 “The importance of knowing your destination, following your star, correcting your course and tuning in to what is most important in your life”. Jonathan Foust, “Best Year Ever" As life does, the circumstances of the past 5 months have brought about big changes. Inspired as I listened concurrently to Jonathan Foust’s talk: Best Year Ever, Parker Palmer’s audiobook, On the Brink of Everything, and Ajahn Amaro on “Less is More” I made a note that these conjoined were to be my newsletter theme for February 2020. Using his template, here is my own Year in Review: What went well this year?
 “Experimentation is how we learn, and a lot of experiments fail. If you live your life experimentally, the failures will be personal, and some will be spectacular. And yet, as every scientist knows, we often learn more from experiments that fail than from those that succeed.” On the Brink of Everything, Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old – Parker J. Palmer What didn’t go so well this year?
 Gotami asked her nephew, "How do I give myself guidance as to what is according to the path or to my habits and preferences? I have a lifetime of conditioning- I can’t always trust my own thinking. How do I discern what is the path and what is not?”. To which the Buddha responded, 'These qualities lead to ease, not to struggle; to being entangled, not to being hampered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to undisturbed, not to entanglement; to vitality, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is the way, this is the guidance, this is the skillful action.'" Ajahn Amaro on “Less is More” Gotami Sutta: To Gotam What am I working toward?
After listening for maybe the eight time, I sent Jonathan and online message of my gratitude: “Jonathan Foust, your timing is, again, uncanny. I am working through moving away from the tradition I began with, finding myself feeling untethered but also being true to myself and my students. I have listened to this talk several times and read your Year in Review several times. Thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom. Actually, I can't thank you enough. 🙏” Jonathan responded, Thank you for letting me know, Michelle ... this is a pathless path .... one step at a time. May your journey be blessed.”
I’ve been reflecting quite a lot this past month on the compounded meanings of community, gifts, capacity and The Seattle Freeze.I guess I will always wonder what creates a community. For the past month I have thought a lot about the significance and definition of gift. In studying community and gifts, the factor of capacity came up over and over again. This all led me around to theorize the infamous Seattle Freeze is our focus on transactional life.
In 2016 I went to Boulder, Colorado for a teacher training. The first day in training, the first lunch break, the teacher and his posse insisted I join them for lunch. After that was dinner, and the following two days I was always invited to join this or that gathering- always included. Talking with my husband long distance, I recounted to him my amazement, “They invited me to eat with them- in 15 years at Seattle Yoga Arts, no one has even wanted to have tea with me!” John responded, “Now you know what the Seattle Freeze is.”  I work to retrain myself and our culture. I want to pass on what I understand has transformed me. Like (recently passed) Ram Dass’ Fierce Grace and Anna Forrest’s Fierce Medicine, I wonder if my teaching isn’t very fierce! That intensity of youth has not diminished. I teach that we must feel, breath and think, that we must know we are feeling (sensations and emotions), know we are breathing, know we are thinking. I teach that it is safe to feel, breath and think. I teach that our feelings (sensations and emotions), breath and thoughts are our corporeal reality. The Economy of Gifts: “You give what is appropriate to the occasion and to your means, when and where your heart feels inspired. For the monastics, this means that you teach, out of compassion, what should be taught, regardless of whether it will sell. For the laity, this means that you give what you have to spare and feel inclined to share. There is no price for the teachings, nor even a ‘suggested donation.’ Anyone who regards the act of teaching or the act of giving requisites as a repayment for a particular favor is ridiculed (laughable, comical, amusing, absurd, ridiculous) as mercenary (motivated to take part by the desire for private gain). Instead, you give because giving is good for the heart and because the survival of the Dhamma as living principle depends on daily acts of generosity.” "The Economy of Gifts", by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 5 June 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/economy.html Your privilege extends only to the act, never at any time to the outcome. Do not be motivated by outcomes, nor should you commit yourself to inaction. Stand in yoga, perform the acts. Give away the avidity.” – Bhagavad Gita, 2.47, translation by Douglas Brooks I feel so fierce about you experiencing this for yourself, I am not always sure where my ability to teach begins and ends. However, I do know where the function breaks down: when it is motivated by gain. When my teaching becomes fixated on the tangible - are you coming back, are you donating financially contributing, are you making progress, did you just suddenly stop coming, this “Economy of Gifts”, this “Stand in Yoga” has failed. "What's in it for me?" is what I understand the Seattle Freeze to be. With that interest, the “mutual compassion and concern as the medium of exchange” is lost. When I left studio teaching and began Aspiration Community Yoga, I was guided by Parker Palmer’s life of “Creating Intentional Community”. As I look back and reflect upon the past 3 years, what I see is that I have done what I am capable of and must release my sense of “it must be me” for the current outcome of success or failure. You let me know whether we have community within Aspiration Community Yoga.  Wednesday, May 29 class, featuring from left to right, Jay, Aine, Patricia and Basil.  "Yoga, a quiet escape for healthcare professionals." Master Sgt. Cohen Young [Public domain] Write with honesty and ‘write what you struggle to know and understand. Everyone in the class struggled with pulling their experiences up and out, putting them to paper and sharing them with others”. Writing is ‘transformative’ therapy for Seattle-area veterans haunted by their experience About that Yoga thing: those of you who have been reading and attending my classes the past month know that I returned to the Bhagavad-Gita in order to begin again in my practice of offering yoga classes. This is what I struggle to understand: Why another Warrior 2? The translation I prefer begins with our protagonist, the Warrior Hero Prince Arjuna, desperate to understand, too. In Chapter One: “The Distress of Arjuna”, Arjuna asks Krishna, his friend, mentor, and creator incarnate of the universe, why fight? What good is it going to do? How could Arjuna doing what is expected of him be of benefit? It’s only going to cause everyone a lot of suffering, as he imagines the battle and aftermath. Every Friday, as I write out my weekly class plans, over and over again I struggle with why are we doing warrior poses? Why do one or two or three? Is it just because Krishnamacharya taught it to Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Desikachar, Srivatsa Ramaswami, A.G. Mohan and Indra Devi, who then passed it on to us Westerners? Is it my own conscience that tells me, “if there isn’t a ‘yoga pose’, they will think this isn’t a ‘yoga class’ and go somewhere else?” Or, is that the party line politics and marketing of American Postural Yoga messaging me? “Arjuna contemplates what it means to stand on the field of Dharma and ancestry and his own conscience at the brink of what will most certainly be fight to the death. Arjuna has never shrunk from a battle, has an unquestioning capacity to take the lead. What value will his actions have long after he is gone?” – Douglas Brooks, CC 102, History of Yoga, Lecture Nine I’ve been teaching yoga for 10 years now, practicing asana for 18. I can say with honesty that my own Virabhadrasana Dwi- Warrior 2 has been very different day to day, year to year. As I have learned more about my own physiology and grown into introspection and interoception, I find Vira 2 sometimes monotonous, sometimes eye-opening. Lately I’ve noticed that if I do six sets of 15 reps or 30 second holds each side, (yes, that’s 90 Virasana 2 repetitions, yes, it’s a bit of a battle), about the 75th, it gets VERY interesting: everything engages. I find out what I wanted from the practice, and the last few are to see what I can do with what I find. I wrestle with thoughts of leading you through a yoga practice like this. I don’t know if you too would be interested in experiencing the process, in investigating how it becomes a whole being practice, or if you would give me dirty looks, complain and ultimately quit. The Bhagavad-Gita offers three principal strategies for the practice of yoga- loving devotion (bhakti) knowledge (jnAna) and action (karma). You will let me know, I'm sure, through your actions whether another Virabhadrasana 2 is devotion to, knowledge of or the action of Yoga for you.
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