Public Declaration of Excellently Awesome Future Life Plans

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Adventure, be in the world., debt free, finances, goals, good health, Guru, Haiti, holidays, India, manifesto, Public Declaration of Excellently Awesome Future Life Plans, Relax, Retreat, see things, service work, study, teaching, touchstone, Travel, Universe, wander about, Writing, Yoga

Been meaning to write this one up for a while now.

Have you noticed how darn freakin’ hard it can be to keep your eyes on your goals when they’re not immediately in front of you? When there are no set dates or schedules? Even worse, when you’re working like a demon to get to even the first marker and more obstacles appear? Yeah, me too. That’s pretty much been 2011 for me.

It can be handy to write up your plans and have them all in one place. So this post is exactly that – a manifesto of my Excellently Awesome Future Life Plans.

All in public and centralised, and a touchstone for me to revisit whenever I forget what I’m working towards. Also, it’s a bit like putting an advance order in to the Universe.

So here it is…*

Short term

• Get a well-paying permanent or longer-term contract job (6-12 months) to keep me financially afloat.
• Be employed before, during and after the end of my current contract (end-November ’11).
• Take my birthday holiday trip in December. Have a blast, meet new people and RELAX.
• Work on reducing my physical possessions – sell stuff or give it away. Hold a garage sale?

Medium term

• Successfully wean myself off thyroid medication, with the assistance of kinesiology, diet, de-stressing, yoga and other exercise.
• Get a clean bill of health for my thyroid once I’m off medication.
• Write a complete first draft of the children’s book that’s banging around my brain. (It currently sends me messages like: WRITE ME, BIATCH).
• Find someone to illustrate my children’s book and collaborate on the work.
• Reverse my thyroid-induced weight gain. – HAPPENING!
• Pay off all of my debts completely.
• Start saving a whole bunch of money for my Big Overseas Adventure!
• Gain my English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching certificate.
• Keep reducing amount of physical possessions to those things that are necessary for functional and/or emotional/spiritual/sanity purposes.
• Get travel shots.

Longer term

• Find a publisher who wants to publish my book and pay me money for it!
• Once I’ve saved up a whole bunch of money for my Big Overseas Adventure, buy an around the world plane ticket. Get necessary visas and insurance. UPDATE 17/3/2013: For now, I’m not taking a ’round the world trip, just a two month sabbatical to India (currently in progress!)
• Quit my job. WOOP! WOOP!
• This one is sad. 😦 Find an excellent new home for Miss Cleo the cat. My beautiful girl. UPDATE 17/3/2013: Since I’m not going overseas indefinitely, I just have a house/cat sitter instead!
• Sell all possessions I don’t want to keep. Box up what’s left to put in storage.
• Make all necessary plans and farewells. Then GET ON PLANE!!
• First stop: India, for panca karma, studying at KYM and Satyananda Ashram. Wander about. See things. Be in the world.
• Second stop: find wherever my Guru is in the world and spend some time with him, still studying yoga (referring to the complete idea of yoga here – philosophy, meditation, asana, pranayama, mudra, bandha).
• Third stop: spend some time in retreat.
• Other stops: maybe visit friends in the UK and US. Do some volunteer work in Haiti. Wander about. See things. Be in the world.
• Maintain and increase my good health, thyroid or otherwise.

Even longer term…

Now I’m getting into very speculative territory. But here’s a lifestyle that could make me happy:

• Settle down somewhere in Asia. Maybe Thailand or somewhere nearby. Somewhere beautiful.
• Get a job teaching yoga, perhaps at some swanky retreat centre.
• Perhaps get another job teaching ESL.
• Write more children’s books and/or other types of books.
• Maybe also do some freelance writing for various websites.
• Combine all of the above with doing service work of some kind, preferably working with children or women at risk. People who need love.
• Maybe other things. Probably LOTS of other things. But the point is to be doing work that I love and that makes me happy.
• Maintain and increase my good health, thyroid or otherwise.
• Live a life I can’t even imagine right now. A really, really GREAT one.

Somewhere in this process…

I dare to dream that this future also includes personal, romantic love. As in a partner. It’s been a long time, but I think I’m finally ready to open my heart again. For someone who gets me, and vice versa. Someone who has a good heart and thrives on the kind of life I’ve described above, just as much as I do. Someone who isn’t afraid of change, growth and learning new things. Someone who knows who they are and isn’t afraid to challenge themselves or me. Who is passionate and knows how to make me laugh. Side note: someone who is preferably taller than my 5’10½” because I dig a tall guy.

So there we have it. My Public Declaration of Excellently Awesome Future Life Plans.

For a long time, I didn’t have any plans or dreams. I didn’t make any and couldn’t even imagine a time in my life where I’d be happy and doing what I wanted to be doing. Things are different now. I’m on my way, y’all!**

Of course, the Universe will have a say in how things pan out. But assuming the Universe agrees, this is what I’ll be doing.

~ Svasti

* This post will get updated as things change!

** Being on my way doesn’t mean I assume everything is gonna go off without a hitch or be problem-free. That’d be foolish-thinking. But I’m down with a somewhat bumpy journey, as long as I can still achieve my goals.

Wisdom, moments & wonder #reverb10

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#reverb10, aliveness, giggled, girl over my shoulder, It’s all about the yoga, musty carpet, oral transmission, service work, volunteering, Wisdom, wonder, Yoga, Yoga teacher, yoga teaching

Another compilation for y’all, out of order in my typically shambolic style…

Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
~ December 10 prompt

Stepping out to teach yoga! I was terrified after I received my qualifications – HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BECOME A YOGA TEACHER?!?!

In the small hours of the day, I sometimes considered just letting it slide. I knew heaps of people who completed their yoga teacher training and then never taught. So why should I?!!

Regardless I took the steps, thinking I suppose I should at least give it a go. So I got my papers in order, applied for YTAA (Yoga Teachers Association of Australia – now Yoga Australia) membership. Got my public liability insurance. Thought and thought about a business name, then threw out all of my ideas and came up with a completely different one several months later.

I did all of that, and still didn’t have a class to teach!

But doggedly, I followed my instincts which told me how I wanted to begin my teaching career – working as a volunteer teacher for the disadvantaged. I thought it’d be awesome to offer some yoga for free to people who need it while building my teaching skills at the same time. Somehow I made it happen, and I’ve written about my yoga teacher experiences a bit. Here’s a handful of those posts:

• A teacher-y thing
• Yoga, Grace and time out
• Gettin’ in the groove
• Fishing in the universe’s ocean

Before I became a yoga teacher, I had a lot of trouble imagining myself as one. But I reckon that’s because I didn’t understand what sort of teacher I was going to be.

I’ve discovered that for me, teaching yoga is service work – no more or less.

It’s not like I’m some kind of authority figure up the front of the room commanding people to move their bodies. Instead, I see it more like a partnership. We work together and we laugh. I am honest and speak to my students as friends, not supplicants.

What I’ve learned from all of this however is that in order to become a teacher, you simply have to get out there and teach. There’s nothing your yoga teacher training course can help you out with on that front, except more contact hours as a student teacher. GO FORTH AND TEACH, I SAY!!

To date, this work of becoming a yoga teacher is the most enriching thing I’ve ever done for myself! So you could say it’s playing out just fine…

::

Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colours).
~ December 3 prompt

That very first yoga class I taught. Okay, the first one where people actually turned up! 😉

The experience of planning that session, agonising over the sequence of asana and further agonising over whether anyone would turn up this time made my belly flip-flop. Little summersaults of nervousness and excitement! I was up late the night before just making sure what I was planning made sense, much as the six year old me hated going to bed on Christmas Eve.

Everything had been donated. My time, the yoga room, the mats. I’d cycled a few kilometres from my place to the venue with the mats in my pannier bags, turning up ridiculously early. The room itself was upstairs at the back of an old heritage building-turned-art-gallery and despite windows in three walls, the space reeked of musty carpet and neglect.

Never mind, I’d brought incense and candles and music and we’ll generate our own vibe. Waiting nervously, and going through the sequence again and waiting some more to see who’d appear at the door.

There they were! We began, talking about yoga in general terms, a few announcements and before I knew what was happening, I was instructing people in yoga!! Who me?? Or, perhaps not me. Not the nervous/concerned person who stumbles over her own words but some other version, reliant on many years of gathered knowledge.

Get this – it worked! I didn’t just survive teaching that first solo/un-monitored class. I rose up and met the energy required to do the work.

Afterwards, I can’t tell you how much I giggled and felt overwhelmingly free. Light, like I could float back home instead of cycling there.

I think it’s that moment of sharing something and seeing the acknowledgement and understanding sink in. They actually get what I’ve shared. FUCKING AWESOME!

I mean, isn’t that what life is all about?

::

Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
~ December 4 prompt

Same-same-same-same – the very reason I grouped these three prompts together.

It’s all about the yoga!

Every time I step out on the mat as a yoga teacher I feel wonder at what I’m becoming – whoever this confident and self-assured person is, she sure doesn’t resemble the girl over my shoulder of recent history. New things are being forged: new things, new limbs, new words and shoulders rolled back further than before, chin up.

This teaching gig is an ongoing learning process – how I speak, move, and interact with those who participate in my classes. And it’s an honour and a blessing to be able to share yoga like this!

My last teaching gig for this year was a beginners class a couple of weeks ago. We were doing some of the Pawanmuktasana series – very simple movements that are exceptionally good for the joints (key for flexibility) and digestive system.

I noticed one of my students absent-mindedly staring at the roof while she worked. She looked bored. Hold your horses, lassie!!! I stopped the entire class.

No. It’s not yoga if you’re only going through the motions. Look at your knee as you move it. Breathe with each movement. Engage the mind in what you’re doing, don’t let it wander!

We started again and they seemed to get it – that presence is required, no matter how simple the asana.

And in that very brief exchange, if maybe even one of those students heard me just a little bit then I’ve made a difference. Which totally rocks, right? Here I am, participating in this ongoing tradition of oral transmission, something that’s been going on for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years.

Let’s face it: that is just freakin’ cool, everybody! Am I right?

::

~Svasti xo

Something for nothing

Tags

Blessings, Blog, Facebook, Generosity, Giving, good luck, Human kindness, Kindness, Love, service work, Twitter, Unemployed, Yoga

Nearly lost it on the way home from my yoga studio today. No, not falling off my bike… instead, deep sobs of gratitude welling from the pit of my stomach.

Had a little temp work in the last week, from Friday to Friday, four hours a day. Crazy little job really. Sitting on a reception desk where the phone hardly rings, and being told Oh, just look up whatever you like online… They worried if I’d be bored, without realising what an internet addict they had on their hands. Being paid to read blogs/Twitter/Facebook for four hours a day really isn’t bad, considering I’d be doing just that anyway…

Due to this surge of gainful employment, I wasn’t able to do all my hours at the yoga studio this week. Which kinda freaked me out, as I don’t like to disappoint once I’ve made an agreement.

But my yoga teacher said not to worry, and that it was better for me to be out there earning money. Actually, she’s been apologising for only being able to offer me cleaning work – can you imagine? Several times I’ve explained how damn grateful I am to be offered anything at all.

And it’s not that I’m superstitious or anything, but sometimes the space for a change of any kind requires a realignment. If you can’t make it happen yourself, a warm hearted and caring person can perhaps do it for you.

But certainly, I’ve seen more work in this last week than I have in three months. And none of it happened until after my teacher went out of her way to help me. I’m just sayin’.

So anyway, I arrived two hours early today to catch up on my hours for the week. Cleaning I find, is service work of a sort. It brings me joy to help maintain a place that’s becoming like a second home for me.

Then five hours of class, and as I’m leaving my teacher asked me if I’d like to be paid for my work thus far – literally half of the time I’d agreed to. Given it was that or withdrawing more money out of my dangerously depleted bank account, I said sure.

And get this – she pays me as if I’d worked 100% of the hours. Tells me it’s for good luck when I suggested she didn’t have to do that.

So I’m leaving with cash in my pocket, only half of which I’d actually earned and my eyes stinging madly. They’ve been stinging on and off all night.

Tried to think about the last time I did something for someone like that – just gave them money or goods or food – directly benefitting them in a way they really need.

Sure, I donate clothes and belongings to charities on a regular basis. But it’s not quite the same, is it?

Not that it was a lot of money but it wasn’t nothing either, and it’s gonna keep me afloat in the coming week.

It means a great deal more to me than that, though. Such a powerful act of kindness is a teaching in itself, isn’t it?

~Svasti