boat off this last week with one final cruise. The new owner is young, she is keen, and she is strong. It looks like a good fit. Wooden boats are tricky. We did our best to keep up on the work, and passed it along with no money changing hands. We hope our gift brings more happiness than hard work.

I have turned the corner straight. Although I want to cherish memories, I am not sentimental. We had a lovely life on board, and saved a lot of money living simply. I know this new chapter living on land; will be full of real stability. I still cannot believe how much I like a storm under the roof of our new house. There is not a creak, just the big blow outside those walls. Nothing moves. The other thing is digging in the earth, moving stones and rock, running out the back door with compost, making fires at night. It is all fantastically earthy. I love my new life on shore. Heaven!

In the Wake of Disaster (March 17, 2011)

It is less than one week since the start of Japan’s triple disaster. The situation continues to expand. The complications are unimaginable. The suffering, the loss, and the fear will not abate any time soon with the nuclear threat looming, and aftershocks rumbling the earth. With all this intense despair, how callous it seems to consider our own potential disasters. How can we hoard while others are in such need? How can people think of the future earthquakes here, and their own possible (yet not real) horror, while the crisis is so acute? In Japan, hundreds of thousands have had no power, lack water, and are rationing food. Many have never ever known loss until this one huge grab took everything away.

How self-centered can we be? Instead of preparing our homes for earthquakes, (in time, yes) could we not prepare our hearts? In Japan, there are things happening right now which are changing lives forever; unforgettable stories of the human heart. Imagine all the scenes of courage, and rescue. Imagine the patience, the faith, the determination to survive together. Imagine witnessing someone risking their life so your child could be saved. Imagine the relief of locating somebody who you thought was lost.

Imagine the rightness of giving away what you yourself may need. If everybody did that, then those in the most need are surely taken care of first, and the trust between helpers grows. Would you have the courage?

These 3 acts of courage are a way to practice right now.

1. Question your entitlement.
2. Notice opportunities to give..
3. Whatever you think you need, be willing to lay it down.

How we act in a crisis is who we are. Who we are is are is the habits we form, and the practices we take on in daily life. There will be no peace in our hearts unless we can be alive in this moment. There are no guarantees, no absolutes, and no security. I would bet that heaven is here on earth in helping others, and hell is hoarding, running away, or protecting only ourselves. Let us learn from the grace and dignity of the Japanese people and continue to pray for their return to safety soon.

A New Year

The lovely thing about a whole new year is a sense of time made large. The sense that a clear new page turns and with a leap of faith, we start afresh. It is a bit like a new day on a grand scale. Why not make resolutions? Why not start again? It makes sense to see things that you want to do differently, and change with the flow of time. Just the way it makes sense each day to wake up and try again. When one has a Yoga practice each day, you start where you are, and notice what needs attention. Perhaps then, by altering perception, altering effort, and remembering what is important, we can ease the suffering of being human, perhaps in conflict with the world. No war need be fought on our home turf, no war with the body or mind, but rather, through stillness of effort and starting again, find tender care and gentle breath. In this way, it is so much easier to see the path to peace expanding our lives to include the world around us.

I feel I am starting to understand real happiness. There are times when I need to adjust to see my way through what feels like an old pattern of pain or loss, but for the most part, I live in a huge meadow of bright calm. Life with my dear Donny has for 25 years felt deep and alive, but with our efforts in building a house together on Gambier island, there feels now a new wonder. Life holds so much promise, so much earthly delight. The building of it was a kind of push and pull, sort of like making the new DVD (Namaste - The 5 Elements). To work at what you love, can still feel like a bind.....a funny letting go while in motion with creation, not wanting to let up, but seeing that everything has a life of it's own, no matter how much you wish you had control.

I sure don't know how to live without a practice of Yoga, and thank my stars the practice is so firm and rich for me. I hope with the new dvd, that others will understand more about this ancient art made relevant through the ages. Please when you see it, do let me know just what you feel. It is not perfect by any means, but is made from my heart. Thanks to all who help me to be a teacher, at times bumbling along just barely keeping it all together, and at other times, feeling clarity that finds its expression with the love of teaching.

Happy New Year

Kate

Returning Home

I spent 5 months this year traveling, teaching, hiking in the Himalayas, and receiving treatment in an Ayurvedic hospital in Southern India.

(click on images to see enlargement)

One of the reasons I like to travel is to see how other cultures express art, music, and religion. I am also interested in what other cultures see as, “normal”. That something that is normal, might be of great beauty, or might be devastatingly bleak, but it is normal if it is yours.

In Nepal, the lush beauty of the pristine cloud forest is normal. Higher up in the stark alpine… it is cold and raw, stark and wild. The stars bolt out of the diamond sky. The Gods are real; living in the eyes of the people, in the sound of the temple bells, and in the wind flying with prayer flags. No roads there, just paths…no trucks hauling produce, just human muscle doing delivery.

In the blasting cities below, electricity shortages have powers cuts for hours and hours per day. Not a “normal” they may want to get used to, but so surprising in terms of what can be handled in a thriving busy city of commerce. During power cuts every day, there is no running water, no lights but candles in the dark lobbies of hotels, no Internet, no television. Major business’s running on diesel generators seems pretty normal.

In the potholed, mud caked medieval streets of Katmandu, poverty, corruption, ignorance and greed are to be seen as much as humility, grace, kindness and faith. Just leaving one’s room and walking out, is a full-on spectacle of altered reality.

In India, 4 people on one motorcycle, cows in the post office, rats at the train station, roaches in cars. This is pretty normal. In some places, the grime seemed to hang like a hot curtain off of every building, awning and sign. Yet the people never look a bit fussed or forlorn. People live lives full of noise, filth, stench and rot while also full of colour, beauty, cleanliness and order. This contrast becomes quite a normal thing to see.

I loved the “abnormal normality’s” of my one-month treatment at the Ayurvedic hospital. It was “normal” for the doctor comes three times a day to check in with me? Taking a vow of silence is something I have done in ashrams and monasteries. In the Ayurvedic hospital, a vow of silence is very much expected, or at least normal if wished for. Can you imagine herbs grown across the street for medicine…no way? But of course, that is normal.

I have said little of my teaching as if it is normal to travel around the world teaching. I taught in 3 cities in Mexico, in 5 cities in the US. I taught in France. I taught in Nepal to my trusty guide and porter Ramish. (I highly recommend Ramish as your guide if you are taking a trek in Nepal. ramesh0904@yahoo.com) In all the places I taught, I felt the warmth of compatibility of the language of Yoga. We are so different in what we need, and what we need keeps changing. Yoga works it’s magic no matter what.

The thrill of meeting fans of my television show, and hearing how people have changed their lives through Yoga, is beyond compare. Everybody has a story to tell about how and why they love Yoga.

When I teach, it is a great wave of humanity that I feel. I feel our efforts, our mistakes, our mini realizations and grand attempts to widen our perspective. I feel that what we do indeed does matter. For our own evolution, and for the sake of our world, we do need to challenge our understanding. We do need to keep asking questions, and we do need to open our hearts.

When I travel and teach, I see that Yoga is very much alive in myself and in so many others. What a gift Yoga has given to us all, and what an honour to share that gift. Thank you all for the support I need to be a teacher.

Namaste,

Kate