notes from slow practice

beloveds,

i know for the past few years i have been on and off with my writing practice here. between teaching, practicing and living, i have struggled to find the flow here. this is one of the many reasons i have been on a semi-sabbatical since september: to fully embody my practice. to devote myself more completely to sadhana, to feathering my nest, to creativity.

over the years, i’ve taken the summer to re-fill my own deep practice cup and have fully committed to offering all that i can during the september-june school calendar. then, for a few years, i kept going all year long. and in some ways, this suits me, i am so happy when i am fully engaged, firing on every cylinder, all-systems-go. when i work, i make more work, and i love making.

however, i knew last spring that i needed to take a true break, i found myself feeling really exhausted. and, (this is a very provocative statement and i feel very vulnerable sharing it) i found myself feeling exhausted by the amount of effort i was putting in to reminding some advanced students and fledgling teachers under my tutelage that practice is a necessary component to a yoga practice. (i know this is a redundant statement, which is one of the reasons i was struggling so hard with it.) (p.s. i love you all! i know it can be hard to commit to your practice. please keep reading even if you are feeling triggered.) i felt like social media (especially Instagram) had really succeeded in reducing yoga to a single, visual depiction of an asana, and that the drive for many newer teachers (maybe older teachers, too) was to gain followers rather than fully engage in sadhana. and i was wondering how to even keep going within this paradigm. i felt like so many social media posts were ads masquerading as acts of super-vulnerable sharing, which felt so manipulative (especially when i observed teachers writing things like “I’m different from everyone else…Join me…”). And knowing that I had participated in this kind of communication was disheartening for me. I wanted the practices to just speak for themselves. The practices DO speak for themselves. And I wondered if I took a step back, whether anyone would show up to my classes. And I had this revelation:

EVEN IF NO ONE COMES TO MY CLASSES, THE YOGA WILL BE JUST FINE! YOGA DOESN’T NEED >>ME<<

This felt like liberation, a state of utter deathlessness.

then, during my trip to France, i received all kinds of information, cosmic downloads, fully intuitive embodied wisdom that my precious home life was my most sacred of practices. i followed the feeling. then, i found myself in the space of wondering whether yoga can even be taught, whether it should even be taught, so i followed that feeling (more writing is flowing from this topic, stay tuned). so i reduced my public teaching schedule, cleared my immersion calendar for a year and said “no” to lots of wonderful opportunities (thank you thank you for asking me everyone, i appreciate you). and i practiced. i just practiced. and i just practiced.

and i realized something major:

i can only do my practice.
i can only do my practice.
i can only do my practice.

and there is freedom and joy embedded in that mantra. i must do my practice, but i can only do my practice.

what flowed was less force, less worry, less… wanting(?) from my teaching practice.
and more spaciousness, more intuition, more interdependence, greater perspective.

i’m not quite halfway through the sabbatical and missing my immersion kula terribly, which is good. ideas for retreats and workshops and new downloadable teachings are swirling in my brain: i’m trying to stay open, clear and steady so that i can catch them as they fly in.

i’ll try to share more of what i’ve been up to this year, but highlights include daily doses of DELIGHT in my beautiful children (naturally), LOTS of home improvement projects, BIG PAINTINGS, little books and writing. i’m even taking a writing class at our local university right now. i love school beyond.

more soon. happy you are here. happy to be on this path together.
all love, k

p.s. i listened to toni morrison’s nobel prize acceptance speech from 1993 this morning. it is so beyond. it feels so prescient.

p.p.s if you are looking for opportunities to practice together, i teach on tuesdays at yoga refuge and saturdays at north portland yoga (my current teaching schedule is here); i teach on thursdays ONLINE in the wildcat yoga club (+ a HUGE practice library); i have LOTS of videos on yoga anytime (use the code SUNROSE for 30 days free); i teach one-on-one sessions– email to schedule. xo