Business

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I’ve worked for years to increase my practice, build what I’m doing and in the past two years really decided it was time people listened. At 25 most people assumed my health was a gift of genetics but ten years later people look at me and start to wonder what it is I’m doing that seems to be working. I ache, I hurt and regularly I might add but, I can control it. Bodywork and yoga have provided a solid platform along with dietary changes that allow me to heal myself to my ability. That control leads to less depression, less frustration and lots of hope.

This week I had to turn away three clients, three of my regulars I see once a week. I, Robert Gardner turned away work and money. I reached my limit. My work has grown to the point that scheduling is needed in more detail, regular time off must be scheduled and my prices/rates need to rise more. I love what I do and it shows. To turn away work is something I’ve dreamed of and it only took ten years, two states and innumerable breaths to reach.

You want a session of Thai massage? It’s $100.00 per session and you’ll need to schedule two weeks in advance. I’ll see you soon. Thai massage class starts at 830am tomorrow.

Namaste’…bitches.

Are you a victim?

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I gave a talk recently at a local HEB. I was asked to speak about yoga and always relish the opportunity to discuss what I do and why. In yoga classes and bodywork sessions I can only talk so much so it’s an outlet of sorts to just verbally address what we’re working with.

A participant listened to me talk about my car accident, heard me talk about BKS Iyengar and at one point he said, “it sounds like you’re encouraging people to not be victims.” In maintaining a sense of supple softness to situations I found his words sank in. That’s exactly it. He hit the nail on the head.

Repeatedly I hear people saying, “I’m old. I was injured. I have this disease or physical malady. I grew up in an emotionally abusive home. I smoke. I’m not flexible or strong.” My response is always the same. “And?” Where you are has no impact on your ability to get better. If you think you’re too sick to do yoga you simply don’t know what yoga is. You are not trapped by your genetics to grow old and wither. You will age but that’s a natural process. Decay to the degree I see in people is unnecessary. You can age and live well. Do you want to be youthful, vibrant and full of vigor? Do you want to eat what you wish within reason? Do you want to avoid medications and surgery as much as possible? Yoga can help you do those.

I cannot promise you will never get sick. I can promise that with regular practice that sickness will not last as long and will not be as intense. That is a goal worth working towards. Yoga is active and empowering. It allows you to harness yourself with every fiber of your being to make a better life. Thai massage is the passive form, it allows you to have someone like me help you along the way. Both are wonderful and should be used to their potential.

Why am I adamant? Why do I increasingly become stern with a boisterous attitude? Unlike when I began I’ve ten years experience and vision. Your life can be better. It can be better than I can envision. If I sound like a broken record or preacher it’s because all around me I see and hear suffering, complaints and pain. People give various reasons for this. Wherever you are, it can get better. I know. I’ve done it and it continues to grow at a pace I find staggering.

Your pain is a form of ignorance, let’s remove it together. Bliss is waiting.

Headstand pt.1

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Years ago I decided after a year or so of yoga practice that I wanted to try doing a headstand. I pulled a pillow into a corner and walked my bottom above my head until I could lift my feet then fell over into the wall. I couldn’t balance and it felt very awkward on my neck. I ceased, deciding I’d try again later.

Months down the road I tried again and something had shifted. I seemed to be able to hold the pose briefly and began working on my balance, then my alignment through my arms and shoulders. The pillow slowly was pulled away from the wall and when I felt more comfortable with my balance the real fun began.

Headstand is like a wake up. As the king of inverstions is allows blood to pool in your head and turns your world upside down. Your heart has to work to push blood up to your feet and when you flip right side up, that’s reversed. Blood flow helps cellular repair and cleansing in your body.

This promotion of vascularity in the head and neck helps keep the thyroid and parathyroid in high functioning order. The hormones released regulate many functions in the body and the increased health of these glands is what makes the long term benefits of inversions, particularly headstand and shoulderstand so profound.

John Friend

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The yoga community is once again in an uproar due to allegations that John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga, engaged in a large array of poor choices including having sex with a number of his students. I find myself in continual awe over what people focus on.

I know little of Anusara, little of the American yoga communities business dealings and even less about the celebrity orgy of yoga teachers. My response on reading the allegations is let the courts figure it out. Energetically, I hope that people can see we have people, making decisions in their lives and as bodyworkers and yoga teachers we need to be aware of the transference and countertransference that goes along with power dynamics. Of everything that John Friend is accused my number one concern is did he abuse authority?

Over the years I’ve had to deal with a huge array of dynamics with clients and students. As a male teacher I remember preparing myself to teach yoga and becoming scared watching a Rodney Yee video. Rodney was walking around shirtless, adjusting students poses in all his sexy flesh and my sense was that I would have to cover up. It seemed far too sexy. As a male teacher I was already going to have to deal with innuendo but it was an edge that I was uncomfortable with at the time.

Rodney Yee, as is well publicized was having sex with students at one point in his career as well. I’m not opposed to teachers and students making adult decisions but how does it look on the outside? Let me say that it has not been easy to do my job the last ten years. I should type that sentence twice.

When I was 25 I was single. I felt most massage clients felt a single 25 year old went into massage therapy to massage naked women. Massaging naked women was just a perk on top of helping people with back pain which I’d suffered with for three years at that point. Many issues regarding, touch, intimacy and sexuality were dealt with during my massage schooling and I continue to encounter new lessons in my field.

The number one issue I have is integrity. Choices are made but more than anything I do not wish to have my integrity questioned. In all my actions I wish to be above reproach. I want students of all walks of life to feel safe, comfortable and secure in our interactions. Doing Thai massage, teaching yoga and giving bodywork there is a large amount of body contact going on. I’ve grown comfortable with this and it doesn’t bother me. I keep in mind that for students, how many men have lovingly nurtured them with touch? Hmm… Just things to ponder.

I’m human. I’ve worked on women and men who might as well have sprouted angel wings and ascended to heaven off of my Thai massage pad. Beautiful people, sexual people and happy people. People I’ve found appealing and arousing. I find the same thing at the supermarket. Having a strong attraction or aversion to people around you should be used as a lesson. What is it that we find appealing in others? What is it we find unappealing?

Bodywork and yoga aren’t about sex. They are however about people and people will never be divorced from sexuality. There are 6 billion people on the planet for a reason.

I strive to never abuse my authority as a yoga teacher or bodyworker. Students and clients submit to me in a sense in session and it’s my job not to abuse that power. They’ve put themselves in a role and honoring their position in that dynamic means protecting them and myself. All our interactions should have integrity. Healing comes in many forms, including sex. I only engage in a few of those for money.

I hope in time the dynamics and power structure become more egalitarian and male teachers don’t abuse authority. In John Friend’s case I hope that his teaching can continue despite whatever personal choices he’s made. Don’t confuse the teacher with the teaching.

Valentine’s meditation

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Dislike for the commercialization of the holidays grows as I age. In considering what my wife should get for Valentines day I had to consider lots of factors. In my relationship with Andrea we’ve come to the conclusion that she adores attention. Having my focus is probably the number one thing that makes her feel special. Buying things and gifts isn’t as large a concern and until recently money was tight enough that that was a beneficial situation.

In considering a commercial holiday that I want to reclaim, what would work best? What can I do to show my appreciation to my partner? When I get home from work this evening, here’s what she’s getting:

I’m going to kneel at her feet with a bottle of nail polish remover and clean every toenail of the old polish. Lovingly her feet will be cleaned by running warm soapy water into a large bowl and having her feet washed by her husband. She will be meditated upon, praised and adored by the man she’s tolerated for 7 years. I will then dry her feet with a soft towel and apply raw unrefined shea butter to her feet and massage them.

Wringing out any tension in her feet while giggling with her and talking I’ll find the sore spots and work them out with care. Grabbing whatever color she chooses I will then breathe with focus and lovingly apply polish to her nails. Each little piggy gets its own coat and the yoga teacher can exhale to dry them in turn.

The value in yoga and meditation is that they are living, breathing practices. They’re not divorced from your day to day life. Meditating upon our loved ones and focusing our care and attention on them allows us to have better, more healing and whole relationships.

What did it cost? How do you think my wife will feel? What do you think she’ll do to me afterwards? We can’t post such things in my blog, those will have to remain secret. 😛

Happy Valentines.

On the Breath pt.3

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In yoga classes I regularly remind the students to breathe. I can never remind them enough and yoga is just exercise without the focus on respiration. The breathing will expand your body, open your tissues and allow more space for your self to reside in physical form.

In this video we talk more about the muscles of respiration and particularly what happens in inversions. Being upside down means that your breath changes in some key ways that you can take advantage of to strengthen breathing for when you’re right side up. Typically the breath is 50% inhale and 50% exhale. Use ujjayi to slow the breath down and enjoy the nuances and feeling of air going in and out of your body. Trace the breath from the nose to the lungs and back out again. Get lost in the breath. This feels good.

What is freedom?

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In 1999 I took my first steps to becoming a bodyworker. A car accident left me with a bad whiplash and subsequent body issues that loomed like a gnawing gremlin for years. After announcing to a new client that I was mostly pain free after my ordeal she asked how long I was in pain. I announced, “ten years or so.” Her jaw grew slack at the announcement I’d dealt with pain for ten years but I kept working with a smile.

Pain, once it’s gone is forgotten. Much like a mother giving birth there is a memory but women do not stop having babies due to it. It becomes something you remember but no longer holds your emotions or life, it’s been processed. Recognizing where I’ve come from it’s been an extremely long journey. Just let it be known that I was miserable, depressed and couldn’t get help through the standard channels.

I’d always been somewhat against the grain but my injuries made me quit, drop out and move on. Receiving no help I had two options. I could become a junkie and medicate the pain away or I could get better. I chose the latter.

I’m still working on my pain but it’s marginal compared to where I started from. I was recently working on downward facing dog pose and using a small block to open my cervical spine. No one has taught me this but I’d seen a photo of BKS Iyengar doing it and as soon as I tried I had the usual response I have to his yoga, “that crazy old man knows! Wow, I can’t believe it’s that simple.” As I open up this portion of my spine realize that now this has been closed for 13 years. A 13 year old wound is being healed, something no bodyworker, no one but myself has been able to access. I grow in my admiration for Iyengar with every yoga practice. He’s considered a master for a reason.

Iyengar doing a demonstration.

Watching this video I continue to be in awe. The physical limitations we have are encultured and not encoded by genetics. Is it nature or nurture? At issue is we’re not really sure where the edge is when it comes to nature. Nurture in turn has hardly been explored, let’s continue working another hundred years until strong AI and the nanobots take hold but for now, there is yoga.

I continue to be amazed at what can be tapped into. I feel good. I’m energetic. A client asked me recently if I ever take a day off. I honored the mirror placed before me and have no desire to burn out but explained that my yoga practice has helped me have a level of health that allows me to keep going. I nap like a cat and sleep is my superpower my wife jokes. When you work for yourself, love what you do, run your own business and are trying to heal not just yourself but those around you, what else can you do but work ceaselessly?

Freedom, true freedom can only be known when it is experienced. Our path is using our body to release physical restrictions, remove pain, maintain health and feel spacious, open yet grounded. Once you’ve channeled your focus, tamed your mind, slowed your breath and begin mastering your body, you’ve only just begun. Freedom of movement, lack of pain and health of the human form is enough of a start.

Iyengar knows what this is about, far more than I do. He’s devoted most of his life to the practice of yoga. May his light continue to shine and dispel the darkness.

On the Breath pt.2

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The most common breathing done in hatha yoga is called ujjayi. It’s said to build internal heat, cleanse the body and it aids in slowing down the heart rate. When people breathe this way there is a slight, small sounding rasp in the throat. It’s the sound of the ocean hitting the beach at low volume. If I have students exhale through their mouth and make a haaahahahahahahhhahahahah sound it’s the same muscular contraction taking place.

This is the epiglottis. This covers the trachea during eating so that food doesn’t go down into your lungs. This covering, if lightly contracted, closes the windpipe (trachea) slightly and makes for a smaller pipe to pull air down into the lungs. This has several functions. The sound occurs due to air rushing over the epiglottis much like the whistle that happens when you blow over a glass bottle.

The lungs are like balloons. There is one on either side of the heart. Those ballons are only so large and if you take a big in breath you can fill them in 3 seconds or so. By gently working with the contraction of the glottis you’re able to decrease the size of the pipe that air goes down. This allows someone to prolong the in breath or out breath substantially to say 12 seconds on the in breath and 12 on the out breath. Then comes the benefit of increasing the strength of the muscles of respiration.

The diaphragm and intercostal muscles that work to pull air in and push it out are strengthened through this kind of breathing because they’re working harder, pulling air through a smaller pipe. Long term this means that the muscles are stronger and your breathing improves and is more full even when you’re not in yoga class and not focusing on it. Better breathing, leads to better health.

So this slowed down, focused, oceanic breath allows you to get air, focus yourself internally and aids in the postures in yoga. It’s something people work on and gets easier with practice.

The easiest way to learn it is to breath through your mouth initially. As you exhale open your mouth and make a hhhhaaaahahahahaha sound. This isn’t with your vocal chords. You’re not singing or speaking you’re contracting the musculature of the epiglottis that allows you to close down the windpipe slightly. Once you’ve done this on the exhale try exhaling through the nose but hold that same throat contraction. With practice you should be able to make the hahahahahaahaha sound while breathing through your nose. Then the final step is to only breathe through the nose and make the sound on the inhale and exhale. This is ujjayi.

This breathing makes some difficult postures easier. I find my ujjayi kicks in even more when I find myself struggling in a pose and needing to settle in and focus. Over time the breath will slow your heart rate and calm you down while still providing ample oxygen to continue your practice.