The Wandering Yogini

• 2012-04-18

  relaxation… what’s that?

  Last week I had an emotional breakdown. Now that sounds dramatic and I don’t really need or want to be dramatic about it, I just started to feel overwhelmed and exhausted at the thought of the smallest tasks that were asked of me. I found myself in a place where everything felt like too much and I just wanted to go somewhere, anywhere to lie on a beach and not be asked to do anything by anyone! It had been building for the last couple of months, I was checking flights to places all over the world and fantasizing of white sand beaches and long undisturbed yoga practices.

  Dreaming of vacation without the ability to go on vacation had started to make me feel trapped. Then it hit me, I had come home from a sweaty yoga practice and there wasn’t much I had to do until I taught later in the day. All I wanted to do was lie on the couch and relax! However, almost immediately, I remembered that I didn’t have Hebrew school that week and that I had promised myself a long review of all the work we had done in the last two months. Then the anxiety started, as the current state of my Hebrew review was not so good. I sat there feeling the stress build in my shoulders, and then I realized I really don’t know how to relax. I pretend I do, but work life balance is not something I’ve come close to mastering and as such I often find myself feeling exhausted and dreaming of vacation.

  The desire to relax and the inability to do so is a relatively common occurrence in my life. I find it really hard let go of the list of things I’m “supposed” to be doing. Now this might sound obvious to those who know me, but I’ve been denying it for years, living in the space of, “I know how to relax, I just prefer to be busy”. I do enjoy being busy, and sometimes do I take the time to relax, it’s just that my relaxation usually comes with the sensation of shit I have so much to do how can I let myself lie on the sofa, which forces the question - is this really relaxation?

  I know I’m not alone in these feelings of panic and my incapability of letting go. The inability to rest appears to be a bit of a modern epidemic. Most people don’t take time for themselves, and most keep a long list of things we need to get done in the back of our minds’. For a long time, I thought I had already figured it out, I believed that by choosing to be a yoga teacher and not working a typical 9-5 job would allow me the time I needed to feel rejuvenated. I always tell people I choose to make less money and have more time, which is true. The problem with this scenario is the constant sensation that having free time is bad and that I should be doing more stuff. I lived in denial about this for a long time, if I was at home “relaxing” I better read a yoga book so at least I can learn something while I’m relaxing and not just waste my time. I don’t actually remember the last time I read a book just for fun.

  Two and a half weeks after our big move across the city to Jaffa things have started to settle down and having time off from Hebrew school has given me more free time, but I haven’t really allowed myself to take a break. The exhaustion came and still I didn’t let myself relax, I seem to always find ways to fill my time instead of taking the time to refresh myself.

  Once it hit me, I felt relieved, work/life balance is a skill I lack at the moment but one I can learn! Maybe I can learn how to relax without a white sandy beach. Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could experience real relaxation while in my daily life, mastering the work/life balance so that vacation could be a pleasure as opposed to a necessity. I’m not sure how to do this, if I knew I would be writing a very different blog post right now, but I do think its possible. Maybe if I do the work upfront in managing my life in a productive way as opposed to being guilt driven, with the feeling that I will never do enough I will start to feel my free time is really MY time.

  I think part of it is learning to live in the moment, so that I’m not living into the future where I have a million things to do but I’m focused on doing whatever it is I’m doing right now; reading a book, teaching a yoga class, or in transport from one place to another. I think giving myself permission to experience the present moment, putting the long list of shoulds aside has potential to transform the entire experience of my daily life.

  Living in the moment is something everyone could practice a more so that our current actions and emotions are not influenced by something that we think may happen. Allowing ourselves to enjoy free time relaxing without clouding our minds with the busy day we have tomorrow or the list of things we didn’t get done. Focusing on what we have and what we’ve done and not on what we don’t have and what we haven’t done is a great place to start.  This is my current practice, enjoying a quiet afternoon doing whatever I want keeping the guilt at bay by telling myself that I will work hard soon and that its important that I feel ready and rested in order to have the energy to do so. Happy resting to all, may we all find the balance that works for us! 

• 2012-03-22

  the privilege of teaching

  I never thought I would be a teacher. Growing up both my parents were in education, my mother was a teacher and then became a principle and my father worked in the administration of the Toronto Board of Education. I saw a lot of the downfalls in teaching, and while I have tremendous respect for the courageous individuals who take on this profession I never thought I would be drawn to it.

  I’m not a teacher in the academic sense, the closest I ever got to that was as a teaching assistant for undergraduate anatomy and physiology courses. I don’t think I could ever teach in a school, as the thought of it alone, exhausts me. But I’ve discovered that when you are passionate about something you start to grow a desire to share it, and sharing one’s passion often comes in the form of teaching. It is obvious to me now that teaching is a very natural progression for people who are drawn to creating connection and spreading their joy in whatever it is that moves them. I discovered that teachers come in many forms and not just in the academic sense, there are music teachers, dance teachers, art teachers, coaches on sports teams, mentors in private businesses, life coaches, yoga teachers and the list goes on.

  Something I’ve discovered about myself is that I love to share. In fact I’ve always joked that I come from a family of over sharers. If you aren’t sure what that means, imagine your grandmother or mother telling you the details of their hormone cycle and you’ll get the idea. I’ve always loved to share my passions with other people, and these have changed over the years, from the more academic side of what I studied physiology, anatomy and nutrition, to health and fitness and finally to yoga.

  When I first started practicing yoga I didn’t think that I would one day teach it. I thought my knowledge could never be sufficient and that my practice would not be strong enough to be a good teacher. As my practice developed it started to feel quite natural that I would want to teach one day, and then it happened, I started teaching a beginner class at Babylon in Vancouver. It was the perfect environment to start teaching in, the studio was in my good friends Kevin and Natasha’s living room, where we practiced Mysore every morning.

  I discovered that teaching was incredible; I was receiving good responses and loved doing it. I no longer questioned what I wanted to do with my life, and knew with sudden clarity that I was meant to teach. Now I don’t mean for that to sound preachy or arrogant, but it was a moment of clarity, which has only gotten stronger as I’ve delved deeper into my practice and teaching. Every day I remind myself that teaching is a privilege! People put trust in me to guide them through a yoga practice and that is an extraordinary honour. I try not to take anything for granted, to stay grounded in gratitude and open to new possibilities.  I will always be a student before I am a teacher. Every day presents new opportunities for me to grow and learn as long as I stay open, allow myself to be vulnerable and continue to ask questions. Sharing yoga with people is a gift that I get every day and I am so grateful for this! Whatever, you are passionate about share it with the world. Someone once said to me that if you don’t share your passions you are being selfish and that we all have so much to learn from each other but this can’t happen if we don’t open up to share it. I encourage everyone to look deeply into what it is that makes them move, to do it fully and to share it with the world. 

• 2012-03-08

  יוגה מלב אל לב Yoga from Heart to Heart يوجا من القلب إلى القلب

  When I began a serious yoga practice about 5 years ago, I saw how yoga could be used as a vehicle for social change. Yoga is a tool for self-realization, bringing us the awareness to move through the world in a more mindful way. Through yoga we can begin to see the connections between all things, between ourselves and all the beings in the world. The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit word yuj, meaning to yoke, to unite, to bring together things that are perceived to be separate. On an individual level yoga, is the joining of the body and mind or physical and spiritual.   On a societal level yoga is the bringing together all of beings into one unity consciousness or put more simple bringing people together from different communities all over the world. When we start to see that we are all the same, all part of the same web of energy it becomes impossible to classify people based on race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc. Instead of seeing us vs. them we start to see everyone as ourselves and ourselves in everyone. We see all people as a different expression of the same energetic force.

  Living in Israel it is obvious how important the development of this unity consciousness is.  Israel is a country with a lot of informal segregation between many groups of its population, however the most obvious being the segregation between Jewish people and Palestinian people who live within Israel, (Israeli Arabs). When I moved to Tel Aviv permanently, a little over a year ago, I decided that if I was going to live here I must do something working towards social change. While there are many social issues here I feel the most passionately about the peace movement and breaking down the walls of segregation.

  Initially I didn’t feel settled here, my Hebrew knowledge is only just starting to become passable and my current knowledge in Arabic is non-existent. For a long time I allowed not speaking the language to be an excuse to not take action. I felt like an outsider and believed that if I wanted people to listen to me I needed to speak their language. While I still think it is important to speak to the population of a country about their country, in their own language, I decided that my lack of knowledge shouldn’t stop me anymore. I started taking action.

  What resulted was the birth of an idea to use yoga as a way to bring people together. Brining people together is after all part of the definition of word yoga. I decided to create a yoga class for Jewish and Arab women. Since making the decision to start this project about three months ago, I have been talking and meeting with a wide variety of people to discuss the project. I met an incredible Arab woman named Yamuna who is a yoga teacher and who is already teaching groups of Arabs and Jews together. After telling her about my idea she agreed to be part of the project and to teach the class. She suggested that the class be taught in Arabic with some Hebrew translation, creating a yoga class that is also an affirmative action piece. Thus the class will give Arab women the opportunity to practice yoga in Arabic and give Jewish women the opportunity to be in an Arabic speaking environment (something that doesn’t happen very often).

  After meeting with my friend Tali and our discussion about how projects like these can either serve to maintain or challenge the status quo, I decided that the project should serve not only as a yoga class but as an entire community building piece bringing women together over a common interest and giving them the opportunity to discuss the issues they face in their lives. Yoga is not only about love and feeling good about yourself, while these things are important we also want to use yoga as the means to build our awareness in the world. Giving the women who will participate in this class the opportunity to do that is very important to me, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room if we want to create change in the world, we must communicate openly, be willing to share and to listen.

  I believe yoga can be used as a tool to change the world, it can empower people and build up marginalized members of society. It can also give members of the ruling or upper class of a society the tools to better understand others. It’s also important that yoga be made accessible to all people so that it’s not just for the rich elite.  This class will be subsidized from fundraising I am currently doing. The class will not be free it will cost 150 NIS (about $40 CAD) for ten sessions and the women who participate will need to register in advance.  For people who cannot pay and want to participate we will have a few scholarship spaces available so please don’t let the money be something that stops you from participating. The class will start Tuesday April 24 at 7pm at the Jewish Arab Community Centre in Jaffa.

  If you are interested in learning more about this project, if you want to make a donation or if you want to participate in the class you can contact me at simonenitzanyoga@gmail.com. 

• 2012-03-06

  like a deer in headlights…

  Like all things in life fear comes in many different shapes, sizes, colours and textures. Fear can be big or small, real or perceived; however, I don’t want to talk about the very real fear one experiences if they are being chased down the street by a person carrying a knife. I want to talk about the every day stuff, the perceived fears we have that we usually don’t recognize as being fear. Things such as, the dread experienced over making certain phone calls, or having difficult discussions with our partner, or asking our boss for a raise. These are the kinds of things many of us fear we don’t know why, and we might not recognize that it is fear that prevents us from doing them.  

  The emotional experience of fear is so ingrained in us that we have come to expect and accept this reaction in certain situations. However, fear presents a big cost to our lives paralyzing, us making us unable to take action and rooting us in our misery. We all have a million reasons not to do the things that we have been avoiding and we really believe that our reasons are true. We are constantly telling ourselves stories about ourselves and our situation that we have come to accept these stories as the truth. The stories will not go away, but wouldn’t it be amazing if we could find a way to tell ourselves stories that empower us, aiding us in taking action instead of letting us run for cover.

  For a long time I dreaded asking people for things, I always did everything myself not because I didn’t trust others abilities, but because I was afraid of what people would think of me if I asked for help. Afraid that people would realize I’m not perfect, or that I’m not good enough. Over the last couple of months what I’ve come to realize is that the resistance I feel to do something, is an opportunity for tremendous personal growth! Instead of being stopped in my tracts and hoping that people will ask or offer to help, I’ve discovered its great to ask! Generally speaking we like to help each other out, but if we don’t ask we’ve already made the decision for them that they won’t help us.  If we ask for something, we are giving them the opportunity to say yes, or no, which is a much more powerful place to be.

  I’m trying to see fear as a very different emotion. Instead of being one that stops me in my tracks, paralyzing me like a deer in headlights, I can see my experience of fear as a cause for action. I can recognize that something I’m afraid of is an opportunity for my personal growth as opposed to a painful experience.

  When I was 16 years old, I went to a triathlon training camp. I had just quit figure skating and was excited for my new sport as a triathlete. Every night a different motivational speaker would give us a talk. One night the speaker told a story that made a big impact on my life. He said, sometimes following your dreams is like a dog chasing a frog. You see this dog in the grass and you think it’s going crazy, running around in circles and jumping up and down. You can’t see the frog so you don’t know what the dog is doing. Your dreams and goals in life are like that, other people may look at you and think you are crazy, they may never understand why you do the things you do, because they can’t see your frog they just see you running around in circles and jumping up and down. But as long as you know what your frog is it doesn’t matter what other people think about you or what you are doing, you are going to be ok. This is a philosophy I’ve tried live my life by.  The lifestyle I’ve chosen may seem odd at the best and totally crazy at the worst to other people but I’ve got a good look at my frog and I know I’m going to be ok! When I think about this story in relation to confronting my fears, I realize I want to live fearlessly. The most powerful and influential people in the world were not stopped when they had to deal with confrontation or whatever form their fear took. The dealt with their fear by using it for motivation, a cause for action, propelling themselves forwards and making real change in the world.

  I am left with something John Scott said at a workshop I recently attended in Tel Aiv. He said that when we are in situations outside our comfort zone, if we are willing to let go, to be vulnerable and ask questions we have the opportunity to learn something new and to grow. I am challenging myself to be the kind of person who is bold and can be vulnerable at the same time, letting go of my need to be perfect and knowing that people will love and accept me anyways. 

• 2012-02-01

  its been a while…

  Well its been a while since I’ve written anything other than my daily dose of early morning journaling, and I must admit that while I do miss writing, it is so easy for me to fall off the bandwagon and slip into the dullness that is life without writing. While I love to write and share my innermost thoughts and feelings as weird or inappropriate as they may be, I recognize that not everyone wants to read every detail of what is going on in my mind. Having said that I don’t really know what else to write about and I’m not that talented a writer, so for now I will continue my ramblings on all things related to me and my life and my self centered blog will continue in this realm for at least the next little while. I hope one day soon, I will have the kind of inspiration or awakening to the kind of writing that is not consumed with the details of my life.

  In the last month or so, I’ve come to a new realization and have experienced a form of transformation. Now that sounds pretty big I know and I’m not usually someone who talks big about herself, I generally underplay my achievements and tend to see my accomplishments as no big deal. While I don’t want to boast or be high on myself I do want to become a person who is able to recognize when I do good things and not to hide my success, progress or achievements in life.

  I have always been a person who fears confrontation. I always tried to make peace to keep people happy, while avoiding dealing with the sticky situations of life. I’ve started to realize that confrontations aren’t really ‘sticky situations’ but that every so-called confrontation presents a new opportunity. They present opportunities to create open communication, to give others and yourself the space to express yourselves. While confrontations may seem like an insurmountable and scary task, these situations when approached from a place of love and caring for the other person present an opportunity to increase the level of relationship that exists between two people.

  I have recently started to find myself ready and wanting to discuss issues with people, to be a stand for myself. Not to do it from a place of attacking the other person but doing it from a place of genuine caring for them and for the relationship that we have. What I’ve discovered is that when you approach life in this way you almost always get a positive response! Its amazing that you can present your issues to the people who are involved in them as opportunities for growth and change and not as exposing their weaknesses. Of course I’m in no way an expert on dealing with confrontation and don’t want to pretend to know how or what to do in each situation but I do believe that when you speak from your heart and give people the room to listen and be moved by your words they will respond in a loving and caring way back to you.

  I’ve also discovered that its totally ok and even highly recommended to ask people for things, to ask for help, for favours. I used to ask for things assuming people would say no or that if I was asking for something it was too much and I was putting them out by asking for something. Consequently I never asked for much, I always tried to be easy going and accommodating, and while I think there is a place for being accommodating and not forcing people into doing things for you. I’ve discovered that when you ask people for things you are actually giving them the opportunity to say YES and to do something for you. And the reality is that most people actually want to help and don’t feel put out when you ask them for something. The other side of this equation is that if you don’t ask them you are taking the opportunity for them to say yes away, you are making the decision for them and that’s being selfish. So I will keep asking for help when I need it and I will keep discussing issues with people when I need to. I encourage all of you to ask for the favours you don’t want to ask for and to approach the confrontations you’ve been avoiding from a place of love and let yourself be surprised by how people listen to you when you talk to them from a place of love.   

• 2011-12-31

  communication 101, expressing my own needs

  For a very long time perhaps my entire life, it has been challenging for me to voice my needs and to ask for help when I need it. That may sound bizarre for a woman who gets what she wants 95% of the time, but its true. I always seemed to get what I wanted, but when I didn’t get what I wanted I would get cranky, or shut down. I’ve never been able to say openly and honestly what I really need from people. I was never a stand for myself, not that I let people walk all over me but I wouldn’t say what I really needed to. I’ve always tried to create the space for others to feel comfortable asking for or expressing what they needed, without asking for or expressing what I needed. I think its part of my Virgo nature, and tied into my issues of perfectionism and not loving myself enough.

  Now I’ve known this about myself for a long time and I’ve been consciously working on it for the last year or so, with a lot of progress. However, I only heard myself described this way by another person when I was in India 5 years ago. I went for a chakra reading and the man who did the reading told me among other things that my throat chakra was closed. The throat chakra governs communication and expression and since mine was closed, I had a hard time articulating my needs. The chakra reader gave me a cat’s eye stone that he put into a pendent and told me to wear as a necklace. The stone was supposed to help open my throat chakra, increasing my ability to communicate my needs. I have worn this pendent around my neck almost every day for the last 5 years! At times when I would know that I needed to be able to speak clearly and communicate well I would make sure I was wearing the necklace. I only took it off on rare occasions if I was wearing a different necklace for a certain occasion.

  Now in the last year, my ability to express my needs has become a major focus in my life, something I have been consciously working on. When I met Zorik, my amazingly intuitive husband, he noticed right away that I had issues in the area of my throat chakra and started giving me singing lessons, which really helped open me up. And I started speaking differently and using my voice in ways I didn’t know were possible before.

  Earlier this week, my throat chakra again became the topic of conversation, when Zorik and I were at the psycho astrologer. She said that my throat chakra needed some opening, and that it was essential that I start to learn how to really communicate my needs clearly and not to wrap myself in a blanket of shame for needing help and not being perfect. Since this meeting only 5 days ago I have been thinking and working on this, stepping out of my shell and making requests from people that before I would have been too ashamed to ask for.

  Yesterday morning when I was showering before yoga practice the cat’s eye stone that was in my necklace fell out of the pendent onto the floor of the shower. I looked down at it and thought wow that’s too bad, I reached down to pick it up and it crumbled into many pieces in my hands. Then it hit me, I don’t need the stone anymore! I am released; I’ve opened up to new possibilities in how I communicate with others around me. It doesn’t mean that my throat chakra is blown open, I’m sure maintaining the openness of my throat chakra will be a life long pursuit. It means that the work I’ve been doing to open my throat chakra is working that I’m progressing and I no longer need the stone to open me up. Now I can do it on my own!

  In the spirit of the New Year and new commitments for the New Year, I am making the commitment to be a stand for myself. I will express my needs easily and readily and not shy away from asking or requesting things from others.  At this moment when my faith is strong I can make a new commitment and stand behind it. When times get tough and I feel myself shutting down, closing off, or getting cranky, my commitment will pull me through and keep me open and communicative. I invite you to think about what are the things you are committed to, what excites you, what are you passionate about, what can you build commitments around that will lift you up and not bring you down. I wish you all a beautiful new year full of love, happiness, peace, compassion and acceptance for the year ahead. May we all grow to love ourselves more, to be better listeners to others and ourselves and to move through the world with compassion. 

• 2011-12-28

  holy shit i’m a virgo!

  So my amazing husband and I (note mentioning, my amazing husband) went to have our astrological charts read, by a psycho astrologer. I can’t give you a great explanation on the differences between astrology and psycho astrology but basically psychological astrology involves analyzing the horoscope using the astrological archetypes to gain psychological understanding into a person’s psyche.

  

  Having our astrological charts read together has been something I’ve wanted for a long time, and I was very excited for Zorik to have this experience, as it was his first time seeing an astrologer. I’ve had some previous experience with an astrological reading but I hadn’t had a real full reading before and not by a psycho astrologer. The experience was amazing! Not only because I was there with my super awesome husband who is open to things like astrology, yoga and connecting to people on a much deeper level, but also because the energy of the woman who gave us the reading was extraordinary. She was so open, warm and kind and I liked her immediately. She spent over three hours with us, explaining and talking with us. I can’t tell you everything she told us and I doubt you would be interested anyways but I do want to share a few highlights that really made me jump out of my seat in excitement and apprehension.

  She started by telling us a little about our joint chart. She said that she couldn’t help but tell us about it right away cause it was so exciting for her. We were born to be together in, our joint chart has a very rare and unique thing in it, I can’t explain it astrologically, but it basically means our souls are better together than apart, that together we will make each other better people and live better lives than if we were apart. Now she also said she doesn’t know how long we will be together but that our relationship was really meant to happen, according to the stars!!

  If you’ve ever had your chart read by a good astrologer you will understand what I’m about to say. If you haven’t and you don’t tend to “believe” in this kind of stuff you will probably feel very skeptical and think that it can’t really be true, but talking to a good astrologer or psycho astrologer about your astrological chart is like talking to someone who knows you better than you know yourself. They can see everything about you and explain personality traits you have in ways that really deepen your understanding of yourself.

  First she told me about how I am a very typical Virgo; extremely particular, precise, perfectionist etc, but on the other hand I am very child like, playful, looking for attention and wanting to be on stage, to perform. For anyone who knew me as a child or young adult you will probably agree that that is a pretty accurate description of my basic personality. She said I am caring and very open to helping other people and to being supportive and loving for others, however, much less open and loving of myself, something I need to work on.

  

  Eventually we came to the discussion of my career and she started by asking me if I studied something. I said I studied kinesiology for 6 years, doing an undergraduate and Masters degree. She smiled so big and was so excited by this because she said it was written in my chart! I was supposed to study the human body and that in my career I am supposed to be some sort of alternative therapist!! Well that was pretty exciting I must say. I had heard before that I should work in the health care field, but had never really expanded on it too much. She was so excited she asked how did I know to study kinesiology when I hadn’t already seen my astrological chart. I didn’t have this information and yet somehow I made that choice on my own, or somehow it found me. She told me there are antibiotics in my hands and that I am meant to heal people. Now this is a pretty exciting thing to hear when you are trying to make a living as a yoga teacher! I explained to her that for a long time I’ve been wondering whether or not I should go back and study some sort of alternative therapy, such as, osteopathy, Rolfing or shiatsu. Then she asked me what would motivate me to go back and study. She told me that I will be studying my whole life, that I want to know everything and she has no doubt that I will study all of the natural therapies available. However, she said that I already have so much knowledge inside me and that it is time for me to start to make the transition from being the student to being the mentor. This is where is gets scary!!! I started teaching yoga and have been teaching for a couple years now and my confidence as a yoga teacher is growing, although my knowledge of yoga is still superficial, really microscopic in scope. She said this is my Virgo tendencies, that the perfectionist in me doesn’t want to put myself out there without knowing everything first. This is part of what motivates me to keep study and will continue to motivate me for the rest of my life. But this is also what holds me back, what prevents me from putting myself out there. And this is the time, according to her, I am ready and people are waiting for me. I have to start making this transition. The next year and a half, according to her, would be a time of transformation and transition, that I am going through a form of rebirthing and that what is waiting for me is a greater sense of openness and confidence in my abilities, a new profound creativity like I have not experienced before. Wow, now if that isn’t powerful, I don’t know what is. It certainly moved me, in a way so rare, I’ve only felt that moved a handful of times in my life.

  For me to be told that what I studied was absolutely the perfect thing for me, is so exciting, I loved my undergraduate degree but in recent years I couldn’t help wishing I had studied something more creative or more philosophical, Indian philosophy, or sociology or something like that. It’s true what they say “that everything happens for a reason” and that all the experiences of ones life contribute to where we are at this moment. What I studied is perfect, what I’m doing now is perfect and where I’m going is perfect! I just need to get my head out of the books and to start doing it already! And that is where I get scared, and excited. What if people don’t like me, that is the questions I often find myself asking. What if they aren’t happy with my work? What if I screw up? All of these are possibilities, they may not like me, I might screw up but the important thing is that I start begin already. And with my Virgo nature, I know won’t let myself screw up that much! 

• 2011-12-21

  the city smells like sofganiot!

   סופגניות = sofganiot (jelly donut for Hannuka)

  

  Now for my friends who celebrate and love Christmas, I apologize if this post comes across like all the things I hate about the holiday. I don’t hate Christmas, I love Christmas, or at least I love that Christmas brings families together to spend quality time with each other, hopefully. This is my second Christmas in Tel Aviv, and there are a few things that I’ve noticed about living in a city and country that almost doesn’t celebrate the holiday at all. First off, you don’t even know that Christmas is happening! The only way I knew Christmas was coming this year was that Stephen Colbert started making Christmas references on his show.

  Living in a warm climate really throws one off the Christmas path also, since the weather one usually associates with said holiday is cold and snowy and here it is sunny and warm, its hard to think of snowmen, or Christmas trees and reindeer etc. You don’t see Christmas decorations or hear Christmas music anywhere! There aren’t even commercials on TV for Christmas sales. And Lastly and most importantly, you don’t have the crazy shopping and consumption that takes over so many people’s lives! I love the idea of getting together with the family or going home to the family and being all bundled up in front of a fire with a mug of hot apple cider or sitting together to eat delicious food. However, in my mind the unfortunate thing about Christmas is that for many people the pressure to buy and consume as much as possible is overwhelming and extremely unpleasant. Living in a culture that is obsessed with consumption, Christmas is the best time of year, there are sales on EVERYTHING and everyone is shopping, making the economy function, for at least a short while.

  

  Ok enough about Christmas, you can see how I feel about the holiday, this post was supposed to be about Hannukah. So, while we don’t celebrate Christmas in Tel Aviv, we do celebrate Hannukah, which, in comparison is a very very laid back holiday season. There is no crazy shopping or present buying, there are some decorations in a few places but they generally go up on the first day of Hannukah, not in mid November. There are Hannukah parties and people get together to light the candles for the holiday but that all happens during the course of the actual eight days of Hannukah not for the entire month leading up to the holiday. There is definitely a lot of eating involved, as there seems to be lots of eating involved in most Jewish holidays, except for Yom Kippur obviously. The biggest and really only sign that Hannukah is coming in Tel Aviv is the appearance of sofganiot (jelly donuts) in every bakery or street stand selling other varieties of both delicious and disgusting fried things. These donuts practically take over the entire city and you see children everywhere with icing sugar on their faces as they stuff giant donuts into their mouths. The donuts occupy the city to the point where the entire city starts to smell like them! I was riding my bike home from teaching last night and all I could smell was the sweet delicious flavour of fried dough covered in icing sugar! I’m not going to go into the details of why we eat donuts at Hannukah, because this is not that kinds of blog, but if you are curious to know I suggest you google it.

  Happy happy Hannukah to all my Jewish readers out there and to those who just love this holiday cause who doesn’t love a holiday where you get to eat deep fried food! And of course a very happy holiday season to everyone even to the mass consuming Christmas shoppers, they also deserve to have a wonderful holiday. Now, I’m going to go eat a donut!

  

• 2011-12-12

  commitment revisited…

  How do you stay committed to the things you say you are committed to?

  This is a question I ask myself all the time, and I can’t pretend to have the answer. Two blog posts ago, I outlined one of my new commitments, to say NO to things that are taking me away from my path and YES to things that are keeping me on it. I’m still doing pretty good on this front, I even finished one of the 4 books I am currently reading, and I didn’t start a new one, yet. I’m committed to finishing all the books I’m currently reading or at least 2 of the 4 before starting a new one.

  I pose the question - how to keep your commitments - because I really don’t know the answer. As I’ve gone through my life, I have learned many possibilities, such as, creating schedules, keeping diaries, making plans that involve other people and saying things out loud to people other than myself. However, there are still things that I am constantly recommitting to. I don’t know why certain things are harder to commit to than others; they are the type of things that I recommit to every few days and then break. It makes me think, “shit that sucked, I’m so bad, why did I do that”, I of course regret it and experience some degree of self-loathing.

  Now this blog is not meant as a confession of all the commitments I have previously not kept, so don’t expect me to confess what these false commitments are. Because once they are down on paper, there would be people who could hold me accountable to them, and that’s scary. It scary because I know I won’t keep them, because I never do! Now if that isn’t fucked up I don’t know what is. I think I just realized that this blog is becoming the place where I admit to all my psychological neurosis and emotional issues, yikes! You have been warned! Don’t feel you have to keep reading, unless you want a good dose of my issues!

  Ok back to the issues of commitment, there are some things that I find it very easy to commit to and stay committed to. My yoga practice is one of them, I don’t find it hard to get up every day and practice. And I am starting to get to the point where I don’t beat myself up if, for whatever reason I don’t practice. Its really not hard for me to get up every day at 6 am and do 2 hours of asana practice. I don’t say this to sound superior to other people, everyone has different things that they are committed to and that they don’t have a hard time keeping. And commitments that easy for us to keep don’t feel like achievements because they come effortlessly, and we live in a society that is obsessed with achievement. This is why when someone says to me in amazement “wow you practice yoga every day at 7am” I’m like its really no big deal, whereas, I may say to them “wow, you drive your kid to hockey practice every Saturday at 7 am!” anyways you get the idea.

  What I want to talk about are the things that are hard for us to commit to. I think we have to stop and ask ourselves why we want to commit to them. Really look at the reasons, and ask is this reasonable, or are we setting ourselves up to fail? Maybe the things we have trouble committing to are the things we don’t really want to do, but feel we should. Things like eating healthier, or exercising more, or eating out less and cooking more, etc. Now don’t think I’m suggesting not to do things that you feel you should do. I think we all generally should eat healthier and exercise more etc. What I’m suggesting is that the reason we find ourselves continuously breaking certain commitments is because they are commitments we don’t really want to keep. If I look deep down, I don’t really want to eat healthy, I want to eat cake and cookies and still be skinny. Unfortunately that is often not the reality.

  So what’s the moral of the story, I’m not really sure, make commitments and be lofty with them, set goals for yourself. But don’t set yourself up to fail by committing to things that you don’t want to be held accountable for. If you break your commitments own up to it, don’t hide it, say, “ok, I broke my commitment, shit happens” and then get back on the horse, don’t beat yourself up and don’t pretend it didn’t happen. Reconnect with the reasons why you committed to that particular thing in the first place are stick with it! And most importantly give yourself a little credit every once and a while for the commitments you do keep everyday, they may be commitments that feel impossible for others. 

• 2011-12-08

  getting caught in the rain!

  There is nothing like getting caught in the rain, especially in Tel Aviv since it almost never happens. I’ve gotten caught in the rain now more times than I’d like to admit though, and riding my bicycle, yikes! Riding in the rain, generally speaking not the most fun activity you can do. Today was an even more special occasion, as I was leaving a yoga lab at my friend’s house, to go to a Rolfing treatment at my teacher’s house. Leaving one very relaxed environment to go to another very relaxed environment, the only problem a 30 minute bike ride in the pouring rain and against insane winds that I haven’t had to ride against since I stopped triathlon. I was wearing my yoga tights and riding a Tel Aviv, city bike, not exactly the smoothest ride. I pedaled and pedaled but barely moved against the wind. It wasn’t till I was almost halfway there when I had the thought why didn’t I take a cab? 

  

  I got to my teacher’s house in Jaffa, a truly incredible place, beautiful old Arab style building with super high ceilings, a view of the Mediterranean and beautiful old tile floors. I was soaking wet and exhausted from the extra long, cold bike ride. Why I didn’t at least wear a raincoat is beyond me, it’s the story of my life; I’m never prepared for the weather! I’m always cold in the winter or getting caught in the rain without an umbrella. The funny part is that I even had an umbrella in my bag during this whole escapade and just forgot.

  Of course getting caught in the rain in Tel Aviv is nothing compared to rainy Vancouver, where I lived for almost 8 years. I was never prepared for the rain there either. I have clearly not learned my lesson. I’d love to pretend that now I’ve learned my lesson, that I will be more mindful of the elements when I leave my house. But the truth is, I most likely haven’t. And when you live in the city where the weather is almost always perfect, ie, sunny 95% of the time, it’s even harder to learn this. I just want to believe that everyday the sun is going to come up and shine and keep me warm, it almost always does.

  I’ve always wanted to live in a sunny place and now I do! So despite getting caught in the rain today (and the last time it rained), I’m going to stay grounded in my gratitude for the sun that shines here 350 days a year and love and appreciate the fact that I can ride my bike pretty much anywhere, any day and not need to worry about the weather! Wow it’s really amazing when I think about it, and the best part, it never rains for more than a couple of hours at a time and the sun always comes out after! Now I believe I wrote a post on this topic some time last year, so I apologize for repeating myself, it’s just that the rain here continues to amaze me, Every time!