I haven't written about a class I taught in over a year. Isn't that weird?
It's mostly because yoga classes are about students and it's kind of weird to blog about them.
Occasionally I'll write out a sequence, but also it's like "yeah...yoga happened..."
As I write this, I'm watching a reiki practitioner heal a woman with some pretty active breathwork. It's powerful, and also funny.
Gong flow started as a seed on the beach in santa Monica- I ran up to him and yelled "gong me gong me".
"you can't just do that, Mona," says Brendon, incredulously.
I get in the gong chair: and I don't know what happened in there honestly. It's like the first time I did yoga: "oh...that was weird".
As I hear the rainstick, I fall back into my body. I sit up and Guy says, "you know, I've been looking for a yoga teacher...."
This is right around the second time in my life where I nearly surrendered teaching yoga. The classes I was teaching before just didn't gather momentum....
It's one of the ironies of an actor moving to NYC- a yoga teacher moving to Santa Monica has the joy of learning in a soul-and-wisdom saturated atmosphere. You get to learn and transform in the brilliant Mecca of mind-body consciousness.
But there's so much yoga all around, there didn't seem to be a need for more.
But the bowls and the gongs have such tremendous power, that they are crucial to share. Seriously, they are amazing. It's a yoga high like never experienced before, and the effects are long-lasting. I truly believe that each gong flow yoga class is a rebirth. I have never before encountered anything so nourishing.
I hold a yoga class in honor of my birthday- it's the style I like, laid back, with an emphasis on writing and individual experience- introspective yoga ; ).
Just kidding, it's all introspective.
Anyway, Guy comes over and gongs the group. Kara, a friend of mine, began to sing in these aerie ethereal tones. It's strange to say what happens during a sound bath, especially if its your first or second time. You enter into a realm without language, and since language is pretty much all I'm used to describing things (I haven't yet ascended to music), it's pretty tricky. One gets up and says, "Wow. Something happened. I'm not sure what it is though". And as with all mystery, I seek to understand.
Guy had a class with a teacher up in the valley; to which I came. I re-experienced my childhood. I walked through the rooms of our New Jersey upstairs appartment. I pretended I was sailor moon and danced around late at night. I sat up on the drawer eating a rasberry-cheesecake muffin. I could feel the texture in my mouth. I walked outside the cafeteria and into the playground. I felt the fuzz of textured dots in arts and crafts. I remembered my humiliation of letting Mike know that I liked him, and the pride of standing up on a bench and announcing the importance of staying calm.
We asked to hold a gong and yoga class at Zoe's, to which she generously and beautifully agreed!
Our first class, which we taught at Zoe's Love Dome, had 5 people in it.
The next one, had 15. And Zoe's is a very small space! We were mat to mat, and there was no question; something significant was happening.
Afterwards, we had to take reservations and then it got tricky- we need a big space- we can't do this by donation. But we want to have it open, so we set a suggested donation- but that confuses people as well. Setting up extremely heavy musical instruments, asking sound healing musicians to work for 2 hours, then taking it all down is a lot of work. And we are openly trying to get by. This sounds like a bunch of mind marble, doesn't it? Sure feels like it. But it's a nice mind marble to have, because the real question is,
How can we share this experience to the highest degree?
Afterwards, came Lucidity Festival, where I began to comprehend the power of the gongs. And where I faced my internal demons of misogyny and vowed to become and self-actualize.
Then, was Symbiosis, where Guy and I learned about each other through challenge, and I fell in love with the singing bowls. Symbiosis was my first encounter with the phrase "brutaful". Brutal, and beautiful. I always imagined that my most activated state would be a busy, talkative way of being. I'm a fairly busy, talkative person, and I suspected when I was being at my fullest, it was when I felt drained of energy, forcing myself to say the next word. I learned that my most activated state is often when I'm listening. Even as I type that I feel a twinge of insecurity- doesn't this run in the way of my feminism? Am I simply too weak to take an active role? Chill out, fears, this is an empowered move, I assure you. Much 2nd wave feminism took for granted that "strong and active" was clearly superior, and it's a way for all people to be. Not so, says the 3rd (and possibly 4th?) wave, "receptive and calm" are markers of a strength so powerful it was repressed and feared. Own it. Bring it back.
Then came LIB, where I learned patience? (maybe) And decided that festival culture and the meaning behind it was as pretty close to the purpose of life as I can imagine. Please pardon me, productivity, but celebrating our short time together on earth through artistic creation is critical.
Since then, it's been a whirlwind of website creation (Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU Yohei), finding photography, seeking space, contacts and conflicts: all for the beautiful birth of transformative experience.
Trust.
It's mostly because yoga classes are about students and it's kind of weird to blog about them.
Occasionally I'll write out a sequence, but also it's like "yeah...yoga happened..."
As I write this, I'm watching a reiki practitioner heal a woman with some pretty active breathwork. It's powerful, and also funny.
Gong flow started as a seed on the beach in santa Monica- I ran up to him and yelled "gong me gong me".
"you can't just do that, Mona," says Brendon, incredulously.
I get in the gong chair: and I don't know what happened in there honestly. It's like the first time I did yoga: "oh...that was weird".
As I hear the rainstick, I fall back into my body. I sit up and Guy says, "you know, I've been looking for a yoga teacher...."
This is right around the second time in my life where I nearly surrendered teaching yoga. The classes I was teaching before just didn't gather momentum....
It's one of the ironies of an actor moving to NYC- a yoga teacher moving to Santa Monica has the joy of learning in a soul-and-wisdom saturated atmosphere. You get to learn and transform in the brilliant Mecca of mind-body consciousness.
But there's so much yoga all around, there didn't seem to be a need for more.
But the bowls and the gongs have such tremendous power, that they are crucial to share. Seriously, they are amazing. It's a yoga high like never experienced before, and the effects are long-lasting. I truly believe that each gong flow yoga class is a rebirth. I have never before encountered anything so nourishing.
I hold a yoga class in honor of my birthday- it's the style I like, laid back, with an emphasis on writing and individual experience- introspective yoga ; ).
Just kidding, it's all introspective.
Anyway, Guy comes over and gongs the group. Kara, a friend of mine, began to sing in these aerie ethereal tones. It's strange to say what happens during a sound bath, especially if its your first or second time. You enter into a realm without language, and since language is pretty much all I'm used to describing things (I haven't yet ascended to music), it's pretty tricky. One gets up and says, "Wow. Something happened. I'm not sure what it is though". And as with all mystery, I seek to understand.
Guy had a class with a teacher up in the valley; to which I came. I re-experienced my childhood. I walked through the rooms of our New Jersey upstairs appartment. I pretended I was sailor moon and danced around late at night. I sat up on the drawer eating a rasberry-cheesecake muffin. I could feel the texture in my mouth. I walked outside the cafeteria and into the playground. I felt the fuzz of textured dots in arts and crafts. I remembered my humiliation of letting Mike know that I liked him, and the pride of standing up on a bench and announcing the importance of staying calm.
Four to fourteen. In 14 minutes.
About a minute into the gong flow, the worries I had been ignoring came up. The thoughts floated in and out, the music threatened them. I listened to the bowls; I imagined what it would be like to think in music. It seemed to be a very simple good idea. Let's try it.
Our first class, which we taught at Zoe's Love Dome, had 5 people in it.
The next one, had 15. And Zoe's is a very small space! We were mat to mat, and there was no question; something significant was happening.
Afterwards, we had to take reservations and then it got tricky- we need a big space- we can't do this by donation. But we want to have it open, so we set a suggested donation- but that confuses people as well. Setting up extremely heavy musical instruments, asking sound healing musicians to work for 2 hours, then taking it all down is a lot of work. And we are openly trying to get by. This sounds like a bunch of mind marble, doesn't it? Sure feels like it. But it's a nice mind marble to have, because the real question is,
How can we share this experience to the highest degree?
Afterwards, came Lucidity Festival, where I began to comprehend the power of the gongs. And where I faced my internal demons of misogyny and vowed to become and self-actualize.
Then, was Symbiosis, where Guy and I learned about each other through challenge, and I fell in love with the singing bowls. Symbiosis was my first encounter with the phrase "brutaful". Brutal, and beautiful. I always imagined that my most activated state would be a busy, talkative way of being. I'm a fairly busy, talkative person, and I suspected when I was being at my fullest, it was when I felt drained of energy, forcing myself to say the next word. I learned that my most activated state is often when I'm listening. Even as I type that I feel a twinge of insecurity- doesn't this run in the way of my feminism? Am I simply too weak to take an active role? Chill out, fears, this is an empowered move, I assure you. Much 2nd wave feminism took for granted that "strong and active" was clearly superior, and it's a way for all people to be. Not so, says the 3rd (and possibly 4th?) wave, "receptive and calm" are markers of a strength so powerful it was repressed and feared. Own it. Bring it back.
Then came LIB, where I learned patience? (maybe) And decided that festival culture and the meaning behind it was as pretty close to the purpose of life as I can imagine. Please pardon me, productivity, but celebrating our short time together on earth through artistic creation is critical.
Since then, it's been a whirlwind of website creation (Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU Yohei), finding photography, seeking space, contacts and conflicts: all for the beautiful birth of transformative experience.
Trust.
