I teach people for a living. No, seriously. I teach Art History four classes a semester (no summers, that's madness) and then I teach two yoga classes a week on top of that, and I have a kid, which is a constant teaching-learning exchange and becoming more interesting by the month. So I teach people for a living, both financially and in broader senses.
Today I taught 15 people in the yoga room (that's pretty freakin' big for Indianapolis) and then 8 people in my "jump through, jump back" workshop, and it all rocked. Six people of those 15 chose to be dropped back, which I've been offering every Sunday for over a month. Dropping back is REALLY rare in Indy; you don't get that in just any class. In fact outside of workshops I've only been invited to do it in ONE standard yoga class here. MADNESS.
There's a young guy (I mean like 21) who did the studio's teacher training, but on top of yoga, he climbs rocks, and is really into Budokon, which means he can float a jump through or back ALL DAY LONG. He came to my workshop and then talked to me for a while after, about how his teacher (Cameron something....Shayne? Is that how it's spelled? That's what's in my head...and how do I know that?) said that he would have to "find his voice," so he asked me if I'd be willing to share poses and moves, basically, some morning, and be sort of a teacher-mentor for this voice-finding. I said, yeah let's do that, and we negotiated Thursday morning.
I liked the idea but didn't want to do it, because I'm desperately pressed for time, all the time, but helping someone at 21 find his voice is something that SHOULD BE DONE, so in the name of imagining myself at 21 mentorless, I said yeah.
And everywhere, this realization is happening. I asked students to put in for a video art panel at the upcoming Womens' Studies conference and a few did. I am going to meet some MFA student next week to see if I want to be on his committee (and I probably do). I'm going to teach graduate Art Theory again in the fall, and my group of undergraduate "fans" (I lightly refer to them as the "fan club") are going to pursue me from Video Art to Avant Garde Film in the fall.
The boy speaks more and more English, and he listens to us all the time. 21 months tomorrow. He and I work on his walking on tilted couch cushions (to me, he looks like the rock climber of the future; the way he pulls up onto chairs, the way he adjusts his weight, develops proprioception...) and read books (TONS of books) and go outside to see and say "bird" and "snow" and all of the other things he knows.
So with Budokon guy, I was thinking, "I should be part of some studio's TT regimen." Not ashtanga specific, necessarily, but a few of my students come to my classes because they like how I teach it (they love the sequence too, but I have ARRIVED, in my teaching voice, which is another reason I said yes to that dude). So I feel like I should be some element in some kind of multi-instructor TT, maybe the way that It's Yoga did it. You had Larry sessions, Marie sessions, Katie sessions, Yariv sessions. I'm into that. But I don't know how it'd play out.
I like mentoring; I like education (although I do NOT like its bureaucracy, but that's a take-it-or-leave-it bargain, eh?); I like parenting best when it is a teaching-learning exchange, that's what I always wanted it to be.
And it's service. A long time ago I read Life and Gannon having said, "When you step on the mat, you are SERVING, don't think that it's for you," and it took YEARS before that made any sense at all, I just couldn't wrap my head around that. Parenting has opened my service economy, my service psychology. I end EVERY yoga class with some lesson that I learn from my one-year old. People DIG that, because in my head, which is a very synthetic place, the parenting blends with Freeman's book MIRROR OF YOGA (which is really great) and with all the Trungpa I've been reading, and it comes out as some weirdly authentic lesson, without me "trying" to make it authentic, which is precisely how you make something sound inauthentic. I try to speak to the real experience with the language I've got, the Buddhistness of parenting itself, and it comes out as a marvel.
It's all service; you serve people. That's what it is.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Chaos and Randomness
These aren't two different things, and in fact, they're really two ways of seeing things rather than things, themselves, at all.
In my usage, randomness is, as Lennon put it, "what happens while you're making other plans." Randomness is a complaint that I make when life sidetracks my intentions.
Chaos is wide-open spaciousness, and by its nature doesn't really permit plans (it's inchoate; that's another way to put it), but it permits action. So as long as I'm willing to fit or surrender whatever it is, chaos functions quite nicely.
Here's an example of the dual application:
The kid sometimes sleeps through the night, but unpredictably. We're never sure if it's going to be 10 hours straight or three wakeups or what, or how long they'll go on or how easy or hard they'll be. Last night it was 2:48 wailing, up til about 4, and then 5:11 wailing, quick put down, alarm goes off at 6:20, the whole household slept through it til 7:20, and then J had to be at work at 8.
So my intentions were:
1. Child sleeps through night (that's always my intention)
2. Wake up, prepare household, take child to daycare at 8
3. Dart over to studio for 8:30-10 "open practice" space
4. Have fabulous practice
5. Go to work, finish grading, give test, get kid, go home
6. Proceed with lovely evening of entertainment, book reading, etc.
In the view of "randomness," I was rudely subverted by the universe on all levels. There was not all-night sleep, there was no daycare at 8, there was late practice (although I did go, I got there at 10), I had a sore, heavy 10 sun salutations and a headstand and a shallow lotus and that's all, I got to work and am about to get the list going, and we'll see how the evening goes.
In the view of "randomness," I can easily become upset and chronically irritated at how unpredictably being a parent governs and in many cases prevents "me" from doing "what I want." And this comes with the ego bleed and with pain and with frustration. Very unfriendly.
*************
In the view of "chaos," however, the universe handed me a total reinvention of my usual morning. A late start plus having to single-parent the kid creates a whole new and uncommon scene. The practice has to move or be surrendered or be adapted, work probably has to be delayed or compacted, and preferences have to shift wildly all over the place so that I don't back myself into a frustrating little corner.
In the view of "chaos," the first thing I do (and I knew this even at 4 am) is toss my intentions out the window, and if the universe happens to see them and read them and feels like respecting them, it'll open a door for me. Otherwise, I handled what there was--I handled what was on the plate rather than trying to choose what I want from the menu. I got the kid to eat breakfast (he likes to play "no" because "no" is interactive, and fun, rather like the way that Owl told us about counting-as-a-game recently) and then we read some books and played for a while and left the house at 9 instead of 8 (because that's how reality wanted it) and got to daycare an hour late, and I got to practice an hour late, and from bad sleep and spotty practices recently, had a mediocre practice, so I emphasized bandhas and attention rather than trying to do anything fancy, and then I went to work, an hour late, and I feel as if I have time to type this, so here it is.
No frustration. Sure, I have no lunch and I need to print out my tests and I probably won't get caught up on my grading for the other class, but whatever, that's just more of what's on the plate. Am I overwhelmed? Guess I better do some midnight grading like I did all last week. So be it. Things move; conditions change; one adapts and makes choices and the consequences become the "plate of tomorrow." I keep setting intentions and then throwing them out; it's hilarious.
There is a ludic character to being in the moment, and high stress forces one into the moment (well unless you go sort of catatonic playing video games or something like that). High-stress action is really weirdly ludic, and that shouldn't make any sense, but it does.
In my usage, randomness is, as Lennon put it, "what happens while you're making other plans." Randomness is a complaint that I make when life sidetracks my intentions.
Chaos is wide-open spaciousness, and by its nature doesn't really permit plans (it's inchoate; that's another way to put it), but it permits action. So as long as I'm willing to fit or surrender whatever it is, chaos functions quite nicely.
Here's an example of the dual application:
The kid sometimes sleeps through the night, but unpredictably. We're never sure if it's going to be 10 hours straight or three wakeups or what, or how long they'll go on or how easy or hard they'll be. Last night it was 2:48 wailing, up til about 4, and then 5:11 wailing, quick put down, alarm goes off at 6:20, the whole household slept through it til 7:20, and then J had to be at work at 8.
So my intentions were:
1. Child sleeps through night (that's always my intention)
2. Wake up, prepare household, take child to daycare at 8
3. Dart over to studio for 8:30-10 "open practice" space
4. Have fabulous practice
5. Go to work, finish grading, give test, get kid, go home
6. Proceed with lovely evening of entertainment, book reading, etc.
In the view of "randomness," I was rudely subverted by the universe on all levels. There was not all-night sleep, there was no daycare at 8, there was late practice (although I did go, I got there at 10), I had a sore, heavy 10 sun salutations and a headstand and a shallow lotus and that's all, I got to work and am about to get the list going, and we'll see how the evening goes.
In the view of "randomness," I can easily become upset and chronically irritated at how unpredictably being a parent governs and in many cases prevents "me" from doing "what I want." And this comes with the ego bleed and with pain and with frustration. Very unfriendly.
*************
In the view of "chaos," however, the universe handed me a total reinvention of my usual morning. A late start plus having to single-parent the kid creates a whole new and uncommon scene. The practice has to move or be surrendered or be adapted, work probably has to be delayed or compacted, and preferences have to shift wildly all over the place so that I don't back myself into a frustrating little corner.
In the view of "chaos," the first thing I do (and I knew this even at 4 am) is toss my intentions out the window, and if the universe happens to see them and read them and feels like respecting them, it'll open a door for me. Otherwise, I handled what there was--I handled what was on the plate rather than trying to choose what I want from the menu. I got the kid to eat breakfast (he likes to play "no" because "no" is interactive, and fun, rather like the way that Owl told us about counting-as-a-game recently) and then we read some books and played for a while and left the house at 9 instead of 8 (because that's how reality wanted it) and got to daycare an hour late, and I got to practice an hour late, and from bad sleep and spotty practices recently, had a mediocre practice, so I emphasized bandhas and attention rather than trying to do anything fancy, and then I went to work, an hour late, and I feel as if I have time to type this, so here it is.
No frustration. Sure, I have no lunch and I need to print out my tests and I probably won't get caught up on my grading for the other class, but whatever, that's just more of what's on the plate. Am I overwhelmed? Guess I better do some midnight grading like I did all last week. So be it. Things move; conditions change; one adapts and makes choices and the consequences become the "plate of tomorrow." I keep setting intentions and then throwing them out; it's hilarious.
There is a ludic character to being in the moment, and high stress forces one into the moment (well unless you go sort of catatonic playing video games or something like that). High-stress action is really weirdly ludic, and that shouldn't make any sense, but it does.
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