Well. Here we are. Here I am. After several months of debating whether or not to even launch this puppy, I decided to jump on the deck, land on both feet, and push off the dock with my proverbial oar and just set sail. I've always wanted to keep some sort of journal, thought document, jot pad for my mind, etc. but never really got around to it. I also never really saw the point of keeping one of those if it never went beyond those pages and my eyes. Some people swear by journal writing and I have no judgements towards that or them, it was just never for me. Call it the writer or the performer in me, but if I were to write something, I wanted it to be read by someone and hopefully have it affect them in the way that it affected me to why I wrote it down in words.
That being said, here is the first ramble of many rambles.
I started practicing yoga when I was twelve or thirteen. I would go every Saturday with my mom to take from a dude named Moses (no lie). After about a year or so of fairly regular practice, I stopped. I don't remember why I did, but I did. Maybe because I was hitting that part of my adolescence that yoga should be considered weird with there being no reason why a fourteen year-old JOCK should be doing it. Besides, doing poses like 'Downward Facing Dog' and 'Pigeon' and 'Tree' and 'Upward Facing Dog' sounds like something you did in Pre-school to a Raffi sing-along tape right before you laid down on heavily sanitized plastic nap cushions...which are in the same family as gymnastic crash pads. Regardless, I guess I deemed it uncouth for a boy, advanced in puberty and already shaving, to do. So I stopped.
Fast forward to April 2013.
I am now twenty-four years old and living in Astoria, a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in the city of New York in the state of the same name. I am a graduate of Shenandoah Conservatory with a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Acting and actively pursuing a fruitful and thriving career in acting and playwriting (and now screenwriting). I have been living in Astoria for over a year now and the early signs of wear and tear of an actor trying to 'make it' were starting to show. I was tired constantly, muttering obscenities to myself when someone was walking to slow on the side walk, and I started growing green hairs and considered living in a trash can.
Something had to change.
Every morning, or however often I chose to ride the subway, I would pass a sign that said 'The Giving Tree Yoga Studio'. It was next to a McDonald's. I haven't eaten McDonald's in ten years so most days I paid the 'The Giving Tree Yoga Studio' sign no mind. But one day, I finally decided to pay the mind. I signed up for my first yoga class in nearly ten years.
WHAT TOOK ME SO LONG?!?!?!
There is a term used in yoga called 'Ahimsa' which means to 'do no harm' or 'do not injure' including thoughts and words. This got me thinking about life outside of 'The Giving Tree Yoga Studio'. We, not only as a society, but as individuals do so much harm and damage to ourselves on an HOURLY basis, screw the daily. We are constantly critical of ourselves, often times to crippling levels. We don't go out and meet friends for a drink because we think nothing looks good on us or we eat a pint of ice cream and then are disgusted because of what we just did to ourselves. We are all guilty of this, myself included. Nothing that we do is ever good enough for ourselves. That is 'himsa', literally meaning to strike or to harm in Sanskrit.
My teacher challenged us to practice Ahimsa on ourselves in everyday life. He challenged us to be our friend, not our enemy. He challenged us to cheer us on, not to cut us down. He asked the class as we sat in Lotus (and my knee starting to throb with a dull pain) why it is that we only treat ourselves well when we feel we deserve, and why it must be in the form materials (manicures, clothes, a vacation, etc). Why can't we treat ourselves well in the emotional? Why can't the happiness stem from within and reach outside of us rather than trying to ingest any happiness that might be outside of us?
He asks some very good questions. Most of which are rhetorical but provoking.
I have my own ideas why we do this to ourselves, and I have worked very concertedly over the past few months to reverse this and actively practice Ahimsa in my everyday life. I tell myself that I am worth it. I am worth that date or that job or the time of that casting director. And all of you are too. And once you realize that it is possible to do good unto yourself, you can spread that lesson to those who may be suffering around you.
We are allowed to realize our own brilliance as well as the brilliance of those around us.
So as I conclude my first ramble, I challenge you, the reader, do adopt this practice into your life. Do a self check of your day and see where it is that you injure yourself and you may be surprised to see that it happens more than you think. See where it happens and tell yourself that, instead of injuring yourself, you can treat yourself. You can indulge and compliment yourself. You are allowed to take care of yourself. We all do dumb things, but we also do amazing things worthy of credit and acknowledgement. So recognize it and heal yourself.
Thanks for sticking with me through the ramble and (most likely) accumulated grammar flaws, but that's what I do and you'll get used to it. See you all next time.
Abide,
Stish
Ramble Soundtrack: "Eyes of the World" by The Grateful Dead
