Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping

Shame-free yoga: teaching yoga without triggering body shame

As I grow into my role as a yoga teacher I've been thinking a lot about how I can create a truly safe space for men and women to explore yoga. In particular I've been thinking about how powerful the messages of body-shame are in our culture, and about how this affects the process of teaching yoga here in the West.

I want to tell you a story to explain what I mean.

A little over a week ago I went to a yoga workshop with a visiting international yoga teacher. He's pretty famous and several of my yogi friends had recommended him. The way they talked about him I had the impression that he had something special going on, something above and beyond your average yoga teacher.

Obviously, I wanted to learn all I could from him so, although he taught in a style that I don't practice regularly, I went along.

The first morning, after dragging myself out of the house at 5.30 am, I found myself on my mat in a setting that although in some ways familiar was in many other ways quite, quite foreign to me.

Unlike my yoga teachers, who have been mostly women, this teacher yelled instructions across the room.

"Straight that leg!' he called to the person behind me, "Staight that leg!"

I glanced back to see that the person behind me was in a pose in which, according to my yoga teacher training, insisting on a straight leg before the hamstring is naturally ready to open could compromise the spine.

My mind was suddenly busy. It leapt into 'judgment' gear, as I assessed whether or not - in my opinion - each of the cues he yelled out across the room was in fact 'safe' for the student at which it was directed.

Moment by moment I struggled to pull myself back into the full presence of my own practice, my breath and the sensations of my own body. But eventually, as I found a rhythm in the flow of the familiar poses, I was able to release my grip on my own ideas about what was happening and just experience it.

It was going well.

Until, that is, he decided to direct his attention at me.

He approached my mat as I worked gently to ease my body into a complex twisting forward bend, one that demanded a little more openness in the hips than was available to me at six in the morning.

"Why is your knee there?" he asked. "Why don't you lower the knee?"

"It doesn't seem to want to lower this morning," I replied, not yet too disconcerted. I'd been in many classes before when my knee wasn't ready to lower and teachers had generally left it at that.

But not this guy. He sat down beside me and shook my knee with his hand.

"Tight." he declared. "You are very tight."

He wasn't saying tight as thought it was a complement, in case there is any ambiguity. It was clear that tight was not what my hip was supposed to be. He slapped at my knee a few times in what appeared to be an attempt to convince my hip to suddenly release and the knee to lower. The slapping didn't produce the results he was hoping for.

Instead, I felt a surge of heat in my face. My heart began to beat faster and I suddenly realised that I was about to burst into tears. I started breathing even more deeply and closed my eyes in an effort to stave off the tears. The closed eyes and deep breathing must have looked like a profound yogic moment to him because he said:

"Yes, yes. Very good. Keep breathing and this tightness will go away."

Much to my relief, and thereby proving his own point, he then went away.

Then the tears came. They surprised me. I've experienced tears in yoga. Tears sometimes come as I breathe my way into a deeper opening in a pose and, in doing so, let go of emotional baggage I've been carrying in my body. I've come to recognise and even welcome those tears.

These were not those tears. These were tears, I see in retrospect, of shame.

Reading Dr Brene Brown's wonderful book 'I Thought It Was Just Me' has helped me recognise shame where I previously might have suspected grief. There has been so much grief in my life in the past ten years that every unexplained outpouring of pain and tears tends to get passed off as a release of stored grief.

But this was not grief. This was shame.

Because like so many women, like so many people, I have been raised in a culture that is rife with messages of shame about my body.

Our bodies, we are told, are too hairy, too lumpy, too noisy, too big, too scarred, too heavy and too smelly.

Then you begin to practice yoga and, for one thing, you begin to appreciate your body for what it can do. It can hold you in a balancing pose. It can carry you through a flowing sequence of standing poses. Your arms grow stronger and that matters more than whether or not they look good in an evening gown, especially since you never wear and evening gown. Your legs grow strong and that matters more than whether or not they look like they did when you were twenty.

But shame can be insidious. As I began to shed some of my shameful feelings about my body, I accumulated new ones.

Those damn hips that simply wouldn't release into the deceptively named 'easy cross-legged pose' became a source of shame for me.

Over time, I found yoga teachers who led me past that shame into an even deeper experience of true body love. Those same teachers told me that my readiness to teach yoga depended not on the openness of my hips but on the openness of my heart and on my own personal commitment to my yoga practice.

But the traces of those decades of body shame remain.

On my mat last week as a well-meaning and, I'm sure, quite compassionate man slapped at my knee and deemed my body to be "too tight", my own private body shames were triggered.

I suspect that his style of teaching, handed down to him as it was by his teacher in India, was quite suitable for Indian men. Perhaps they had not been raised on the diet of shaming body messages that we have been raised on in the West. I'm sure it is suitable for some people in the West as well, people who have already found a deep ground of resilience in the face of body-shame triggers.

But for the rest of us, for most of the women I know and most of the people who come to my classes, I'm aware that yoga can all too easily become simply another place in which to beat ourselves up about the inadequacies of our bodies.

As a yoga teacher my commitment is to be mindful of that context in which I teach. My commitment is to teach in a way which, as far as possible, reinforces positive experiences of and messages about our bodies. My commitment is to teach without shame. 

Have you ever experienced body-shame while practicing yoga? What do you think a yoga teacher can do to help avoid creating more body-shame in yoga classes? Do you even think that this is something yoga teachers should be thinking about?

I'll have a collaboration sandwich, please

Kelly and I are cooking up a great collaboration - co-facilitating the next Off the Mat: Yoga in Action group in Wellington

I read a post by Amanda Farough last week where she declares that 'collaboration trumps competition'. She was writing about web designers. When I told her that we face the same challenges in the yoga community she was a little surprised.

'I never realized that even in the most peaceful, heartwarming vocation, the creeping nature of competitiveness still lurks.'

But there it is, even in the most peaceful, heartwarming vocation - the creeping nature of competition is lurking. Let me paraphrase Amanda -

Yoga studios. Visiting yoga teachers. Yoga retreats. Yoga intensives. Yoga iPhone apps. Yoga DVDs and CDs. Yoga online. Yoga spas. Yoga classes at gyms.

Wow.

No wonder we can so easily get up in competing for a piece of the yoga pie!

Here in Wellington there are lots of yoga teachers in a smallish town. Increasingly that's the story all over the world. So many of us have been transformed by yoga and want to share it with others that it can seem the population of yoga teachers is growing faster than the population of yoga students.

In times like that it is so easy to feel threatened. Most people I know who teach yoga in Wellington are barely getting by. We charge very little for our classes because a) we want as many people as possible to experience yoga and b) people don't seem to be willing to pay more. 

When you are barely making ends meet or, which is not uncommon in the yoga world, not making ends meet at all - it's not hard to understand why you might feel some fear when yet another new teacher or studio shows up in town.

I know for myself that I'm always aware of not wanting to step on any other yoga teacher's toes. I'm working hard to build my own yoga community of students but I want to do it without 'taking' students from anyone else. Between worrying about paying my own bills and worrying about straying into anyone else's territory, it's easy to lose the love.

But, as Amanda pointed out in the context of her web-design work, it was the love that got us all into this in the first place. We teach yoga because of what yoga has given us, a deeper connection to our deepest selves and, quite simply, lots and lots of love.

I can't say it better than Amanda,

I love code. I live, breathe, eat, and sleep design. I love people. The combination of the three is why violetminded got started in the first place. Love, baby. Sure, somewhere along the line, I’ve gotta market and self-promote. I may even try to make a bit o’ scratch. But money isn’t not what drives me. It's not my currency."

Replace 'code' with 'yoga', 'design' with 'conscious activism/service' and 'violetminded' with 'Zen Peacekeeper' and you've got my story in a nutshell. Sure, somewhere along the line, I've gotta market and self-promote but money isn't what is driving me. Love is driving me. Love and a whole heap of enthusiasm. 

Which is why, given the choice, I'll take a collaboration over a competition any day. That and the fact that I have never, ever come up with an idea that wasn't improved by the input of another brain and heart.

Of course there are some projects that are solo by their very nature. Writing the first draft of my memoir was a solo undertaking. But even then, I couldn't have done it without friends who were willing to read early drafts and now - joy of joys - I have my agent as a collaborator on the next draft. 

When it comes to yoga, I'm grateful for my Wellington sangha (community) of teachers. I'm grateful for people who are brave enough to move past the fear we must all feel sometimes and find the magical spaces in which we can work together to make something bigger and better than what any of us could have done by ourselves.

Today I especially want to give a shout out to:

• Kelly Fisher and Lynda Miers-Henneveld of Yoga Unlimited
• Melissa Billington of Myoga
• Kara-Leah Grant of The Yoga Lunchbox
• Tyag Fenton of Yoga for Freedom
• Seka Ojdrovic of Yoga Sangha (with me!)

These five have all collaborated with me in some way or another over the past year as I've found my feet in the yoga world and I'm grateful to them all.

These days I'm buzzing with ideas about more collaborations, here in Wellington and across the globe and I gotta tell you, there's something mighty appealing about the variety and spice of a collaboration sandwich. Beats competition any day on my menu.

What about you? How does competition, fear and a sense of scarcity creep up on you? Is there a collaborative culture in your field of work? Can you imagine what flavours would be in your dream collaboration sandwich?

Zen Peacekeeper Guide to Twitter: Expanding the conversation

A couple of weeks ago I started a series of short posts sharing what I know about Twitter.

If you missed them, you can read the previous posts:

• What is Twitter and how does it work?
• Ten easy steps to get started on Twitter
• Joining the conversation: Replies and Mentions

These Twitter posts will pop up once a week and although I have some ideas about the topics they'll cover, please feel free to leave a comment with any of your burning questions about Twitter.

Last week I shared my thoughts on joining the Twitter conversation, I'm continuing that theme this week but moving on to 'retweeting'.

Expanding the conversation: Retweeting

If someone tweets something that you think is so good you'd like to share with your own followers, then you are going to want to retweet it.

There are a few ways to retweet so pull up a chair and listen closely.

The first option is using the "Retweet" function built into Twitter. So let's say I look at my feed and see this lovely tweet from heatherplett (see below)

When I hover my cursor over her tweet the two options, 'Reply' and 'Retweet', appear. When I click on 'Retweet' a small dialogue box pops up checking that I really do want to retweet this to all my followers.

If I click on 'Yes' then Heather's tweet will appear in my Twitter stream exactly as it is, like this:

There is another option. I may want to retweet what Heather has said but add my own comment. In that case I can copy her tweet and paste it into my update box, at the letters RT to the front of her tweet so everyone know I'm retweeting her and then add what I want to say.

It gets confusing when you explain it, so here's another picture.

You can see Heather's tweet in my Twitter stream. Then I've copied it and put her Twitter name at the front, preceeded by the letters RT so everyone knows I'm quoting her. Finally I added my 2 cents worth at the beginning.

Some people, when they use this approach, put the RT and the Twitter name at the end of the Tweet. I don't think it matters where you put it as long as you give credit to the person you are quoting, and in that sense it's kind of like a reference in an essay.

By including their twitter name you'll also make sure that they see that you've retweeted them and that generally makes people feel loved so it's got to be a good thing. 

If you use a Twitter platform like Tweetdeck (which is what I use) then you may have other options for retweeting, but for simplicity's sake I'm going to leave it at that for this week.

Let me know if you have any questions!

What courage looks like on an ordinary day

Self-portrait in the hall mirror: What courage looks like at my place, on an ordinary day.

When people hear that I lived in places like Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip they often tell me that they think I am very brave.

I am brave. Some days I think I may be the bravest muthafucka on the planet.

As I told some friends this morning, if you look up "courage" in my dictionary, you'll see a picture of me, resplendent in my favorite green Superhero cape.

But on an ordinary day, which means every day around these parts, courage looks less like a trip into a war-zone and more like this:

• Showing up to a yoga workshop even though I know perfectly well that this style of yoga takes me so far out of my yoga comfort-zone that I'll probably end up crying (and not the pretty kind of crying, more the gasping, snorting, snot-dripping kind).

• Accepting that my boyfriend invites his (much younger and much hotter) ex-lover to stay with us, not because it doesn't bother me but because it does bother me and I'm ready to face down those particular gremlins.

• Writing the book I've always wanted to write despite the fact that I know it will never be as good as I've always hoped it would be.

• Leading 45 people on a 30 day yoga journey despite having spent the first two hours of this morning weeping into my yoga mat (which is also green, a great colour for courage).

• Looking at my own tear-stained face in the mirror and finding something of beauty and someone to love, even when the voices in my head are all braying for blood for my failings.

How about you? What does courage look like at your place today?

Zen Peacekeeper Guide to Twitter: Join the conversation

Two weeks ago I started a series of short posts sharing what I know about Twitter.

If you missed them, you can read the previous posts:

• What is Twitter and how does it work?
• Ten easy steps to get started on Twitter

These Twitter posts will pop up once a week and although I have some ideas about the topics they'll cover, please feel free to leave a comment with any of your burning questions about Twitter.

Last week I shared my thoughts on getting started on Twitter, so now you have your profile, have chosen some people to follow and hopefully some of them are following you back. What next? Twitter is not just a series of millions of tiny billboards, it's a form of conversation. So, it's time to join the conversation.

Join the conversation

There are four main ways to join the Twitter conversation:

• replying;
• retweeting;
• direct messaging; and
• using hashtags.

I'm going to take these one at a time. Each is relatively simple but it can get overwhelming fast. So this week, let's look at 'replying' which is also known as 'mentioning'.

Replying

When you place the symbol @ before anyone's Twitter name in a Tweet, that tweet will show up in that person's feed, whether or not they are following you. There is a special feed in each person's Twitter account for all tweets that mention them. Here is a screen shot of mine:

As you can see, this is a great way of initiating conversation with someone you are following.

In fact the only reason I have that response from Chuck (who is someone every aspiring writer should be following, he is the King of agent advice) is because I responded to one of his Tweets, including his Twitter name preceded by the @ symbol so that it showed up in his stream. 

You can also see that while two of these Tweets are direct responses to something I had Tweeted, the third (from irenenam) is not a reply but a mention. She's talking about me, and Twitter makes sure I know about it.

As it happens I already know and love irenenam, so I'm already following her. But if I hadn't been, seeing this Tweet would have motivated me to go and check out her profile and, almost certainly, given how sweet this Tweet is, follow her.

So mentions are also a good way to connect with your 'right people' on Twitter.

A couple of final points about 'mentions' and 'replies' - which perhaps explain the difference between the two.

If you are replying directly to someone else then you are likely to put their twitter name (preceded by @) at the front of the Tweet, in fact if you use the "reply" button built into Twitter this is what it will do for you. These replies show up in the stream of the person they are directed towards and in the streams of anyone following both you and the person you have replied to, your other followers won't see them.

If you are "mentioning" someone, then it is likely that you'll place other words before their name, in this case the Tweet will appear in the feeds of all your followers.

To use the examples above, Chuck's tweet would only have shown up in my stream and the stream of anyone who was following us both. Irene's tweet will have gone out to all her followers.

Occasionally you'll see that someone has inserted a period before a reply, they do this so that the tweet appears in all of their followers feeds/streams, presumably because what they have to say to that one person is important enough for everyone else to read it to. Make sense?

Start a conversation with me!

If you read my blog and follow me on Twitter and I'm not following you, mentioning me or replying to me this way is a great way to let me know you are out there and would like to connect, by the way. I'm sure I'd love to connect with you too!

Have fun with that folks, and meet me back here next week to talk about retweeting.

How do I become a yoga teacher?

Me, teaching outdoor yoga as part of the Climate Festival in Wellington last year

There is a great conversation going on over at The Yoga Lunchbox on the subject of how to become a yoga teacher.

I've contributed my thoughts over there and decided to reproduce them here because I'd love to hear your responses and thoughts as well.

So how do we become yoga teachers? Speaking for myself, this is how I became a yoga teacher.

First I become myself. Yoga helps me bring my head and heart, body and mind, breath and spirit all into alignment. As I have become more my own authentic, healthy self, I have become of more service to everyone around me. For me, teaching yoga is part of that service.

So first there was my own process of unfolding and reuniting with myself through yoga. Then there was a deepening of my desire to serve, which seems to have arisen naturally from that process. In that deepening was a desire to share this process, yoga, which have given me so much.

Then came the work of equipping myself with the skills to teach. Teaching yoga is not the same as practicing yoga, nor is it quite the same as 'instructing' yoga.

There is a process of deepening into the role of teaching yoga just as there is a process of deepening into our yoga sadhana. Teaching is predominantly about a relationship between the teacher and the student. The quality of that relationship plays a large part in determining the quality of the teaching.

It's a symbiotic relationship, the learning and the rewards flow in both direction. But there is a specific responsibility upon the teacher, so ensuring that I have the skills and knowledge (as well as the personal practice and commitment to our own constant unfolding) to teach wisely and safely is a fundamental requirement for me.

There are many ways to develop those skills and that knowledge. Some of us will have teaching, coaching, mentoring and communication skills from other areas of our lives that will serve us well as teachers of yoga. Some of us will learn to teach yoga predominently from our own yoga teacher, in the process of being taught. Others will attend specialized yoga teacher training courses. All these are valuable paths. None of them can guarantee us that we are ready to teach.

How do we know if we are ready to teach?

For that we have to be honest with ourselves and listen to the best teacher we all have, the wise and profoundly truthful voice within us that already knows the answer to all our questions."

Zen Peacekeeper goes to the Oscars (not literally, sorry)

That's me, on the red carpet at Wellington's hottest Oscar party - the Weta Digital party where hundreds of Weta staff celebrated their win for best Visual Effects for 'Avatar'. The dude next to me is not a VFX, he really did stand there all afternoon posing for photos with people like me. Good people, the Weta people. Good, hard-working people.

Spoiler alert: This post reveals significant plot points of the film 'Avatar'

Yesterday I watched the entire Academy Awards presentation.

First up, can I just say, there were enough war movies in that show to almost give me nasty flash backs. I understand that the United State of America is at war, therefore people want to watch war movies. But can I just speak for myself and say - I don't really want to watch war movies. Alright, thanks for hearing me out on that.

Apart from the award for best visual effects, which went to Weta Digital for 'Avatar', I had no stake at all in any of the awards. I was watching the ceremony with hundreds of Weta Digital staff and I wanted them all to be happy, so I was thrilled that they got the credit they deserved.

Other than that, I had no strong views. I had seen very few of the films nominated and I'm generally a little wary of the whole Hollywood scene.

But I have been thinking lately about the power of cinema as a medium for telling stories in today's world. I’ve always thought that telling stories is a most powerful way to communicate. So after watching 'Avatar', I wondered whether it had the power to inspire viewers to take action to address the very real, current issues alluded to so clearly in the film. 

Despite not doing well at the Oscars, 'Avatar' has been a huge success at the box office and is on it's way to being one of the most widely viewed films in history. So, is it likely to inspire positive action for change?

With 'Avatar', James Cameron chose to tell one of the oldest stories on the planet, the story of a terrible threat to the survival of the very eco-system. In his telling of that story he did a great job of revealing much of what is going on in our own world today.

Scientists going undercover into a ‘hostile’ community and then being pressured to reveal their findings to the military has haunting echoes of psychiatrists, anthropologists and sociologists being sent into villages in Iraq and Afghanistan to gather information which is then also passed to the military for use as ‘intelligence’.

I know at least one civilian social scientist in Afghanistan who was killed under those very circumstances. As far as she was concerned she was doing anthropological research, as far as the local community was concerned she was gathering intelligence for the US military.

So ‘Avatar’ cuts close to the bone. I could have done without the stereotypical portrayal of the ex-military gun for hire. By portraying them as thugs, films like 'Avatar' underplay the intelligence and therefore the power of those men and women. But the parallels to the operations of Blackwater and other private ‘security’ contractors were clear.

The real-life relevance of the excavation for “Unobtainium” and the corporation's willingness to destroy Home tree and even the lives of those who lived within it don't need any explanation. James Cameron was laying the analogy on thick and fast.

But will it motivate people? Or will it simple depress people into hopeless apathy?

The answer to that question may lie in another aspect of the narrative: the myth of the single hero.

I’ve seen plenty of critics slate ‘Avatar’ for the use of the classic ‘Great White Saviour’ story line.

To summarise - the Nav’i, indigenous to Pandora, need an outsider (who just happens to be white and American) to rally them to action to save themselves.

Yawn.

It’s not only a tired cliché it’s also a dangerous one.

But it is one of our most beloved myths. Even when we get past the racism and accept the reality that the indigenous and non-white people of the world don’t need a white saviour, we still look for the one great hero to arise.

Think about Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. I don’t want to detract from the significant roles each of these men played as leaders in their respective liberation movements. They were charismatic and committed men who knew how to motivate action in others.  But none of them was a singular hero who saved the day by conquering a mythical opponent.

In great mythic narratives, however, that is exactly what happens. I have no problem with that as a myth, it's an excellent allegory for the journey each of us must take to slay (or better, learn to ride) our own dragons and find our authentic path to service in the world.

But I do have a problem with it as a means to motivate ordinary folks like you and I to action.

As long as we take the myth literally and hope that a hero will arise from amongst our ranks (or, even more unlikely, will arrive from somewhere else) and save us, we won’t feel very inclined to take the reins of our own lives and make changes to save our own world.

What do you think? Do films like 'Avatar' motivate you to take action to preserve the planet? Or do they leave you feeling hopeless and helpless?

Did any of the Oscar nominated films this year motivate you or others you know to make positive changes in your life or your community? How about films not nominated for any Oscars?

Zen Peacekeeper's Guide to Twitter: 10 easy steps to get started

Last week I started a series of short posts sharing what I know about Twitter.

If you missed it, you can read the first post here: What is Twitter and how does it work?

These Twitter posts will pop up once a week and although I have some ideas about the topics they'll cover, please feel free to leave a comment with any of your burning questions about Twitter.

Ten easy steps to get started on Twitter.

As I explained last week, Twitter works by choosing whose Twitter feeds you want to follow. Once you've joined Twitter you can find people who you are likely to be interested in by checking out their profiles. But there are so many people on Twitter that you'll want some ways to get straight to the people with whom you have most in common.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Find one or two people with whom you already know you share interests. You can search for them by name or email address. Once you find them, follow them.
2. Look at who they are following. You can see this if you go to their profile page. On the right hand side of the page is a link that will show you everyone they are following. You may find lots of other people who are interesting to you this way.
3. See if they have any lists.

Twitter lists are a great way for people to collect together all the people they like to follow in a particular category. For example I have a yoga list, a Buddhist list, a writing list, an Afghanistan list, a list of people who are changing the world, and something I call my 'kindred-spirits' list, which is people who may not fit into any of the previous categories but with whom I feel a strong common ground.

I'll talk more about lists in a future post, including telling you how to make a list. But for now, they are a good place to find people to follow.

But First: Fill in Your Profile and Start Tweeting

Before you start following hundreds of people, make sure that you post some updates of your own. As soon as you follow someone, they will have the chance to visit your profile and decide whether or not to follow you back. It helps them if you've already shown your colours by posting at least a few Tweets that give a good flavour of what you are all about.

Also - make sure to fill in your profile and to post a photo. I won't ever follow anyone who doesn't have a description of themselves in their profile and a photo. There are too many automated Twitter robots out there and my filter, to make sure that there is a real person behind the Tweet, is to look at their profile.

So here are your ten easy steps to get started on Twitter

1. Sign up to Twitter
2. If possible, use your real name.
3. If your real name is taken then use a name that relates to your blog or that says something about who you are.
4. Fill in your profile, give people a sense of who you are and what you are about.
5. Upload a photo - show people that there is a real person behind the account.
6. Send a few updates - they should reflect your interests, your sense of humour, your personality.
7. If you have a blog or a Facebook account you can let people know that you are now on Twitter so that they can follow you.
8. Find a few people who you already know either in real life or through their blogs. Follow them.
9. Check out who they are following and see if they have any lists to find more people who you would like to follow. Follow them too.
10. Start out by following no more than 40 or 50 people and then give them a chance to follow you back. It's better to build your Twitter feed slowly and build your own followers at the same time.

That's it for now! Ten easy steps to get started on Twitter.

What does yoga have to do with peacekeeping or Afghanistan?

When I started blogging I was living in Afghanistan, working as a human rights officer with the UN peacekeeping mission. These days I'm hosting '30 days of yoga'.

What happened?

When did this become a yoga blog? What does all this yoga have to do with peace-building, world-saving and human-rights defending? What does it have to do with Afghanistan?

Firstly, this isn't a 'yoga blog'.

You are as still just as likely to find me writing here about young women activists in Afghanistan, finding your purpose or how to write without writing as you are to find me writing about whether or not it is best to practice only one kind of yoga. 

What links all these topics together is my understanding that we each have a unique and essential role to play in the world.

Each of us has a unique set of experiences, skills and qualities that makes us perfectly qualified to do what it is that we do best.

When we discover where our passion and purpose lie, we are then free to follow our own authentic path to service in the world.

In my life the sense of purpose came early. What took me longer was the process of unravelling the well-hidden fears that lay beneath my good intentions and which, as long as they were unexamined and unaddressed, undermined my ability to serve.

Yoga and meditation have been my path to meet my own self.

In the sometimes terrifying stillness and clarity of the meditation cushion and the yoga mat I have finally kept company with the thoughts and feelings that I had long preferred to avoid.

By holding my seat, continuing to breath and leaning into the softness of my own exposed wounds I have been able to first glimpse, and then rest into the spaciousness that has always been here, waiting for me to sit still long enough to come home to it. 

What all of this has to do with my work as a human rights advocate and peace-builder is this:

"If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That's the true practice of peace."

                              Pema Chodron, Practicing Peace in Times of War.

30 days of yoga: special offer for 'veterans', sponsor a participant

If you missed the announcement earlier this week, the good news is that we are doing another 30 days of yoga. Read here for more details and to find out how to join me.

I have two announcements to make today. The first is a special offer for returning participants (people who took part in the first 30 days of yoga). The second is an opportunity to sponsor someone else to take part.

Special Offer for Returning 30 Days of Yogis

If you took part in the first 30 days of yoga then you can choose the "Exactly What You Need" option this time for only $50. That's half price. It's my way of thanking you for making the first 30 days such a success. You all rocked.

Email me or leave a comment here if you'd like to take up that opportunity.

Sponsor a Participant

Maybe you've experience the healing power of yoga and would like to share it with others. I have been approached about the 30 days by some amazing women who just don't have the resources for the full package right now but who I know would benefit so much from it.

I don't want to betray their privacy so I'll just say very generally that some of these women are doing some amazing work of service in the world, some of them are healing from powerful traumas, some of them are fabulous creative activists. If you'd like to sponsor one of them to join 30 days, just email me (use the link in the side bar on the left, just above the "Categories" link) or leave a comment here.