Think BIG

When we moved to rural Maine 21 years ago, I was 26, a newish bride, a new home owner of a 1790 farmhouse with 70 acres of land, and a bit confused. I remember meeting the couple we were buying the house from. Linda and Dan were their names, and Linda was the talker. She talked about her sheep, Shearfest (an annual festival where folks bring their sheep to be sheared each spring (say that 5 times really fast!)), her spinning group (not talking Peloton here, mind you, but the kind of group where ladies take turns holding out their hands just so in order to collect the wool yarn being gathered around a spinning wheel), and then she talked about whatever else she felt like getting off her chest. This was our intro to the long and dark winters of rural Maine, and the people who survive them. We eventually found our way to Portland. That said, the quirks and hustle of wherever you live will surprise and amaze you wherever you go.

So, why are we talking about wool and chilly winters from the tropics? I guess because I feel a little bit like Linda, minus the sheep. When I got my 200hr training certificate from SYJ in 2011, I was a mother with two toddlers and a kindergartner, a wife to a husband who worked long days in NYC and a person who had lost her personhood. Yoga had always been a constant, but doing the deep dive into the training was my way of going back "in" to myself, to what felt like meaning in my ungrounded life. The movement, the breath work, the Indian myths and history, the meditation, the community/kula, the essence of knowing something that was so personal and, yet, felt so universally across the globe... It was a very defining time in my life where I felt connected to what brought me joy, what stirred my fears and what kept my attention, besides the little people whose energy never seemed to wane. When I completed the training I didn't start teaching in studios or anything, but offered weekly practice sessions to friends. This was just enough to keep me engaged and mindful as a teacher of a practice that I loved, while also allowing me to still receive the gifts of yoga without becoming wrapped up in how I was going to pass it along to my students.

And that's what brings me to today. I am becoming "the talker." I have never been "a big talker," always more of a listener. I have sat in therapy rooms holding space for clients and asking questions as an agent of change, but my job was in listening to the details and clarifying feelings/beliefs/patterns more so than talking my way through the session. Clients came to talk to me. I think the same goes with a lot of my friendships, maybe not as much with my closest friends, but I tend to not be as vocal as those whose company I keep. And I'm good with that, don't get me wrong. (I am an introvert after all, quiet and solitude feeds me in ways that it doesn't feed everyone.) In this reclaimed role of being the yoga teacher I am meeting an edge that is uncomfortable and unsettling, but so necessary. I'm using my voice to not only guide breath and movement, but to claim something that I had lost.

Truth be told, four years ago I lived through a reckoning, an undoing that brought traumatic suppressed memories to the surface and held me captive to PTSD symptoms for over a year and a half. One way I learned to survive the horror that assaulted my mind and body was to live small. My routine, my world, my calendar, my expectations, and my truth had to be kept within a contained space where I felt safe, at the cost of being small. I didn't want the attention of acquaintances, let alone strangers. I didn't put myself in situations where I felt exposed, a loud dark room with spinning bikes or a Walmart with all sorts of aggressive smells and all walks of life. When I wanted to express myself it was in my paintings and my journals- pages and pages of them. I did not use my "voice" other than with my therapists, healers and inner circle. And there is more to the story here, I know, but the point is... I made it through by mostly trying not to be seen. And then Covid-19 hit, and we moved to a place with constant sunshine, and here I am, a year later, teaching 3-5 classes each week to new friends and to strangers, to vacationers and to my husband- who is now scratching his head as to why it took him so long to get into and actually enjoy yoga.

Only time will tell when I find my teaching groove and allow the innate confidence I can feel in my body to come through in my voice as I lead bodies into and out of poses. It's hard to stand/sit/perform/bend in the front of a room! Unlike Tupac, All eyes on me is something I have NEVER done well, but this is something that I have to do. I have to talk! I don't necessarily dislike my voice, but I know that I don't project well and I tend to mumble on a good day. I can get choked up on words because my thoughts move faster than my mouth. And I tend to prepare what I want to say ahead of time and have a hard time winging it, something that is challenging when you've built a class around forward folds but the crew that comes in to class can't touch their toes. However, I am putting myself out there and trusting myself enough to get through, and sometimes enjoy, AN HOUR of guiding people through a practice that is authentic and personal to me. And with all that said and done, I am practicing being bigger.

May you live your BIGGEST life yet!

With love,

St. Sunshine