I have missed writing here. I have missed introspection in public. I have missed taking notes after every yoga class I teach or take to just share it here afterword.

I am not sure who still follows me and who has given up on me a while ago, but I just moved to Mumbai, India.

Yes, India! And I finally got the jitters to start writing about yoga again.

I moved following my partner in his dream. It has been extremely challenging and I am not sure yet how I will survive this big step. But, they all say when you follow your heart, all will be ok, and I am hoping someone is right! Plus, I have a feeling Mamma India will have some surprises in store for me…some I cannot even see yet!

So, I have decided to write here once again, because I have no other way to practice my yoga the way I prefer in the city what better way than practice patience and while waiting. I have had a hard time adjusting to a routine that is both practical and not nerve racking with having to cross town to just bend in poses. I have made a mini yoga/meditation room in my home and I have used it as a creative/practice space, but the distractions are immense and the noise does not always help. Plus, I have an inherent belief that practicing next to other people, and learning more and different moves from teachers and other students is a very big additional self-control practice in itself.

But, aside from the obstacles of having to find the “perfect” yoga space for my inner-peace, I have to disclose that everyday in Mumbai must be a yoga practice day or else you will quickly lose your wit and collapse somewhere nobody will even find you. This city is massive, chaotic, noisy, unforgiving and constantly in movement, but it’s also layered with history, traditions, cultural spaces and so many diverse people. It makes the USA melting pot scenario look ridiculous. It is a city where you can plug in anywhere and everywhere and something will come out of nothing. A city where every single person I see crossing my way walking smiles as big as they can even if they have literally nothing and their homes is on the street corner. I have never seen so much empathy and strength and ruthlessness to live, to survive anyway they can.

Yoga practice in Mumbai feels to me as a daily practice that must be pursue off the mats as well as on. So, I am not fretting the studio or the perfect vinyasa, I am just going with the flow of what life is bringing about and trying to juggle it the best I can with the most grace and compassion for myself first as I am new to this all and it will take time to adjust.

Namaste!

So, I have now resumed teaching regular classes every Friday and Saturday mornings at a rock climbing gym called Brooklyn Boulders here in the Gowanes neighborhood of Brooklyn.

This routine is giving me both a new mental challenge to come-up with different and exciting classes weekly and also a very good basis or self-reflection before I enter into a space of teaching others.

I have been wanting to address the difficulty I have been having with my own learning of being compassionate as much as I was back in 2011 or 2012 during my 500-hrs Dharma Yoga teacher training, when meditation, veganism and daily practice changed me completely from the inside out as a much nicer and more understanding human being to the less patient and more judgmental one I am today. But, then I though of this: We go through phases in life and we change daily. We adjust to situations and we calm down or get aggravated for any number or reasons that can differ every give moment. How about we just become really ok with this? How about we embrace our craziness and go with it without always question it! Could we a nice change for a bit, not?

The pure self is the one that accept such changes of moods, attitude and behavior and adjusts to the fact that others likewise ourselves are not perfect and this is wonderfully ok. We are not always going to love everything of everyone we live with, are friend with, love or even married. It is about the way we compromise with the understanding that as much as we have limitations, they have them too and, as much as they consider us ok with such flaws, we shall do the same.

So, in the next few months until the Christmas holidays I will basing my teaching on compassion and acceptance and unconditional love of others no matter their flaws and their short coming and their infallible and annoying ways of pushing our buttons with their imperfections, because they are just a mirror of ours, just as annoying, shortcomings, we are just too incredibly selfish and infallibly full of ourselves to believe we are actually perfect ourselves!

You know the feeling of your throat closing and your lungs not fully expanding?
Have you ever set at your desk, opened the computer and felt completely and utterly as if your mind was full of ideas a moment before and immediately just dried out all of a sudden? You stare at the screen incredulous and speechless, did not get anything done already yesterday, and the day before and the one before that one.

You wake-up, make coffee, stumble upon your steps to get to this ridiculously grand desk, sit at it, and nothing comes out of you. But, other days, when you feel much more organized and your schedule is so busy you can barely breath, then those days sitting at this damn desk is easy, is a piece of cake: You sit, you type away, one letter at the time, words just fly off your fingers, your photo editing skills have improved enormously. You got it! You are in tuned with what you want, who you are and where your life is going. Somewhere forward, even though you do not know when and where, but you at least know it is now going at least and it is much better than being stuck.

But for how long can you live this way? How many more night can you deal spending waking-up panicking about money, motivation, direction, active entrepreneurship and not freelancing for free and sitting at a desk to just warm the chair and not bringing anything else back to the table?

What is going to happen if I do not break this mechanism?
What will break this mechanism for you as a freelancers?

For me the answer is always child pose. May seems like too easy of a fix, but it is all true and it has been this way for the past 11 years, never failed me once. Since my very first panic attack back in 2005, child pose has been my departure and arrival pose, my end and my beginning. I loth to do it every time, because the feeling of laying on the floor, head down on the mat, legs apart and hands forward, makes me very vulnerable and very open, but also very honest and very aware of what is it that is going on with me. I curl in it. I cry in it. I rejoice in it. every. single. time.

I know if I sit in that quiet space, dim light, with my forehead on the floor, my breathing will start again, my brain will get oxygenated and my thoughts will run slower. And then when I come out of the pose, magically, I know what to do, I know where to go and how to move in one direction or another.

Try it and you will see. Now, also try focusing on the smell and sound of the ocean while in the pose.