Guest Post: Elizabeth J. Neuse

Speaking of setting intentions, I’d like to share my mentor Elizabeth Neuse's post on her own New Year’s Resolutions.

Elizabeth is not only an amazing Yoga Teacher, she’s also kind, candid, cool, laidback and incredibly funny. I aspire to be like her as a yoga teacher and as a person. 

But back to The New Year. Check out Elizabeth’s 2014 intentions. You’re in for a treat:

Resolutions and Samskaras

This year I made one New Year’s resolution- to omit sugar and road rage from my diet. No one likes to picture her yoga teacher raging at other drivers, but it happens. I decided to begin on Jan 5th right after returning from vacation. As I walked into the yoga studio yesterday a sweet student offered me a truffle. Walking out another dear student gave me a box of truffles. Before I knew it I was driving through SoHo steering with my knee, holding a praline crunch cup between two fingers and using another finger to indicate how I felt about the driver who just tried to cut me off. A few moments later I snapped out of my sugar rage, cursing myself for breaking my resolution after only 15 hours (if you count the hours I was asleep). A few moments after that I remembered something about self-love and decided to get curious rather than hostile towards myself.

In Buddhist practice we learn that suffering comes in the form of two arrows. The first arrow is the inevitable life circumstance- someone cutting you off in traffic or forgetting that you have given up sugar long enough to scarf down a few chocolates. The second arrow comes in the form of judgment of the first arrow. The second arrow is the expletive that flies out of your mouth, like a rabid sparrow, fueled by the nasty thoughts you think about yourself when you “mess up”. The first arrow can be a tool for learning. The second is a weapon.

When I take a step back and look at the first arrow I can see that while my intention was to love everyone and save myself from early tooth decay, I hadn’t done much to address the samskaras (habitual patterns) that caused me to react in the moment. Yogis have known for thousands of years what scientists are discovering today. It is incredibly difficult to change our habitual patterns, because they are wired into our brains. BUT it is possible. Through tapas (dedication), svadyaya (self study) and Ishvara Pranidhana (letting go), over a long period of time we can change our habits.

With these teachings in mind I got curious. I noticed that although I had flipped the bird at the other driver, I didn’t actually feel upset. My nervous system had not responded the way it used to, with clenched teeth and a racing heart. I looked in the rearview mirror at the man behind me whom I had not let in. I repeated a phrase Pema Chodron offers, “Just like me.” Most of the time when someone does something we abhor, if we get really honest we can recall a time when we did the same thing or at least something with the same energy behind it.

“Just like me” opened me up a little.

At the very next light someone else tried to cut me off. Instead of honking and speeding up, I slowed down and waved him in. To my surprise it actually felt good to help him even if he was breaking the rules. Sandwiched between my “just like me’s” I acknowledged that open feels better than shut. Curious feels better than judgmental. Gentle feels better than angry.  

Now what about the truffles?

They were given to me as a gift. I told myself gratitude meant eating them. However, as a vegetarian for the past 18 years, if someone gave me bacon truffles as a gift I would not eat them.

What would I do? Share them with a bacon-loving friend. 

Last night I enjoyed one more truffle and shared the rest with my bacon-loving husband. I decided that small amounts of high quality chocolate eaten mindfully works better for me than deprivation. I also changed my resolution to this:

 In 2014 may I deepen my commitment to curiosity and kindness, to recognizing others as “just like me” and to letting go of my secondary archery practice gently, one arrow at a time.

What are your New Year’s Resolutions?

How will you support yourself in the process of making these changes?

May your 2014 be filled with rich insights, limitless joy and bacon truffles;)

Namaste,

EJ

[Reprinted with permission by Elizabeth J. Neuse. Elizabeth is a Senior Teacher at YogaWorks and you can find more info on her and her teachings here.]

My Louis and Me

For the most part, this blog does not focus on fashion. I appreciate good style but by no means am I a “fashionista.” I’m more excited about finding the perfect throw for our apartment than finding the perfect graphic black & white ensemble for spring. (In fact, I just looked up current fashion trends on InStyle.com, to confirm that B&W is in.)

That being said, I like to think I have good taste J My mother says I dress like my late Grandmother Elly. I take that as a compliment, even though my mom really does think I dress like a grandma. Long gone are my college days of wearing barely there spandex halter tops. Now I dress strictly for comfort, with the occasional (i.e. when attending a wedding) night out teetering on stilettos.

But whereas in the past dressing for nights out meant trying really hard, these days I just aim to look put-together. Sometimes that means I dress in head to toe preppy; on other occasions I look more bohemian. And most days I just wear jeans and a tee or long-sleeved variation. (Really it just depends on which items of clothing are currently clean.)

My coworkers sum up my style as Californian, which I take to mean no-frills. I mix high-end items with cheaper pieces. Occasionally I’ll wear a statement accessory or a couple of delicate necklaces, but I’m not big on big-time accessorizing. I believe in investing in a few key items I’ll have forever, for example a Vince leather jacket I’ve had for over ten years, a handful of fancy blouses my friends must be so sick of seeing me in throughout the past decade and designer handbags.

Enter: Louis. But first, there was Coach. And then Kate Spade. And Prada. And now, Louis Vuitton. Throughout my late teenage years and early adulthood, I’ve taken to brand-name handbags and totes. The right ones never go out of style. And they dress up any jeans and t-shirt ensemble.

Recently I had an internal conflict regarding my Louis Vuitton “Neverfull” bag. The LV Neverfull is a really expensive handbag I bought a few years back, when I was in a more lucrative but less fulfilling job. I had recently been promoted. And I wanted to upgrade from my fading brown woven leather Banana Republic “work bag” which mimicked the Bottega Veneta style. I wanted a real-deal classic designer tote for both business and pleasure. And I gave myself that gift.

Then, my circumstances changed. I went from magazine marketer to fashion house social media manager to SAHG to yoga instructor and yoga advisor. And here’s the rub. Yogis don’t carry LV carryalls. Yogis don’t advertise brand name monograms or signature prints. It’s an unspoken rule. My fellow yoga professionals all tote around no-name leather satchels and the like. And I had wanted to fit in. So during my yoga teacher training and throughout my first months working as a yoga advisor I left the LV at home. I didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention. I didn’t want to be that girl.

Then recently, it hit me. Who cares? Anyone – especially a fellow yogi – who judges me for sporting an LV bag has her own bag of problems. Yoga is all about non-judgment, until it comes to investing in designer fashion accessories it seems. Well I’m here to break the mold. There should be no mold. And if there is, I’m fine not fitting into it.

[Me & My Louis Neverfull]

A

Writer's Block

I’ve suffered a bout of writer’s block recently. (You might’ve guessed it, based on my lack of posts over the past several days.) I’ve been quite displeased with myself because of this drought. I’ve had nagging feelings of: Why aren’t I feeling creative? Why am I too lazy to dig a little deeper for inspiration? Why must I label myself as lazy, or as anything at all? And then, Why am I so hard on myself? The other day I told my therapist that I’m living a lie. Lately my blog has been mostly restaurant reviews (which are all true and heartfelt) but I haven’t been penning anything about the not so delicious stuff. The funk I fell into this winter, after the Sandy Hook shooting. The “blahness” I’ve been feeling recently, probably caused by over-tiredness, no doubt triggered by my insomnia as of late. I write a mindful lifestyle blog, yet lately I’ve really struggled to be in the moment.

Just like writer’s block and insomnia, savoring the here and now can be a vicious cycle. And there are good things to savor! But alas, my mind wanders. I begin to worry. My acupuncturist (yes I’ve enlisted a team of experts to help with my wellbeing) reminds me not to judge these moments; we all have our work cut out for us.

Fortunately there are tools. There are books to borrow, online forums to visit. As I’ve mentioned many times before, life coach Martha Beck has been a huge help and source of inspiration for me. And her advice is free J In fact, in my email inbox last night I received her latest blog entry. It’s beautiful. And you can read it here. And here’s one quote that I’m keeping in mind:

The labyrinth is teaching me to question the bits of driven, linear, achievement-based dysfunction that can make me miserable in a life of incredible blessings and good fortune. We didn’t enter life to get it done. There is no place not worth revisiting. We double back to find the pieces of ourselves that still clutch the same issues like a baby clutching its pacifier. Compassion invited us to this unbearably repetitive, slow, complex path of self-discovery, to show us that only when we surrender our idea of how things should be going do we notice that the entire thing is breathtakingly beautiful.

For me this serves as a timely reminder that it’s okay to be on a path of self-discovery. No particular “achievement” (like being the most prolific and popular blogger to ever exist) is going to change Me. So, I haven’t blogged in a month. It’s fine. I’m back. And I’m exactly where I need to be. 

A

Fall Back In

For me, fall/winter has been a time of overconsumption. I haven’t been following my own advice to eat non-nutritious food in moderation, as discussed here. It started mid-October. Justin and I (along with 20 of our closest college friends) visited our alma mater, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was a blast, and we binged on beer and cheese curds among other college munchies. Then we got stuck in Chicago during Sandy, which turned out to be a great opportunity to prolong our time with college friends, but also an excuse to just laze around, just like we did back in college. From Chicago we road-tripped back to NYC, which of course was another unhealthy eating excursion. Next was NOLA for Thanksgiving. And since being back in NYC, it’s been one Secret Santa dinner after another, as well as Hanukah feasts with family, Xmas Chinese food and movie theater candy. Lots of movie theater candy.

This period of overconsumption has not been limited to food. We’ve recently seen many movies both in theaters and on TV, we’ve started two new television series, and I read another new book. All this of course in addition to my weekly digest of too many magazines to admit. It’s been media overload.

It’s time to lighten the load, mindfully. I’m trying to be yogic and not make myself feel bad for the fact that I’ve been feeling blah because I’ve been eating poorly and watching too much TV. Otherwise I’ll just continue to eat poorly and be inactive. (And so the vicious cycle goes.)    

No. Yoga has taught me to accept me for me, as I am. Yoga has taught me to not beat myself up over “bad” behavior – to not label behavior as being “bad” or “good” in the first place. I read this inspiring statement in a YogaWorks newsletter today: “Don’t get discouraged if unhealthy eating habits show up from time to time. As some of my favorite yoga teachers say during a challenging pose, ‘if you fall out, fall back in.’”

A

P.S. A quick media review –

I thought This is 40 was eh.

I loved Les Mis.

I also loved Django Unchained. (Even though I had to cover my eyes for much of it.)

And Gone Girl? So good. I couldn’t put it down.