Owning Our Femininity

     It’s Saturday morning on a holiday weekend, so when I met my friend at a local coffee shop I wasn’t surprised to see her show up in ratty jeans and a baseball cap.  What surprised me was that when she got closer I could see she had cut her hair. Think Annie Lennox with a Hispanic twist. 

My friend is owning the aging process and has decided to stop coloring the gray; 

cutting it short made the process less awkward for her.

     

I felt it a bold move to cut her hair so short. As we spoke about her decision, she said she didn’t feel feminine anymore. I get that, but it just seems messed up to me. I started thinking about our society and why I have never had the courage to cut my hair “too” short. As a society we revere lush, flowing hair. I don’t think it’s too extreme to say that there are many of us out there who directly correlate our femininity with hair. Which, quite frankly, is bullshit. Being feminine is so much more than the length of your hair. I would argue it’s not even related to one’s gender. It’s a state of mind, an internal knowing. It’s the tilt of a head and a soft smile when you spot your lover gazing at you from across the room at a party. It’s the way one’s skin smells after a luxurious soak in a bath filled with lavender sea salts. It’s getting all snazzed up in something that makes you feel pretty, 

earrings falling on a long, elegant neck.

     

All of these things and so much more make up our femininity. It’s up to each one of us to own both our masculine and feminine sides without allowing society to put parameters on us. I have always wanted to be as bold as my friend. Someday I hope to go all Buddhist monk on the world, but I’m not there yet.   

Practice and All is Coming

We have had some challenges arise this year and this summer; with little work for me, I chose to wallow a bit in my misery. What that meant was late nights drinking too much wine and eating food that I knew perfectly well didn't nourish me. Four weeks ago I went back to work, as well as began a class called the Psychology of Yoga, which was a study of the first chapter of the Yoga Sutras. With a more rigorous schedule, I told myself enough self pity, it was time to clean up my act.

I needed to immerse myself in the lectures that accompanied this class, to read the guidance of the gurus that came before me, and to once more apply these principles to my life. It has been wonderful to roll out my mat, to sit quietly in meditation, and to return to a more balanced existence. To practice my yoga as it was originally prescribed, at home, alone, in silence. How many of my yogi friends have thought about this group class phenomenon?
Before the 1950's group classes didn't exist.

We've Americanized yoga.

Don't get me wrong, I love a group class. At a group yoga class I feed off the energy of others; I am literally energized by my fellow yogis' company. It's how most of us here in America find our way to yoga.
However, it takes tapas, self-discipline, to practice at home. Alone.

This summer I found myself falling into mudha, a space of lethargy and dull mind. The longer I allowed this to go on the harder it was to get back to my practice.

Yet, when I practice, I am more balanced, my mind is easier to quiet, and I suffer less.

This morning I ignored the laundry waiting to be folded, the dogs begging for a walk, the floor that desperately needed to be vacuumed and I stepped onto my mat. I began with three Om's and then moved into a vinyasa flow to wake my body. I took my savasana and sat for a meditation afterwards. I wanted to ease my suffering this summer, I wanted to be happy again, yet I was doing nothing positive to help myself. The sutras reminded me that yoga's aim is to both discover and reduce the cause of my suffering, and to do that I must return to abhyasah, 

a persevering practice.

 Pattabhi Jois said “practice and all is coming”...I think I'm ready.