A Month of Release

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.

Tao Te Ching

My first three experiments were focused on cultivating my passions. I thought I was throwing myself softballs, choosing to double down on activities that I already enjoy. In reality, however, I ended up being disappointed because it never lived up to my lofty expectations. This disappointment morphed into guilt and resistance to doing the things that I love to do. My first month of doing yoga every day felt too long, while the second two months of music and philosophy felt way too short to accomplish even a sliver of what I had hoped. Life always seemed to interfere.

I have A LOT going on this month already, so in an effort to relinquish some of the control that has caused me suffering, this month I will be practicing the art of non-doing in doing--spring cleaning my life, as it were. I have been in a long period of transition, which has not come to an end, if there ever is such a thing. No dust is settling, but rather lifting into the air. But I will not be blinded by the dust bowl. Instead I will seek stillness and liberation amongst the dancing particles.

ALBUM RELEASE

This month I am finally releasing my debut LP Comets & other drifting bodies on April 12th. I started writing and recording these songs back in 2015 and had naively thought I would release it in 2016. Well here I am 4 years later, ready to let it go and share it!

Listen to the singles Upside Down and Losing Touch

JOB RELEASE

I am also releasing my job as the Grants and Foundations Coordinator at AGE of Central Texas, a nonprofit supporting older adults and their caregivers. I will miss my colleagues and the clients we serve, but this feels like the right move. I will be starting a new position as the Content Marketer at Alegion, a tech startup that offers supervised training data for machine learning projects. I am expecting a bit of a learning curve but am absolutely thrilled to begin this new challenge!

HOUSE RELEASE

My rental house is being sold and has become a revolving door of young hip couples and real-estate wheelers and dealers inspecting our home. I love this house, but it is time to move on and nest elsewhere.

In the process of letting go, you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.

Deepak Chopra

Got any tips, tricks, or practices to help me through this transition? 😙

Doin' too much

“Yoga is not about tightening your ass.  It’s about getting your head out of it.”

~Eric Paskel

Sometimes I think I might be a little dense, whenever it feels like I’m learning the same lessons over and over again. As I continue to practice yoga everyday, and reflect on it, some of those recurring lessons are making themselves very apparent. For example:

I love to do too much: I know I told you all that this was my Month of Yoga experiment, but secretly I was also trying to do the majority of the other experiments on my list: singing and writing and decluttering and reading and cooking and digital detoxing and cutting spending and and and…. I’ve been tiring myself out in a lot of ways other than my main experiment. I want to use the 12 Experiments and the New Year as a catalyst for radical self improvement and reshaping my life. However, right out of the gate I became impatient and a little judgmental. How quickly I put aside self care and compassion to focus on discipline and achievement.

Which leads me to the next lesson: the physical practice of yoga is really just a sneaky access point to the mental, emotional, and spiritual practice of becoming, in a compassionate, kind, and intentional manner.

So this past week I slowed down a bit. I began alternating between public classes and less intense home practices. In the public classes I feel pulled by the intention and energy set by the teacher and the other students. At  home, on the other hand, I close my eyes and focus solely on my breath and whatever feels good in my body at that moment. Sometimes I fall out of time and feel the vastness of space. In a period of my life in which I often feel rushed and behind and impatient, these 15 or 20 minutes provide a much needed respite and reset.

Thank you all for reading!

If you want to join in the adventure, here is a step by step guide on how to start your own 12 Experiments.

Week 1: I'm flying...oh wait no, I'm crashing.

I froze my gym membership for the months of November and December because I was out of town a lot. I had told myself that this would be an opportunity to focus on my home practice. Instead, predictably, I fell off the wagon.  Leading up to this experiment, I began unrolling my mat at home and re-familiarizing myself a bit, but public classes are what really push me. I kept a log throughout my first week of this experiment:

Day 1 -  4pm 75 minute Vin/Yin class

This was a perfect class to start the year.  45 minutes of flow and then 45 minutes of slow, juicy, deep tissue yin. This experiment will be easy because I am a golden goddess.

Day 2 - 6:30 am Vinyasa 2

Oh jeez. High intensity early morning class that felt like 2 classes crammed into one.  I felt simultaneously strong and out of shape, but I kept up. Afterwards, I felt inspired to practice some of the poses that I hate  *make me pretty uncomfortable*: Dolphin, crow, headstand, approaching handstand, humble warrior, fire logs... I felt great for a few hours, but by 9am I wanted to curl up under my desk to take a nap.

Day 3 - 8:30 am 15 minute home practice

My alarm didn’t go off this morning, so I missed the 7:30 am class. Even though I was running late to work, I did a few Sun Salutations, cat/cows, and a healthy amount of time in child’s pose. Nailed it.

Day 4 - 6:30 am Vinyasa 2 class

Woof. I did not want to get out from under my warm down cloud of a comforter to stretch out my still-sore body. It was pitch black and so peaceful as all of the sane people in my neighborhood lay sleeping. Walked in late and basically never caught up. While two days ago, I thought ‘I should really work on developing my inversion practice.” This morning I laid in child’s pose as everybody else flew upside down in impressive handstands. I left only vaguely glad I went, but mostly in a sour, withdrawn mood. I thought I could just throw myself back into the same level that I had been building toward with a year of consistent practice. Not so. I really felt those 2 months of languishing. This Month of Yoga is going to be a bit more challenging than I had expected.

Super Soldier Pose

Day 5 - 10 am 60 minute Vinyasa 2 at ABP

Dragged by patootie over there. Tried and epically failed my first attempt at Super Soldier Pose, but I had a good giggle experimenting.

Day 6 - 10:45 pm 15 minute home practice

Snuck it in under the wire.

Day 7 - 4pm 60 minute Yoga for Climbers at ABP

I got up at 5:45am to make a 6:30 am yoga class. After wedging myself out of bed, stomping around, and just staring angrily at my dresser, I finally thought, why am I doing this? I went back to sleep and went to the 4pm.

Lesson 1 : from this experiment so far: I am very unhappy waking up before sunrise during the winter. I am in hibernation mode, which means I sleep more, eat more heavy, hot meals, and don’t get up several hours before the crack of dawn to do a restorative practice. Plus I am stiff and cold in the mornings and need a couple of hours to warm up. Late morning to evening are the good times for me.

Lesson 2 : Never take a 2 month break from yoga again, duh.

Lesson 3 : For henceforth experiments I will only make myself do something 6 days a week, cause let’s be real, everybody needs a day off every once a week.

Lesson 4 : This post is too long! Write shorter posts, more often.

12 Experiments

A few weeks ago my boyfriend Thomas told me about a friend of his who had spent the entirety of 2017 doing a new personal experiment every month. He mentioned that his friend, Sarah Natsumi Moore, was rebooting the 12 Experiments for 2019 and that she was inviting people to join in. He was going to do it, he said. Would I be interested in joining, he asked. The premise is to do one experiment per month for a year and see what happens; to try something for 30 days, reflect on it, and share your experience. It didn’t take very long to decide that I would like to do my own 12 experiments. You are now reading the introduction to my year-long experiment, which hopefully will give me some concrete goals and intentions for 2019. I love the element of limited time for each experiment. It is just one month, after all. I could do anything for a month.  At the same time, it’s a whole month! A lot can happen in a month.

2018 slipped by at a breakneck pace. I have found myself with a to-do list that is nearly identical to the one I had at the dawn of this year. It often feels as though I am treading water, tiring myself out, not making noticeable progress in any particular direction. Without previous comforts like the regularity of a higher education schedule or major life events, time has begun to extend out like the West Texas horizon, endlessly flat with hardly any landmarks to be found.

I attended my 10 year high school reunion recently and was struck by the variety of lives my classmates are living, all of them different from my own. I’m willing to accept that some of that is chance, but more so it felt like concrete proof that our lives are the result of the choices we make and what we prioritize. I want to spend 2019 digging deeper into that which brings me joy. I’d like to let go of all the things that obstruct my growth. I want to recalibrate my priorities, cultivate confidence, and deepen my relationships. I want to create and share and elevate and collaborate. And on top of all of that, I want to share this journey to empower myself and you, yes you, to live more intentionally.

Potential experiments in no particular order:

• A Month of Yoga a Moving Meditation: Reconnect with my body and breath

• A Month of Singing: Find joy in making music everyday

• A Month of Writing A Page A Day, I wrote a page every day for a year once and then fell off the wagon. I was really improving as a writer and felt as though I was finding greater clarity in my thoughts.

• A Month of Letters: Write to all the people I have been intending to reach out to.

• A Month of Decluttering, Making room for joy: I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up on vacation a few years ago. I was so inspired, but by the time I got home I gave away a few things and then gave up. I think I’m finally ready to let go of some extra baggage!

• A Month of Digital Detox: no social media, no tv, no movies

• A Month of Frugality: Buy Nothing Extra

• A Month of Guitar: Play everyday

• A Month of Cooking: Learn new recipes and eat at home.

• A Month of Walking: See Thoreau’s essay Walking and Thich Nhat Hanh’s How To Walk

• A Month of Reading: Dive into other worlds, read a couple of hours every day!

• A Month of Performance: Live or post it

• A Month of Finishing: Do those things that have been on the to do list forever!

• A Month of Generosity: Be more generous than you think you can be. Tithe, donate, volunteer, help out, go above and beyond for others.

The format as laid out by Sarah, is to reveal the next month’s theme a few days before the 1st. Write about why you chose this theme: hopes, fears, rules, expectations, etc. Then give some updates throughout the month on how it is going. At the end of the month, reflect on how it went and introduce the next month’s theme. If you are also interested in experimenting, you can get more information here!

A list of people around the web trying out their own experiments in 2019!

• Sarah Natsumi Moore

• Thomas Allison

• Jayden Beatty

• Sarah Smith

• Jessica Ertle

• Lydia Jarjoura

• Anna Stewart

• Lynn Miller

• Jessica Garcia

• Nicole Berland

• Maring Higa