Welcome to the Gold Coast, Gatsby Country. 

I don't think the original estate owners had a yoga studio back in the roaring 20's, 

but we're going to re-write history.

I'm excited to be co-hosting a Writing Yoga retreat this summer with NYC literary agent Linda P. Epstein.

It's called,

Nurture Your Work in Progress, Nurture Yourself.

If you are looking to escape, indulge, and work your fiction, 

we would love to see you sipping something sweet by the pool,

 writing your novel in the Magnolia room, and dining each night under the chandeliers (or stars if weather permits). 

 

Barefoot in Boston: the Glamorous Life of a Yoga Mat

Barefoot at Home

Before Sandy, when Long Beach still had a boardwalk,  I received a purple yoga mat and lavender scented eye pillow from Barefoot Yoga.

The mat traveled with me to several different classes, visited studios in New York City and on Long Island. It survived post-Sandy construction. It was my Ashtanga,Vinyasa, and slow flow partner. Just when we were getting used to our newly re-finished floor (see picture), I rolled her up and took her to Boston.

All the other mats in my closet were jealous, but it was barefoot's turn. How a mat holds up matters. What it is made of matters: no heavy metals, phthalates, latex. Who wants that between the earth and the body?

How many footsteps at the top or bottom of the mat does it take before imprints won't wipe away?  I see no trace of myself yet. On the mat, that's a good thing. After thousands of salutations, what stories hide in this perfection? 

Barefoot at night. Boston, river, lights, 10,000 writers at the conference next door, AWP 2013. 

Barefoot at Night in Boston

Last night, my mat and I saluted the moon. Our first night in Boston in final relaxation with Barefoot's matching eye pillow: silk, flax seed, lavender, evening bliss. 

In the morning, the ground is white. More flurries, more Northeastern storms. Yoga in snow.

Barefoot in Snow

Something about being above the earth, like clouds makes me feel safe.

I eat crunchy peanut butter and crackers in my room to off-set the price of staying at the top floor of the conference hotel with sweeping city views. We still feel glamorous.

This mat is the Yin and Yang of writing and yoga, morning and night, peanut butter and sweeping views.

At night, city energy is softened by the warmth of the room and rhythmic movement of cars below. In daylight, snow erases the view, causes me to look inward.

It is perfection, this balance.

- Find Barefoot Yoga here or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Barefootyoga. 
- Read about the AWP 2013 Writer's Conference Here. 

Setting Your Story, Setting Your Yoga Practice

Michelle and Marybeth teach evening yoga at my gym. These two accomplished yogis never fail to set the stage so lushly for practice that you want to float from class to sleep. Each week feels like a celebration of the creative. It could be the incense, dim lighting, music or their soft voices. It could be the way they use elegant props like candles, lights and flowers. Or maybe it is their intention to make you feel like you are practicing on some beautiful beach and not at the gym.

Every once in a while a weight-lifter drops a weight while you're drifting off in savasana and the room shakes. You notice and dismiss.

Every once in a while you catch a runner outside the glass panting from treadmill to the corner of your eye. You may even feel like you're being chased.  No problem; you're a warrior.

In a class where flowers are lit, I think of story. Where does this vase live? In the middle of a gym floor?

What helps you set your stories? What helps you set your practice?

New Year, New Practice

Happy New Year, writers and yogis! 

The gas lines are gone, the tide is low, and the hole in my roof repaired. 2012 has been shown the door. 

I'm taking in a deep breath now and enjoying the newer air. It's cold, but fresh. 

What is different for you? What do you hope to create, write, and dream in 2013? 

I'm excited to share upcoming opportunities, events and ideas in the writing, yoga, and writingyoga communities.  We will be back to Thursday posts next week so please stop by then for a more juicy visit. 

In the meantime, thank you for your practice, love, and readership. 

Namaste, 

Stef

www.stefanielipsey.com

Hurricane Sandy, Gas Lines, Yoga, and Returning to "Normal"

I hope you are reading this from a cozy, warm place, one with electricity, heat and hot water running from your kitchen sink. Finally, nearly a week after the hurricane, we have light. And heat! Several of my dear friends and immediate family members have either been evacuated or have had their homes washed out to sea. I have never seen anything like it. My thoughts and prayers are with those who lost more than shelter or possessions.

We are all alive and well here. I have spoken to people whom I have not heard from in years. It warms my heart to hear stories of communities coming together to help those who are not as lucky as I was.

Cathy Epstein of Artisan's Well in Sea Cliff has a donation box set up for local shelters in front of her store. Barbara K. from Sea Cliff is transporting goods to shelters with what gas is left in her tank. My friend Mary-Beth gave a community restorative yoga class, at the Creative Arts Studio today where Tracy Warzer, the owner, opened the doors to make a community Mandala.

I have just returned from eating her delicious homemade soup, Lisa's homemade vegetarian chili and Grassroots' amazing scones.  I feel like life is resembling normalcy.

I say resembling. I say it cautiously. It will take a long time until everyone gets to sleep at a place called home.

On the fourth night without power or heat, my husband rehearsed music with his local band. We opened the doors to anyone who was home and could walk on over without using precious gas.

Waiting for gas in Glen Cove - car line a mile long

The next morning, I invited everyone back for yoga in my living room. When we woke up, the house was freezing and I cancelled on the group text message. My friend Barbara, a nutritional and laughter coach with a great sense of humor and generous spirit said, "why don't you all come here?"

And so we did. Seven woman showed up for spontaneous post-hurricane yoga.  Our bodies were cold and creaky. We needed to be gentle. Yoga shows us how to listen to our bodies and to be grateful that we can move them at all. Last week, Hanumanasana or split pose, was met with ease. Today, feet, shins, thighs, hamstrings, groin, all feel stiff.

Yoga meets you where you are. Today is drastically different from last week and next week. It's not about judgement or criticism. It's inclusive and welcoming. It warms the physical body and the heart. It builds community and inspires us to express our unique and individual gifts.

So after class when I went home to admire my new decor, a tree branch that pierced through the dining room ceiling from a tree that had fallen on the house, I could smile and get my butt back into the chair to write.

view from my dining room window

Stay safe and warm everyone.

Namaste, 

Stef

Can You Write on a Stand Up Paddle Board in the Middle of the Sea?

Welcome, Writers/ Yogis! 

 

I just wrote this piece about my first experience on a SUP. Have you ever tried it? It's life changing....

 
If I didn’t do it, if I didn’t witness, if others didn’t witness me, I would have never believed I was capable of such a miraculous thing. Some of us were sitting, some standing on feet and others on their heads, but all of us were out in the middle of the LI Sound on stand up paddle boards, “SUPs.”

photo by Karen Chrappa

At first I thought people were saying, “s’up?” as in  “what’s up?” in the way us New Yorkers leave off beginnings and endings of words, but no, there really is such thing as a “SUP.” Because of Michelle (thanks, Michelle!), of Shore Thing Rentals and other brave beach lovers of my town, I tried something new. I told myself that I would just stay seated. Michelle said that when you feel steady, slowly stand up. I did. I could.

It was remarkable. That was day one.

On day two, yoga. I completed four sun salutations, both A and B, on a tiny paddle board in the middle of the sea!  Crazy, right?

The best part was that I did all this after work, just in time to catch the sunset. I felt like I had a bonus day, a weekend inside a weekday. It was like being given a second childhood.

Next time I go out, I’m bringing my journal. I will write while standing on my head in the middle of the sea on a paddle board while keeping the pages dry.

To read more, please visit www.soundcliffwritingspa.com.  Thank you for reading! - Stef

Packing the Yoga Mat: For Lightness or Comfort?

yoga mat on the balcony

It feels like something extraneous to pack when traveling to the other side of the country, ocean or world, but I take it anyway. Technically, my "travel" yoga mat was not designed for travel, it's a freebee promo one that just happens to be very thin and portable. I would travel with one change of clothes and a toothbrush if I could, but you need things like bathing suits, writing materials, and underwear. I also know how grateful my hands are for that first downward dog on familiar sticky ground.

Sometimes I feel silly. Do I really need to carry this thing?

I write to you from Southern Italy where my feet act like percussion mallets under tiled floors. Gorgeous mosaic and stone keep us cool, but aren't the ideal surface for a yoga practice. Yes, there are options, some wooden floors, sand and lawns, but it's hot out there and I might get a few strange looks.

How about you? Comfort or lightness - what's your call?

Top Ten Words for Writers, Yogis and Yogi-Writers

1. Simplicity - less is more
2. Breath - relaxed, flowing, even, rhythmic, inhale, release
3. Sequencing - right words, right poses, right order
4. Flow - arc of line, phrasing, grace
5. Philosophy - tradition, breaking tradition
6. Ease - even in discomfort, especially in discomfort
7. Alignment - posture, poise, non-harming, strength
8. Grounding - getting to the mat, getting to the desk, staying focused
9. Intuition - listening to your body, following the pen
10. Discomfort - ease in, stretching boundaries, moving past --

What's your top ten?  What element flows through your pen? What fire helps you move on your mat?

Writing on the Subway; Yoga in the Square

If I gave you this token, where would you go? 

Are your journals filled with the backgrounds of tracks and rails or running streams? Both? 

It's summer now. Where will you go to write?

 The wheel has turned to summer and thousands of us will gather tomorrow, June 20, 2012, with our yoga mats to salute the sun in Times Square, one of the busiest places on earth. Is that a great image or what? 

Will you be there? After I put in a full day at the library, stop home to kiss my kids, I will sling my mat on my back, get on the train and arrive in time for the 7 pm class. Want to read or write about it? Please visit me here: http://soundcliffwritingspa.com/2012/06/19/times-square-yoga-writing/

or read about last year here: http://writingyoga.blogspot.com/2011/07/yoga-in-times-square.html

It's been two weeks of NYC nostalgia in my notebook and I can't seem to stop. 

If you'd like to join me on the ride, grab your metrocard and read this terrific anthology. It's called Token Entry: Poems of the New York City Subway, edited by Gerry LaFemina (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/token-entry-gerry-lafemina/1109245760?ean=9780980191691)
The poems dip in and out of the boroughs and in and out of time. I am honored to be included in it too.

Where will you go to write this summer? 

Where will you take your mat? 

What themes burn holes in your journal this week? 

I would love to here where the "token" has taken you. 

www.stefanielipsey.com

Spring Cleaning for Writers (and people with minor floods in their laundry room)

I kidnapped my friend by accident. She was just tagging along on a quick carpooling run, but non-road detours (namely kids and a flood in my laundry room) kept us from our destination to hear some musician friends play at a restaurant. As she helped me soak up water with used towels, I blurted out,  “I just want to go to my beach house.”

 

I don’t really have a beach house but she humored me so I kept going, “I’m going to my beach house, alone. It’s got new wood floors and large white windows and I’m gonna sit on the only piece of furniture inside it, a couch, a plain sand color couch. The view is amazing too.  Picture windows and no plumbing issues. I’m really going, okay?”
“Okay, she said.” And we got back in the car.

We made it to music, but I didn’t feel like dancing. I sat uninterrupted for the first time that whole entire day and went to the beach house in my head.  Unlike my real house which had been uncharacteristically clutter-filled and flooded on Friday, the beach house was pristine.

Clutter is not just physical and external. Often our inner state, reflects our outer and vice versa. When my house and desk are clean and clear, everything flows better, including my writing. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Turns out that some of my favorite  gurus have been saying this for decades. Cleaning and clearing space makes magical things happen. Deepak Chopra, Oprah, Cheryl Richardson, and Denise Linn have each said in different ways that getting rid of things you don’t love, need or use can change your life.

Denise Linn calls it “modern day alchemy” and I highly recommend her books on the topic where she details how to “clear your space.” Cheryl Richardson’s books will incorporate this process as a life skill necessary for making room for greater things to come. She’ll get your butt in gear and help you learn to take good care of yourself too. (This is the librarian in me talking, so listen up!)

When my Dad died in 2006, I went to the beach with papers and burned them at the fire pit. I tossed the ashes in the sea. I had no idea what I was doing then, but now I know. I was testing the wings of the Phoenix.

SPRING CLEANING FOR WRITERS (PLUS PROMPTS)

• Get your notebook ready, but don’t write a word. We’re going to de-clutter your desk first. Set aside some time to go through every single drawer, surface, crevice of your desk. Have a big hefty bag ready and purge. Spray some lemon oil mixed with water in the air before you begin. You will immediately feel refreshed. Once the desk is clean, have a seat. Write a thank you note to yourself in the voice of your desk.

• Go through your files, paper and electronic. Condense. Delete, delete, delete. I have been working on that for two weeks and it feels amazing. Pull out one old draft that you had given up on long ago and revisit it. Read and edit as the writer you are today. Did you notice a different in voice and style? Hope so, it’s 2012!

• This is a tricky. Edit a friend’s work. Set a page limit and make a trade. I have had my share of editing through the writing course. It’s time consuming, but well worth the effort.  Did you find it easier to make changes in another’s work? Could you see “mistakes” and patterns that you do as well but were too close to the material to recognize your own flaws?

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING (and cleaning):

• Post a comment here to share your words of wisdom and wit. What did it feel like to clean your space? Any tips for the rest of us? Was it easier to create in your lemon-scented clean room?

• Find a writing buddy and help each other out. Post here asking to exchange or on my wall on FB if you would like a virtual one: http://www.facebook.com/StefanieLipsey.Writer.

• Visit:  www.stefanielipsey.com to see event and workshop info.  

also posted on: www.soundcliffwritingspa.com

Stories We Keep: a Yoga as Muse Anthology, Writings by the YAM Tribe with an Introduction by Jeffery Davis. A Review.

Gather around the fire, roast a yam, listen to the journeys that brought five women to their writer’s desks, but first, skip to the stories. Although the contributors are accomplished yoga teachers and practitioners, none of their pieces mention the word yoga. The structure of this multi-layered anthology goes like this: a woman tells a story, she is interviewed, and then gives you her yam recipe.

Each work is unique and compelling, the interviews are fascinating, but yam recipes? At first I wasn’t sure I wanted them to be there. It seemed a little kitch. But as I read on, I saw that the YAMs were a story too. YAM is an acronym for Yoga as Muse, and the treatment of this vegetable by the writers is quite revealing.

Take Catherine, who wrote the chilling story, “A Cold Minnesota Day for a Rape.” She says, “A Recipe? …cooking is more of a chore for me than anything.” I’m with you, Catherine. Tanya, an active MFA graduate and yoga teacher who also enjoys working with children, contributes a playful recipe for yam fries. Bhavi, the author of a sophisticated domestic themed story, “Swan Song," contributes an equally sophisticated recipe for “Curried Sweet Potato Bisque.”

Am I psychoanalyzing the YAMs? Maybe, but it only made me love the stories and the writers more. It made me take myself less seriously, which I believe was an intention of its inclusion in a serious anthology. Best of all, it even made me want to turn on the oven.

Now that your mouth is watering, let the stories speak. “This anthology contains no…ecstatic moments of the writer or a character becoming one with green leaves and mountain streams….what a relief.” writes Jeffery Davis in the introduction.

The “relief” will be welcomed by yogis and non-yogis all, because although yoga is the vehicle, it’s not the destination here. The stories stand alone.

After Davis’ gorgeous introduction comes Darlene Rivais', “Swan Song,” a lovely and complex relationship story that begins, “Two years ago, for six months, we were pregnant. Then we weren’t.” My heart sank. The miscarriage leads to betrayal in a marriage that is often treated with humorous irony, “That was different, you say, please tell me you read a book. No book. Marco. He’s tantric. But you say please, so I say yes.” The metaphoric and literal swans glide along the lake, and like a poem, the scenic scope is wide and deep. Emotions lay quiet, until they explode. “I’ve cried and smashed vases and stained the new carpet in the nursery – now exercise room – with blood from the cuts on my hands.”

Co-editor Dawn Curtis’ novel excerpt, “Butter Girl,” is a wild rush in the life of sixteen year old Lily whose forty year old Mama just gave birth - yet again. Lots to unpack here, a fire that charred the town and trees two weeks ago, a mother who still hasn’t recovered from childbirth and Victor, an older brother who “spies” on her. Like the first story, the lake figures prominently. Lily wades in it with her Ukulele and sketchbook held high, two symbolic objects that intriguingly resurface throughout. The language captures the voices of this large family living in rural America beside a lake while successfully retaining a sense of urgency and artistry. Fire, wild dogs, peering eyes of men, a cruel father, and too much responsibility culminate in the ending at a fever pitch. “Lily…moved through the water...the air was filled with cries and smoke too thick to see from whose throats they sprung.”

Story three gets us out of the water and into the city, actually the suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota. I wished that the rape in “A Cold Minnesota Day for a Rape”was metaphoric, but no, it was brutal. Part one is the voice of the victim called, “daughter” and part two carries her mother’s rage in a scene that depicts a sighting of the rapist in a local McDonalds. Both are told in the present tense which heightens immediacy and intensity. From“2. The Mother”: “I am a wolf. Don’t dare to mess with me. I’ll cut your balls off.” and later, “My daughter looks at me. Fear and nausea in her eyes…I sit up, my backbone an ebony skyscraper.…‘Eat.”

The lead-in to the rape is stunning. In part One, we follow the girl’s footsteps.“Walk the two blocks toward the school, woodland across the street on your left, apartment complexes on the right that gradually fade, leaving you with hard cold sunlight…” Details such as, “A dachshund runs out of nowhere…clawed feet too big for its legs” are skillfully engrained throughout the story. And this one too, which follows the rape, “Janitor helps you up…The wall is thickening, growing roots through your heart and skin and cells. Take his hand.”

“Motion” by Tanya Robie is another novel excerpt about a young woman, but unlike “Butter Girl,” the character, Annabel, is going through the tribulations that often accompany divorce. She is filled with rage and ready to “fly the coop” on the brink of her last years of high school. Her parents are filled with hypocrisy, trying to keep the family together in the mist of dysfunction. When her boyfriend can’t stay over, she becomes enraged to her core, her fear and anger palatable, “She wanted to blast them out of her body. She felt their weight in her stomach, and in her mind she could their mass…[and]…the triangle of her pelvis, and the oval of her ribcage.” There is a familiarity in Annabel that makes for a smooth read. Right from the start, Robie masterfully sets up the story with a broken welcome sign, a shattering of familial bliss, “– a lilac painted on a thin piece of slate – fell to the ground and cracked.”

The last story, “Throwing Like a Girl” is a novel excerpt from Robin Bourjaily, one of the editors with a busy yoga and writing business in Des Moines, Iowa. She likes her yams “Casual or Dressed Up.” Two recipes even I could handle.

In this final story, Tanya invites us into her inner musings about marriage that circumnavigate around a conversation with her decorator, Maria. Tanya’s husband, Jeremy, is an executive with Consumer Reports and lately, “all they seemed to do was rub each other the wrong way.” In a short space of time, this beautifully written tale of a suburban marriage documents a lifetime of love and lost loves before landing into present ambivalence. The excerpt concludes with Maria asking for some masking tape, but no, there is none available.“Without getting up to look, Tanya shook her head, no. Nothing in the house was that binding.”

Fire-keeper Robin, tends the flames of inspiration well, but let the stories speak for themselves. Read each one with care. It takes a tribe to maintain the flames, and each writer lives up to the task and name bestowed upon them around the circle, Love Keeper, Twilight Keeper, Mystery Keeper, River Keeper. Get the book to learn who is who.

As Davis said in the introduction, there are “No Rumi-esque songs of the Divine.”But there is some kind of magic happening in this tribe and anthology. The magic of the three elements: story, interview, recipe. The magic of life, art, and stories told off the mat with sutras, asanas, teacher, elements, and tribe as muse.

I highly recommend this anthology, as a librarian, writer, yoga teacher and mostly, as a girl who likes a good story. And who doesn’t like a good story ‘round a fire?

GET YOUR COPY OF STORIES WE KEEP: www.storieswekeep.com

FOR MORE ABOUT THE TRIBE: http://www.trackingwonder.com/yoga-as-muse.html

Disclaimer: I have no connection with YAM and have never met any of the writers in person. My only connection is a love of writing, yoga and story. 

Thank you for reading! - Stef

Follow Writing Yoga for gems about writing and yoga. Follow the Sound Cliff Writing Spa and get free writing prompts by email.

http://www.writingyoga.com - http://www.stefanielipsey.com – http://soundcliffwritingspa.com

©Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Healthy Writers Series: Is There a Traffic Jam in Your Body? How to Keep the Words Flowing

This photo of Long Island City is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Hey, I'm a guest blogger!  It's a short article with lots of resources and links to help keep us writers and yogis flowing along with our pens.

Healthy Writers Series: Is There a Traffic Jam in Your Body? How to Keep the Words Flowing...

Svadhyaya and Some Ya Ya's at Walt's House

Whitman Well from WWBA

This weekend, I went to hear a poetry reading at the place where Walt Whitman was born.

Later, I thought of the weekend as being complete and whole. Time for dancing, food, family and friends, room to sit and listen to poetry plus active hours on the mat. That doesn't always happen, does it?

As I sit with three newly purchased books of poems from yesterday's reading, I think of a particular yogic principle from the "internal disciplines" called Niyamas.  (Some Yoga 101 here:  basically, there are eight components in yoga philosophy called "Yoga Sutras." You can read these teachings in a book called, The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali. Part 2 of 8 is called The Niyamas.)  Niyamas are interesting because they feel private - things like purification, contentment, and self-study.

Personally, I love the Niyama, svadhyaya. I just like saying the last two syllables out loud! You try it: yah-yah. Anyway, it means self-study. When we read the yogic philosophical texts, and connect to teachings, that's svadhyaya. As a poet, reading poems are my philosophical texts too. Writing is the asana, the poses and practice.

And then there's Walt. I don't usually do this, but here's a poem I birthed at the birthplace, on the place he called the "fish-shaped Island of his birth, Paumanok." 



Concrete Walt

The gate wasn't here a hundred years ago
before stockade fences kept us
from running through wheat fields,
escaping woods to rocky shore,

when I park a single car
among ten it feels wrong,
ten thousand painted wheels
line stillness at a mall across the street.

I dip my fingers in an empty well,
listen for hints of footsteps rising.
Are you still in a flood-tide west --
riding with the ferryman from Brooklyn?

Louisa, the pain of childbirth
is almost two hundred years old.
Will you come with me to Macy's,
to the mall named after your son?

It's so hard here without ships or sea,
with DDT flavored groundwater,
but we can walk, Louisa.
We can walk across Route 110,

with ghosts of soldiers, immigrant workers,
defy speed racing past --
or just stay here and listen
to the sound of leaves crash against the gates.


(first published in Rogue Scholars,  ©Stefanie Lipsey 2003)


Thank you for reading. I can't promise you will see the ghosts too, but it's worth a visit to the WWBA.  Do you find self-study to be a portal? I would love to hear your thoughts and reactions to what you read, visit and practice. Come on back and post. 

See you next time! - Stef

www.stefanielipsey.com

Links to Get You to the Writer's Desk and Inspire Creativity

Look at this, my first time clicking the "share on blogger" button!  Lucky for you, it's a great share. My friend, adventurer, and excellent writer, Deonne, has posts on two different blogs this week and they were so informative, I just had to share. 

Deonne and I got our MFA degrees together and since she moved back to Taos I don't get to see her much. (Those of you who lived through a creative writing program know how much you bond with your peers & how much you miss them when you stop pouring out your soul to each other every week in class.) But now, here she is. And there she is. Everywhere. Her blog is hilarious and you will enjoy her subtle bits of wisdom.

Oh, did I mention that she traveled across country in a scamp and blogged about it??  Really: http://www.gonescamping.com/2012/02/07/here-there-and-everywhere/

Then find her here on Creativity Portal:
20 Questions Interview with Deonne Kahler - Writer, Photographer, Owner of JournalsAndNotepads.com

And there on Fear of Writing:http://fearofwriting.com/blog/2012/02/from-stuck-to-unstuck-in-one-easy-step/

And at journals and notepads too.

As you can see, there's no advertising on this blog. It gives me the freedom to share what I think might be helpful to writers, yogis, and creatives. Deonne doesn't even know I'm writing this post. I think I better send her a text.

Enjoy!!!  - Stef

www.stefanielipsey.com

Being Flexible is all in the Head!

This week in the Sound Cliff Writing Spa, my other blog and online writing community, we are talking about flexibility as writers. 

The question is "how flexible are you?" Does a flexible body make a more bendable mind? Maybe yes, maybe no. 

What do you think? Come visit the spa and post your thoughts. Here or there. It doesn't matter. I'm flexible.

http://soundcliffwritingspa.com/2012/01/30/writing-prompt-17/

www.stefanielipsey.com

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Picture credit: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=3229

Can Your Calendar Turn the Office Desk into a Yoga Studio?

I like my iCal, but I love my paper cals better. I never have to back them up.

There is something personal about a paper calendar that online calendars can't replace. After yesterday's internet censorship protests, you can't help but wonder what would happen if someone decided one day to delete you. It might be okay to delete me, but not my calendar.

I have a pocket sized filofax for my bag (my love), a beautiful paper calendar for the fridge with family events, my ical, and Louise Hay's affirmation calendar for the circulation desk of the library where I work.

When we got back to school after our December vacation, I unpacked my new Louise Hay calendar and placed the 2012 version in a vacant spot.  I love that one of the first things I see each day when I walk into work is that calendar and so do the teachers. Joyful teachers make joyful students make a joyful workplace.

What is the first thing you see in your workplace? Your writer's desk? A pile of work? Clutter?

Could sitting at your desk feel like sitting on a meditation pillow in a yoga studio?  Could it be cleaner, clearer, filled with purposefully placed objects in a lavender-scented room?

Yoga cultivates imagination and in my own imagination, I say yes.  Why not?

Clear off the desk today. Spray some lavender. Hang a beautiful calendar instead of the yucky one. Hang one with inspirational images and quotes. Make it yourself on your computer. Or, keep it zen and place a plain calendar next to a rock.

Once you are finished, dump all those other piles of papers into the shredder and tell us how THAT felt!

It's a new year -- how will you keep track of time?

www.stefanielipsey.com

Counting Calories in the Borough of Queens, Ann Podracky, Her Mother, and Andy and Marie

Special Fiction Issue of Writing Yoga.

 I heard this moving and humorous piece read by my friend, Ann, on Saturday night. It was at a new reading series in Sunnyside Queens so artfully curated that each reader entertained and enlightened the audience without a single gap in interest. All I can tell you is that the QC MFA based series, Oh, Bernice! blew me away. Don't miss it next time if you live in NYC. I wish I could deliver this story as well as Ann read it, but I guess I'm just lucky she let me steal it for the blog.

Andy and Marie

by Ann Podracky 

      My mother counted calories. Throughout my childhood I'd find her tabulations scrawled on the edges of newspapers, table napkins, lunch boxes, and McCall’s magazines. Once she used a birthday hat I had saved.  100, 200, 100, 500 were scribbled on the tail of a gray monkey holding a large pink birthday candle. These numbers were the one thing that let me know as a young girl where she had been in the world without me. 

      She got her caloric values from a small red booklet whose cover featured a muscle bound couple in matching leopard-patterned bathing suits. It was the one Jack LaLanne had recommended on his morning TV show that my mother turned on but never exercised to. The couple on the booklet held up the letters that spelled out Andy and Marie’s Calorie Counter. My mother tried to keep it with her wherever she went. When she couldn’t find the booklet she would ask in the same voice she used to ask where my brothers were, “Ann, where’s Andy and Marie?"

     One night I found out how she arrived at her numbers, which always ended in zeros. I had asked her to tell me a story before I went to bed.  Still standing in the kitchen washing dishes, she grabbed Andy and Marie who were lying on the toaster. “If I eat a piece of rye bread, I look it up in Andy and Marie under breads,” she said.  She turned to the section on breads and pressed her wet finger on it, leaving a mark.

 “If Andy and Marie say a slice of bread is 75 calories, I round it down to 70,” she told me.

   “Why do you go lower?” I said.

   “It’s easier,” she said. “Go to bed, Ann.”

    With all that counting, my mother never did lose weight until she was in her seventies, about ten years after my father died. She was very thin by then because she was having trouble swallowing. The day before she went into the hospital for the last time, I visited her in her apartment. I noticed there were numbers penciled on the wall: 200, 100. There were even erasure marks. 
     "What's this? I asked, pointing to the wall.
     "I still like to count my calories," she said. 
     “But you’re hardly eating,” I said.

    “You were always such a worrywart, Ann,” she said. Then she took a small red booklet from her housecoat pocket. The pages were yellowed, held together with crisp scotch tape. The cover was torn. I recognized the leopard bathing suits.  Andy and Marie were headless.

     “Let’s see, a small can of tuna in water,” my mother said. She leaned over to the wall next to her recliner and penciled 150.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Ann Podracky has read her work at different venues in the city including Ear Inn, the Bowery Poetry Club, Earshot, and CUNY’s Turnstlye Reading Series. She was a Writer-in-Residence at the Louis Armstrong Museum and Archives in 2010 and a fiction editor for the online journal Ozone Park. Her writing can be found on the City University of New York 9/11 Memorial Site, the Revision’s Journal, Little Perversities, (Wasteland Press 2005), and Poetry in Performance 38 and 39.

For more stories from Ann and info about the Oh, Bernice! Reading Series, please visit, http://ohbernice.tumblr.com/
Visit Stefanie at www.stefanielipsey.com.  Free writing prompts at the Sound Cliff Writing Spa Workshops.

1,2, wear no shoes...3,4,open the door... 5,6 - 7,8, Mat and Pen, Childhood - Begin Again

It's the middle of the night and I reach for my pen in the dark. Jack be nibble....jack be quick.....I write in my journal. I add three other nursery rhymes. In the morning, I can't make out my handwriting, the part where I stop quoting Mother Goose, but know what it says. It's part dream, part abstraction, part future poem.

Photo by Jessica Lipsey

Doesn't everyone dream in childhood? Working with children each day is like getting a childhood rewind button. (Do you remember having to rewind things?)  It also teaches me how to live creatively within structure. Monday through Friday = pledge of allegiance, stories (I love stories), research, lessons, lesson planning, lunch, more stories, research....dismissal.

Those things are set. My school day is set. But what happens before and after is up to me. Each day is a choice. Do I hit the snooze or tip-toe into in the living room and meditate before the kids get up?  Do I keep my journal with me so flashes of words from sleep to wakefulness don't get lost? Or do I go to work, come home, eat a bag of cheeze doodles, dinner, TV and sleep?

Nothing against cheeze doodles, but as crunchy and indulgent as they are, they won't make me feel delicious. I want my life to feel delicious. I want that for my own family, friends, and the kids I teach. I want that for you.

What is a delicious life? It's splashed with joy. It's a snowball fight (seasonal metaphor), feathery flakes, blue sky and tiny intervals of freedom. "Free time" is short and it's long. It's being a child an an adult at the same time. A delicious life is filled with love, creativity and ritual. A meditation ritual extends time, writing re-lives it, and yoga integrates you and time with all that is. In short, the future and past are up to you.

Namaste,
Stef

p.s - Need some help getting to the mat? The free Yoga Journal 21 day challenge starts Monday, January 9th. I have no connection with Yoga Journal. I'm just a fan. See you on the mat: http://www.yogajournal.com/21daychallenge/#.TuF7aWyUrFx.facebook. You can even practice with your kids if you've got them.

Writing, Yoga, and Staying Curious in the New Year

Are you ready for 2012? Goal-setting books, classes,and websites are filled with experts ready to help.This year, my only goals are to stay flexible, curious and welcome in mystery. 

from the AMNH website

Today, I walked through the American Museum of Natural History with my family. The guard said that over 30,000 people visited yesterday and at 12 noon today when we arrived, there were already 17,000 viewers ready to take on the blue whale and dinosaurs. When my kids were little, we spent days in the museum, digging for dinosaurs in the discovery room. But now, experience and curiosity let each one of us find our own artifacts to wonder about.

I'm expecting 2012 to be a year of discovery, in the same way I expect to discover new aspects of myself, my students, my family and friends each year. I've often limited myself at the start of any given January 1st by setting so many specific goals. This year, I'm staying open to discovery.

The art of discovery and staying "curious" is an integral part of every yoga and writing practice. We write to surprise ourselves and our readers. In yoga, a certain amount of curiosity is needed to gain flexibility and move through challenging poses.

Even when we think we are being flexible, inviting discovery, and staying mildly curious, are we allowing it to happen naturally? Is there more? Of course there is. But what?

Yoga teaches us to be present and stay curious in the body and mind. This year, where can you delight in your own discovery?

Tell me. I'm curious.

Meditation and Quiet Yoga is Always in Season

Tonight I went to an evening vinyasa flow class followed by a meditation class. I don't know where I floated to, but I was very "floaty."  Ahhh.  A long group meditation session is exactly what I needed to counter the stress of holiday planning, a busy work week, and a wonderful, but active family life. 

It is true that you create more time if you allow yourself to sit quietly and meditate. The beauty of mediation is that just like yoga, you don't need to spend money on equipment or leave your house to have a healing session. Meditation indeed heals. It also has been known to reverse the aging process. How does that sound?

I'm going to entertain you with a quiet page this week.  Your life is busy enough. Finish up that holiday shopping and get to the mat and/ or meditation pillow.I'm thrilled that you show up to Writing Yoga to read and share your wisdom. Speaking of wisdom, what helps you make room for mediation in your own busy life? 

Happy Holidays and New Year!

Namaste,  

Stefanie 

PS - When you float back to your computer, can you please take a moment to visit my new Facebook page?   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stefanie-Lipsey/113744045398986.  I'll be posting more writing & yoga goodies next week in 2012! 

www.stefanielipsey.com

www.writingyoga.com
www.soundcliffwritingspa.com