Dear Lovers,
I hope you are letting the soft edges of the fall sun bring a tenderness to your heart. I just adore fall. I close my eyes at night and see a sea of yellow and orange; so much warmth, so much love. I am reminded of this love every time I show up to teach a class, how very lucky I am to do the work I do in our community. I can't tell you how my heart leaps each time a heart I have connected with walks into the studio and then I can't wait for the people I don't know in the room to feel that love too. I adore all of you...
Even after 15 years of teaching yoga and feeling the love, I still have doubt come up. Doubt has had a great way of keeping me stuck, not letting my Self be seen, questioning my intelligence, and resisting the life that wants to move through me. I now see that Doubt is just here trying to keep me safe and I am learning to work with Her, bless Her heart she can stay as long as she needs to.
When you start to look at what you are resisting most in life, you will likely find that this is what points you toward freedom. I have been resisting redoing my website for years now. When people told me that they went to my website I would just cower in shame because I knew how outdated it was, but I thought the process it would take to make a new site would be worse than feeling the shame. So I 'embraced' shame and the website remained outdated, the resistance to moving forward with it was very strong.
Looking into my resistance, I feel compelled to share some of my early life in hopes of inspiring you all to keep diving deep. I have never written about some of my core wounding that happened to me as a young girl. It often takes our stories to bring up energy that wants to move through us. This energy is the conditioning that has contracted our body, hearts and minds.
I spent a portion of my childhood, age 3-7, in England. While there, I went to an American school for kindergarten and moved to an English school for first grade. My older sister was well received at the new school. She was smart and quickly moved up a "form", which is the English word for grade. While I, on the other hand, had an extremely hard time. English children start school earlier than American students and so in first grade they were already teaching multiplication, division, and writing in cursive. I was just trying to get addition, subtraction, and printing down. The English teachers would shame me in front of the class by having me stand up in front of my peers whilst they told me I wasn't trying hard enough and that I needed to be more like my sister...
I can spare all the other details of this horrendous shaming, but suffice it to say, my psyche took on that I was dumb, I would never be as good as my sister and there was definitely something wrong with me. My English classmates took after the teachers and were pretty terrible towards me being the American and I only had one friend at the school, it's amazing these angels that show up in our lives.
About 4 years ago I was going thru old files of mine and I found my report cards from that year and sure enough my memories of this time were validated; my grades were poor and the teachers said again that I should be trying harder. I would like to believe we have woken up to shaming and comparing and we can see that they are not great motivators. So, only in hindsight can I can see why the shaming was done. In their weird and awkward way, to put it nicely, these teachers were just trying to help. They were doing what they were taught. And thus cycles continue...
So, If you want to make a big shift in your consciousness and end the cycles, stop asking yourself, and others, "What is wrong with me?" And instead, when you do catch yourself in this thought(s), immediately put your hand on your heart and say to yourself, "I am sorry. There is nothing wrong with you. Everything is right with you; let's just see if we can go about things in a different way..." Those words were all I needed to hear when I was in English first grade. All I needed was a little extra help and a little self love.
Speaking of self love, if you want another shift in consciousness; please stop comparing yourself to others. The mind uses comparison to externally rate ourselves on some kind of fake scale of lovability. If you are low on the scale compared to others then you are somehow less lovable. But the thing is, you are the only one living your life. Keep your consciousness out of everyone else's and enjoy the life that you have been given. This is why I "dip my toes in" only occasionally to social media, because I want to be busy enjoying the life I have been given. However, it seems that you have to "put yourself out there" sometimes if you are a yoga teacher. Which brings me to my next sharing:
Almost three years ago I was in a car accident that a lot of you were aware of. Something I haven't shared was a revealing that happened a couple weeks after the accident when I was getting a cranial sacral treatment from my friend in Hawaii. She had one hand under my sacrum and one hand working on my head, mouth and neck. She exposed my breast during this process, which was very curious. I really didn't have a problem with my friend seeing my naked chest, but for whatever reason during this treatment my lower back went in to extreme sharp pain and I was ready to kill her. There was so much rage. Where was it coming from? I had never had an experience like this and I thought, "Uh oh, this is where the sexual abuse gets uncovered". I worked with that thought(s) and nothing else would come up. Months later I drove down to the Eastern Sierras and had to make frequent stops because my body was still healing from the accident. During one of these breaks, I was walking along Topaz Lake and I asked myself when have I felt this before? This feeling of being exposed. Sure enough, up came the memory:
It was a sunny day in England, which was quite a rarity. The English school I attended had a pool and so as a special treat because of the warm day they had us swim. I did not have a swimsuit at school so the teachers forced me to go swimming in my underwear with my chest fully exposed. I was laughed at and made fun of by my classmates who already were excluding me and making me feel stupid. I was so ashamed and embarrassed...
So there it was, along the shores of Topaz Lake, I got to love up on my little Shari. I got to hold her and tell her thank you for protecting me for all these years, but now I can protect her. We got this together. Now when I visualize little Shari jumping into that English pool, in her beautiful little body, she has a big smile and both her middle fingers are flying high, showing everyone this is not her shame, it's theirs...
Now, back to resistance and my website. It is ironic, and sad too, that not long after my Eastside trip, I had an adorable student walk into my class. Her name is Amanda Denz, and she builds websites and had done many for yoga teachers. I talked with her, shared, even went back and forth on email but I could not commit to myself. It was embarrassing. Life was giving me this opportunity, but I wouldn't take it. Resistance is strong with this one...
That resistance extends to many aspects on this theme of shame. Many of you have been following my newsletters, which now people are telling me is a blog, and so you know that I have been working on my beliefs and trust of men. When I met Ben he told me he would bewilling to help me with my website. He said he couldn't help me with the building of the website, but he offered to take pictures and help edit my content. Did I take him up on his offer? Well, about 6 months later I did. I knew I was going to be teaching at the WanderlustFestival this past summer and thus lots of random people I didn't know would be checking out by website. More embarrassment...
Early this spring, I was sitting at the new rec pool in town, trying to hack my way thru at least updating my old website while my daughter and her friend swam. In walks my friend, Nate Melen. He asked me what I was doing and he told me that he designs websites now. Ha ha; of course he does! This time I said "fine universe, I will do it". Nate was so patient with me and my resistance and held me accountable to keep working on the content and design, but pictures had to be done. Ugh! By the way Nate is awesome to work with if you need help with website development. So Ben and I scheduled a photo shoot, the weather was perfect, I had an appointment to get my hair done, and then we would head out. I tried to get out of the shoot when my hairdresser Nicola called to see it she could reschedule my appointment. I said "Yes! I would love to get out of this photo shoot," as I ate chocolate and nut butter, dreading all of it. She wouldn't let me change and the appointment was kept. So Ben and I went out to Martis Valley, to do what I most dislike- pose for the camera. What I experienced in front of the lens that day was something I have never experienced before. I saw his eyes behind the camera seeing me, really seeing me, and all the shame and embarrassment and resistance fell away. All I felt was tremendous love...
The pictures ended up being my favorite pictures that I have ever had taken. It's amazing when we really allow ourselves to be seen what gets healed within our being and I know that I was allowing it because of my work around trusting men. For many of us women it's our bodies that reflect shame, but I know it can be for men too. Please know that there is nothing wrong with your body, it's perfect just the way it is with all it's beautiful flaws. It is a divine expression of consciousness. And the comparing we all do is another way we continue to shame, and resist, ourselves. I encourage you all to enjoy the body you have been given, and know that it's a gift to experience pleasure, enjoy life!
So the website is done, it has been since July. I haven't told many people about it, but some of you have found it. My new website. I hope to use it as a platform to share my offerings to more people and (gulp) let myself be seen. I also share my teachers, healers, and links to resources I use. Lastly, I am posting my newsletters on there as well. I have always felt okay with sharing my newsletters because I have met or know the people that receive it, but now the whole world can see it. Yikes! Fear comes up, but I remember little bare chested Shari in her underwear taking the big plunge and say "Yes!" to all of it. Ben asked me the other day if I needed some fall pics for my website and "No!" came out without any hesitation. Self work is never done...
I so hope you will take the plunge with me and Ben for our next 4 week series, "Healing the Divide" starting Thursday night, November 1 at Tahoe Yoga. It is open to both men and women, couples, or singles. It will be transformative. It will be healing. It will be powerful. I hope you will join us.
So much love to you all!
Shari
