Things to do when you're (f)unemployed

Things I have done:

• Read books in the park
• Watch dogs in the park
• Buy pastels and a sketchbook and randomly make art according to your mood
• Browse bookstores looking longingly at the new books and thinking about the stack of books you haven't read yet sitting on your floor at home
• Read more books in the park
• Laundry!
• Wait 9 hours to get tickets for Shakespeare in the Park, pass out for 2 hours, watch Al Pacino for 3 hours whilst extremely exhausted
• Cook more extensively than you have in the past 6 months
• Actually buy groceries and prepare all your meals for a week rather than eat out
• Be SUPER good and make a big recipe on Sunday that you eat for dinner all week! Who am I?!
• Go for happy hour drinks with people who are employed and have total excuses to be kind of tipsy at 6pm even though you do NOT
• And along those lines, take advantage of all the $3 drink specials in NYC. What is this magical number and why have I never known about it before??
• And then also sort of along those lines, go out for drinks with other unemployed people and feel mildly ashamed when you meet guys at the bar and they start asking about your life. Trump feelings of shame with mild gloating about how you work in the film industry and it is so normal to have periods of unemployment, that's just the renegade lifestyle we lead! [Even if you're basically trying not to have that lifestyle anymore]
• Write poetry and long journal entries
• Actually upload the 600+ pictures you took in Costa Rica, e-mail them to all the people you met there
• Walk ridiculously long distances because what else would you be doing? 50th & 8th Ave to 20th & 1st? Why the hell not?
• Entertain your parents for the day with the NY Transit Museum, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and Restaurant Week dinner at Megu. Try to appreciate their spastic nature and kind words about your job prospects.
• Play phone tag with your sister who is traipsing around Europe, finally get her on the phone and spend the whole time wallowing in your jealousy of her life
• Do extensive research about free events and volunteer opportunities in NYC and make lists of onces you want to take advantage of. Wait patiently until those events roll around.
• Go see your friend's experimental show where you will pay a dollar to be blindfolded and led through a series of rooms where you'll experience sensations that are supposed to be reiminscent of The Odyssey (I am doing this tonight. I am kind of scared.)
• Write in your blog! Meta!
• Yoga. Lots of yoga. Think long and hard about the way you do yoga and the effect it has on your life and what more you can derive from your practice in regards to your mind, body, and soul.
• Research and make lists of all the classes you want to take once you have a salary and have paid back your parents for your travels to CR and you know, your student loans and rent and food and stuff. 
• Finally figure out how to sell my severely damaged laptop that has been hangin' in the corner of my room for a couple of months. Big chunk of money coming my way! Very exciting. (By big, I mean less than a weekly paycheck from my last job, but all things are relative these days)
• Drag your butt to Pilates on a Sunday morning with your ex-boss and complain to her about your lack of love life and lack of work over brunch immediately after, even though you know she'd hire you in a second
• Finally cave and agree to work for a day on a TV show because WHAT THE HELL you need the money anyway. And maybe you'll meet some cool people. And you're pretty much bored out of your mind and need a little bit of cash so you can continue to eat.

Yes that's right people! I am employed, for a day. Do I get to add this to my resume?  Can I add the part where my old boss BBM'd me saying she's already told the whole office how awesome I am? And the part where I'm mainly super excited because I get to go back to the soundstage where all the guards are hilarious and call me "Meryl"?

In other news, I am super stressed because I am supposed to look at apartments this weekend but at this point there is pretty much zero way how I will afford to live in an apartment past August 20th. Mmhmm. But I am trying to enjoy my (f)unemployment, because ideally, I will hopefully have a real salary job, not a film production job, where I won't get these long breaks anymore and will be on the 2-weeks-vacation train instead. To be honest, the benefits of a salary and health insurance and the whole concept of having a life outside of work would make that completely worth it to me. Because I didn't have any of those things when I was working in production, and that did not make me happy.

In yoga news, I gave myself a break yesterday because my muscles were really unhappy with all the working out I've been doing. Today I'm gonna go to a Foundations class at Sankalpah and see if I can work on my basic yoga poses for a bit to improve the rest of my practice. I am kind of excited by this concept, and hope it kind of shines a light on certain habits I have or ways I can improve. More on this probably tomorrow!

Offering up your Yoga

I've been toying a lot with the idea of offering up my yoga practice to something.

There has been mention of this over the years, by certain yoga teachers or articles I read, or whatever. Very often a teacher will begin a class by asking you to set an intention. Prior to my yoga retreat experience, I recall having a bit of a hard time setting an intention. Or rather, not a hard time, but kind of a really basic and simplified method of choosing an intention. To the point that my intentions were kind of stupid, if you will (or at least that's how I feel in retrospect). I guess it's unfair to myself to call them stupid, but they were juvenile and shallow and things like "Ok, I'm gonna really focus on STRETCHING this class" or "Ok, I will try to remember to BREATHE". I guess these are proper intentions, and good physical practices, but I think I was missing the overall point, the part where yoga becomes more than just a physical thing and delves into the spiritual.

Somewhere within my first couple classes at Pura Vida, I chose a really basic intention/mantra, but I think it was really valuable. It was "Be receptive and be strong." I sort of chanted this to myself whenever I was having a tough moment in my yoga practice there, or whenever a teacher would come over to me and adjust me. So often I am inclined to argue with someone who adjusts me, and I mean that in a figurative sense, not just yoga. I like to be right and I hate to be wrong, so if someone corrects me or adjusts me in any capacity, I sort of swiftly give myself an excuse or an argument in my brain. I'm not an argumentative person, and I won't usually put it out there in the universe, but in my head I'm giving myself a reasoning so that I was right anyway and the other person is just naive to my rightness.

This time around though, I tried to really give myself over to my teachers and admit to myself that they knew more than me and were going to be right no matter what. So I was open to their adjustments, and through that I learned quite a bit about myself. One thing being that I am chronic hyperextender (not a real word) in my joints, and that is probably what's leading to all my crazy alignment problems in my hips, and etc. etc. and basically I am just being LAZY because at my first yoga class I was like, "Ooh! I am bendy! I am flexible! I can almost do a split!' and have banked on that throughout all my classes since, and now that I'm aware of this issue I just keep realizing how fucking laaaaazy I am and just adding a slight microbend to every joint is making my muscle soooooooo sore because I'm actually using them this time around.

Wow, this post was about offering up a yoga practice to someone, wasn't it?

I guess the point is that a lot of good can come from setting an intention. And sometimes yoga teachers will specify that you should think of someone who needs something in their life, or someone you feel you've been false with, or something along those lines. I've often heard those words during a yoga class and a couple of specific people popped in my head right away (for the sake of the people that read this blog, I won't be specific) and I've thought of those people throughout the rest of a yoga class and whatnot. But I'm not sure if it was ever genuine before, for some reason I think it was on a more shallow level as well (along the same lines as my intentions evolving), where I was simply thinking about that person.

In "Eat, Pray, Love", Liz Gilbert ends up doing some offering of her own, but in the context of a meditation practice. She kind of talks about giving herself over to that moment and thinking really fully about that person and what they need and what she wants to give to them and the love she has for them etc. etc. and then she often talks about the aftermath and what comes from that practice offering. And while I'm enjoying the book, sometimes things seem a little prepackaged and perfect, how they work out for her, and how actual tangible things come from her prayers or thoughts. But because I'm in this sort of open and receptive (ooh, full circle) mindset, I'm trying to believe that if I am genuine in my offerings, maybe things will come my way as well. Or, if you take a more rational and not so crunchy approach, coincidences will happen and I'll connect them and get all excited and continue to live my life in my crunchy way because it makes me happy.

On Saturday, in Cristy's class, she asked us to offer up our yoga practice that afternoon to the teachers in our lives. We did some chanting re: that subject (not that we really knew what we were chanting, but I'm told it had to do with teachers) and then some meditating on it as well. She talked about thanking any teacher in our life, including those hidden teachers, maybe even those we've had negative experiences with - anyone that we learned something from. For a variety of reasons that may or may not include an idiotic text message that I received at 4 AM the night before after two months of silence, the main person popping into my head was my ex-something of recent months. So, against all rational thoughts in my mind, I chose to thank him throughout my practice. I really focused on the things I've gained from that mess of an experience during that hour and a half, and I tried to identify specific improvements I've made that stem from that. It was difficult, but I came up with a few. And it was a great class. And I was really sincere and genuine in my thoughts.

Now, I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, and I guess it is actually sort of embarrassing after I spent an hour and a half sending out "thank you" vibes to him, but we ended up in an all-out-text-message-brawl that night. HOWEVER, I would like to say that I had the last word in that brawl, and it felt really good to send that message (which I will NOT transcribe on this blog), and to be really really quite honest, I feel totally and completely at peace with that situation. I SWEAR!

And maybe that has something to do with my offering to him.

Or maybe not. You can decide.

But I am going to keep trying to be genuine in these offerings.

On a more serious note, yesterday's yoga class I decided to focus on my job hunt, or the job hunting gods, or something like that. I was about to run out the door to a sure-to-be-small class at Sankalpah, but I was a tiny bit late due to job hunting, and I was stressed and I just realized I did not really want a serious yoga practice that day. Or to be one of a few in a class, or to chant or anything. Maybe this makes me a bad yogini, but I was just being honest with myself. So I decided to chill out for another hour so, continue applying to jobs, then head over to Yoga to the People where I could disappear in the back of the class and push myself as much as I felt like in the moment. So I did that, and I despite what I expected to happen, I actually had a pretty intense class. I really tried to go deep in the poses, lower in my warriors and more stretched into my side bends and twists.

And throughout I kind of kept telling myself to endure and to be strong and to breathe and I would get through it. And at the same time, I kept telling myself - if I can do this, then I can endure and get through this job hunt. And if I emerge victorious from this yoga class, then I'll emerge victorious with a job. Right? Right?

It helped. A lot. Lying in pigeon pose, I thought of my post about hip openers the other day, and about the pain and emotions that are held in our hips, and how I've been so frustrated with trying to find a job and just stressed about my apartment situation and whatnot, and I actually found myself getting super emotional, more than I have ever in pigeon pose. I came out of it pretty soon after because I couldn't really stand it, but the other side was easier, and I just focused on the breathing and focused on the job hunt and the fact that I know I'll get through it somehow, and before I knew it that side was over.

So I emerged from that class feeling pretty positive about it all. It remains to be seen if anything comes from it, but we'll see. And I'm going to keep experimenting with this idea, because it's interesting and it doesn't hurt anyone, right? That is, unless you're my ex-something. But that's just a whole other story.

Creating Yourself

Well, that yoga class from yesterday certainly kicked my butt. As did the Pilates class I dragged my ass to this morning! I am so sore, all I want to do is lie in bed.

I could barely get through the class, my muscles were screaming so much... I wanted to start Pilates as sort of cross training. I know that I am super lazy when it comes to my abs/stomach/core in real life and in yoga, and I figured going to class where I'm reminded every 5 minutes to suck it in will help with that.

Well, it definitely will help. But it was torture today!

It was actually quite the interesting experience as well, because of the difference in breathing techniques and the whole "draw your navel in as close to your spine" sort of thing, definitely worked out my brain as well trying to remember to do all the pilates-specific actions.

I suppose it was against my better judgment to drag myself to class when I was kind of sort of hungover and on only about 4.5 hours of sleep, but you know. I'm trying to be really good about my workouts and everything, so at least it was a better choice than sleeping in then gorging myself on Ess-A-Bagel (the amazing bagel place basically less than 2 minutes from my apartment) while lying in the park, that exact sequence of events being something I have done many many many Sundays.

I ended up going with my former boss to Mimi's Hummus for brunch after class, where we had a delicious meal. I got sunny side up eggs with swiss chard and tomatoes, a tabouleh salad with whole wheat pita bread, and beets as a side. I am so in love with food, I can't even tell you. I am so jealous of Liz Gilbert in "Eat, Pray, Love" when she's in Italy gorging herself on all the amazing pizza and pasta and all that. I've recently been feeling a reignited desire to cook and bake and experiment with food, and I've been toying with the idea of cooking classes in the back of my head.

I have so many ambitions and things I want to explore, it is kind of ridiculous. And I am very all over the place about these ambitions, forgetting them one day then instantly being reminded and having an aching desire for several days, until I kind of forget again. But the same standards stick around for awhile. 

Here's a list of things I'd really like to pursue over the next several months/year or so:
Partner Dancing Lessons (Swing/Tango/Salsa - I love them all!)
Regular Dance Classes (Lady Gaga class at Broadway Bodies this Fall!)
Aerial Silks Class
Cooking Classes - especially Knife Skills
TEFL/TESOL Course
Yoga Teacher Training
Volunteering at BARC Shelter
Joining a Food Co-Op
Volunteering at one of the rooftop farms in NYC
Joining a book club (and reading more in the process!)
Being on a ZogSports team

And that's about all I can think of for now. I guess the first step is getting a job so I can start paying back my student loans and have the money for all this!

That's actually a huge part of my life right now, the job hunt. I've been applying for anything I can possible find that fits my skill set and is somewhat relevant to my degree and that I don't think I would hate. I'm really confident about my resume and cover letter and past work experience, but I've only had one interview (that I haven't heard back from yet - maybe I will hear this week). I have been lucky enough to find job opportunities that I'd be thrilled to have - but no word back yet, which is sort of frustrating. I found a listing on craigslist to be a full time dog walker, and I think I may apply for that just to tide myself over until I find something in my field. It would be good exercise, I love dogs, and... it would be a job. So we'll see, we'll see.

I'm struggling a lot with identifying what I actually want to do with myself these days, and while I have clearly identified certain things - like pursuing yoga seriously, for example - I'm just having a hard time identifying all the different components of my life that I'd like to have, and of the ones I have identified, how it will all jive together and whatnot. I've been really focused on this quote recently:

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. [George Bernard Shaw]

This is something no one has ever said to me, and somehow I never saw this quote until very recently, maybe about a week or so ago when I was at The Strand. It was on a card, and I immediately bought the card just so I could have it to stand up on my desk and look at. This is a notion that never crossed my mind, honestly. I was really caught up in this strange feeling that I didn't know myself, I didn't feel like myself, how was I going to figure out what I was meant to do, if I didn't know myself? etc. etc. Super caught up in trying to identify myself. Little did I know that if we go by this quote, that is impossible. Instead, I needed to be focused on who I wanted myself to be. This may sound silly, but this is a completely revolutionary and inspirational thought for me. I guess I am sort of inclined to believe that things like astrology and your parents and your life experiences have shaped you. Meanwhile, there is this idea that you can change anything about you because you are creating you and you are your creation.

I like that.

Another quote I've been focused on is this...

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. [Gandhi]

I'm not sure how to articulate my feelings on this one, besides the fact that I'm really trying to strive towards that aligned moment that the quote is referring to as harmony. I think I really felt this while I was in Costa Rica, if only because since I was by myself and no one around me had any expectations or anything, and I didn't have any expectations of myself or my plans, I was able to just live and be in the moment. There were zero pretenses or outside forces at work, so when a thought popped in my head, I would say it or I would do it. And, interestingly enough, I felt like "myself" more than ever in those moments. And even more interestingly, once I was cleared of worry about what others would be thinking of me  or if what I was saying or doing was correct or appropriate or whatever, I found people were drawn to me even moreso than I think they would have been if I was acting in my normal social situation way (which is not to say I put on a act or anything, I am just referring to the sort of normal (or at least I assume it is normal) thoughts that pass quickly through your mind in a social situation - the nuances of who you're interacting with and in what environment and whatnot). I met the most incredible people in Costa Rica, everywhere I went. I struck up conversations and bonded with people on bathroom lines, on buses, in hostel rooms, at my volunteer projects, at yoga classes, etc. etc. And that happened, I believe, because of that extreme lack of pretense.

This is all sort of making me think of some of the things we studied in my Theater & Therapy class I took a couple years back, and the whole notion of spontaneity. Some theorists in Drama Therapy write or talk often about the concept of a child's spontaneity. A child doesn't have those social rules ingrained in them in anyway yet, they are natural and pure and without any "mucking up" from the world around them. Some exercises in Drama Therapy are geared towards returning to that state of mind, where you are able to act as soon as a thought pops into your head. Improv is based on this, sort of. I wrote an extensive paper back then about my hang ups in regards to Improv, and how I hated it and felt extreme pressure when in an "Improv" situation because I was constantly censoring my thoughts and acts and whatnot, and how this theory could probably work really well on me but it sort of terrified me in a way. I remember my professor scrawled across my paper "Everything you think is perfect! Don't get caught up in those thoughts!" and gave me some sort of awesome grade. The paper was more extensive than I just described, and it was probably one of my favorite papers I ever wrote in college (the other being about Annie Sprinkle, the performance artist who once was a prostitute/porn star).

Remembering this now, I feel a little bit like I conquered those demons. Or, I took a big step towards conquering them. I'm still learning, after all.... I think that's all life really is. A learning experience.

And that's all for this Sunday Night. :)

Your Own Caregiver

Happy Saturday!

I just got home from a marathon Trader Joe's shopping excursion, where I ended up chatting with my cashier and finding out she had just moved to New York to pursue media production and I gave her all sorts of advice and tried to pass on good karma. I also bought a ton of produce and healthy things that will hopefully last me through the week - I'm trying to be really good about groceries and eating out these days. Before I went to Costa Rica, I was eating out for practically every meal except breakfast (and sometimes that too!) and that wasn't great for my wallet or body - even though there are amazing vegan/vegetarian food options everywhere in NYC and I love to take advantage of them. I'm trying to teach myself that they are for special occasions only, and I think I've been doing pretty good so far... of course, there are social events, but I'm trying to make those few and far between.

Before TJ's, I went to a late afternoon class at Sankalpah, one of my favorite studios I've tried in the city. I had Cristy as a teacher, and she was absolutely great. The class ended up being just me and another student, which is always an amazing blessing in terms of yoga classes. I first began taking yoga seriously when I started going to a studio on Long Island where the classes were sometimes just me, and at most maybe 6 or 7 of us. Before that, I was turned off by the shoulder-to-shoulder practice at Yoga to the People (though I do love YTTP still for a great power yoga workout - if you wanna sweat it out for cheap, this is the place to go. Good to work on flexibility as well because of the heat) and never really felt comfortable in my poses. The one-on-one attention I got at Yen Jen Yoga, my first real yoga studio (I'd link to the site but it is now shut down! :( ) really inspired me and pushed me to my limit. I finally saw what my body could do, and I became kind of addicted. That was a really cool style of yoga, basically like Hot Vinyasa. We practiced in the heat, though I don't think it was as heated as a classic Bikram Studio, and we did flow sequences with a bit of Bikram mixed in (but not the parts I hate! I really am not a fan of typical Bikram for whatever reason).

Anyway, so I'm a huge fan of the small yoga class, and it is SO rare to find that here in NYC. Sankalpah is the only studio I have found where that's happened, and I love it. Cristy was a new teacher for me, and she was great. I spoke with her afterwards and she mentioned training at Jivamukti, Laughing Lotus, and the Omega Institute, the first two I've actually been to in the past. Just in passing conversation, I asked her about how she morphs her technique for the studio with all those different trainings in the past, and I was really surprise to hear that she essentially doesn't. She said she has never been to Isaac's class (he's the founder/main teacher at Sankalpah) and just does what works for her. I guess maybe she was hired because of a similar mentality, or maybe (because Isaac also began at Jivamukti, I think), it has to do with the foundation of the teachers. I was surprised because I've found that Sankalpah has great teachers and of course each class is unique, but there are some of same ideas seemingly flowing through the various classes. Maybe I am just fabricating that in my head....

In my mind, Sankalpah is a great vinyasa flow studio, without the basic vinyasa sequence. All the poses flow together, there are plenty of down dogs and up dogs and all that but there is always an element of surprise, always a couple of poses thrown in the class that challenge your flexibility and if you took a second to think about it, you might think you couldn't do it, but then you do it, and it is awesome! That's my favorite sort of pose in a yoga class, because it sort of plays to my strengths (flexibility) but kind of blows my mind at the same time. Also, most of the time, those sorts of poses feel awesome!

I think Sankalpah may be where I end up doing a teacher training course, but I haven't made any decisions and I don't know if I am ready to do a training in the fall or if I should wait until Spring. I have a ten class pack, so I'm gonna keep attending classes there and see how I feel. I'd also like to get over to the Integral Yoga Institute sometime this week, and eventually I'd love to check out Om Yoga and Sonic Yoga as well.

So many yoga studios, so little time!

I wanted to make this post about hip openers, but I got off on a bit of a tangent. So here are some quick thoughts on hips:

Apparently we hold a lot of emotions in our hips, and hip opening poses help stretch those and shake those out. The way your hips feel can change remarkably class to class, and in my opinion, the stretches hurt (in a good way) the most when emotions have been on the rise/heavy. But clearly, those are the best times for them. I love hip opening poses, mainly because I have very open hips and they come relatively easily to me, but I can't tell you how much it varies from practice to practice. Sometimes when I'm lying in pigeon I want to cry there's so much tension - sometimes I feel bored and ready to do double pigeon. I firmly believe that little tidbit that so many yoga teachers impart - we hold our emotions there.

I just did a google search and happened upon some really interesting info on this. Here's a paragraph from this site, that I find to be a really useful and inspirational explanation. I'll leave you with this:

Hip openers have the notorious reputation of evoking deep emotions. We store a lot of emotion in our hips, typically emotions like depression, anger, anxiety and fear. Physically, our hips are large joints that provide us with stability. They are surrounded by muscles on all sides. They are attached to the back, abdomen, hamstrings, quadriceps, abductors and adductors, and gluteal muscles. We are very protective of our hips because they guard our sexual organs. Our hips have a wide range of motion and can be affected by a number of different poses. When we practice specific hip opening asanas like Half Pigeon/Full Pigeon, or a Low Lunge, or better yet, Frog pose, we are bound to release tension (emotions) from those areas. Following a hip opening intensive class, you may find yourself to be sad and irritable. This is actually a sign that the yoga is working for you. The asanas do not create emotions, they help bring emotions to the surface. Once you are able to recognize and accept your emotions, you are one step closer to being able to deal with them. This can be a scary proposition for some people. When we are placed in a stressful situation, we tend to go into a ‘fight of flight’ mode. In yoga, it is possible to go into a ‘fight’ mode. But outside of coming out of the pose and walking out of the room, there is no real ‘flight’. Luckily for us, yoga is a safe place for us to deal with things. The emotions are all just part of the process. The empowering thing about yoga is that it you have it in yourself to be your own caregiver.

Bienvenido!

Hello!
I am so proud of myself that I finally got this blog together. I've been meaning to do so for awhile, but I kept taking care of other things first and putting it off, until finally....
What bring me here at this exact moment? The fact that I am ill and cannot practice yoga, funnily enough. I am stuck in my apartment warding off a weird sore throat/sneezy cold while it absolutely POURS outside, guzzling down a green smoothie.
It is actually quite a shame that it's raining, because my parents are supposed to come into the city today and my mom had a great plan all worked out that involved walking around Brooklyn Heights and checking out a neighborhood where she used to live. Now, I guess the plan will be modified, which is just as well because in my sickly state I'm not sure how well I could handle all the walking.

So I've started this blog, mainly because I've wanted a real, live, well-written, often read blog for a long time. I haven't really had a specific topic in mind, and I've haphazardly created personal life blogs or secret poetry blogs or travel blogs, but never stuck with them for too long. Several weeks ago, I booked a 4 week trip to Costa Rica with very little plans on my way, and ended up backpacking all over the country and extending it to 5 weeks and having an amazing time. I did this because I was feeling directionless, unfocused, uncentered, and uninspired.

[As an aside, I finally decided to read "Eat, Pray, Love" this week, and I am a little dismayed that I am not the only one who took a hedonistic journey and wrote about it on the way. I am also angry that everyone I know is mocking me for reading this book. I clearly relate, okay? Even if I thought I was solo in this idea, and the first to decide to write about it, and she had a book deal before she even wrote about it, and I guess her problems were much greater because they involved divorce and serious depression and clearly she traveled more than me, and then there gets to be a movie about her journey as well starring Julia Roberts and etc. etc.]

Anyway, I kept both an actual journal and a travel blog throughout the trip, and I found it incredibly comforting and mind-clearing to write about everything that happened. And a lot happened. I really felt the universe at work throughout the trip, sending me people and signs and experiences to confirm or erase thoughts or ideas I had. Fears and doubts would cross my mind only briefly before something new and exciting came and changed my perspective.

One main theme of the trip was yoga. I was lucky enough to spend my first week at Pura Vida Spa & Retreat Center, doing their Mind, Body & Spirit program. What that essentially meant was that we did yoga twice a day, ate delicious vegetarian meals, took a couple of day trips and had some fun activities like aerial silks class or salsa dancing, and had plenty of opportunity to experience body work with amazing people (personally, I did a deep tissue massage, reflexology/reiki treatment, ear candling, an ayurvedic consultation, and this fascinating thing called bodytalk). That sort of set the tone for my trip, and then as I continued throughout Costa Rica, I was able to take a couple other classes in various places and met a ton of yogis on my journeys. Costa Rica is a pretty yogic place, I guess.

All of this, and all my discussions with the yogis and yoginis I met on my way, sort of highlighted a major fact for me. I feel my absolute best when I am pursuing a yogic lifestyle. I feel amazing post-yoga, I love cooking and eating healthily, I am fascinated (and intimidated!) by true yogi spirits, and I want to know more and more about the whole lifestyle. I can't identify any feeling I have felt that is better than lying in savasana after a solid, physically exerting but also spiritually rich yoga class.

So now, here I am, back in NYC. Trying to get the career part of my life together - I am a fairly recent college graduate (Dec '09) - and I had been working in film production for awhile, but I'm trying to branch out otherwise. But I think a really important part of my life that I do not want to let go of is the yoga part. So I've made a commitment to really pursue yoga seriously, in all my spare hours. That means classes several times a week, seriously studying the methods of the various studios and teachers I experience, hopefully reading some books that are out there on the subject, and just doing a lot of thinking and analyzing as to whether perhaps yoga is something I want to pursue as a career. For the moment, I need to pay the bills doing something I got my degree in, but I want time to explore that side of me, and I want to incorporate it into all aspects of my life eventually.

So here is this blog. This blog will be about me, of course, and probably there will be some entries that are lacking in yoga entirely. After all, I am a young 20-something living in NYC, some would say the center of the universe. Sometimes exciting or interesting things happen to me. Sometimes my life is so boring and mundane I want to kill myself. But I hope that this blog will overwhelmingly aide me in my journey to becoming a true yogini, and I hope that I will be able to bring some people along with me on the ride.

Thanks for coming, I hope you stay awhile!