How can the teachings of yoga help us to live a life filled with courage?
Swami Lalitananda had been appointed as president of Yasodhara Ashram, a yoga retreat and study centre, mere weeks before the community’s most beloved building, the Temple of Light, was destroyed in a fire. In this episode she talks about how the teachings helped the community move through this event and how these teachings can help us bring courage into the workplace, into our relationships and into our everyday life.
Based on which articles I have loved and which ones have been viewed the most, I’ve curated the top five articles of 2016. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them!
Continue reading “Courage Compass: Most Popular Articles of 2016”
For the past 10 months I have been working on the Courage Compass, a life coaching business and it’s been one of the most challenging things that I’ve done.
The main hurdle for me has been: Am I ready for this? Do I have the necessary skills? Will I offer a quality product? Do I know what I’m doing? Am I a complete fraud?
I am behind on project reporting at work. And I know this doesn’t sound like a big deal but I’ve been behind for awhile and I keep getting more and more behind.
I keep thinking that things will slow down and I’ll have time to catch up, but it hasn’t happened. And it has really started to weigh me down. I feel like I’m not getting the work I need to get down. I don’t feel productive. I feel like I’m failing at my job. Something needs to change.
When I was in my early twenties I despised celebrities. I couldn’t understand other people’s obsessions. Shallow people with no lives of their own are the ones who get obsessed with famous people, I thought. I was bigger, better and more intellectual than that. Other than Julia Roberts – I barely knew any celebrities names and I wore that as a badge of honour.
Continue reading “What I learned from Gwyneth Paltrow, Stephen Colbert and Amy Schumer”
A friend is 40 minutes late for our coffee date but I give him a hug and act as if he is on time. A colleague doesn’t show up for a meeting we’ve had planned for a long time, but I shrug it off and reschedule. The internet install guy drags out a simple procedure that should take 20 minutes so that it takes over 3 hours, but I smile, make polite conversation and laugh at his jokes.
I have gotten good at acting as if everything is fine. I have gotten good at hiding my anger. I have gotten good at avoiding conflict at all costs.
I tell my sister that she should tell her story, write it out and then post it on her Facebook wall and yet I’m terrified to tell mine.
I don’t want to tell anyone. I want to keep it quiet, close to my heart. I want to pretend that I don’t make mistakes, that I always acknowledge my privilege, that I’m perfect. I want silence.
I ran a workshop for a group of LGBTQ newcomers a couple of weeks ago on criminal law. I was the organizer, the facilitator and the panel moderator. I recruited the volunteers, set the agenda, chose the scenarios we would use.
And then after the workshop I got some feedback that one of my volunteers felt oppressed, that I didn’t do my job as the panel moderator in balancing which voices were heard and that several components of the workshop were disempowering for participants instead of being empowering.
And I said I was fine after I read it but part of me went into a spiral. I can’t do my job, I’m not good at my job, I’m actually just perpetuating the cycles of oppression that I thought I was trying to stop, I’m a bad person, I don’t deserve the good that I have in my life. And these voices felt like they were strangling me.
black. sticky. strangling.
But I told myself I was fine and that I didn’t need to tell anyone, that I had come so far that I was beyond needing to tell others, or that they wouldn’t understand anyways. Any and every story to convince me to keep silent.
But I’m not above shame. And just because I lived at an ashram for two years doesn’t mean that now I’ve worked everything out and that I can fight all my battles on my own. I still need help, I still need people to listen to my story, I still need empathy.
I am not invincible and I’m far from perfect. I am trying so hard to create experiences that are empowering for participants and sometimes I fail. This time – I made multiple mistakes. But that doesn’t mean that I give up and stop trying at all.
And so I am scared that I will fail again, but I am trying to learn from my mistakes and create something better. I am trying to be brave and not listen to these voices that tell me to crawl into a hole and never to come out again. And I am trying to move out of silence and through the shame.
I was reading the comments on one of Sufjan Stevens’ newly released songs. Someone (dragonman) said something insightful about the meaning of the song and someone else replied ‘Dragonman, I think I’m in love with you.’
And I thought – wow – can you fall in love in the comments section? But then again, as a newly converted online dater, the comments section suddenly doesn’t seem too far off.
We live in a digital era, where every aspect of life has a digital platform. From personal (FB), to work (LinkedIn), to political (twitter) to dating (OKC) I am online. Each with it’s carefully tailored profile – the perfect picture, tone, diction for the specific platform. And as I start to date strangers, I suddenly realize that giving out my cell phone number is far less personal than giving out my last name.
And so it’s scary and there’s a vulnerability in painting my thoughts, opinions and photos online. But there’s also the freedom that comes with being vulnerable. This is me, these are my thoughts. Take what you will.
And so I give out my last name and cell phone number and say take what you will.
This is me.
It’s the first warm weekend in the city so I bike to the park
I find a big tree to lean my bike and my back against
Dappled light
And I am alone
Everyone is out – families, couples, gangles of cyclists – playing frisbee, having picnics, drinking beer and I suddenly hope desperately that I’ll run into someone I know – an old friend, a new friend, an acquaintance, anyone – so I can join into this togetherness of being with loved ones in the sunlight.
But then I notice two small girls each holding the leash of one small dog,
running down the steps,
laughing.
And a skinny Indian boy standing up on his bicycle riding fast,
And two small boys run up to me and ask if they can hide behind the tree with me.
“Who are you hiding from?”
“My dad!”
They run away giggling to the next tree ahead.
And I finally notice the first flush of leaves, lime green, bordering the sky,
and the sweetness of a young couple sitting on a bench beneath the trees
and I realize everything is as it should be.
And I remember there is beautifulness
to being alone,
and there spaciousness
in being single.
