October is My Favorite Month!
My birthday and my son's birthday are both this month! To celebrate, I'm going to be running a competition! Click this link <-- to download a list of sanskrit to english translations, and this one <-- for a sanskrit pronunciation guide. I'll do my best to use as many of these during class as I can, and hopefully the pronunciation guide will help. At the end of October, we'll have a little test, and the person with the highest score will get a free 1 year subscription to Yoga Journal! If you have any questions, see me after class.
Things are coming right along for The Day of Giving and Thanks this November! We'll have speakers, discussion groups, musicians, yoga, meditation and more on three stages. The Amazing JessHoops will be there, with her many different sizes of hulahoops to play with! We have so many awesome raffle giveaways, from yoga memberships to merch, candles to tattoos, and much more. To stay up to date on what we are doing, make sure to follow Kutumba Yoga on Facebook! You can also check out our website and sign up for our newsletter--schedule of classes, speakers and musicians goes out Oct 15!
I recently read a piece about authenticity, and wanted to share it with you.
"Drought. Fires. Floods. Rising temperatures. Police states. White Supremacy. Class wars. Donald Trump.
"The writing is on the wall. The end is near.
"We’re screwed and all anyone seems to care about is their spiritual journey and their artesian chocolate bar made by a fedora-wearing bearded 20 year old living in #Bushwick. Only the hippest can help us. Only the rich can afford authenticity. Only those that can ignore the violence that privilege inflicts will have the most Instagram followers.
"We’ve somehow forgotten that we are inherently interesting because we are human. We’ve ended up in this weird hipster hell where everything is an ironic nod to the past, to someone else’s identity or to fractions of an imitation of ours.
"We need to occupy authentic.
"Of course, artisanal chocolate isn’t the problem, it just points to it. It points to the lack of care of how we effect each other’s space, cultures, histories and displacements. Because when we have no sense of self it’s far too easy to colonize unconsciously.
"When we are able to disown what we don’t like about ourselves and buy what we do like it’s far too easy to escape doing the necessary work needed to heal our deeper wounds around our identity.
"Owning our identity in all its complexity, in all its shame, in all its triumphs, in its entire history and its possibility is what it means to live an authentic life...
"When we are full of our own sense of self, unadulterated by the manufactured need for approval, we are in our power. We are full because we have feasted on what is ours. No stolen steaks. No unlawfully gained grain. Nothing swindled. Everything earned above board. And only then do we have the opportunity to have an authentic connection to another...
"We cannot connect with another until we are willing to know the ins and outs of connecting with ourselves. We cannot even connect with our life in an authentic way until we are willing to be real with ourselves.
"We are so much more than the image we project." - for more from Chani Nicholas, click here
Yoga helps us to be authentic, because it forces us to sit with what is. To accept our physical form gives us the courage to be honest about who we are. I hope you take some time this month to take stock and be honest. Remember, honesty doesn't mean beating yourself up. More often it's difficult to be honestly kind--to avoid the habit of degrading yourself when you're looking in the mirror.
Give yourself as much love as you give out. You are just as deserving.
