I started my “Heart Opening Yoga and Meditation Fall Retreat” in an unusual way this past weekend. I confessed to everyone in our orientation that I was a hypocrite. Really, I did. In the months leading up to this retreat, I saw that I was not at all skillful at keeping my heart open around financial sustainability and co-facilitating with a business partner who has a completely different style of processing than me (how dare he think differently than me! Didn’t he know I was the one with all the years of experience event planning?! Didn’t he know that he needed to buy this ingredient and not that one?). This was my first retreat that was not filled to 75% capacity within the first month. I’m not sure why. I suspect to teach me exactly the lessons I so painfully tried to avoid in the process of trying to get the retreat filled.
Okay, so let me get back to the intro. After introducing the retreat weekend topic, doing intros, house rules, yada, yada, I said to the gathering of souls at the retreat something like this: Im not sure that I really have any business facilitating a weekend about heart opening. I don’t know that I have perfected the market on that. This retreat has made it very clear to me that issues of co-facilitation and finances are something that bring up a lot of fear in me and that when in fear, I close my heart. But what I can tell you is that I try. I try really, really hard. And when I make a mistake, when I fumble, when I hurt someone from unconsciousness and reactivity, when I close my heart, I try very hard to make amends and learn from the experience so I never do it again. I needed to say this to them to be clear and clean. I was not going to be able to hold the space for deep heart opening if I wasn’t able to go there with them.
I find that getting honest like this in the yoga world is a constant job. For me, it’s absolutely inseparable from the goal of my yoga practice and my recovery. For example, I’ll confess to you that until just a few months ago there was this one story I would tell myself about people being flaky in the yoga world which would really get my panties in a wad. I cannot tell you how many times I harbored negative feelings towards yoga teachers who said they were going to be some place at some time, but either cancelled at the last minute or just didn’t show up. It amazes me how I could be shocked by the same behavior from the same person over and over again. What is even more astounding to me is my ability to completely forget all the times I have been flaky and unreliable. For heavens sake, when I first started teaching yoga, I’d cancel class all the time because I had to travel to some yoga training or meet with some guru or quiet my seemingly bottomless urge to move back to NYC with quick visits throughout the month. I was completely unreliable in my wanderlusting and soul searching and have since had to make amends to the businesses I hurt by my unreliable behavior. I need to confess too that sometimes, not all the time, not at all like I used to be, I’m still a total flake. Just yesterday I missed a doctors appointment and forgot to call to cancel and just last week I slept through my alarm clock and missed coffee with my friend Valerie. Who me? Yes, you.
I’ve got a lot more to say on this topic, a lot more ego-ousting to do, but for now, what about you my peeps? Has anything helped you to keep it really real in this sometimes not so yogaish yoga world and this sometimes not so recovering recovery world?
