Brahmacharya

When delving further into yoga and yoga philosophy you learn about the Yamas and Niyamas, which were written by Patanjali. The Yamas and Niyamas make up two of the eight limbs of the Ashtanga yoga system, also written by Patanjali.

The least straight forward Yama for me in this day and age is Brahmacharya because it means abstinence, particular in the case of sexual activity. But celibacy isn’t practiced by too many people these days other than nuns, monks, and non-molesting priests.

Brahmacharya can, however, be practiced in a more modern fashion. You can be sexually responsible, we can make a conscious decision to enter into more truthful relationships including with ourselves, and you can try to make sure you are not drawing the wrong kind of attention to yourself.

The last part intrigues me the most, especially when it comes to flirting and also being aware of the image you project of yourself. I was recently reading this 19 year old girl’s blog and a sentence she wrote really stuck out to me:

The person I wanted people to think I was. bright! huge smile! charismatic  optimistic! fun! and fearless!

Too often than not I find myself trying to project this image, especially when I meet someone new or want to leave a good impression. I can be loud, laughy, assertive, happy, possibly even a bit aggressive, fun, outgoing, bubbly. There’s nothing wrong with feeling or being any of those things. In fact, it is incredibly enjoyable to act that way sometimes. It can even make you believe all those things about yourself even if you don’t always feel that way. But is that the sort of image I want to project if that’s only a part of who I am?

I act this way in part because I feed off the energy of others and I really enjoy being around them. I also act this way because I want to be liked by others and I don’t want to be thought of as a downer or a burden or anything else that might be negatively perceived. But we all have our own dark side. And if we want to be in a truthful relationship with ourselves and with others then we have to be honest about and transparent with our good and bad sides.

Equally importantly, we must think about the kind of attention certain images attract. Most people are naturally drawn to fun people who can be the life of a party for very obvious reasons. Other than the superficial reason, though, it’s not so obvious what the deeper attraction might be.

When people draw attention to themselves it’s normally because there is a need they are trying to fill. What that need is is much less obvious. But the effect of seeking attention is that the person who is drawn to the attention only has a superficial attraction to the attention-seeker. If you’re relationship is based off of being the life of the party, it probably isn’t a substantive or long-lasting relationship. Once you find out who the real person is, the attraction is probably quick to dissipate. I’ve experienced this with myself and with others.

It’s human to want attention and to seek it, but we must ask ourselves what are the consequences of the attention we seek? What is it that we need validated? What is it that we are trying to cover up?

Once we find out the answer then we can change our behavior so that it better suits are intentions and more real desires — ones that don’t fulfill a temporary, immediate need. This may mean we become less fun. It may mean we are not always joyous and desirable to be around. But it probably will help you find someone who you are more compatible with in the long run and who will appreciate you for you — not what you want other people to think of you.

It’s a part of growing up — acting more responsibly and being aware of how your actions effect those around you. In the end, even if someone else gets caught in the crosshairs of your behavior, you are the receiver of your own actions.

To me, that is what Brahmachyra means. Now I just have to start putting those words into action.

Letting Go

Knowing is the easy part. The hard part is knowing what to do with what you know.

For instance, I am terrible at letting go. I know I need to let go more. And I know life would be so much easier if I could let go of New York, my first love, my last blip of love, my many years of anger, sadness, hurt, shame, and depression.

But figuring out how to make that happen is so hard. For one, there are many ways to let go. So you have to find a way to let go that works for you, whether that is laughing, exercising, hanging out with friends, etc. What is it that helps you relax? It probably isn’t just one thing.

There are many ways I let go, but it’s still hard to do it. I still encounter a ton of resistance before embarking on an activity that helps me let go. Why? Fear of what will happen when I do let go. Fear that I will lose my drive, my passion, my fighter mentality, my persistence, my productivity, my desire to write.

I am told, though, that if  work on helping myself let go more, I will experience less pain, physical, mental, and emotional, and more joy. I’d be happy to let go of the obsessiveness, the attachment to outcomes, the perfectionist part of me, and enjoy a more carefree existence. The hard part is getting there. Because getting there requires sharing, and as someone who values my independence and freedom, I have a hard time sharing with other people.

People are supposed to share in order to reduce their “load” (i.e. what they are burdened or saddled down by). In part, it’s what makes us unique. But opening up and sharing yourself with others is extremely difficult when you’ve been hurt, left broken hearted, wounded, or scarred in any way because you attempted to share yourself with others.

But if we don’t keep sharing ourself with other people despite the heartache that may come from it then we will wind up in even more pain. We will crack under our own weight because we will have become so heavy with our issues, our heart, our emotions, and our mind.

I know I need to share my heart (and mind) again. The hard part is in the doing. I suppose the only way to do so is to let it go and see where it leads me. Now, if only I could trust it enough to let that happen.

Meditating

As part of the yoga teacher training course I am taking we were asked to set an a goal (or goals) for the course, similar to how we are sometimes asked to set an intention at the beginning of a yoga class. Mine were pretty broad and general, like wanting to become more focused (less scattered), gaining more clarity in terms of what I want to do with my life, dealing with my anxiety and stress, and learning how to take better care of my body and mind — I have suffered from severe migraines, gone through a period of being quite sick, have had crippling allergies, occasionally have experienced panic attacks, broken my foot, have recurring lower right back spasms, tight hips, etc.

Ultimately, all of the above tie into one source: stress. Stress on the body and stress on the mind. To help remedy this situation the yoga instructor suggested I start meditating.

In any other context, and probably at any other point in my life, I would have just laughed off the suggestion and cracked it up to be a load of crock. But after practicing yoga for many years and finally beginning to feel the benefits of meditative-like practices during certain classes, I was more than open to trying to meditate. After all, the whole point of practicing yoga is to get us into a state where we can more easily meditate.

The instructor suggested I start off slowly in small intervals of time. For instance, meditate 5 minutes 3-5 times per week. This sounded more than doable. I could easily take 5 minutes in the morning (or before bed or during a work break). So I did. After a week, I increased the time to 10 minutes because 5 minutes seemed so brief. After a couple more weeks, I increased the time to either 15 or 20 minutes. As in exercise, the real benefits of meditation begin to kick in at around 20 minutes.

By meditating, I mean setting a timer on my iPhone and then sitting down, preferably with my hips raised and legs crossed, and then telling myself not to think for most of the time. If I am not telling myself to think, I am trying to not go through my to do list or plan out the rest of my day. To remedy this, I count how long it takes to breath in and then breath out or I try to “observe” or “watch” the breath. But, as another yoga teacher pointed out, it could easily take a year, if not longer, before I am actually meditating.

In any case, whether or not I am really meditating, I am loving it. It has been quite a pleasant surprise. Yes, it requires a certain amount of discipline, even just carving out the time to do it, but I love how it makes me feel. I feel more focused, less stressed, and energized. In fact, one of the best runs I recently had was when I meditated for 20 minutes beforehand. My mind feels calmer and my body feels revitalized.

It’s also been helpful in kicking bad habits, like the occasional desire to have a cigarette while out drinking with friends. There’s something about smoking that makes me feel more awake and calm at the same time. After a big meal, it can also feel like a nice digestion aid. It signifies to my body and mind that the meal is over, ie: stop eating. Or it acts as a substitute for dessert.

After reading a required course book about meditation, Turning the Mind Into an Ally, and coming across a passage about why people like to smoke, I finally understood what we are actually addicted to: being incredibly present in the present. Smoking stops time. When people smoke, they are able to forget about their worries, they take the time to watch the world go by, and they are really enjoying the moment. That is exactly what meditation does as well: we set aside our concerns, focus on the present, and just let ourselves be in the moment.

After my initial skepticism of meditation wore off, I now see how beneficial it is — and why people keep earnestly suggesting to try it. It it is relaxing, stabilizing, and enjoying. It can help us kick bad habits and it helps us become less attached to things, which helps us stay focused on what matters.

Moreover, it’s a portable practice. We can do it anywhere, anytime, and we can do it into old age since all it physically requires is sitting. And I imagine it will only get better and better with time, just like my yoga practice.

My 10 Day Cleanse

My yoga teacher’s training class recently went on a 10 day food cleanse. When the idea was first proposed I was petrified. I am constantly grazing on food so the mere thought of restricting it seemed impossible. Besides, I thought, I already have a pretty healthy diet, what would I gain from a cleanse?

As it turned out, the only major food components I would have to give up were: caffeine, which I was deathly afraid of losing, and processed sugar. Other than chocolate, giving up sugar for 10 days wouldn’t be too painful. 

But when I saw the list of things we weren’t allowed to have, I panicked. We had to eliminate soy (not a problem since I don’t eat or drink it), dairy (I love my Greek yogurt in the morning and on occasion eggs, but ok), meat (I  sometimes eat chicken and some kinds of fish so not bad), caffeine (yikes), sugar (what would I do without my daily dose of chocolate?), gluten (luckily there is gluten free bread and oatmeal), and alcohol (I could easily do that for 10 days).

So what could we have? Gluten-free oatmeal and breads, organic veggies and fruit, quinoa, legumes, wild and brown rice, nuts, almond milk, coconut milk, rice-based pasta, and if we were really craving something meaty, then a wild piece of salmon or trout, but limited to only once or twice during the cleanse. We had to cook with organic olive oil, safflower or grape seed oil, and pink himalayan sea salt.

It doesn’t seem like a lot of options but when you think about how many different grains and vegetables there are, there’s plenty to eat. And if you’re in a city like New York where organic, vegan places abound, then it’s very doable. What’s not so doable is the expense of healthy food and organic groceries.

The sad fact remains that the healthier the food, the more expensive it is. Cheap food is cheap for reason — not simply in monetary terms, but also for your health. Good food shouldn’t have to cost more, but it does. It costs more because it cannot be mass made to perfection.

Most of us are not eating real food because the cost is prohibitive and/or the access to it is limited. Even those perfectly shaped, non-bruised apples are not real food. They can be found in practically any store right now, but they should not be available in April. Apples get picked — and eaten — in the fall. But we can get apples anytime, anywhere. And we can get jumbo-size strawberries year round. Have you seen the size of them lately? It’s like they’re on steroids. They don’t even look appetizing, or edible. This phenomenon hits at the heart of the double-sided food problem: we don’t eat what’s fresh and we don’t eat what’s in season.

Our bodies like variability. We don’t want to eat the same thing everyday year-round. But we can, and we do. We can eat strawberries during the winter and apples during the summer. Except that they aren’t real when they’re not in season. They are either manufactured or frozen for weeks so they can be shipped half-way around the world. Either type of handling creates a severe loss in the food’s nutritional value. When there is minimal nutritional value, there is less taste. When there is less taste, there is less satiation. When we are less satiated, we keep eating because we don’t feel full from our foods and we aren’t satisfied with an empty, tasteless meal.

When we eat and eat, we are bludgeoning our digestion system, which needs time to rest and break food down. On top of overloading our digestion track with food-like substances, we are giving it food that is much harder to break down so we put even more strain on our bodies. We become lethargic from having to work so hard to suck out the minimal nutrients in the food we eat, and we have less and less energy because we aren’t getting many nutrients.

Having just completed the cleanse — and trying to stick to it as much as possible — I am able to see the benefits of eating real, clean, in-season food. I have much more energy, I’m not dependent upon caffeine to wake up and feel good, which also means I can go to sleep much more easily, and while I don’t think I lost any weight (I don’t weigh myself; I use the clothing test), I feel much lighter in my body.

At first, I was entirely dismayed by not visibly shedding any pounds. The main motivation of cleanses for most people, no matter how noble you are, is to lose weight. Why would I be sacrificing all this energy and money on the cleanse if I wasn’t seeing any visible effects from it? But I was. Just not the ones I thought I’d see. 

Instead of weight loss, what I found was how badly addicted I am to chocolate (sugar), which I already knew, but didn’t want to admit. More importantly, I had a chance to give my jaw a break from the constant chewing I do throughout the entire day. If I am not eating something then I am chewing gum, sucking a candy, and drinking lots of water. We were not allowed to have sucking candies or gum since they contain all kinds of fake sugar. 

I knew I was a grinder at night, but I didn’t realize how much of a grinder I was during the day. My oral fixation was killing my jaw, breaking my teeth — I had recently undergone a second root canal, which came about from a combination of my soft teeth and the constant clenching, and I would add, probably my love of sweets, gum, and sucking candies.

In any case, it was nice to give my jaw a break, and to get to the crux of my other eating habits. Not only did I have an oral fixation to break, but I also had a chance to recognize my mindless eating habits. Like most people, my eating can be quite emotional. I eat when I am bored, in need of a break from work, under a certain kind of stress, or experiencing a strand of unhappiness. I say certain kinds of stress or unhappiness because when I am extremely stressed out or really unhappy — or really happy — I don’t eat at all. Other times, I just want to experience the comfort and immediate satiation that comes from eating soft, warm, chewy, filling foods (normally not the healthy kind).

Part of this emotional eating is human. Another part is that I don’t like sitting down for meals unless I have a nice length of time to eat, enjoy, digest, and rest, which is a rare occasion in this culture. Bigger meals take a longer time to digest, and while that digestion is occurring, our bodies and brains become more sluggish because our energy is being used to break down the food. Yes, eating makes us tired. That’s why eating right before bedtime can become a bad habit. It’s also why having a siesta is such a great idea.

But when you work all the time, you can’t afford to feel full, or sluggish. Nor are we living in a country with an afternoon nap culture. Working long, condensed hours are not suitable for big meals. So, instead, I have little things throughout the day in order to keep working and not feel lethargic from a complete meal. If I have a big meal, I want to be sure that I have time to rest afterward, or simply go to sleep.

It could be argued that eating three “complete” meals a day might make my constant grazing habit disappear, but after trying that, I’d rather stick with a feeding schedule that feels a bit more natural. For me, that is eating when I am hungry. Being able to identify when you are hungry and when you are craving things for the wrong reasons is also what the cleanse helps you figure out.

In my case, I have days where I am really hungry and some days where I don’t have much of an appetite. In the end, those days are balanced out, and I’d rather eat more when I am hungry and less when I am not. Granted, this makes for a more abnormal, irregular eating schedule, but since I have that sort of freedom in my life right now, I may as well use it.

And if I really want to lose weight, then I’ll just have to eat less. In the end, that is the only real way to loose weight and keep it off.

Ode to Boston

Boston, oh, Boston. Where do I begin?

I must begin by saying I have never loved you more.

Though the true nature of our relationship began much differently. We started with torture, hate, anger, sadness, misunderstanding, and so many other dark thoughts and misgivings.

Yes, I hated you. I hated you because you took me from my city. I hated you because you weren’t New York. I hated you because I had unfinished business that you didn’t let me complete. I despised you for everything that you were and were not. Now, I love you for all of those things.

At the time of our move from Brooklyn, New York to Concord, Massachusetts, I had just finished sixth grade. I was beginning to enter a world of freedom in the city, where my friends were coming into formation, where we could ride the subway by ourselves, where we could start to take advantage of the city without oversight of our parents. I was in heaven. I knew I was in the coolest city on the planet and I knew how lucky I was to be living in the best neighborhood ever.

Then it was gone. I was no longer there. I was stripped of my identity. I was torn from what I loved. It happened so suddenly, without any choice or voice in the matter. My city was gone. My friends were gone. My life was gone. I was so angry. So senselessly angry.

So I took it out on my new city. I blamed Boston for all of my woes. I cursed its existence and let the unhappiness settle in. I had loved my life just the way it was — school year in the city, summers in Connecticut. I didn’t want to live in the country year round. That was totally unnecessary. Absolutely boring. A horrid concept.

But that was my new life. No explanation. No guide through the transition. Best, biggest city; oldest, smallest town. Private to public. Lovely apartment to scary, strange home. No more summer home. Just one ugly home year-round. Ability to get myself anywhere; have to wait until 17 to get anywhere alone.

As a middle school girl, I hated you. I cried in the empty bathroom stalls at school. I looked at bottles of advil and wondered how many I would have to take in order to go to sleep for a while. Just until the pain was gone. I tried to run away. I was confused, hurt, angry; with no understanding of how to express my anger and no ability to express why I was feeling those things. I was alone in trying to make sense of it all.

As a high schooler, sent to a private school in Cambridge, in an attempt to put me back into an environment I so dearly missed, I still resented you. When I graduated, all I could think about was how quickly I could return to my city. Four more years.

But my mourning did not end there. I could still barely admit where I was living. I would proudly say I was from New York and just going to school in Boston. I was from a city that’s supposed to hate you. I couldn’t wait to leave you.

In recent years, after being back in New York for a while, my appreciation for you has grown. I love leaving the madness of the city. I love the beautiful coastal train ride between the two cities. I love having a car. I love the peace and quiet. I love the simplicity, the ease, the size. I love the farms, the roads, the towns with one main street, the quaintness, the access to the outdoors, the beautiful brownstones of Beacon Hill, the tiny square parks in Brookline village, the Green line when it is above ground, the wharfs, the informalness, the pubs, the churches, Trinity church, Newbury Street, Copley Plaza. The awful reason why I am now writing about this.

You are a beautiful city. You are a peaceful town filled with loyal soldiers. You are magnificent, resilient. You have a pride that is strong and subdued; quiet and forceful. You may not say much, but when you say something, you mean it. You know what is real and what is not. There is no pretense in this town. There is no room for any bullshit.

You are rightful defenders of the truth, no matter how brutal it may be. You carry on in the face of adversity. You are hard workers, tough soldiers, and loving parents. You do not get pulled in by any undercurrents. You are the undercurrent.

You know what is worth fighting for. You know when to fight and when to let go. Above all, you are survivors and abiders of peace.

You are brave. Braver than I will ever be. I admire you from afar and maybe one day will do so up close and personally.

I no longer stand against you. I stand with you. I stand in this pain because anything else would be a lie. And I know how much you hate lies. I see how much they can kill.

Farewell, Birmingham

I keep going back and forth as to whether or not I should write about this. I hesitate because I don’t want to give him any sort of vindication and also because when we dated, if you could even call it that, for a split second, he asked me to write a post about him. He had read some of my blog posts and asked me on several different occasions whether I would write a blog post about us, and what I thought our ending would be.

I told him I never write about romantic relationships while they are happening. I try not to write in the heat of the moment, but rather let things simmer and see where the chips fall so that I can provide as fair a perspective as possible and not write out of hot anger, heavy hurt, or blinding madness.

But, this isn’t about him. It’s about me. And I do want to write about it despite his curious request to have me write about us, or him, really. I found it a bit odd because no one has ever had the gall to ask me to write about them. At first I thought it was an incredibly vain, albeit a realistically vain, request. He readily admits is a shameless self-promoter, like any good salesman, which he is. Now, I have come to believe that it was probably more of a cry for help than anything else. As any human is, he is desperate to have his life validated. Unfortunately, he is going about it in a way that will bring him anything but validation, as most of us do when we are unable to fulfill our own basic needs and create our own sense of satisfaction.

I say a cry for help because I think he is fully aware of his predicament, even if he might not be willing to admit it. Unfortunately, despite what seem like attempts at trying, he doesn’t appear able or willing to really help himself. No one magically knows how to help themselves — they have to seek out help to help themselves and then be willing to work on themselves, for possibly the rest of their lives.

He may have also asked me to write a post about him, in part, because he wanted to know how I felt about him. I think he saw how much better I express myself through the written word than the spoken one, and since I wasn’t giving him any spoken validation, I needed to give him a written one. But I didn’t do it. I thought he knew how I felt without me having to say anything directly to him. But, apparently, he needed that reassurance, and I did not give it to him.

In any case, I found him and his background intriguing even if his request and other premature announcements made me a bit wary. I had been in a four year relationship that I had only recently, and finally, let go of — or, rather, he let me let go of it. I’ve never thanked him for that, but one day I hope I will. It had been less than four months since the break-up and I wasn’t remotely interested in re-entering into anything serious.

We had met at a friend’s fundraiser. He came up to me at the bar, asked what I was drinking, told the bartender he would have what I was having, and brought me over to meet his friends — he was there with a great couple, and that was that. Even though I was there with my sister, we spent a good portion of the night talking, and the five of us went out afterward.

He was British (it’s hard not to love their accent and be drawn in by it), and a pithy conversationalist, which I loved as well. When we spoke it felt like we were jousting in a combined production of Hamlet and Taming of the Shrew. Not that our dialogue was anything like that of Shakespeare’s, but that was the image conjured in my head when we were talking.

He was electric, fun, and more gregarious than me, which I rarely find in a guy. He literally spoke to everyone regardless of sex, age, beauty, and all the other factors, which I found endearing. Perhaps I should have been thinking that he might have been coked up. I don’t think that was the case, but, looking back there was a certain freneticness to his behaviour along attached to his earnestness and eagerness.

Needless to say I was hooked. Even though he didn’t look like the guy I typically went for — tall, dark, and handsome. I figured since it didn’t work out with the last one, his new looks and personality might be exactly what I was looking for, or needed at the moment.

His Aryan looks of blonde hair and blue eyes combined with a stout figure made him look like a rugby player who enjoys his pints and fish and chips. And his name, a name that I love, luckily was neither one of the names that my dating life oddly oscillated between. Another artificial bonus. At minimum, he was, at least, a superficial way to break habit and change my unsuccessful pattern.

But I really had no idea who he was or what he was about. It was obvious that he was charismatic, but if there’s nothing to support the charisma, then the veneer quickly wears thin. It was obvious he liked attention — who doesn’t? But I have come to learn that it is not the right kind of attention. It is a temporary enjoyment; an empty attention. A vacuous desire that breeds more of the wrong kind. The kind that makes Alice want to go down the rabbit hole.

Later that night, at a restaurant bar close by, he shamelessly flirted with both an embarrassed male waiter and three other girls. I wound up talking with the couple who were his friends since it was impossible to stay at his energy level the entire time. At first, I thought he was just having a good time and being incredibly outgoing. Looking back, I realize how unstable that kind of behaviour is, and how unsettling it made me feel. He was a human high. I felt “fuori di testa” or “outside the head”, but translations never give proper justice to the saying.

At the end of the night, at the third place of the evening, he pronounced to my sister that he was going to marry me. She just gave him a wry smile that encapsulated a “whatever”  ”yeah, right” and “good luck with that one”. We all eventually went our separate ways. He had picked up some stragglers from the second bar, but after they left, he was the first to go home. He had hit a wall. His mood had dramatically downshifted. He went from being spiked full of air to utter depletion. Knowing when you’ve reached your limit is always a good thing. But, having experienced what he was experiencing, I should have recognized such a drastically unhealthy flip — between the extreme extrovert and the insipid introvert.

We exchanged numbers after I walked him out to say good-bye. He gave me what he called a schoolboy kiss (a barely there peck on the cheek) and was off into the night and into his own darkness.

I vaguely remember talking about going to see a movie the following day, and the next day I heard from him. He wanted to see Bond. I had already seen it. So we settled on Flight. He bought the e-tickets. The day was drizzling rain and we were both exhausted from the night before so it was a perfect day to go see a movie.

Instead, we wound up watching one at his place. He lived in the Village, where I have always wanted to live, and he had been on his couch practically all day, which sounded exactly where I wanted to be, so I was more than happy to go over.

His place was great (although I would have liked any place in the Village). The living room was enormous and sparsely filled with an L-shaped couch, an Ikea table, and an enormous flat screen tv, required equipment piece for any single man. The ceiling was high, the windows were tall, and there was a ceiling fan. I was in heaven. And we could order practically any movie we wanted, thanks to his Apple TV.

Externalities aside, the best part was that it immediately felt like we had known each other for years. Like we had been best friends forever. Like we were already in a couple’s routine. It was a feeling I had not felt since my first love, and that was years ago. There was familiarity paired with electricity. He was warm and welcoming and wonderful. I felt immediately comfortable and safe. Free to be me. He was like a cocoon I just wanted to wrap myself in.

There’s a saying I kept hearing in yoga class around the time I met him — to press down to lift up. It never made much sense for a while until one yoga teacher explained it a certain way — press down through your feet in order to lift up your upper body. How would pressing down lift you up, I wondered. So I didn’t try it. But when I finally did try it, it made lifting up so much easier. That’s how I felt with him and that’s what I wanted to do keep doing with him — pressing down to lift up. Because pressing into him felt so damn good.

But I didn’t allow myself to do that. I was still in protection mode from my last relationship that had left quite a scar. I wasn’t ready to make myself vulnerable yet and as wonderful as he made me feel I wasn’t able to get past a sneaking suspicion that somehow none of this was real. That it was too good to be true. That there was no way we could both feel like this, this quickly.

But, he did. Or so he said he did. Yet I didn’t believe him. I didn’t let myself believe him. He told me he really liked me. He told me he thought this could be amazing. He told me he didn’t really date that much. He told me everything I wanted to hear. Even his friends, who I wound up meeting on New Year’s Eve, told me how wonderful he was. They would fight to the death for him. They confirmed everything he said about himself. But I was still not convinced.

I had always been told that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is. I didn’t want to believe that saying. I wanted to be optimistic. So I ignored that little voice in my head and went along with him. He felt so good to be around — too good. But when we parted ways and after the high was gone, all I could think about was him and when I would get to see him next. I couldn’t concentrate on work. I couldn’t think about anything other than how amazing it felt to hang out with him. My head was spinning and my heart was pounding. My mind was in the clouds. Nothing could stop me. I was invincible. Maybe this is it, I thought. Maybe this is what I’ve been missing. Maybe I would get to experience first love all over again. He was a human drug.

But drugs and first loves are intense. They’re madness. Insanity. They’re a thrilling and terrifying roller coster ride. Did I really want that again? Absolutely not. What I wanted was a steadier love, a more grounded love. A love that is just as real, but without the lovesickness ando pangs.

So I went for runs, did yoga, did anything to get myself out of my head. But it wasn’t until I went for a spin class with a very good, old friend of mine who always gives sage advice and works hard at making sure she has both feet firmly planted into the ground. Kat, she said, don’t get ahead of yourself. She could probably tell I was a bit delirious from my encounters with him and that my excitement was the kind that can easily turn into despair if what you are excited about doesn’t come true.

Slow down, she was saying. Yes, slow down. That was exactly what I had been working on for the past year. To not get caught up in the future or tied down by the past. To take things as they come and not make any more out of it than what it is. To try not to become too attached to what I want to happen because it can easily change in an instant.

But when you’re with a guy who constantly jokes to random people whilst we were out and about that we just got married and when he is telling you he wants to have lots of babies with you and when he is showing you pictures of his nieces and nephews and sisters and parents and his quaint English village where his dad is a Vicar who is still madly in love with his wife who has become somewhat debilitated by a stroke, you can’t help but think that maybe everything you’ve fantasized about will come true. That you will get married to the man of your dreams, that you will have dual citizenship babies, hopefully with insanely cute British accents, that you might live between London and New York, that you are married to a man that is deeply in love with you and just wants to take care of you, especially when the two of you have an amazing time together, you start to get ahead of yourself.

Getting ahead of ourselves is perfectly normal. It’s whether or not we can come back to reality (to what is real, as they say in yoga) that matters. And sadly, so, so sadly, his words did not match his actions. A fellow Taurus and friend who I adore told me early on to “watch his feet”, which I did, and which I told him I was doing, to which he replied “what does that mean?” Perhaps I should have taken that response as yet another hint.

Despite his thoughtless behaviours, I still believe he is a genuinely good person. I just don’t think he is aware of the consequences of his actions. Nor do I think he is willing or ready to face what is truly haunting him. But that is his own battle to fight. I have my own. All I know is that the more I confront my own ghosts, the easier it becomes to live with them. To accept them, and move on. It is an incredibly difficult task; to untie those Marley chains from past, present, and future and un-scrooge our feelings toward them. It is a harrowing task, possibly a never-ending one.

I take on this work because I want to make peace with my ghosts. Be free of them. I don’t want to be beholden to things that are beyond my control. I want to take what was good, learn from what was bad, and move on with my life.

But he oscillates between two extremes — a really high high, and a really low low. I saw his high when we were out, and I saw his low the day we watched British comedies on his couch. I know it all too well. You go at such full speed to distract yourself from whatever it is you are trying to distract yourself from that when you stop, you crash. It’s like you are comatose. Catatonic. It is a hellish form of existence. It is purgatory.

I had been working so hard to get away from that place and I knew I didn’t want to go back there. I was afraid that if we were to be together I would get sucked right back in.

I had also learned from my last relationship that no matter how wonderful the guy may be, if he allows whatever he is battling to run his life and make him act strange, then it’s not worth waiting it out. I did that. For four years. Thinking it was going to get better, that he would get better, that he would get to where he wanted to be and then we could get to where we wanted to be. If I were still with him, I would still be waiting. And I am done waiting. Done waiting for someone to battle their own demons. I have my own monsters to befriend and it’s never smart to fight two battles at once.

So I let this take its course. I didn’t try to make anything of it. I didn’t force it to be something it wasn’t. I just let it be. And so it became nothing.

Helen Keller said, “When one door of happiness closes, another one opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

It’s not that I cared so much about the door closing, or perhaps I did because I saw such wonderful potential, but I’ve learned that if it doesn’t exist now, there’s no reason to hope it will exist in the future. So I had to let go of yet another romantic notion. But what was most bothersome was that he didn’t bother to close the door.

He just receded. The bombardment of texts died down, the emails with links to articles about why it’s great to date an ex-pat stopped coming, and the voice I rarely heard on the phone to begin with went silent.

I knew it was coming, but it’s still painful when it happens. And it lingers even more when someone decides to start something but doesn’t have the cojones to end it. It feels like a waste of time. Why bother starting something if you know you’re eventually going to fade away? Why waste your time treating yourself and someone else with such carelessness? Why regurgitate sweet nothings into deaf ears?

I know why .. now. And I hope he understands as well. He deserves more from himself and I deserved a tangible ending. But we all know what happens when we expect great things from an Estella.

I at least thought there might be some poetic justice to it all. I had broken up with my ex-boyfriend only a few blocks away from where it had all began with the Brit. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have something new begin where something else had ended. Absolutely. But life doesn’t get tied together that neatly. Barriers get broken, boundaries are crossed. So we have to find a way to navigate a much more fluid existence.

I must live with the fact that I will never get any real closure from him because he is incapable of providing that, and I can try to be thankful that he is no longer my problem. Even though it seemed like it would have been a nice one to have.

Why I do yoga, then and now

I started doing yoga as a way to counteract the strenuous activity and workouts I had grown so accustomed to as a competitive athlete for practically 20 years. If I wasn’t practicing gymnastics six days a week for three hours a day during the school year, I was playing tennis for that same amount of time during the summer, combined with being a member of a other teams during certain years. 

I have played soccer, tennis, basketball, lacrosse, field hockey, ice hockey, done track & field, gymnastics, swimming, rowing, and more. If there was a sport, I tried it. I didn’t mind being active, being outside, and being on a team. In fact, there were times I really enjoyed it. But it wasn’t something I ever chose to do. I played because it was required. The only sport I truly loved and chose to do was gymnastics. I loved it so much that at six years old I decided I wanted to be an olympic gold medalist, like Nadia Comaneci, and asked my parents to send me to go train with Béla Károlyi the famous gymnastics trainer, at his camp in Texas. They wouldn’t hear of it. 

Once I had graduated from college and started working, I continued to exercise on a daily basis. Daily exercise had become so ingrained, a way of life, that I didn’t know how to live without it. So I would go to the gym and push myself as hard as possible, even after a long day of work, whether that was on the treadmill, elliptical, or lifting weights until I was completely exhausted. I would make sure to stretch, sit in the sauna, etc, but because it was so hard for me to relax, let go of the tough workouts (and things in general), I thought it was time to find something that would help me do that. 

My mom had been doing yoga for a while — ever since she was pregnant with us and before it turned into a Lululemon crazed activity. On occasion, I would see her doing some yoga stretches in the morning and she would sometimes tell us to breathe or some yogic saying like that, but I never knew what it meant. 

At first, yoga was simply a way of stretching and giving myself a day off from self-imposed punishing workouts. Now it has become my primary activity.

I’ve been doing yoga on a pretty consistent basis — one to two times a week, initially — since 2004. It’s taken me eight years to begin to understand what it’s really about and to learn how to really practice it. I still feel like I am only at the beginning, which is a good thing. It’s been the one activity that I’ve been able to stick with throughout all the years of change — jobs, apartments, boyfriends, interests. For me, that is huge step. (My dad has always been concerned with the fact that I never seem to stick with anything). 

Yoga has allowed me to focus, to relax, to better understand my body, my mind, and my heart. It has also helped to drastically improve my health and allows me to feel more mentally and emotionally stable. The latter has only been quite recently and I think, in part, because I have started to try to meditate on a consistent basis. (That could be just for 5-10 minutes a day). 

At first yoga was about stretching and flexibility. Now I realize it’s about strengthening and flexibility — of the body and the mind. The body is the easy part. The mind is the much harder part to make both strong and flexible at the same time. I’m still working on trying to get the mind to the place of caring about things or people, but not be so attached to the outcome. That still sounds like an oxymoron to me. I still don’t know if I truly believe that it is possible. I definitely have no idea how to do that. But I know I want to work on getting there even though I have a feeling it will be a lifelong endeavor. That’s what yoga is to me: a lifelong journey where I keep pushing myself — in good ways — to become a better person, a stronger person, a more enlightened person, and a more understanding human being. It’s the one thing I know I will do until I die. Because even if I can’t do the physical postures at a certain age, I can always do the breath work and meditate.

There is nothing else I know in life that is for certain. I don’t know where I’ll be living, what I’ll be doing, who I might be with or whether I will be alone, or what each day is going to be like. I just know that every day I have the ability to do yoga — and I want to do it. That is a rare find for me — to want to do something every day, all the time. I’ve never found something that is so hard and that also feels so good.

The rewards certainly don’t come quickly or easily. Yes, I always feel much better after taking a class or practicing on my own or even meditating for a bit, but that has taken years to learn, and I am still working on it. I am still working on linking my breath to the postures and movement. I am just beginning to learn how to meditate. I am just discovering that if you do yoga correctly, it is incredibly, incredibly tough — it can even feel painful sometimes. But it is what I come back to again and again. Every day. Because I learn so much about myself and I learn how to better interact with people and not get so pulled by them or other outside forces, although that is practically impossible to do all the time. I get to experience the joy I felt when I did gymnastics. We do splits in class and handstands, and backbends, and even back walkovers.

Gymnastics might have been the last time I loved doing something that could also be very punishing at the same time — ripped hands, bloody blisters, massive bruises, banged hips, getting the wind knocked out of you. Thankfully, none of that happens while practicing yoga.

Yoga is much more gentle and kinder to your body. And that’s also what I love about it. I can feel like I am working on improving my body and mind without killing myself or wrecking my body. I did that for practically two decades. Now, it’s time to let my body recuperate. It’s time to try to ease my anxious mind so that it doesn’t wreak havoc on my body.  It’s time I stop pushing myself to the point of breaking. It’s time I figured out a way to exercise without breaking a foot, work without breaking my mind, and love without breaking my heart.

I’m no longer interested in pushing myself to the brink and then back again. In the end, that form of existence is two steps forward, one step back. Yoga helps me pull myself back from the brink so I don’t break. It has taught me that reaching the brink is not a healthy goal nor the end one. Instead, what yoga helps me to do is move forward without reaching the brink.

It helps me stay relatively sane in a city that can seem incredibly insane so much of the time. It helps me let go of the things I shouldn’t be holding on to, although that is another incredibly tough task I feel like I will be working on for the rest of my life. Above all, it helps to calm my anxious mind and stressed out body so that I can think more clearly, feel more alive and healthy, and act with intention instead of reckless abandonment.

Yoga helps me more tactfully, or as they say in yoga, gracefully, deal with whatever comes my way — good or bad — so that I don’t wind up in a tailspin or a fit that lasts for hours or anger that lasts for days or sadness that lasts, well, simply too long.

It’s not that I won’t ever have these moments. I just hope I can make them become less long-lasting and fewer in between.

Yoga helps me to feel not so bat crazy or like I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off. It helps me feel less scattered, and more focused. It helps me feel like I am actually listening to my inner voice and not the demons inside my head. It makes me believe that no matter how badly my heart has been broken, it will start to heal again.

It helps me stand up to my emotional bullies. It helps me build the strength to keep moving forward even when I am repeatedly being stepped on, dismissed, or criticized. It helps me take myself — and life — less seriously. It provides the training to increase flexibility, courage, and openness to go in directions I wouldn’t necessarily have dreamed of or even thought of, but may be even that much more rewarding and illuminating. And joyful.