Beth Lapides: My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

They say follow your bliss but I say follow your pain. Because I’m starting to notice that when I follow my pain, then my bliss follows me.

This happened recently with my arm pain. The pain had become so bad that at the end of class, sitting in final cross-legged position, instead of joining my om with those of my neighboring mat-mates, I was busy scanning my arms and shoulders, trying to pinpoint exactly where it hurt most. Or should I say where it didn’t hurt.

By the time we namasted, my inner whining was so loud I could barely hear the post-class chat I love so well. I left my mat where it was and cornered my teacher, my tense voice the very definition of the squeaky wheel.

I elaborated on the arm and shoulder pain he’s all too familiar with. Besides being my teacher, I am also lucky enough to occasionally work with him as a massage therapist.

So I didn’t really need to say my fingers and forearms hurt while I type and my shoulders hurt while I sleep. But I did it anyway.

“Would you like some cheese with that whine?” he asked.

I told him I’ve been doing fewer chatarungas, fewer handstands and no between-class weights. But instead of feeling like my arms are healing, it feels like they’re just getting weaker. And fatter. So now I’m not just whiney and pain-averse, but also a vain diva. He patiently ran down some arm, shoulder and neck exercises we often do in class and reminded me of one in particular.

“Put your arm straight out to your side at shoulder height. Hand on the wall, like a stop sign,” he said. I did, imagining I was saying ‘stop’ to my arm pain. It felt like fireworks running up and down my arm. I’ve started to think of this feeling as taking the should out of my shoulders. I should write a new end for my show. I should find out what the pineal gland really does. I should post my podcast to the My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat Facebook page. I should Google remedies for arm pain. I should Twitter taking the should out of shoulders.

“I’ll do it every morning and night,” I said, like a convert. And I do. I’m diligent. In a way diligence is exactly what has gotten me into this mess. My diligence has turned me into an armed robber. I rob my arms of their ease by using them too diligently: Diligently connecting with friends online, diligently connecting the dot-coms between everything from cobra pose to coconuts to orbs.

The word arm comes from the PIE (proto-Indo Eurpoean) base *ar- which actually means “to join.” I started to think about how much arms are about joining. Joining in with others online. Or hugging.

I felt some nerves coming back to life and some tenseness loosening. So I started showing the exercise to my comedy students and even at a party one night to my friends. I had to laugh because years ago another teacher used the term party pose for show-offy asana. Now here I was between glasses of wine, watching my friends whine and confess that they too were having all kinds of arm and shoulder troubles.

The next night I dreamt my arms were being treated with electrically charged acupuncture needles. It felt amazingly great. And in the left inner forearm, where the needle had been, an outline of a flower appeared. Subsequently I learned this is the PU4 acupressure spot, which has to do with increasing qi, or prana or life-force. It is also related to issues of the heart, as do all things with the arms, which are on the heart meridian. And how did I learn all this? By researching online, of course. Two steps forward, one step back. Or now, since I measure things as being click-worthy, two clicks forward, one arm spasm back.

But the dream didn’t end with the flower. After some electricity flowed in, I sprouted an extra set of arms. And not just more arms. Transparent, magical, mystical arms. Doubled arms like all those the deities have.

I started clicking around for clues to the meaning of this dream. But nothing was clicking with the clicking. Then I stumbled upon Kali, whose name means black. And I remembered a second part of the dream. My dream healer had been wearing a black T-shirt. The exact opposite of classical healers, whom we actually call white coats. And I remembered that after the dream treatment my healer had lain down with me and hugged me so well that when I arose I was highly aroused.

Okay, maybe I’ve been eating too much maca. Or maybe the idea of having an extra set of arms is just that exciting to me. Or maybe something more profound had happened.

I’ve always shied away from Kali, preferring, like most people, the also-quadruple-armed but much more cuddly elephant deity Ganesh. There’s nothing cuddly about Kali aka the Black Goddess. Or in my case the black T-shirted Goddess.

So in the dream I was Kali, and I was also hugging Kali. And here’s the thing about Kali and her four arms. Two are for creating and two are for destroying.

Do we need to embrace the primal truth that we are all joined together as Kali now? That we created, or helped to create, a world in which every system is dissolving: the banking and ecological and Hollywood systems? The whole Cartesian system of thought?

That’s what I’m spending so much time online trying to understand – the dissolution and how to be part of the recreation.

So I have resolved that I am going to start hugging more. Not in an Amma way. But just as I go.

I once read that the key to a happy relationship is six hugs a day. Greg and I notice that we often don’t meet our quota. Not for lack of love, but for lack of focus. And sometimes from shying away from the fierceness of hugging, which does have a Kali-like quality, an ability to destroy a mood or a wall, and create something else. A Yoga, a union.

Sometimes it’s easier to click click click than it is to wrap our four arms together and stick with it. But I’ve started to feel that these turbulent changing times (some say it’s the Kali Yuga in fact) demand this kind of loving fierceness. And besides, hugging is one of the only things I can do with my arms that doesn’t hurt.

Beth Lapides is currently touring her show 100% Happy 88% of the Time and teaching The Comedian’s Way workshops. Subscribe to the new My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat podcast on iTunes or listen to it on bethlapides.com. Email her at beth@bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Arm and Arm appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

I’m a spiral girl
living in a linear
world. Sometimes passing.

Haikus by Beth Lapides, from Did I Wake You? Haikus for Modern Living (published by Soft Skull Press). Bethlapides.com

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Spiritual Haiku appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Beth Lapides

Community : Seen & Heard

Cha-Ching: Swapping The Mind For A Song
Wednesdays Through December 15!

Having been hit hard on the head by the Woo Woo Fairy’s weighty wand early on (at birth), I’m already a member of the striving-towards-awakening choir to which Beth Lapides is not really ever preachin’ in her frolicking song-spiel, 100% Happy 88% of the Time. Nobody likes a preacher, and Beth is a relaxed and benevolent raconteur, a good witch who stirs her personal narrative into an alchemical stew of original songs, graphic word puns, paranormal investigations (house dousing, crystals, crop circles), healings and the surviving of several questionable clouds with no apparent silver linings. Even people with a low spiritual IQ would willingly consider converting to a new POV when charmingly crooned to by the divine Ms. B.

Who put the “UN” in fun, Beth might ask, as she begins to undo her own limited thinking in favor of following the signs – they may indeed have her best interests at heart. If you don’t already know it, Ms. Lapides is the High Priestess of the UnCabaret, the mother duck to countless stand up ducklings who were honing their hilariously off-kilter weltanshauungs (that’s German for world view) back in the day on the UnCab’s stages, where Cheerleader/Hostess Beth held the space generously by cackling her raucous, encouraging laugh in support of those unique and valuable Voices Who Were Emerging. Some of them are now Hollywood bigwigs who were even in attendance at opening night. (Holy crap, did I really just sit in front of Sex in the City’s geniuses, John Melfi, and my elfin hero Michael Patrick King? Actor/writer and UnCab vet Taylor Negron and NEANEANEA Grant winner John Fleck were also there.)

It is with this same mirthful and supportive spirit that Beth approaches the colorful narrating of her own path in a recently emerging art form that has moved from pure stand-up comedy to a more integrative story-telling, one that encompasses both the dark and light of the personal path. Eschewing the more intellectual take one might expect from her Ivy League education (Brown) and Jewish upbringing in favor of “less thinking, more singing,” Beth offers helpful antidotes to the unhappiness bred by Our Time. It’s comforting to know that we’re all going through it – “it’s not just you” is her opening number. In other words, Beth Lapides is courageously practicing what she preaches when she asks us to sing along with her during “Change – Makes Us So Unhappy,” reminding us that change is the only unchangeable by being willing to walk through real uncharted territory within herself. She always wanted to sing, but has really just begun in this current iteration of the show, putting a vulnerable yet sweet spin on this performance and paving the way to a more soul based type of entertainment not usually encouraged here in Ho’wood. She has here opted for a more humanized, accessible version of her life’s story, unfolded through a series of signs along The Way.

After a few Hollyweird sucker punches, an eviction and a radio firing, Beth and her curly headed hubby Greg Miller, who throws in a few PIC-y remarks from the sidelines, (‘Partner In Change’ is a Beth-acronym for those who support growth) the two strive to make sense of their uppy downy journey, even while they are in it. And if these two can save their lives by finding meaning in all of its twists and turns, by Golly, so can we save ours. Isn’t that the whole purpose of storytelling, anyhoo? Everyone has their limits though and apparently, Ms. Lapides draws the Woo Woo line at angels. Can a pow wow with angel expert Doreen Virtue change (that word again) her mind about the existence of the angelic realm? You’ll have to see 100% Happy 88% of the Time to find out.

Towards the end of the show, I could have sworn I saw Beth Lapides sprout wings, she looked so like those cherubim in whom she says she does not believe. I highly recommend this lovely, uplifting show (directed by Clifford Bell, with musical direction by Mitchell Kaplan) to take your Mind off. What do you mean “of what?” Ecch. Just take it off.

Sea Glassman is a painter, poet, filmmaker and director, as well as a performance coach, yogini and guided intuitive. She has directed countless plays and began her documentary film career with her debut film, Stacey Steals Flowers, at the Nantucket Film Festival. Her writing has appeared on line and in various newsletters. Her blog “OMVELOPE,” is a literary magazine dedicated to The Arts and Spirituality: omvelope.wordpress.com.

Beth Lapides (read her collection of My Other Car is a Yoga Mat columns here) has been receiving some positive strokes for her show–including LA Weekly’s Best of Issue Best Comeback! And a nifty mention in Flavorpill, including, “Inspired by eureka moments afforded by hinky Hollywood, adolescent diaries, 2012, chronic back pain, an eviction, and a foretelling dove, Lapides candidly offers her game-plan for going “emotionally green” as the best tool for survival in this era of demise. Won’t you ascend with her?”

Order your tickets to 100% Happy 88% of the Time at bethlapides.com.

By Sea Glassman

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Beth Lapides’ 100% Happy 88% Of The Time appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Photo: David Young-Wolff, davidyoung-wolff.com

My teacher, Erich Schiffmann, said it best, “If you want to push yourself in Yoga, push yourself to show up often.” With a chuckle, he would add “Once you’re there, there’s no need to push yourself. If you do, you get hurt. Then you get mad at Yoga, and it’s not Yoga’s fault. It’s your fault, for pushing yourself.”

Most of us begin Yoga because we want to feel better. We want to be healthier, have more energy and feel more at ease with ourselves and others. But somewhere along the way, our deep-rooted patterns of perfectionism have transferred onto our Yoga practices. We’ve taken our daily struggle to be the best, to achieve and to excel, into our Yoga – completely defeating the purpose.

Our drive towards perfectionism has origins way before the Yoga mat. We want to be the ideal parent, the model employee, an exemplary spouse. All the time we are striving for perfection, we are missing life along the way. It is the nuances, the imperfections, the mistakes that bring us back to our own hearts and into the present moment.

How endearing is it when someone you love in a totally non-perfect, non-graceful way, hits the ketchup bottle one too many times and ends up spilling it down their white shirt? Don’t you just love them for doing it? What about the smile that it gives you, the laughs that you share and even better, the story you get to tell about it? “Remember the time you spilled ketchup down your white shirt?!”

It is hard for us to believe the same goes for the Yoga room, but I swear it does. As a teacher, I love when a student goes flying out of a balancing pose. I love the look on their face, the sounds they make and – hopefully – the laugh they get from doing it. In that moment when they are falling, the imperfection connects me to them, we are totally in the now, totally together in union, Yoga – and it is the mistake that brought us there.

My heart goes out to the students whom I see pushing, yanking and straining themselves into postures because they think it will help their practice. Instead of learning to relax, flow with grace and breathe, I’ve seen yogis come out of a Yoga class feeling more stressed out than when they went in. It is wonderful to be passionate, precise and courageous in our Yoga, but is it really about an agenda? Don’t we spend enough time trying to “get things right?”

Instead of mechanically doing the same Yoga postures you did yesterday, practice being a yogi. Try asking yourself questions like, “Where in the body does the breath travel?” or “Where can I be more grounded?” Or even better, “Where can I relax without collapsing?” It will help you focus on the real goal, which is being totally accepting and present with what is.

I may not be doing a triple back flip with a twist, but when I practice, I am here in this body right now. When I show up and “not push,” I stop “doing the Yoga” and start “being the yogi.” I step into myself as I am right now. I am not perfect, but present.

Sara Elizabeth Ivanhoe is a graduate of the Yoga Philosophy and Yoga and Ecology programs at Loyola Marymount University. She currently teaches at Yoga Works, Santa Monica. Her latest DVD, Yoga on the Edge, is available on her website: yoganation.com.

By Sara Elizabeth Ivanhoe

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Not Perfect, But Present appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Beth Lapides

One of my teachers describes the ultimate expression of a pose to his mostly beginning students with the phrase: In a perfect Yoga world. For instance he might say: In a perfect Yoga world, your head would meet your foot.

On good days In a perfect Yoga world helps me see how even with my head meeting my foot there is always a deeper place to travel to in a pose. But on bad days I can’t help but think: In a perfect Yoga world I wouldn’t even be in this class.

Not that I mind practicing with beginners. In fact I love it. Sometimes. But because of peculiarities of time and space, of scheduling and geography, I find myself fifteen years into my Yoga practice, practicing mostly basics, with mostly beginners. At a gym. I tried to find the Yoga of the situation. I looked to the yamas and niyamas. I practiced svidyayha, self-study, almost obsessively so since the gym Yoga happened in a room lined with mirrors. I practiced ahimsa, nonviolence, by not beating myself up when I caught a glimpse of my bulging thighs. Ok it wasn’t a perfect Yoga world. Except that for me, any world that includes Yoga is perfect.

And then my yearly gym membership ran out

I sat down to have a heart to heart with my credit cards. They told me they were tired and to talk to my checkbook. My checkbook was busy with my rapidly escalating insurance. I argued that Yoga is a kind of insurance. And my checkbook agreed. That was one of so many reasons it had paid for fifteen years of yearlies. But now, with those thousands of Yoga classes inside me, couldn’t I practice on my own? Just for now?

I felt panicky at letting go of this one bit of structure in my freelance, self-employed, independent contractor Hollywood hyphenate life. I felt overwhelmed at the thought of not having a teacher bossing me around to balance out my own bossiness. I felt out of emotional alignment at the idea of now not only not having a doctor I trusted who knew my body, but not even having a trained Yoga professional keeping an eye on my physical alignment.

There was only one thing to do. Try the old challenge/opportunity switcheroo and decide that practicing on my own at home was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was going to go deeper and integrate my practice more thoroughly into my day-to-day life. Live in a more perfect Yoga world.

A perfect union, a perfect Yoga, has nothing to do with being correct. It has everything to do with a willingness to change together, to evolve towards a perfect Yoga world.

I shifted to a completely vegan diet. I enjoined Greg to do a one minute Om namah shivayah meditation at the beginning and end of every day. I borrowed Yoga DVDs from the library. Downloaded classes. Rolled on my YogaTune-Up® balls. Connected with yogis on Facebook. Did my elliptical machine with yogic awareness. Attempted yogic sleep with exercises that lead to lucid dreaming. Lay on the spikey Shakti mat while watching TV. Chanted at my keyboard. Opened thousands of emails from Yoga studios. Taught Yoga to total beginner friends. Learned how to work with shiva lignham to take advantage of the energy of pradosham. Put my legs up the wall on long phone calls. Thought about money as energy Studied the correspondences between crystals and chakras.

In a way being cut loose from any regular class really was the best thing that had ever happened to my practice. But I felt restless. Was I really doing as much as I could? Was I giving in to my weakness of over-thinking and under-doing? Was I being too easy on myself or too hard? Was I really practicing perfectly?

I was at my desk one day, headphones on, having just finished a pineal gland/third eye meditation exercise to a Tom Kenyon download (link to this amazing free audio onbethlapides.com) I felt very tuned in. And when I opened my eyes I noticed my New Year’s circle. Inside the hand-drawn circle I’d written all the things I wanted to keep and cultivate, outside it all the things I wanted to leave behind. And in big letters, definitively on the outside of the circle I’d written: The Perfectionist Thing.

Soon after this, a Tarot reader at a wedding suggested that my high standards, for myself and for others, might not be serving me. And I had to admit that I was driving myself crazy. And of course when you drive yourself crazy, you’re taking jobs away from other people. It’s like your own personal NAFTA.

One of ‘my’ online teachers reminded me that the Sanskrit word for perfect, purna also means full. I tried to shift from thinking about perfectionism as a search for rightness, or flawlessness to fullness. As in being yogically full – of life. Not Hollywood full – of myself.

I went to double check the translation on Google. More obsessive Type A behavior. I input ‘Sanskrit English translation perfect’. But I didn’t get purna. I got the translation of the word Sanskrit itself which essentially means…perfect!

Sanskrit is formed from sam meaning ‘entirely’ or ‘wholly’ or ‘perfectly,’ and krit means ‘done.’ Perfectly done. Which, I couldn’t help but notice, is also a phrase people apply to steak. But it made me want to know Sanskrit more fully, and so I put study Sanskrit on my list.

Then, in the course of another project, with perfection percolating in my mind, I was re-reading the Constitution of The United States. “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union…” it begins.

Of course Yoga means union and being a yogi I couldn’t help but read that line as “We the people, in order to form a more perfect Yoga world.” And it struck me that the American experience is a Yoga experience. A union of “states”, a melting pot of nationalities,
a oneness of high ideals and low brow culture. That in these fifteen years practicing Yoga in classes maybe I’d been a little lax in my responsibilities as a citizen. Maybe in my search for the perfect practice I’d been neglecting what it means to be an American Yogi. Maybe the political landscape, which has become so dreary, is calling out for yogis to be yogis. Loudly and proudly.

A more perfect union. Because in Yoga, as in America, we’re perfecting the union. The oneness. A perfect union, a perfect yoga, has nothing to do with being correct. It has everything to do with a willingness to change together, to evolve towards a perfect Yoga world.

So, as much as I miss classes with advanced yogis doing accelerated arm balances and heart-baring backbends, I am trying to see how my years of classes have been training for the Yoga of life. Where I practice fully. Sometimes on a mat, sometimes on a stage and sometimes in bed. Where the idea of a more perfect union gets a whole new spin.

Follow Beth Lapides’ perfect Yoga journey on Twitter, on her Facebook Fan Page, the LA YOGA website or via podcast. Invite her to your Yoga studio at beth@bethlapides.com or visit her website at: bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post A More Perfect Yoga appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

I was lying in final twist, pulling my hip away from my ribs like a good little yogi, when the teacher, who didn’t know my practice that well, came over and gave me an adjustment. My back cracked. His eyes lit up; I could tell he was very pleased with himself. My back cracked ten more times. His eyes shifted to panic. Being a people pleaser, I tried to quietly reassure him. But I was, in fact, on the verge of panicking about it myself.

I’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to remember when my right hip joint had started cracking so prolifically. But I could only conjure memories of lying on my mat, twisting deeper and deeper, feeling like it needed to crack but couldn’t.

Beth Lapides

That night, standing in the shower, I swayed – shifting my ribs ever so slightly in the particular way that causes my back to crack over and over again. I counted up to 100 cracks. (I know. Counting is another bad habit that we control enthusiasts fall into when chaos is looming.) But I couldn’t stop. I was trying, as I had been every night for some time, to crack it until it was all cracked out. One more crack. Just one more.

I stepped out of the shower and into Facebook. Out of one habit into another. I wrote about my cracking problem on the My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat Facebook fanpage (join us please! quite a lively kula). And one clever yogi commented ,“Don’t get hooked on the crack.” Ha ha. Funny yogi. You crack me up.

Of course so much of life is habits. And Yoga teaches us to exchange unhealthy habits for healthy ones: The habit of unconsciousness for consciousness; the habit of being distracted for the habit of focus; the habit of avidya, incorrect comprehension, with vidya, correct comprehension. At least that’s my comprehension of correct comprehension.

Even before my feet stepped on their first mat, I practiced the habit exchange program. When Greg and I met I was a smoker, a pack of Marlboro Reds a day. Late one Sunday afternoon, at the end of a falling-in-love weekend, we were sitting in a red vinyl booth, waiting for our egg rolls. I was smoking. Greg looked me with his big dreamy brown eyes and asked if I’d ever seen anyone die of lung cancer.

When I got home, I threw the rest of the pack away. I would exchange smoking for love. But how? I wasn’t practicing Yoga yet so I didn’t have the advantage of my mat. I was a voracious reader though (or did I escape through fiction out of habit?!) and I happened to have a book called Dune lying in wait. I got into bed and cracked the spine of the book.

Yoga teaches us to exchange unhealthy habits for healthy ones: The habit of unconsciousness for consciousness; the habit of being distracted for the habit of focus; the habit of avidya, incorrect comprehension, with vidya, correct comprehension. At least that’s my comprehension of correct comprehension.

One story element in Frank Herbert’s page-turner turned out, synchronistically, to be a highly addictive, cinnamon-esque-smelling substance. Reading about addiction helped steel my resolve to exchange the habit of smoking for the habit of loving.

Quitting smoking was just the beginning. I’ve changed in all sorts of ways for Greg. As he has for me. I know that a lot of couples subscribe to the romantic policy promulgated by Billy Joel, “Don’t Go Changin’” to try to please me.” But we have what we think of as a ‘do go changin’” relationship. What if you do go changing to try to please me? Make a little effort. Of course the trick is to find someone who likes you just the way you are, but also sees some room for improvement and has some good ideas. It wasn’t like Greg was asking me to stop being an artist, or start doing crack.

One habit Greg has tried to help me break is my habit of negativity. “You’re so negative for a positive person,” he’s always telling me. He’s right. And I hate that about myself!

The first time I noticed my ‘no’ habit I was climbing the stairs out of the West 4th Street subway stop. I was a young artist begrudgingly headed to a day job. “No,” I heard myself say with each step. No no no. And just as the darkness of the underground station gave way to the daylight of the West Village, it dawned on me that if I could just replace those nos with yesses, everything in my life would change for the better. When I paid attention, I could do it while I was walking. “Yes yes yes,” I repeated all that year as I walked my way from day jobbing to the life I’d imagined.

Even now, all these years later, when I don’t focus on saying yes, I still easily slip back into the no habit. And this habit of negativity, I now know, in Yoga is called dvesa, rejectivity, or aversion. Dvesa is one of the four branches of avidya. We get caught in the habit of dvesa when we say no to things that are unfamiliar, things that have caused us pain before, maybe even things that we are afraid will reject us.

I’ve noticed I don’t always know when I’m engaging in dvesa. Because a knee jerk, dvesic no, sounds a lot like a considered discerning no. But no – all nos are not alike. And of course, you say no to no in order to say yes to yes.

What was I saying yes or no through my incessant back cracking? The first cracks were a no to a feeling of stuckness and a yes to freedom. But now I was saying yes to sensation that caused no effect. And this habitual action is raga, attachment. Raga is an other form of avidya. It is the wanting of something because it satisfied a need we had previously. One more. Just one more.

The word habit comes from a PIE (Proto Indo European) base ghabh – to seize, take, hold, have, receive and surprisingly also to give. The word habit opened my mind to the idea that giving and receiving are not opposites but rather two unique expressions of the same DNA, like the flower and fruit of the same tree.

All nos are not alike. And of course, you say no to no in order to say yes to yes.

Of course the place which we inhabit is both the place that holds us and the place we hold in our hearts. Which then holds us. Ad infinitum. Like a Marushka doll of hearts and homes, holding and being held.

This idea of holding helped me shine new light on my habits. When I perpetuate bad habits it does feel like they have a grip on me. When I perpetuate good habits I feel I am holding more prana, that I am a vessel for the life-force. I thought of one of my favorite prayers: I build a house of light and therein dwell.

And then my mind settled on the “to have and to hold” part of the meaning. When Greg and I got married we were young and rebellious and never even considered exchanging the classic vows. But I see now how the vow, “To have and to hold,” creates an uplifted structure around the idea of marriage – which is habituated love, a kind of soaring cathedral in which the echoes between giving and receiving can resonate. I saw the rings on our fingers, symbols of our union, our Yoga, perfectly placed reminders as our hands engage in taking and holding and giving and receiving too.

So I said no to the habit of cracking and turned off the shower, because why was I still here when Greg was already in bed, ready to practice two habits I hope he never changes. The habit of loving me. And the habit of letting me love him.

Beth Lapides has an active discussion on the My Other Car is a Yoga Mat Facebook fanpage about all things habitual. Get in the habit of listening to her podcasts and checking out her current schedule at: bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Down The Habit Hole appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

I’m so excited! I’ve made a huge breakthrough in my practice. After only twelve years of determined effort, I have moved on from the first sutra to the second! At this rate I will get through all 195 of Pantanjali’s Sutras by the time I’m 2,340 years old. Thankfully I have my Hatha practice to keep me young.

The first sutra, atha yoganusanam, sounded so simple: “Now is the time we do Yoga.” Then I started thinking about ‘now’ ‘time’ ‘we’ ‘do’ and ‘Yoga.’ Yikes. And what about “the?”

A dozen years of down dogs later, it’s no small victory to show up on my mat with the feeling I’ve woven that first sutra into my life. Even if I ultimately had to win it by turning part of the sutra into my My Space password.

Now I find myself thinking about the second sutra in the same way I think about lunch after I’ve fully digested breakfast. I’m hungry for it. Sutra 2, or more accurately 1.2 says: “We do Yoga to connect to unbound consciousness.“ And I’m okay with “we” “do” “Yoga” and even “connect.” It’s “unbound consciousness” that’s got me this round.

Apparently my subconscious is working it out. I’ve developed a strange habit of tracing infinity signs onto the side of my thumb with the tip of my index finger. I noticed myself doing it absentmindedly one night while I was watching a movie. Once I was aware of it, I caught myself doing it A LOT, in fact, almost all of the time that I wasn’t clutching something. Of course I’m clutching something most of the time: keyboard, Blackberry, some shred of stability. But every now and then, at least fifteen minutes a day, I’m not clutching anything, or anyone, and then my hand starts in with its strange inkless doodling.

And this invisible drawing has drawn my attention to how much I’m thinking about our place in the sky. And its place in us. About how our galactic spiral is a mirror of our snakey DNA structure. That we’re literally made of stardust.

I find myself reading elaborate explanations and interpretations of planetary movements, trying to decipher the technicalities of 2012 and the galactic alignment, to figure out if and how it might be connected to my physical, spiritual and emotional alignments. I stare up into the night sky wondering, is the Big Dipper really pouring golden energy down onto my home? Is Sirius, the Dog Star, really a portal to the next dimension? When I look at bright blue day sky I see a sparkling, infinity looping energized grid. My photos are filled with orbs that – who? – look like nebulae. I guess I really do have stars in my eyes.

Turns out that ether, in Sanskrit, is akasha, as in your super-permanent akashic records. I always imagined they were written in something even more solid than stone. But akashic is derived from the root kas, which means to be visible, to appear, to shine, to be brilliant.

Which is all kind of weird for me. I’ve always been an earthy girl, arty but practical, a feet on the ground, stubborn, Capricornian seagoat girl. Now, as my index finger has been “pointing to,” my feet are still on the ground, but my head’s in the clouds. This new me isn’t quite an air head, but maybe I am an ether head.

So, a few months ago when I was asked to test-drive a new company’s Yoga mats I got excited when I saw that one of them had a picture of deep space on it. I was hoping it might help me navigate this new terrain I’d entered, terrain where there isn’t any terra at all.

The mat arrived and looked great. I left my black mat home guarding my altar and brought the cosmic mat to class. I hated it. I told myself it was just different, that I was clinging, that I should use it a few times and break it in. But who has time? There’s a whole shifting cosmos/world/society/economy to grok.

There was something potentially inspiring about this ethereally cosmic mat I wasn’t willing to give up on. So I rolled it out in my office. I thought at the very least it might encourage me to get up off my ass when I’d been sitting at my desk too long.

And it totally did! I’d tried other mats in that spot, and they never worked. There was something about the picture of outer space that encouraged me to explore my inner space. Before work I’d sneak in a few minutes of mantra and meditation, on long phone calls I’d lie down and restore with my feet up on the wall, mid-afternoon I’d open my hips and my heart. And during all of that it encouraged me to connect to unbound consciousness.

Turns out that ether, in Sanskrit, is akasha, as in your super-permanent akashic records. I always imagined they were written in something even more solid than stone. But akashic is derived from the root kas, which means to be visible, to appear, to shine, to be brilliant. Doesn’t that sound like stars to you?

Last week, with this all swirling around, I had a dream in which one of my Facebook Yoga friends made a guest appearance. The next day I posted a cool NYT article about recycled materials for home building, and this friend commented on my posting. Typical synchronicity for the way for my life is now. I told her this in a comment. She commented back that I was in her dream too, and it was a similar dream. Let me emphasize we’ve never met; we’ve only had a few casual volleys on Facebook. So where were we when we were having those dreams? When Greg and I have overlapping dreams? In unbound consciousness. In the ether.

But what is this infinite ether? And how do you connect to unboundedness? How do you not? Is it the hardest thing in the word or the easiest? Isn’t infinity everywhere, all the time? Do we connect through it and thus to it? Is something changing in it that’s changing us? Is it just that I’m on the second sutra? Or is the second sutra popping up to help me understand these changes?

When I meditate now, I hear a hum. “Tinnitus,” people suggest. No, it’s not. “Cars.” Definitely not. “The low frequency military hum.” No it’s not that either. I think it’s the sound of the cosmos. The actual hum of the ether. Nada yogis suggest listening to the sound and the sound inside the sound. And to the sound inside the sound that’s inside the sound. Ad infinitum. Until you get to the sound that was the sound that came from the nothing that was something that created everything that is or isn’t.

I’m getting there. Partly thanks to my new etheriffic mat. Because sometimes we can be the change we want to see, but sometimes we become changed by what we are seeing.

Beth Lapides is making comedic stops through the ethers, including a night performing “100% Happy 88% of the Time” at the Writer’s Boot Camp in Santa Monica, Sunday, October 25 at 8:00 P.M. Her regular Comedian’s Way classes are ongoing. Find out more at: bethlapides.com

Beth?s Cosmic Yoga Mats

Beth’s Cosmic Yoga Mats

The etheriffic mat with the graphic of the universe Beth uses is her office is made by Devi Yoga Mats: devimats.com.

The black mat Beth tried to leave by her altar, but instead practices on every time she goes to class is the classic black mat by Manduka: manduka.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Yoga Mat is the Cosmos appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

BethLapidus

I HAVE A MILLION WAYS to avoid a pose: thinking about something else while I’m in it, slipping out of class to pee or judging everyone else’s poses. My favorite way to avoid a pose has always been to slink off my mat for a sip of water.

But lately, I’m having a hard time using water this way. I don’t feel like I’m a water user any more. Now I feel like I’m a water lover. And, of course, love is complicated.

It used to be so simple. I’d suck on my straw peacefully avoiding the dreaded eagle pose. But now it seems like the water activates my monkey mind the way water was supposed to activate those super cute little sea monkeys you could order from the back of comic books.

I tell myself I shouldn’t be drinking water in class. Water quenches the fire I’m working so hard to stoke. Drinking water mid-practice disturbs the pranic energy body. And my drink is another student’s distraction.

But then my self tells me that I’m thirsty! Oh monkey! As usual the choppy water on my mat reflects the storms gathering in my life. And my relationship with water is one of the biggest storms this season.

In fact, around our home-office these days, water is the ultimate water cooler topic.

“Do you think the water would be happier in the fridge?” I ask Greg as we hover around the Brita. Apparently water becomes more alive in a dark space. Just the way I feel more alive when I’m in the dark space of eyesclosed meditation.

We fantasize about buying The Egg, a high-end ceramic container that keeps water moving and spiraling. Apparently spiraling makes water really happy. Just the way my thighs are really happy when I spiral them in down dog.

“I love you water,” Greg says. “I love you,” I coo to it. It’s like we’re having a three-way with our water.

We’re not the only couple having an open marriage with our liquidy friend. It seems as though water is everywhere now in this slippery fluid time, in our current dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Watergate, water boarding, the rain forest, water wars and Katrina. Water, like that stream of water running through the center of the opening credits of HBO’s In Treatment, is a meme, running through our center. It’s the subconscious rising up, like a thought we can finally hear ourselves thinking.

So it’s not surprising that one of the biggest stars to emerge from the What the Bleep circuit is Dr. Emoto, who says in his NYT bestseller Hidden Messages of the Water that loving and thanking our water changes it for the better! His pictures of water crystals are so seductive. They’re like the Playboy centerfolds of the New Age. His theories are even sexier. He says that with intention, we can transform water and thus transform ourselves (since we are, after all, somewhere between 70-90% water). According to his work (and images), we beautify water by loving and thanking it. By singing to it. By raising our own vibration when we are around it.

Although when I went to see him live, I was disappointed that the merch table had, along with the requisite CDs and books, water tcatchkes, including coasters, stickers and someone was even selling pre-loved water in those squishy plastic bottles too, which we now know are poisoning both us and the water and I’ve which I’ve come to think of as water prisons. Nevertheless, I left the event feeling high and the feeling lasted for days. Best of all, it really did help my relationship with water.

Water is amazing. It will go wherever I tell it to: goblet, espresso maker, Jacuzzi – I am the boss of water. But then again, without water, I will die, so water is the boss of me. I try to practice aqua-asana, being one with the water. Being the water.

Water is a master yogi. So flexible: It twists in and around itself without ever pulling a muscle. So balanced: Water will always find its level. So strong: It wears down rocks and never breaks a sweat. It doesn’t have to. It is sweat. Like many yogis, water is filled with joy: Burbling and splashing and swirling. In fact water is H20. O ho! It’s actually a laugh.

Water, like our Yoga practice, is said to enhance telekinesis, telepathy and telepathic healing. So drinking while practicing might be the one-two punch, or more yogically, the in-out breath that we need to cultivate in order to evolve into intuitive/psychic/third eye seeing millennials.

So maybe when I drink water in class I’m not avoiding challenging poses. Maybe I’m letting water assist in my evolution into a light being. No wonder I always get so insatiably thirsty!

“Thirst”, by the way, comes from a PIE (Proto Indo European) word ters – like terse, dry. It shares the same root as terrain (land). But the word thirst connotes so much more than dry. Dry is a fact. Thirst introduces the idea of desire: The land’s desire for water. Last week I was on a ferry. Cameras clicked as we left the island. Then, out on open water, the cameras were pocketed. When land appeared again, so did the cameras. Travelers were picturing themselves against the place where water and land meet. And I got that each of us is a shoreline, a solid mass quenching its desire for fluidity, movement, flow. And a place where water can satisfy its longing for solidity, stability and groundedness. It always seems to come back to our pesky desire doesn’t it? Technically it’s not the desire that’s the problem. It’s the attachment to the results of trying to have our desires met. But tell that to your heart. Or your heart’s neighbor, your dry mouth.

So to sip or not to sip. That is the question. If vibration effects water, and Yoga classes are such a nexus of good vibes, shouldn’t we be bringing bucket loads of water to flow and Om and meditate around? Isn’t it possible that the water we’re drinking in class is especially nourishing? More thirst quenching? It always feels to me like it is. Especially when I’m running from an annoying pose.

Beth Lapides is navigating change without getting her feet wet and in the meantime, Beth will be performing her show “100% Happy 88% of the Time,” Friday, Sept. 25 at Yoga Sanctuary, in Las Vegas. You can start to subscribe the audio version of “My Other Car is a Yoga Mat” on her website: bethlapides.com.

By BethLapidus

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Water Whirled appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Beth Lapides

Sometimes you’re born into a family, sometimes you marry into one and sometimes you find your family in a room filled with sweaty headstanders. But whether you are bound by blood, love or belief, family means family photos. Usually the family comes first. But recently I discovered a part of my family I wouldn’t have known about without the pictures: Orbs. Frisky quanta of ight, bouncing around
my pictures.

According to Wikipedia, Orbs are “just a symptom of new digital camera tech, capturing previously sub-visible particles.” Where’s the ‘just’ in ‘previously sub-visual’? Debunkers claim they are dust specks, moisture or appear as a digital effect. But I have pictures of orbs
I shot with an oldfashioned SLR during the day. I didn’t notice the orbs in those shots at first, maybe because I wasn’t looking for them. But my own semi-scientific experiments suggest that consciousness more than humidity is at play here.

Orb 1

My first orb shot ever happens to feature Felicia Tomasko, the beloved editor of LA YOGA Magazine. I was telling her I’d seen orb photos and was feeling like, Why don’t I get any orbs in my photos? Then I snapped this picture. Seek and ye shall find? I notice that the orbs like it if I demand they show up, but they don’t seem to like it if I whine. They also like it when I feel loving, or when there’s music or art around. They like it when I’m playing with friends. They also seem to like my garbage can. Hmmm.

Greg shot this of me while I was mid-toast at our dear friends John and David’s wedding. The orb is the same color of John’s head. Oh, those orbs have a good sense of humor and clearly are in favor of equal marriage rights for gays. Or they’re possibly angling for a sip of my champagne.

Greg took this shot of me under one of the olive trees in our back yard. We love this tree and consider her to be part of our family. There are always orbs around her. Now the orbs are starting to feel like part of our family, too. And while we don’t totally understand them, there are lots of our human relatives we don’t understand either. Greg is partial to the theory that the Orbs are bio-photons of some enormous intergalactic being(s) of love. I’ve heard some entities call the orbs, flocks. And angels. And signs in the skies. Signs of what? The human species evolving from Homo sapiens to Homo luminous?

Orb 2

Do you have orb photos? Write us at: edit@layogamagazine.com

Beth will be performing her show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” on Sunday, July 19, at Writers Boot Camp in Santa Monica. For tickets, info, more on the Orbs, or to contact Beth:bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Either Orb appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

One day I walked into class and noticed that since I had seen my teacher last, like two days ago, he’d changed. Good-bye robust athletic yogi, hello rock star. Not the junkie kind either. The thin, trim, spry, stage-roaming, glowing kind.

After class, when I asked him what his secret was, he revealed he was on day four of the Master Cleanse. To open his hips. Really? Yes, supposedly the strict regimen of lemon, cayenne and water is, along with its other healing properties, supposed to help open up stubborn hips.

I’m going to do it too, I said. I wasn’t thinking of the hip opening, my hips were already more open than even my big mouth. They were so open that colds, flus and hormones settled eagerly into them, like fans before a show. I definitely didn’t need to open my hips. But I did need to look like a rock star!

I’d always been put off by the Master Cleanse. Just the name is so mastery. I’m very anti-authoritarian – unless I’m the authority. But ever since a William Morris agent had told me I had a nice body…for a person, I’d been trying to take off five pounds here and another five there.

I planned to get through the weekend’s gigs and start on Monday. No point trying to do a cleanse when you are entertaining in a filthy nightclub. I kept imagining I’d be one of those yogis, sipping from their Master Cleanse concoction-filled water bottles, humbly saying: The first few days were hard but now I have soooo much energy!

Day one: Weak, woozy, light-headed. Day two: weaker, woozier, light-headeder. Day three: too weak to speak, too woozy for schmoozy, and now also snoozy. Lightheaded to the point of being almost thoughtfree. And not soooo much energy. In fact noooo much energy.

But who cared? I looked so hot in my pleather rock star pants I didn’t want to peel them off. I did though. And I even gathered enough strength to pull on my Hard Tails. Then I collapsed onto the bed from where it became clear, that the vast expanse of physical reality that lay between me and Yoga class was un-navigatable.

I knew I did need to move my body though, so I geared up for a little walk. I tucked a pen and scrap of paper into my pocket, just in case the one thought I had been waiting to hear finally arrived. The fact that I knew I was listening for this thought was a kind of miraculous revelation. Apparently, I’d pulled a bait and switch on myself with the Master Cleanse, tempting my ego with weight loss because my higher self was desperate to gain clarity.

For me, something clicked when I learned that biophotons, little bundles of light energy, actually leap from one to another of us. Like fleas, but brighter, lighter and more magical.

After shuffling halfway around my block I wrote: must get a house. Two weeks later we were evicted. Ha ha, good one universe. I’d only lasted five days on the Master Cleanse, but it was enough to change my life.

I always feel compelled to explain that we weren’t evicted through any fault of our own. And it’s true that we weren’t running a meth lab, a brothel or anything else as illegal or as lucrative. There wasn’t even any unpaid rent. But maybe, without it being our fault, we did cause it. A new landlord was relocating his extended family into our fourplex but he’d assured us we weren’t going to be evicted. Then the Master Cleanse, and my note to self, and voila! So maybe he’d been lying. Or maybe he’d changed his mind. But maybe the Master Cleanse had caused the shift or maybe I’d done the Master Cleanse because I’d sensed the shift. One thing I knew for sure, the Master Cleanse and the eviction were connected.

Of course everything is connected. That singular truth has been being beaten into our thick skulls for years: STDs, The Inconvenient Truth, this economic debacle. And lately we’ve been seduced into understanding everything is connected with more enticing examples: Dr. Emoto’s water crystals, Lynne McTaggart’s Intention Experiment, scientists proving that happiness, and fat, are both contagious. For me something clicked when I learned that bio-photons, little bundles of light energy, actually leap from one to another of us. Like fleas, but brighter, lighter and more magical. So, in a sense, when you’re standing in line at the supermarket, you’re standing behind everyone the person in front of you has ever stood behind. Now we find out that the residue of our prescription drugs fill our water supply, which means that your Prozac is my Prozac; your CoQ10 is my CoQ10, and also that your Master Cleanse is my Master Cleanse.

Which is why when I overheard one lithe yogi saying to another that she was on day three and she was soooo woozy! I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut. You can go off it, you know. The Master Cleanse is not the boss of you!

I hope I said it nicely. Because I’ve started to understand, on a visceral level how connected we are and that it’s just as bad to feed negativity to The Field as it is to feed white flour to your digestive tract.

So I’ve gotten slightly obsessive about what I’m putting out. And taking in. Yes, you are what you eat, but you are also what you read and watch and listen to. And the universe is what it eats too. Which is me, you, us. So I eat more greens; I disconnected my TV; I play my tuning forks. And I’ve started to think of this way of living as a complimentary system to the Master Cleanse: The Mistress Cleanse. Not a cleanse to do now and then for a few life-changing days, but one to do every day, in every way.

Yes, you are what you eat, but you are also what you read and watch and listen to. And the universe is what it eats too.

As it turns out, the word cleanse comes from a Proto Indo European (PIE) base gel – meaning to gleam. It’s related to a Greek word glene, meaning eyeball. And an Old Irish word gel meaning bright. And it’s true that when things are dirty or dull, they are harder to see.

A cleanse can bring us closer to seeing the gleaming truth, to help us see, have the moment of clarity, which comes in a flash, in the light bulb moment. We call the visionaries among us bright, not because they can be seen but because they see. I read once that we’re attracted to gleaming, shiny baubles because when we were foraging for food in the wild, berries were shiny, and easy to see. Of course berries have more antioxidants than almost any other food, making it a bright idea to eat lots of them.

But sometimes berries aren’t gleaming enough to brighten me up during this doozy of a woozy world. In these days of accelerating change, rapid connecting and massive transformation, sometimes I need more gleam, even a little glam. And then I get shining, eye lining with glitter, sparkle that helps me flitter and roam the Earth, the third rock from the sun. A star rock. And I’ve let go of the rock star pants, and wrapped myself up in dresses instead, as befits a devoted Lady of The Mistress Cleanse.

Beth Lapides is the Mistress of her own domain: bethlapides.com. Find out more about her shows, workshops and books and inspirational speaking. Email her atbeth@bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat: The Mistress Cleanse appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Beth Lapides: My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

The other day Greg and I were stuck in some mood-ruining slow-and-go traffic. Instead of picking a fight we picked a mantra (sacred syllable) and started chanting. Somewhere between the opening om and the closing swaha, the air cleared and we were in it together again.

And that’s when I remembered the billboard.

It was years ago, but the oversized picture of Earth from space under this phrase, The Couple That Prays Together Stays Together, still rattles around my mind. At the time it conjured up images of self-righteous Sunday sermons and I was dismissive. Besides, I’ve never been very good at praying per se and staying together seemed like a limited end game. I thought a couple should more than stay together. They should grow together. Or transform together. Or even consciously evolve together. But I do love a rhyme and the billboard stuck.

Then I started practicing Yoga. I loved it immediately. And I loved Greg. I knew they were going to love each other if only he would come to class with me.

I didn’t insist because you can’t hurry love. But you can definitely nudge it. So every day as I was suiting up, I’d casually ask Greg if he wanted to come with me. Not today he’d say. It became a running gag. I’d ask him at random times, like when we were on our way to a gig, or as I was walking out the door with my mat. I would ask not to hear a yes but for the laugh. And also to remind him I was, not so patiently, waiting for him to join me on the Yoga bandwagon.

I knew it would be good for our union because after all, Yoga, as almost everyone in America knows by now, means union. It comes from the word yug which translates literally to yoke. Mind/body, breath/movement, theory/action. Me/Greg. All of those unions. And others too. And the fact that it is not clearly about any one type of yoking, but all yoking, is one of the things that I love about it.

Yoga doesn’t oversimplify. And neither do we. We were going to have such a great three-way if only Greg would get his ass to class.

So I started pushing, familiar with but not yet embodying the yogic concepts of staying on my own mat and over-efforting. The phrase missionary position took on a whole new meaning for us. I would show him poses while we were taking a break from work. Explain what little philosophy I’d picked up while we were making dinner. Run down the health benefits when he wasn’t feeling well.

Then one day while I was I pushing, he pulled. His back that is. Something popped during the most strenuous part of his exercise regimen: getting up off the couch. How about today? he finally asked.

Before our first class together, I introduced Greg to my teacher. The couple that bends together mends together, my teacher said. Ha! Finally an answer to the billboard. The couple that inverts together squirts together, Greg said on the way home.

And he was immediately good at inversions. He wants me to point out that he could barely do a forward fold and still can’t comfortably sit in a cross-legged position. But his success in inverting gave him the sense of accomplishment he needed to keep going back to class. So inversions were, in a sense, for us becoming a Yoga couple.

In fact, years before we ever went upside down on our mats, on the very first morning we woke up in each others’ arms, we found our heads at the foot of the bed, feet in the clouds of the pillows. Upside down from day one. We should have known inversions would be in our future.

And though we’ve learned about ‘us’ in all sorts of partner poses, one of the most profound shifts in our relationship came during partner handstands. I was spotting Greg, holding his thighs. Don’t grip so hard our teacher said. You’re spotting, not tackling him!

Right. A lighter touch would give him more space. Be more fun. And require less energy on my part. On the mat. And off. Because, of course we’re always spotting each other in life. As a couple, as friends, as business partners. Always trying to keep each other from falling, we help each other stay afloat for a few extra breaths and break through to the next level.

And the deeper our practices become, the more Yoga becomes part of our relationship. If I’m beating myself up, Greg might remind me to practice ahimsa (nonviolence). We integrate svadyaya (self-study) into our writing workshops. We remind each other to stretch when we’ve been desk sitting. I encourage him to meditate, he runs his thumb over my creased third eye. And of course we are constantly reminding each other to breathe.

Yoga’s not bad for our relationship in the bedroom either. Without changing what we do it changes the experience of what we do. Sex is still sex but it’s also a root chakra energizer. And very healthy for a girl so much in her head as I am. Sometimes if my mind is distracted, I can focus on our sexual union as the union of Shiva and Shakti energy. The steadfast and the yielding. And sometimes I just remember to focus on the heavy breathing. Someday when we’re not so busy maybe we’ll even get into the exotic stuff because sure, tantric sex is hot, but it’s also quite time-consuming.

Lately we’ve been really into twists. Maybe because the world seems like it’s taking such a big one. And we’ve been saying the couple that revolves together evolves together. And then going upside-down for our beloved inversions. Letting blood rush towards our hearts. Where the real work of Yoga happens.

Beth Lapides and Greg Miller can be seen being mates on Yogamates.com talking about using comedy as a yoga teaching tool. More info on their work both as individuals and partners at uncabaret.com and bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga mat: State Of The Union appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

I’ve always avoided bhujangasana. Teachers bust me for rushing through it. And when I have managed to stay in the pose for the requisite number of breaths I see how easily you can avoid a pose even while you are in it. Something I should have learned during my third year of dating a gay man.

I asked myself what had changed to make me want to crawl inside bhujangasana like it was my favorite snakeskin print dress. Yes, my lower back was stronger, but it was more than that. Then one day I heard myself saying there is nothing but change anymore.

Beth Lapides

As it turns out, the bhujanga in bhujangansana means snake and the bhuj in bhujanga actually means to bend or curve; to change. As I practiced the pose knowing this, I realized that my love affair with bhujangasana was blossoming because it has become a way for me to express my feelings about living through this time of curves in the road. Which was another thing that surprised me. I don’t usually think about Yoga as an expressive art form. I think about it, as it’s usually spoken of, as a technology, a science, a healing modality, a tool and now apparently a competitive sport as well.

But, as the dancing Shiva reminds us, Yoga is also a dance. And to me, bhujangasana almost perfectly expresses the feeling of transitioning. The long straight runway of legs (okay for me, the short straight runway of legs) grounding all the way from the tip of the big toes to the pelvic bone, where suddenly everything starts to change.

The shape of bhujangasana is about transition and its placement in a sun salutation or flow series is transitional too. So it’s usually treated as a pass through pose. More like a tree to stand under than a house to live in.

And it is a great way to get from chatarunga to down dog. It’s not the only way, but a decidedly elegant and interesting way.

Not to mention beneficial. Cobra is obviously good for the spine but also apparently good for everything from balancing the thyroid to improving digestion to developing the psychic channels. And maybe it was that very psychic channel that was leading me to look deeper and deeper into the cobra.

It started to seem to me that to avoid bhujangasana was to avoid the essence of Yoga. After all, one of the primary goals of the practice is to raise the mysterious, coiled, serpenty kundalini (literally fire snake, or serpent power) up through the chakras (energy centers). In a sense every yogi is a snake charmer. Every yogi is saying I have a snake coiled up in my ass and I have to get it out! I notice in meditation these days I have a very visceral sense of the two serpents weaving through my chakras, around my spine, like they do on the caduceus. Of course the serpent is not the only animal in Yoga. A Hatha practice is filled with animals: dogs, birds, camels, lions, the exuberant monkey Hanuman, and even half-dead bugs! It’s a virtual class menagerie.

But the snake is the central Yoga animal. Without the snake there is no Yoga. In fact Patanjali, the author of the famous Yoga Sutra, is generally depicted as half man/half serpent, a human torso resting on a coiled snake, a kind of serpentine centaur. And although it’s never mentioned in any compendium of symbology, the serpent seems to represent the sutra. The thread. The illusive thread. The thing onto which the beads of our mala are strung. The thing that connects each of our breaths. The shaft of life threading our chakras together.

The serpent, despite its bad reputation as a tempter and a demon, is the naked truth of ourselves upon which we hang each mood, each part of ourselves, each of the days of our lives.

So class became all about cobra for me. And then I started to realize that serpents have been snaking their way through my consciousness for the past year. We all talk about the pesky ego-driven and distracting Monkey Mind. But lately I feel I’ve developed what I think of as Snake Mind. I think about snakes and serpents and all things snakey and serpenty: DNA, DNA alignment and re-genetics, sound waves, light waves, the new wave, wavelengths and the Milky Way, which the Mayans called The Cosmic Serpent. And I even think about them in a snakey way. I find my mind not hopping around in that torturous playful monkey way, but slithering, creating threads of thought that at their best illuminate pathways of connection. At their worst, though, these snakey thoughts overlap and tangle, and threaten to overwhelm my glimmers of single-minded wholistic clarity with a giant knot of interconnectedness.

But when I’m practicing bhujangasana it’s the strong spine open hearts serpent spirit that I plug into. In fact bhujangasana is sometimes called nagasasna, nag being another word for snake. And it struck me that the Nag in the famous Nag Champa incense must refer to the coiling smoke. (Champa is a particular flower.)

So the other day as I was wriggling into the pose I started to think of the lower half of my body as an incense stick and the upper half as the snakey trails of scent. And instead of feeling constricted in the pose I felt very free. I imagined the very top of my head as the ash: Hot! I mean with the intellect falling away.

Oh why do we have to rush out of this pose? There’s so much here! So much in this most yogic of poses. And in this most transitional of times.

Beth Lapides and Greg Miller can be seen being mates on Yogamates.com talking about using comedy as a Yoga teaching tool. More info on their work both as individuals and partners at uncabaret.com and bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat: Snake In The Class appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Kundalini is a very powerful and transformational energy located at the base of the spine at a space within the last three vertebrae of the tailbone or coccyx that extends to the perineum. Kundalini is a natural birthright for all people and can be sought and nurtured with a physical and spiritual practice. Yoga is one of these practices.

Any one or a number of phenomena can be experienced when the kundalini shakti is beginning to awaken in a person. These will most often come first into the dream life and then expand into the waking physical life. There is a long history of symbols that can be seen to announce the beginning of awakening the kundalini shakti.

Those in the medical establishment wear one of them on their lapels at work: the caduceus. This is a physiological representation of the pathways of kundalini. The two serpents and a staff are symbols of the spine (staff) and the two serpents (the two central nadis, or channels: ida and pingala) as the spiraling pathways the kundalini follows when awakened. The wings are the spirit taking flight or the seventh chakra (energy center) becoming illuminated.

Serpents are one of the more common forms used by the kundalini shakti. The human spine resembles a serpent standing on its tail if one observes the natural S curve of the human spine. Tigers and butterflies, birds and fish, serpents and cocoons and many other examples of the transformative natures are used as communication templates for the person from their kundalini.

You may see these animals in the dream life or in waking visions or in your physical conscious life as there is a blending among all these realities when we begin to walk the kundalini shakti path. The connection to the natural environment is very pronounced and can help us understand how this is indeed a natural expression of the human being.

There are compressions of information that merge from combining the two worlds of the physical and the divine. When an animal communicates with a person in the dream or waking vision the person can be given a large dose of kundalini shakti. When being confronted by the animal, there can often be a sudden release from many natural fears that are associated. These can be extremely blissful experiences. The serpent is sometimes experienced, but this is not a rule as the shakti will appear as it wishes to appear. Tingles and love and energetic vibrations all over the body will often be felt when in the presence of these natural creatures.

Spiders may also be experienced. You may even see spiders riding a web just a few feet from you. The common reaction is to jump! So you jump. But when you look back there will be nothing there for your physical eyes to see. This will give you an idea as to what just occurred, and when your conscious mind remembers the kundalini process you will make the associations to kundalini shakti and typically you will never find the spiders anywhere in your house or near you.

These spiders are another aspect of the kundalini shakti. They are another way of testing your ability to understand and not fear the multiple shapes and sizes of the natural forms this intelligent force can assume. Some Native Americans saw the spider as an embodiment of a female goddess. The Dineh’ people of the American Southwest worship the Spider Woman and they attribute to her their knowledge of weaving the beautiful blankets and clothing they are known for around the world. (The name Dineh’ means The People and this is what they call themselves. Other people know them as the Navajo.)

  Tigers are another animal that can represent kundalini shakti and they have a long history of representing strength, power and death. The protector and warrior Goddess Durga rides on a tiger. Even today in an area near Bangladesh, people are still being eaten by tigers. Tigers have a very pronounced and fierce countenance yet when their image or form are experienced inside of a kundalini shakti awakening event or an interactive vision they are to be loved and respected rather than feared. These forms will often reciprocate in a similar manner. The tiger will sometimes lie down upon or next to a person as they sleep. Resting next to them as a way of letting the person know it’s okay. Do not fear. They can form into fierce aspects of protection if the person is still in the stages of feeling they need protection.

The experience of kundalini shakti is as real as the shoes on your feet and the fridge in the kitchen. The animals are part of the divine process and are an aspect of a new world blending with our familiar world. We must be prepared to meet this new world with open hearts and open minds and not to become confined by fears. This is an introduction into the enlightened path.

Master Chrism is a kundalini awakened teacher with twenty years of experience with a guidance to teach for those who are guided to receive. Kundalini as it expresses through Chrism is the teacher and Chrism writes from his own experience with this divine interaction and what he is able to perceive via the kundalini. Chrism will presenting a lecture in Los Angeles, Tuesday, April 28 and a weekend seminar May 2 – 3. For more information, call (714) 709 – 3550 or visit: kundaliniawakeningseminars.com.

By Chrism

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Tigers, Spiders & Snakes, Oh My! appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Beth Lapides: My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

I’ve always been kind of embarrassed by how much I need my yoga teachers to tell me what a great job I’m doing. It’s not a job after all, it’s yoga. Not that I don’t love to be challenged, corrected, adjusted, egged on, pushed or even teased. But I need the cheerleading too.

I love to hear those special words: good, great, super duper! And it’s even better when my name’s attached. Really good, Beth.

That’s why I love having a regular studio; a place where everybody knows your name. Just like on Cheers, the TV show. Your name is your own personal cheer. Yay: your name here!

I loved to be cheered on so I’m always cheering other people on too: friends, baristas, the guy in front of me in line at the supermarket. I’m afraid I might have scared off one or two yoga newbies with overenthusiastic praise. That was your first class? You did great! Good for you! That was a really hard class, too. Next time you might find it a little easier without the socks.

I notice that when I teach writing/performing workshops, the more I cheer my students on, the easier it is for them to hear my notes. There’s something about the phrase Here’s what’s so great about you that really seems to open up the ears.

I first learned about the power of cheerleading in high school, when I was a literal cheerleader. The kind with pom-poms and a miniskirt. People are always surprised when I tell them about that part of my life. I guess it’s because I’m bookish, anti-authoritarian and afraid of heights. Or maybe it’s just the dark curly hair.

I wasn’t exactly a Laker Girl or anything. I was a cheerleader for the JCC: The Jewish Community Center of New Haven. Beep beep ungawa, the JCC has got the powa. I never did any flips or pop downs or even any cartwheels. But we did do a pyramid. Jews building a pyramid? Hmm. The historical symbolic resonance did not even occur to us. So ok, maybe we didn’t exactly bring it on, but we screamed our lungs out for the team. And we put out for them too.

You can’t translate seed sounds into other words. You simply have to experience them and use other words to try to describe that experience. And of course seeds are activated by…? Sun! Ra ra ram!

Sometimes we minimize the power of cheerleading. We hire life coaches…not life cheerleaders. But if you want evidence of the power of cheerleading, look at the mega-media success of Oprah. Op-rah ra ra!

Yes ra ra ra! The most primordial cheer. And ra? Etymologically, ra is attributed to hurrah. But where did hurrah come from? My guess is that hurrah comes from Ra, the Egyptian Sun God. And if there is any better cheerleader than the sun, I don’t know what it is. Grow! Grow! Grow! Fewer hours of the sun cheering us on may be why we get more depressed in the winter.

In fact, we’re learning that deficiencies of Vitamin D, a vitamin that our bodies produce in response to the sun’s rays, increases a person’s risk of developing cancer. It turns out all that staying in and avoiding the sun, all that sun blocking, is just as lethal as overexposure. We can take D3 supplements, but it’s good to actually spend some time with being in union with the sun, closing our eyes and saying ra ra ra.

After all, what is the center of most Hatha Yoga practices? The surya namaskar, the sun salute! In fact the ha in hatha is Sanskrit for sun (ha ha! = laughing, and so laughing is cheering). Tha is the moon. Us. That which is being cheered.

This year on the winter solstice, the darkest, longest night of the year, Greg and I did a practice of 108 sun salutations. We rock! (rah-k!) we kept saying to cheer ourselves on. I’m still sore. But, we did get through it, thanks to our mutual cheerleading.

For yogis there’s another level of ra ra ra. Ram is one of the Sanskrit bija mantra or seed sounds. When I first learned about seed sounds I wanted to know what they meant. But you can’t translate seed sounds into other words. You simply have to experience them and use other words to try to describe that experience. And of course seeds are activated by…? Sun! Ra ra ram!

Each of the seven major chakras (wheels of energy) in our bodies has a seed sound associated with it. And Ram is the seed of the Manipura (manipurRA!) what’s known as the third chakra. It’s this chakra that corresponds to the solar (like the sun!) plexus. The bright yellow, sun-colored, will-connected, Vitamin D, you-can-Do-it centric, solar plexus. When we chant Ram, we channel sun energy. We’re solar-powered.

Probably the most well-known cheering in yoga studios today happens with Anusara certified and inspired teachers. I know some yogis aren’t into the Anusara practice of applauding after demos. But I say give a cheer, get a cheer. And practicing at Anusara studios helped me be a little less embarrassed about my desire to be cheered on because I realized that I enjoy it just as much when I hear other people getting cheered on as I do when the cheering is for me.

Where did hurrah come from? My guess is that hurrah comes from Ra, the Egyptian Sun God. And if there is any better cheerleader than the sun, I don’t know what it is.

More evidence that we are all one. And that the cheer vibrations are in and of themselves good for everyone. Of course there are lots of ways to cheer people on: Facebook messages, gifts and prizes, or clapping. And according to light and energy workers, clapping is one of the most effective ways to clear a space. Good to know if you find yourself caught without your trusty sage or if perhaps, you happen to make your living as a performer. Say as a comedian, where your job is basically to cheer people up.

Dr. Emoto and other new edge scientists are doing experiments that prove cheering is more than a feel-good panacea, that positive reinforcement has measurable positive results. Which is to say, the phrase good for you, actually is good for you. So I’m accepting the cheering support of others without feeling quite so squeamish about it.

And I’m redoubling my own cheerleading too. So congratulations for making it through this column. You’re doing great! Good for you: your name here!

Beth Lapides cheers people on in workshops where she, and her partner Greg Miller, teach writers, performers, yoga teachers and other humans how to cheer themselves up by understanding and telling their own story. For more info on this and Beth’s shows visit bethlapides.com or email beth@bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Hip Hip Hoorah appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

That’s an exaggeration. Some years, I resolve to not care if I get good at jump ups. Some years, I resolve to work on “inflating my kidneys” in order to get good at jump ups. Or tackling my fear of falling in order to get good at jump ups.

Beth Lapides: My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

I have, in fact, gotten a little bit better at them. At one point, I convinced myself I was actually good at them. Then I started practicing at a studio where many of my fellow yogis and yoginis could actually go from a jump up into handstand and then lower themselves smoothly into uttanasana (standing forward fold) while chatting. I don’t think being green with envy is really considered eco-yoga.

Normally, I am pretty good about staying on my own mat, but that year I resolved to remind myself during jump ups that though I couldn’t really jump up, I was a funny stand-up. Oh I was hilarious, even my jump ups were comical.

I once did a decent jump up though, so I know it’s in me somewhere probably living next door to my ideal weight, which I once weighed for a week. I’m starting to think it’s not jump ups I’m bad at, but resolutions. If you keep resolving the same thing over and over, it’s not really a resolution. It’s just nagging.

Oddly, outside of resolutions I’m always deciding to change and then actually changing.I’m constantly consciously evolving my diet, work, philosophy, practice and even my attitude about change. So what is it about resolutions that lead me down this goal-oriented, process-denying, jump up centric path every year? Is it just that I’m so exhausted by December that my mind goes on autopilot?

I realized that resolution is re-solution. Re-solving. And I hate re-doing things. During a recent hair cut, as Matthew was patiently snipping at my difficult-to-cut curly hair, I was complaining about re-dos: a rewrite that had just landed back on my desk, and the eight pounds I’d gained back and had to re-lose.

“All I ever do is do-overs,” he said cheerfully. Which made me think instead of calling them hair dos, we should call them hair do-overs. And it’s true. Almost every time I’ve had my difficult hair cut, I’ve had to have it recut. Even if you have the easiest bob on the block it grows out and you cut it again: A do over. And writing is rewriting. Of course breathing is something you have to do over all the time. Breathe in? Again?

Of course some things are not as pleasurable, or as primal, as breathing. That’s why we have to be reminded to chop wood, carry water. Or now, as I like to say, chop wood, but not old-growth; carry water but not in the leaching plastic bottles.

I realized that in a yoga practice it’s all do overs, and I don’t mind, because in yoga I always have the attitude that I am practicing. I don’t practice to get perfect; I practice to become a better practicer. In yoga, practice makes practice.

In every class I re-solve poses: for that day, with that day’s body and that day’s energy. When a teacher calls out trikonasana (triangle pose) I don’t think, “oh not again, I’ve already done trikonasana,” I think, “Ahhh sweet trikonasana,” and I start in, re-solving it, and letting it re-solve me. And I resolve to someday be able to say the same for that confounding right angle pose.

Resolution doesn’t just mean becoming resolute, determined to do something. Resolution comes from resolutionem, a Latin word meaning ‘the process of reducing things into simpler forms,’ which in turn comes from a word meaning ‘loosen, dissolve, untie.’ What?! Untie?! Un-unite? Isn’t union, uniting, the heart of yoga? How can untying be part of uniting? Is it a kind of all-encompassing counterpose?

As it turns out, resolvere, to loosen, to resolve leads us to solve and dissolve. I start to see how solving problems, and resolutions are connected to solution, a liquid containing a dissolved substance. Maybe because I have the watery Age of Aquarius on my brain, I start to see us all as pieces of the solution. And that the solution is each of us dissolving into the liquidy wholeness of all of us, them, it, we. Untying, loosening of our egos can result in the uniting with oneness.

So this year I’m not resolving to do anything about my jump ups. This year I will be resolving to practice with an upward facing attitude despite these downwardly mobile times. In whatever pose I’m in. In every now. With every one. Even that girl over there who can jump up like she is flying. Oh wait, is that me in the mirror? Nope. Well, maybe next year.

Beth performs her show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” at Urban Yoga in Palm Springs on Sat. Dec. 13. Maybe you want to bring her to your studio? Contact and info (and get your own “My Other Car is a Yoga Mat” license plate frames): bethlapides.com

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post Practice Makes Practice appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

At difficult times the universe feels alive with signs and symbols pointing to our good discernment or poor judgment surrounding a decision or event: driving home after ending an unhealthy, draining relationship and feeling as though a luminous rainbow in the sky and remarkably clear traffic mirror a newly empowered inner life; or when the shrill noise of a carpenter’s drill from a nearby office renovation mockingly punctuates a meeting with a demanding client.

During these heightened moments we may hear our own intuition plainly guiding us. On other days our internal guidance is less than lucid. At these times, a system like astrology offers a map of reality that can shed light on one’s larger life path and provide eloquent, helpful information about the qualities coloring the atmosphere.

LA YOGA’s monthly astrology forecast is based on the science of Jyotish, the traditional astrology of India. Jyotish is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘the study of the lords of light.’ In the West it is usually called Vedic Astrology. One strength of this system is in daily forecasting, in which Jyotish reveals in practical detail the energies influencing our immediate environment and recognizes each day’s most natural activities, allowing us to actively integrate the general mood present. This knowledge helps us center ourselves internally, pace ourselves well and channel our energies creatively and productively in the external world.

The Sidereal Zodiac: “In the Beginning…”

At its foundation, Jyotish differs from Western astrology that uses the equinox-based tropical zodiac, with its use of the astronomically more accurate sidereal zodiac (sidereal meaning pertaining to the stars). In the West, we usually think the spring equinox on March 21 as marking the sun’s entry into the zodiac’s first sign of Aries but in actuality the sun doesn’t enter this constellation until around

April 14. The reason for this difference lies in a slight wobble in the earth’s rotation that has gradually caused the correlation between the sun’s ingress into Aries with the start of spring to slip backwards over the centuries. By not calculating and adjusting for this there is a continual shift of the vernal equinox. Western astrology uses a symbolic zodiac based upon the sky as it appeared over 1,700 years ago. Jyotish continually makes adjustment for this phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes, maintaining the true calculation of planets against their backdrop of stars.

Classical Jyotish has six specific branches:

• Gola: observational astronomy, our direct perception of the planets and stars.
• Ganita: astronomical and astrological mathematical calculation.
• Jataka: birth or natal astrology; interpretation of the personal horoscope.
• Prashna: answering questions based upon casting the chart for the moment when a question is asked; called “horary astrology.”
• Muhurta: Choosing astrologically favorable times for any action; called “electional astrology.”
• Nimitta: Shamanic interpretation of the natural world.

The most widely known and requested is Jataka or the study of a person’s birth chart. This natal astrology is psychologically revealing and often astonishing in its predictive power. It vividly describes the unique, changing qualities of one’s personality, important life lessons and likely future events.

The astrology of daily forecasting makes up the branch known as Muhurta. Since our efforts tend to produce results according to the planetary configurations under which they are initiated, this science aims to recognize the best season, day and time to perform activities and set intentions of all kinds. In India, honoring Muhurta is important for foundational life events. These include: the time when an infant first receives solid food, when a person embarks upon a new educational path, and when a person would decide to receive spiritual initiation, get married, moving into a new home or start a business. Muhurta also includes the practice of choosing favorable days for routine activities like travel, meetings or socializing to facilitate centered, clear action and harmonious experiences.

The Panchanga:

The Daily Forecast of Vedic Astrology In India, the almanac known as the panchanga is widely consulted for daily astrology.
Panchanga means five limbs, and its elements give information about the relationship between the Sun and Moon, the luminaries influential in creating our daily atmosphere. The panchanga or five limbs are:

1. Weekday (Vara)
2. Lunar day (Tithi)
3. Lunar half-day (Karana)
4. The moon’s position in a Nakshatra, “lunar mansion” or “star”
5. The joining together of the degree positions of the sun and the moon (Yoga)

Of these, the most important considerations are the weekday (vara), lunar day (tithi) and nakshatra, the factors that most strongly color the fundamental qualities of the day. The weekday’s role is often considered in how a specific planet rules each day: the sun rules Sunday, the Moon Monday, Mars Tuesday and so on. It is ideal to perform tasks similar to each planet’s characteristics on its corresponding day. Mercury, planet of intellect and eloquence makes Wednesday a natural day for meetings and presentations. Jupiter, planet of higher knowledge, children and general good fortune makes Thursday an excellent day for receiving spiritual teachings and making important commitments related to children. Venus, planet of romance, leisure and culture naturally supports these enjoyments on Friday. Saturn, the planet of delays, misfortune and mature responsibility governs Saturday, making this an ideal day for retreat, rest and receiving Ayurvedic treatments like oil massage, but not the first choice for scheduling major joyful beginnings like marriage.

The Tithi (lunar day) describes the brightness and waxing or waning of the Moon. The moon represents manas or the emotional, sensory mind. Each of the Moon’s 30 phases indicates changeable energies that render the mind introspective, extroverted, stable, unsteady, gentle or severe. In the West, we see this concept in our recognition of the full moon as a time of high energy – for better or for worse!

The Glory of the Moon

The nakshatra is one of the profound glories of Jyotish. These 27 lunar constellations of the Vedic zodiac measure 13 degrees and 20 minutes, corresponding roughly to one day’s movement of the Moon. Each night the Moon radiates the unique shakti or creative energy of the nakshatra where it sits, coloring the mood on Earth. Each nakshatra contains layers of symbolic imagery and numerous characteristics such as soft, severe, upward moving or downward moving. In Muhurta, the nakshatra is of great importance in understanding the natural qualities of each day. Some nakshatras are gentle, supporting light, sweet activities
like socializing and romance. Harsh or practical nakshatras support tasks with a no-nonsense dynamic. Moveable nakshatras support travel, while fixed ones support creating foundations and long-term planning.

In the monthly Jyotish forecast, the most favorable days are often those when the Moon is in one of the especially auspicious nakshatras such as the upward-moving, charismatic and creative Rohini Nakshatra (Lord Krishna’s nakshatra). Underlying the more intense days is often one of the severe or sharp stars such as the harsh Ardra Nakshatra, whose symbol is a teardrop, and whose deity is Rudra, god of destruction. Sharp stars may not be good for a carefree, breezy day, but can still be beneficial for actions that require a sharp, tough-love energy, such as engaging in a necessary confrontation or detaching from a relationship.

In natal astrology, the nakshatra of one’s Moon reveals much about one’s temperament, life lessons, personal relationships and even profession. In India, people regularly inquire about each other’s Janma Nakshatra (the nakshatra in which your Moon is placed in your birth chart) much in the way we ask about Sun signs. In matchmaking, a couple’s nakshatras are significant for determining whether they are likely to share agreeable emotions and goals.

These elements of Jyotish at first might seem foreign and esoteric to Western tastes, perhaps in the same way that yoga and Ayurveda might have seemed exotic to those who after some introduction now seamlessly appreciate their morning neti-pot ritual and daily round of Sun Salutations. Nevertheless, this divine science is worth getting to know as an inspired system for supporting a harmonious, balanced life and a clear practical path.

By Tamiko Fischer

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post We Are All Made of Stars appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

I was settling into my end-of-class lotus, feeling so grateful for my yoga practice, ready for a little oming. But no. The teacher asked us to mentally list three things we were grateful for. And I panicked. Because I’ve quit gratitude lists.

It’s not that I’m an ingrate. I thank people all the time. In fact thank you for reading this column. But a gratitude list isn’t for other people, it’s for you. And maybe God. Or the Universe. Or Big Mind. Or whatever you call it. And if you can come up with something we can all call it, I would be especially grateful.

A few years ago I was stuck in a low point and everyone suggested gratitude lists. So I tried them. And every morning the same thing happened. I’d start my list with what I was unquestionably most grateful for: my beloved esposo, Greg. And then immediately this train of thought rolled down the track of my mind: What if Greg dies, what if I die, oh my God who will die first?! Oh yes, these gratitude lists were really getting my days off to an excellent start.

I tried rescheduling my gratitude list into different parts of the day, like a TV executive moving a pet show around the schedule. I found that if I did the list late at night I was less grateful for generic things like “yoga” and more grateful for specific things like that one second of balancing in handstand. Although I wasn’t quite up to being grateful for the awkward fall that followed it.

Some writers say God is in the details. Maybe that’s true of gratitude lists too, which after all, are a kind of writing. Because with a more detailed gratitude list, I panicked less, appreciated more and, as a bonus actually was able to get off the Ambien.

Still, I was using the practice to fall asleep and wasn’t it supposed to be helping me to be more awake? Gratitude had become one more item to check off on my spiritual to-do list. I decided to quit listing and try integrating gratefulness into my life. And right when I was struggling with this, I ran across one of those “greatest hits” parables that you see attributed to every religious/cultural/teaching tradition. Man’s son captures a strong, beautiful, wild horse. (I always imagine Brad Pitt and an equine Angelina Jolie.) The neighbors tell the man he’s so fortunate. The man says, we’ll see. The horse throws the son (he is a wild horse after all, was it even right to try to tame him?) and the son breaks his leg. The neighbors are like, that horse was a curse! The man says, we’ll see. Soldiers come to the village and take away all the able-bodied young men. The son is spared. What are the chances? Now the neighbors tell the man he is so lucky! The man of course says, we’ll see.

Two things bother me about this story. One: Can’t we update our parables? Like what about this one? Man’s son wins hybrid vehicle in raffle. Neighbors tell man how lucky he is. Man says, we’ll see. Son’s driving on the freeway and is hit by a Hummer. Car totaled. Huge hospital bill. No insurance. Neighbors say too bad. Man says, we’ll see. The draft is reinstated and the son is exempt because of his injuries.

It also bothers me that after centuries of retellings the son is still in the story, despite the fact that he does not have one single line of dialogue. I know enough about ending up on the cutting room floor to know if the son didn’t need to be there he would have been edited out. No lines? Why are we still paying him? Give the Dad the horse!

But I see now. We can’t cut the son because we are the son, not the father or neighbors. We don’t just analyze the ups and downs, we experience them. And the thing is, when you are the one who is thrown from a large muscled mammal, or from your job, house, relationship or health, a part of you may easily say we’ll see. But for me, even when I am saying we’ll see, I am usually also saying yay or nay. I have the score-keeping neighbors and the detached father sitting on my shoulders – as diametrically opposed as a devil and an angel.

There’s another level on which we are all the son. The son is the sun. This linguistic connection is not incidental. Literally, we are the sun. Our life-giving star is primarily hydrogen. And so are we. All of the sons and daughters (who I think of as girl sons) of earth are suns. As Sly sang: Everybody is a star. Though he has no lines, the son is the star of the story because the son does stuff. The son takes action. So some of us worship The Son. And some of us do Sun Salutes.

So we definitely can’t cut the son. Of course the horse has no lines either, but you can’t cut the horse. The horse drives the story. And it’s key that it’s a wild horse, not a plow horse. Because we want to ride! The ride is what we came here for. The handstand and the fall after the handstand. And the getting up after the fall and getting ‘back on the horse.” Riding well is about being able to be grateful for it all, even being grateful for not being able to be grateful for what you have because you’re afraid you’re going to lose it. Right now I’m just grateful I got through that thought.

One of the things I love so much about yoga is that it promises – and delivers – not the freedom from painful experience but the freedom to experience fully: To experience it all gratefully.Great-fully! Even if we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Even if we reject the idea that things ever “turn out” at all.

Easier said than done. But one night I was sitting on my cushion and I totally felt it: Infinite gratitude for everything and anything. Whatever wafted through my monkey mind was lit by gratitude’s rosy glow. And then for a few breaths, there was blessedly nothing. Nothing to cling to. Nothing but gratitude. And I thought, thanks for nothing. Which made me laugh. And laughing is the wild ride I give infinite thanks for.

Beth Lapides performs her chakradelic new show: 100% Happy 88% of the Time, Friday, November 7 and Saturday, November 8 at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica (310) 315-1459 and Saturday, December 13 at Urban Yoga in Palm Springs.Beth’s show is ‘Theater of Consciousness:’ free range comedy with big ideas and eye popping visuals. For tickets or info about bringing the show to your studio: info@bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat: Thanks For Nothing appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

And now the orbs have bounced into my consciousness. The orbs are impish little balls of light that first started appearing in photos of crop circles. Then they showed up in pictures of other sacred sites. And now they are in all sorts of pictures. Zoos, backyards, a friend even sent me one surrounding a couple at a mall.

Debunkers claim the orbs are dust spots or “just previously subvisual particles.” As if there’s any “just” in that phrase. Rebunkers
are saying they see orbs without their cameras.

“Why don’t I get any orbs in my pictures?” Apparently the orbs don’t mind a little whining because as soon as I asked they immediately started appearing in my pictures.

I experimented and found that when I felt more loving while I was shooting, bigger, brighter and more abundant orbs dotted my shots. Which meant that my consciousness was affecting reality in a way that my digital camera could see.

I feel like my experiments are a tiny part of a great wave of Citizen Science. Like Dr. Emoto and his water crystals or Lynn McTaggart’s work on focused group intention. I also feel like it’s connected to my yoga, which I see as the great experiment: You change your behavior and watch the results. You are the experimenter and the experiment.

Lately I find that when I think I’m really not something, often, that is exactly what I am. So I am staying open.

And then I heard about a satsang (spiritual gathering) to receive darshan (blessings from the teacher) with Swami Vishwananda. I didn’t actually know what darshan was, but I liked that. Beginner’s mind is so much easier when you are actually a beginner.

I’ve never been a guru girl. I’m more of an independent study type. But lately I find that when I think I’m really not something, often,
that is exactly what I am. So I am staying open. And this latest event has everything going for it: It is free, on a night I actually have available, at a venue so close I won’t have to worry about my yoga carbon footprint.

Plus this is a bhakti-yoga event, which I understood to mean Love Yoga. And when I get to the hotel ballroom, the love is flowing.

I walk into a heartbreakingly beautiful kirtan (devotional chanting). Within 30 seconds I’m sobbing. When my eyes clear I see that I’m dressed all wrong. The room is a sea of white easy-fit cotton. I’ve got on slinky summer black with pink straps. Modest only by Hard Tail standards. Oops. Beginner’s mind, beginner’s wardrobe.

There are a couple dozen other obvious uninitiates but we’re warmly absorbed, like ground pepper into creamy soup.

After an hour or three the kirtan peaks and the Swami arrives. Not in white, in hot disco pink. Maybe in bhakti yoga you earn your pink robe the way you earn your black belt in karate. Or maybe the Swami is a yogi fashionista. I feel better about my non-white pink-strapped outfit. I feel better about everything.

I stand in a slow moving line to get a one-on-one with the Swami. I am not impatient. No one is impatient. We are not waiting. We are loving.

Orbs

Finally I am eye to eye with the Swami. Should I keep my eyes open, shut? I try open. Feels amazing. I try shut. Even better. But I don’t trust it and I open them again. The Swami dabs my third eye as if to say, it doesn’t really matter whether your other two eyes are open or shut. It only matters that you feel the love.

Back home, still glowing with bhakti vibes, Greg and I continue our orb experiments.We shoot and then get into bed to review
the pictures.

What we see is kind of mind boggling. Around me, in various pictures taken at various angles, are two bright pink orbs. Exactly the color of the Swami’s robe.

Is the Swami’s consciousness affecting the orbs? Is my consciousness of the Swami affecting the orbs or are the orbs trying to tell me that they also had a good time at that party?

These rose-colored orbs do not appear again for a week. Then I tell this story about the Swami and pink orbs on stage. And the photos from that show, when I’m talking about the pink orbs, have pink orbs in them!

I love those orbs, for their sense of humor and for raising my consciousness. They asked me to be in a state of love the same way the Swami had. And maybe they were the same as the Swami because a guru is literally one who dispels darkness with light. And that’s exactly what the orbs are doing. The orbs are gurus. So I guess I am a guru girl after all.

Beth Lapides is the author of Did I Wake You? Haikus for Modern Living and the creator of Un-Cabaret. Find out more about her shows, workshops and seminars at bethlapides.com or email her at: beth@lapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat: May The Orbs Be With You appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

Don’t Think of it as Pain

Don’t think of it as pain,” my first yoga teacher used to say. “Think of it as sensation.”

Yes, painful sensation.

But I did start to think of it as sensation. And it helped. So I shifted my attitude off the mat too. For instance, I didn’t think of hunger as hunger, just a hungry sensation.

Two years of daily classes later, I was in upavista konasana (seated, wide-legged forward fold) when a different teacher gave me an overly enthusiastic adjustment. There was a ripping sound. “Was that your pants?” he asked, adding insult to injury.

No, that was me.

At first I thought this painful sensation might be a good thing. Maybe something was opening up. So much had already opened through yoga, and I hadn’t always been aware that it was un-opened to begin with. Then I noticed I was drooling from the pain of what I now know was a torn hamstring.

I tried to heal it with heat then ice, ice then heat, and finally, heat over ice, which is to say, vodka on the rocks.

I accepted a complimentary private session from the apologetic teacher. But it didn’t help mend the injury, or my anger. I tried electrical impulse therapy, various massage therapies and finally acupuncture.

“You can’t take the pain,” says Mimi Yu, the tough-love acupuncturist as I lie bare-assed and crying on the crinkly white paper. She has needles in her own neck, in the Frankenstein spots. I guess to prove that she can take it. She was right about me but she was wrong too. Because yes, I was crying but there I was, taking it.

“Jewish girls so spoiled,” she says as she twiddles the needles. “You better never have baby. You can’t take the pain.”

But I kept coming back, because on the first visit Mimi Yu had told me “eight visit; no more pain.” It became my mantra: Eight visit; no more pain. No more pain. Such a seductive thought. Not realistic though. I once saw the Dalai Lama point to his body and tell Larry King, “You have this, you have pain.”

One day Mimi’s acupuncturist-in-training son wanders in to twiddle my needles. He offers to try a technique he’d just learned: heating the needles. We could do it this very Saturday. Hot needles? Wow that sounds great, but I think I’m booked on Saturday. Yes all day. Doing what? Oh, not having hot needles stuck in my ass. Apparently, we all have our limits as to how much pain we are willing to go through to have no more pain.

After ‘eight visit’ the pain had receded enough so that I could function again. But it was far from gone. I was always aware of it. Like a broken heart. In fact a major yoga injury is like a broken heart. It seems impossible that the thing that felt so good is now making you feel so bad. It seems impossible that the very thing that was fixing your whole life is now ruining it.

My injury was putting the ow into flow but I kept practicing anyway. I had to. Yoga had become my coping mechanism. And I was in the middle of a major life/career transition. I’ve heard people say that most yoga injuries happen during transitions between poses. But the timing of my injury, right as I was in contract negotiations, makes me wonder if most yoga injuries don’t actually happen during transitions between phases of our lives.

Maybe hugging is the answer to everything. After all, all hugging is yoga, a union with what you hold dear to your heart and a falling away of everything else.

When my new phase finally started up it was almost as unsettled as the transition had been. I was working seventy-hour weeks hosting two daily radio/internet shows. It was a new job, at a new company, in a new medium. And in order to halve my commute I moved to a new neighborhood. But I kept practicing. I collected schedules from every yoga studio near work and would duck out any afternoon I could for a distracted, exhausted, injury impaired practice.

And then I was fired from the sinking ship. Ouch. I tried not to think of it as pain but as a painful sensation – to my ego and bank account. “I have time to focus on my practice again,” I told myself. And instead of crying over spilt soy milk I began to search for a new yoga home. One with a teacher who would help me practice around the injury. I had by now, given up hope of ever healing it. And then I found Anthony at City Yoga in West Hollywood.

“Hug your muscle to the bone,” he instructed. And after a few months of struggling to figure out how to hug my muscle to the bone and then and a few more months of actually hugging my muscle to the bone, my yoga injury was miraculously healed with yoga.

Maybe hugging is the answer to everything. Hugging trees, hugging each other. Hugging the curves of this winding road into the future.

I recently ran across a relationship advice book that prescribed six hugs per day. Greg and I started joking that we weren’t meeting our quota. So we started taking hug breaks and now there are days when what started as a goof turns a four o’clock funk into four o’clock fun. After all, all hugging is yoga, a union with what you hold dear to your heart and a falling away of everything else.

Then one day, mid-hug, I noticed how active hugging is. And suddenly it was so obvious. I’d been injured because I was practicing passively, without active engagement of the muscles. The adjustment wasn’t over enthusiastic, my practice was under enthusiastic.
And when I owned my part in the injury, my anger disappeared. I really had healed my yoga injury with yoga. Except I don’t think of it as an injury anymore. I think of it as a teacher. A very painful teacher.

Beth Lapides is a comedian, writer and teacher. Her new show is “100% Happy 88% of the Time,” a more convenient truth about our times, blending funny personal stories with eye-popping edge science and adventures on the spiritual edge. Don’t miss her next performance on Saturday, October 18, at M-Bar, 1253 N. Vine, Los Angeles, CA 90038. (323) 993 – 3305 or visit: bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

In yoga class I caught myself beating myself up about beating myself up. I took it as a sign to start focusing on ahimsa (nonviolence). In classical yoga, ahimsa is generally given as the first yama (ethical precept), and defined as the non-harming of others by thought, word or deed.

The idea of harming others seems off. Because isn’t the idea of otherness itself violent? Isn’t the act of separating the totality of unbound consciousness into ‘me’ and ‘not me’ a kind of violence? If we are all part of one consciousness, there really is no other to harm. So, when I beat myself up, not only is the berating itself violent, but it means I’m separating myself, creating an artificial other.

I’ve been practicing on my mat, at my desk and even in the highly unflattering light of dressing rooms. But my biggest challenge is in the kitchen. In terms of eating, practicing ahimsa is often defined as being a vegetarian. I actually was a vegetarian before I was a yogi, and before I knew much about nutrition. Unfortunately, I learned that it’s possible to assault yourself pretty brutally with bread and butter.

Now I don’t know what I am. Sometimes people ask if I’m a vegetarian, assuming that I am; and I say no, I’m just annoying. Because I’m a picky eater. I’m always looking for the optimum energy-giving, life-enhancing, nontoxic, sensually-satisfying edibles. Sometimes, given all the variables, a little fish or chicken seems like the best choice. But like most of life now, the choices just aren’t that simple. I’d love the ego gratification of checking off the box: vegetarian. Or even better, vegan. And the clarity of being able to say what I am. I’ve heard my style of eating described as ‘meat-reducer’. Also ‘weight-reducer’. I pay close attention to the (hopefully local and organic) sourcing of the food. What do I call that? A ‘sourcer-ess’?

Now it seems most important to not eat industrially processed food. If I can’t get the corporations out of Iraq, at least I can get them out of my body.

Another problem I have with the classical vegetarian interpretation of ahimsa: plants seem as alive to me as animals. And science backs that up. Experiments have proven that plants recognize the people who water them, and perk up when those water bearers come into the room. Plants respond to consciousness being directed at them by emitting more light. Is it possible that vegetables don’t feel pain? I’m here to tell you, I’ve heard the carrots scream.

Those on the forefront of water research say that water is improved if we love it. And thank it. Two parts thanks to one part love. Apparently, those are the proportions that the water likes best.

Ahimsa in the kitchen? With the cutting, chopping, boiling, searing, grinding, grating, slicing, dicing, not to mention mincing. Yikes! And what about the chewing?

They say you’re supposed to chew each bite a hundred times. Chewing and chewing till solid is liquid. Till the thingness of the food is obliterated and becomes part of you. In fact, I can’t help but feel that eating is inherently vipracticeolent, which is maybe why we’ve come to use the violent euphemism, breaking bread.

Recently I experimented with a totally raw diet. I was attracted to the calm peaceful energy of spirulina (which I’ve heard provocatively
described as “a plant with some animal qualities”), and swayed by alluring before and after photos. But I couldn’t hop on the juicing bandwagon. For one thing, sipping the carrot, celery and beet seemed nonviolent till I had to deal with the pulp, which definitely
doesn’t look like you made gentle love to it. Plus it feels like a waste of fiber.

I pay close attention to the (hopefully local and organic) sourcing of the food. What do I call that? A ‘sourcer-ess’?

But the raw diet got me on a banana kick, and I’ve been relishing the highly nonviolent experience of this monkey favorite. The skin pulls off so easily. Not like a grapefruit for instance, whose skin you can actually hear tearing away from its fruit. And chewed banana is not much different than pre-chewed. Banana is what it is. The syllables BA-NA-NA even suggest the “seed sounds” in its name. Banana is the funniest fruit too!

Then again, most bananas aren’t locally grown, which means their carbon footprint is big, which is violent to the Earth. Not to mention that the pesticides used on non-organic bananas are killing the songbirds. So, it turns out vegetarian eating is harmful to animals.

Of course water is ultimately the most peaceful thing to consume. Assuming you don’t boil it too hard or keep it locked up in a horrible plastic bottle. Water loves to move. And those on the forefront of water research say that water is improved if we love it. And thank it. Two parts thanks to one part love. Apparently, those are the proportions that the water likes best. And when you are loving your water while you drink it, you are loving yourself, because the water becomes you. You are 80-90% water. You are it. It is you. All is love. In union. What could be more yogic?

But there are no ‘aquatarians’, (let’s not get into the pee drinkers!) because you can’t live on water alone.

So maybe you’re not what you eat, but how you eat it. For me, yogic eating currently means eating with a nonviolent intention, an intention to be in the now when I eat. And to be in union with the people with whom I am sharing food. To be one with the food itself. Binding to it. Although hopefully not with too many foods that are binding.

Beth Lapides is the author of Did I Wake You? Haikus for Modern Living and the creator of Un-Cabaret www.uncabaret.com. Find out more about her shows, workshops and seminars at bethlapides.com or email her at beth@lapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

I’m a third-generation American, a second-generation control freak, and I now realize, a first-generation yogi. The other day, I was reading a teacher’s bio. Her first teacher? Her mom. She’s been practicing since she was two. “I’ll never catch up,” I thought, which just put me farther behind. If I’d been practicing since I was two, I’d never think an unenlightened thought like that.

Then, in the kind of synchronicity I’ve come to expect from life lately, every yoga book I picked up was written by someone who had learned yoga from their mom or dad. Yesterday I started reading The Science of Breath where I learned that Swami Rama was raised in a Himalayan cave and “trained in the closely guarded secrets of yoga from boyhood.”

How I long to have been trained in the closely guarded secrets of yoga since ‘boyhood’.’’I thought I was jealous of the wardrobes of the Sex and the City actresses until I read that. Actually, I was raised in a kind of cave too. We called it the suburbs. And I also learned some closely guarded secrets. We called them hondeling and kvetching.

My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

I had a flash of bitterness, wishing I’d learned triangle in sixth grade instead of playing triangle in an orchestra. But what about the rebellious teen years I loved so much? Did yoga eliminate the need to rebel? Or was one of the closely guarded secrets of yoga that when you are 13 you have to redefine yourself? In a way, wasn’t the Buddha’s whole life an act of adolescent rebellion? But in some ways I did start practicing yoga because of my parents.

Wasn’t the Buddha’s whole life an act of adolescent rebellion?

A dozen years ago, I was in the bathroom of a West Hollywood nightclub, prepping to go on stage. I’d spent a long weekend back East, packing up my ancestral family tract home. I was sleep-deprived, and lost in the memories of a weekend spent going through memories. I tried to bring myself into the here and now so I could go on stage and host the Un-Cabaret, my comedy show that was actually about being in the moment. But then I remembered I’d thrown away all my Monkees albums. Had that been a mistake? Plus I was freaked out about my family all leaving my hometown. Just because I didn’t want to live in my past, that didn’t mean I didn’t want somebody to live there.

I noticed something felt different while I was peeing but I didn’t pay attention. I was thinking about my grandmother’s samovar, and my mom’s purses and my teenage diaries. Then, when I went to wipe I realized that I’d been peeing with my underpants still on. How not in the moment do you have to be to pee with your underpants still on?

I tossed them. Sad too. They were the cutest Tweety Bird g-string. And I decided in that now, I would start yoga the next day. Sometimes you have to plan ahead to be in the present.

The next morning I bought my first monthly pass at the neighborhood studio. I may have been starting a new leg of my spiritual path, but that didn’t mean I had to leave the bargain gene at home. I loved yoga immediately, and felt I’d found a new home, at this studio, in the practice. Then one day, as I was coming up from my uttanasana (standing forward fold), I noticed that from the inside, the giant YOGA painted on the plate glass window, spelt backwards, read ‘A GOY’. Oy to the vey. Was it a warning? A label? A challenge? A sign of some sort? Did I not belong here?

I was definitively not a goy. Though not so much a Jew either, more Jew-ish. It’s like being a Jew, but a lot more vague. You feel vaguely oppressed. Vaguely guilty. Vaguely like having a nosh. Which isn’t an actual meal or even a snack, a definite portion on a small plate; it’s an open bag of chips, or a cracker from your purse in synagogue. Which is like church, except that there’s usually a moveable wall that can make the room bigger or smaller. Depending. A vaguely sized room.

The only thing that wasn’t vague about growing up Jewish was the directive to ‘Never Forget.’ Now, in yoga I was being told to ‘Be Here Now.’ It was what I had come for. How to reconcile the two? I decided to never forget to be here now.

The only thing that wasn’t vague about growing up Jewish was the directive to ‘Never Forget.’ Now, in yoga I was being told to ‘Be Here Now.’ It was what I had come for. How to reconcile the two? I decided to never forget to be here now.

I realized this was something my Mom had tried her best to teach me. One day, in my pre-teen years, I’d made the perfect tuna sandwich. I ran upstairs, giddy. Mom was excited for me.

“I’m going to make another one,” I said.

“It won’t be as good,” she warned wisely.

Of course it wasn’t. My mother was trying to teach me what Pantanjali is trying to teach me, that the desire to repeat a pleasant experience is one of the causes of the dark unhappy tightness The Yoga Sutra calls duhkha (suffering) and Mom calls shpilkes.

So in some ways, I guess I am a second generation yogi. But in other ways I share the first-generation sensibility. I send something of value back to the old country: Mom’s now using Jill Miller’s yoga balls. Dad is meditating.

I’ve learned a new language and speak it reverently but badly.

And if I could pledge my allegiance to my adopted home with a room full of other immigrants I would do it in a heartbeat. Oh wait. I do, in every class, with every Om.

Beth Lapides is the author of Did I Wake You? Haikus for Modern Living and the creator of Un-Cabaret. Find out more about her shows, workshops and seminars atwww.bethlapides.com or email her at beth@lapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

I used to be a total yoga snob. So when one of my yoga friends reappeared in our world-class class and confessed she’d been ‘doing yoga at the gym,’ I thought, ‘Gym Yoga?! I would never do gym yoga!’ She was back in our class now, because she’d been injured. Sure, gym yoga! Only a fool would do gym yoga!

Then my living situation changed and I couldn’t make it to my world-class class five times a week. Or even four. Or sometimes even once. I did everything I could. I rushed away from things before they ended, I over-extended, I pretended. Basically, I fought the flow that I had worked so hard to learn in my practice.

My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat

When I did get to class, my yoga friends would ask where I’d been.

“Practicing at home,” I would say. I could see that pitying ‘I would never give up these classes’ look in their eyes.

“Isn’t it lonely?” they would ask.

“Oh no,” I would say. But it was lonely. Yes, I tried downloads, CDs, DVDs and being my own teacher. Still, lonely.

In desperation I bought one of those dayglo rave hula hoops because they were pitching hooping as a complementary practice to yoga. The only thing was, I wasn’t actually practicing enough yoga for hooping to be a compliment!

I made it to my world-class class one day but I couldn’t even enjoy it. “Are you okay?” my teacher asked.

“I feel my practice slipping away,” I said.

“It’s just asana. You’re living your yoga.”

“That’s sweet,” I said, and I started to cry.

I decided to join a gym because this way I’d be in shape to practice when I could get to class. And because there is one two minutes from my house. It’s called World Gym. If there was any word that could make me want to join a gym it might be world.

As long as I’m there, I check out the yoga. And to my shock I find a teacher I really like. Now, of course, I’m happily practicing ‘gym yoga’ three times a week. Never say never. Didn’t Pantanjali say something like that in the fifteenth Sutra?

At first doing yoga at the gym freaked me out. So loud! So bright! The classes are only an hour!? Mirrors in the studio? I missed the yoga studio sign in, where incense and ohm chatchkes create a kind of overture for class. Now I enter through a subway-esque turnstile whose electronic ID tracker raises paranoiac feelings about governments and RFIDs [Radio Frequency Identifications] if I let it. But I found that actually, I wasn’t letting it. I was becoming my own source of calm, not depending so much on the lighting and soundtrack.

And what a soundtrack! Instead of the hushed sounds of post-savasana yogis blended with harmonium and waterfall, I am welcomed by POUNDING DANCE MUSIC. So loud I can barely hear myself think. Hey wait, isn’t that a lot like ujjai breathing?

It’s not the only noise. Beyond the turnstile at World, a bank of a dozen TVs hang from the ceiling, blaring “Terror! Gossip! Financial Ruin!” I remind myself that Ganesh is not only the remover of obstacles, but also the placer of them. And that obstacles create opportunities. And that these dozen high-def fear-based images give me the opportunity to consciously embrace love!

Inside the yoga/bike/step/hip-hop room things change. The lights are low, and the Gayatri Mantra plays. But it never quite disguises the other music. Or the punching bag. On the best days the sounds actually blend harmonically into one. And looking at the guys pumping up on the machines it occurs to me that I am pumping up too. Pumping up my drishti (point of focus) , pumping up my ability to focus on the sitars without letting the thump-thumping freak me out.

One extra bonus at the gym: yoga virgins wandering into class. It’s an excellent opportunity to suck new people in. I mean help and give guidance. And then there they are on the Nautilus machines, happy to help me klutz around.

Then one day my teacher pointed out how a particular asana would be expressed “in the perfect Yoga World!”And his tone of voice implied that this was a world we should accept that we might never enter. And while it was true for me with that pose, it occurred to me that I may have entered some sort of other ‘perfect yoga world.’

I notice, partly thanks to World Gym, I’m practicing more yoga in the world. Maybe because I feel like World Gym is so unlikely a spot for yoga, any spot seems like a possible yoga spot to me now. In the car, on stage, in bed, in line at Trader Joe’s. All excellent places to connect with unbound consciousness.

But I am also always so happy to return to my favorite world-class studio. I am happy to practice. In this world or that. Or both. Always mindful in either world that the other exists, that it’s all one world. Thank you gym yoga!

Beth Lapides is the author of Did I Wake You? Haikus for Modern Living and the creator of Un-Cabaret. Find out more about her shows, workshops and seminars at bethlapides.com or email her at: beth@bethlapides.com.

By Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides

Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.

bethlapides.com

The post My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.