The Beauty of The Guru

Gopala Aiyar Sundaramoorthy, my teacher's teacher.

Maybe it was the person who first taught you to read. Or perhaps that teacher who saw something special in you and urged you to push just beyond what you thought were your limits. It could have been a friend or family member who extended him or herself for you, showing you how to be a better person in the process. Or an artist, a writer, an athlete who ignited something inside you that made you want to dance or paint or write or run as brilliantly and as beautifully as you ever had before. That person on some level was a guru - a spiritual guide in your life.

The word guru comes fraught with all sorts of associations in our culture – there is an implication of a submissive worshipfulness that is anathema to many independent and free-thinking people, myself included. There are stories of gurus with fleets of Rolls-Royces and/or dubious behavior in their personal lives. For many people I know, it is a term that evokes a certain uneasy feeling. None of my teachers will allow this term to be applied to them. We dance around it, embracing its true meaning, but not its sometimes unfortunate associations.

Let’s make this simple: Gu can be defined as darkness. Ru can be defined as illumination. The Sanskrit word guru means the one who draws you from darkness to light. That would be a teacher. But here’s where it gets interesting for those of you who aren’t into geeking out over Sanskrit grammar: a guru can be anyone or anything that offers you an illuminating experience. I think about the dazzling brilliance of my college art history professor but I also think about the beauty and tenacity of a blade of grass popping up through the NYC concrete.  Both sweetly and ferociously affirm life. Both take the role of guru in a particular manner.

This past Sunday, July 25 was Guru Purnima, which, for yogis, is the annual celebration of our teachers. It always falls at this time of year on the full moon (purnima = Sanskrit for full moon). A flurry of yogi messages criss-crossed on Facebook, as so many of us in the Anusara Yoga and the Rajanaka Yoga communities thanked our teachers and each other. So to my teachers, my gurus, to all of you who inspire me, push me, encourage me, and coach me through life…Thank you!

Ask yourself this:

Who are my teachers?

To whom am I a teacher?

And then:

Thank them…via phone, email, letter, or face-to-face conversation.

With this gesture, you become the teacher too.

The Beauty of Choosing Happiness

“First happiness is a choice. Then it is a practice.” Jason Nemer, co-founder of AcroYoga

You have to make the choice to be happy – it is like anything else – sometimes it is graceful and effortless and sometimes it seems beyond our grasp. When petty irritations arise or a sense of futility or loss dominates our days, it’s time to ask yourself,  “Do I want to live in this place?” I was discussing life on and off the mat with friend and fellow yoga teacher Siri Peterson. When we teach, we put our best selves forward. So what happens if we carry that off of the mat and into our daily lives? Both of us are in the art world - I am a visual artist and Siri is a dancer. Both worlds can be viciously competitive environments, which, after a while, leave their imprint. Although competition is a reality in any professional world including yoga, the overall tone of the yoga world is one of openness, assistance, compassion, and warmth. Needless to say, we both lead slightly divided lives.

I decided this week to take that best self from the studio out into the streets. Normally, if someone slammed into me in the subway, I might snap at them or fume, feeling irritable and wronged. If a student pushed past me at Virayoga, where I teach, or shoved aside my things to put down their own, what would I do? Not much, actually. I would think, “that person really needs class today,” and then seek them out, acknowledge them, let them be heard. And that would feel good.

As a yoga teacher I make an easy choice to be my best self. Anger begets anger, just like sorrow does sorrow and happiness - happiness. When we default to anger or irritability, we perpetuate the grasp of those destructive sensations in our lives. Don’t get me wrong, feeling the entire cycle of emotions is an essential part of being complete human beings, but getting stuck in the ones that drag us down is a problem.  This goes for sadness as well. When something painful happens, feel it fully – go to the depths, but then rise back up. Choose to surface. This is both liberating and empowering. Think of the sensations in your body and mind when you feel any particular emotion. What feels the worst? What feels best? What serves you most in your daily actions and interactions? Choose to constantly move toward that feeling, that emotion. Dedicate your day to it. Your week.

All week, my experiment has been surprisingly smooth. It has actually been easier to not succumb to negativity in that my mood stays balanced, my interactions graceful. I feel happy. But still, it is a practice. So try it. Begin like this:

Inhale into anything that feels stuck or blocked inside your body and mind.

Exhale whatever is not serving you.

Repeat this as many times as you need.

And then choose happiness. Again. And again. And again.

It’s like answering to the universe. And answering to the universe opens up the vastness of your heart.

The Beauty of Touch – Visiting Amma

First you wait in line on 34^th Street for a while, with an assortment of yoga teachers, Indian families, and assorted devotees in the 90° evening heat. Then you enter the Manhattan Center, taking a paper number, like at a deli counter, and move through the marketplace, distracted by the stacks of brightly-colored scarves, bronze Ganeshas and Lakshmis, books, cds, photos and essential oils. Somewhere beyond the market, there is rhythmic music and chanting which floats up through the space. Peering over the crowd, you can clearly see a plump, radiant-looking woman seated onstage under bright lights, surrounded by white-clad assistants and a long line of people.

Amma, who is known as a living saint, gives out hugs. She is highly respected for her addresses to the United Nations and her extensive charities that feed, clothe, and educate the poor, but she is most famous for the way in which she gives darshan, or blessings, in the form of an embrace. Amma has hugged over 25 million people all over the world. Sometimes she does this for more than 18 hours straight. This sounds unusual, but if you remember that touch, offered lovingly, is essential to human happiness, the meaning of the experience shifts. Babies deprived of touch suffer developmental problems. Pets are brought into nursing homes so that the elderly can have physical touch and affection in their lives. When we are massaged or have bodywork done, we often have an emotional response. Amma offers touch as a gift and as a lesson.

So what is the experience like? Her assistants line you up, wipe your face, ask you to remove earrings or glasses, then bring you forward into her arms. You are enveloped in her embrace. She smells good, like jasmine maybe. She chants a mantra in your ear, and then releases you, smiling, placing flower petals and a Hershey’s kiss in your palm, as the next person in line is guided into her arms.

You feel either calm or emotional, happy or released, a little spaced out and meditative. Maybe you go downstairs and eat a dosa or drink some of the fragrant chai, basking in the bhavana or vibe. Last year, sometime between midnight and dawn, hip-hop pioneer Doug E. Fresh, radiantly energized from Amma’s darshan, stood up and gave a 20 minute impromptu performance, freestyling and beatboxing his way into everybody’s heart. No one around me had any idea who he was, but still, he pulled the entire crowd up from their meditations and onto their feet, ecstatically clapping and participating in a call-and-response.

Touch does more than activate our pleasure sensors. It develops our brains and our awareness. It offers solace, which in turn creates connection and community. Think about this: How and when do you offer physical touch to the people in your life? What is the quality of your touch – even of your hand touching someone’s arm to tell them something? And most importantly, what message does your touch convey?

The Beauty of Body Art

 Marina Abramović performing Rhythm 0, 1974

Honey, a knife, feathers, grapes, a bullet, a gun, a rose, a whip. In 1974, artist Marina Abramović placed objects that could give both pleasure and pain on a table in an art gallery, and invited the general public to use them upon her as they wished. After 6 hours, she walked out half-naked, covered with honey and blood. The piece was over.  She presented her body as a canvas – a medium on which people expressed their impulses and desires.

Our body is our canvas – one of our primary means of self-expression. We clean it, sculpt it, feed it, starve it, push it to its muscular and energetic limits. We adorn it with clothing, cosmetics, jewelry, tattoos and piercings. We use it to dance, to celebrate, to experience pleasure and pain. We use it to communicate in a way inaccessible through words.

The purpose of movement can be practical: the cause and effect of exercise and diet. But movement can also be aesthetic: as ecstatic as a victory lap or as haunting as a Pina Bausch dance. Some feats of the body push beyond mere functionality to create beauty, grace, artistry. Abramović’s work might be read as more gritty and disturbing than beautiful, but it challenges us to contemplate our own bodies and their relationship to the world around them, so it is aesthetically provocative, and conceptually beautiful.

Think about this: How can we create meaning with and through our bodies? How can we elevate the quality of our movement so that it becomes art?

 Marina Abramović sits for 700 hours in eye-to-eye meditation with members of the general public, MoMA 2010

The Beauty of Dynamic Movement

(via tibchris)

Should I practice yoga or should I catch up on my sleep? Should I spend the afternoon drawing in my studio or should I clean my apartment? Should I cook a healthy dinner or order take-out, spending that saved time checking emails? Depending on my choice, I’ll end up more energized, organized, physically gratified, or creatively fulfilled.

Given the essential nature of all of these activities in my life, how do I prioritize? Most of the creative people I know bump up against this question on a daily basis, because we are almost never not working. We are in constant motion, the world around us is in a state of constant motion, and the only fixed thing, ironically, is movement.

So we need to begin the answer with the assumption that in a dynamically moving environment, things won’t slow down and it is simply a matter of figuring out where to step in so that you collaborate with time to move forward with it. When this happens, we call it being in the flow, whether it happens while running, dancing, writing, singing, drawing, cooking, and so on.

So first ask yourself: What is essential to my well-being?

On the most basic level this should include adequate sleep, good food, and exercise in whatever form inspires you. Your physical well-being should be cared for in order for you to address anything else.

And then ask: What offers me security and stability?

Without the basic needs of home and income tended to, all movement becomes frenetic, desperate, more about surviving than about living.

And finally ask yourself: What gives you pleasure?

Find the daily things that make your life into art instead of a cycle of obligation and routine. This depends more upon your perspective than upon the actual events of your day. If you are fortunate enough to love what you do OR to be able to bring love to what you do, the sweetness of life waits inside the smallest action, gesture, or event of your day. Step into your daily life by infusing it with your best intention and your most skillful artistry.