The desire to be happy drives all of us, but sometimes it drives us in the wrong direction. Anything we do, we do because we believe it will bring us peace or contentment or feelings of joy or gratitude, even things we do for other people. I teach because I love it. I love the feeling of being in a room full of people who are breathing and sweating and focusing and looking at themselves in an honest way, in a safe space. I love the co-creation of that space, and I feel grateful that I can offer ideas that might help someone to heal, drawing from my own healing journey over the last twenty years. It feels good. Doing things for my kids makes me happy, even if I’m exhausted and have answered nine million “why” questions by the end of the day. Folding those tiny tee shirts, or pairing up those little socks makes me smile, because it’s so fleeting. Soon my son’s socks will be bigger than mine, and my daughter will be rolling her eyes as she heads out the door with some guy I’m going to vet like I work for the FBI.
Anyway, my point is, if you ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing, or why you want what you want, I can almost guarantee you’ll find it’s because you think this course of action will lead to your happiness. If you’re on a diet, maybe it’s because you haven’t been treating your body well, and are now trying to make friends with it again, eating whole foods, and drinking lots of water, and tuning in to your body’s needs and desires. Or maybe it’s because you’re buying into the insanity that you can never be skinny enough, but if only you could, you’d meet someone fabulous. See what I’m saying? Whether it’s a healthy or unhealthy motivation, you’re doing it because you believe it will lead you somewhere good.
If you’re working a ninety hour week because you think a lot of money will make you happy, and someday you’ll be able to retire and enjoy yourself, I’d say that’s not a good course of action because tomorrow isn’t promised. If you’re chasing someone who isn’t really giving you the time of day because you believe if only you could “have them”, then you’d be happy, I’d say you’re also on a thorny path, but sometimes we’re in pain, and that’s what’s motivating us. We’re coming from a place of lack, and we attach our happiness to external things, people, events or circumstances, and so here we are on this quest to be happy, but we’ve taken the road to misery. I think a lot of people are living this way.
Ask yourself why you want the things you want. It’s a good exercise, and you don’t have to share your findings with anyone (although a great therapist can be very helpful in this regard). Make a list of those things or people or brass rings you’re chasing, and hold them up to the light, because you don’t want to spend too much time racing down Misery Lane. You really might need to recalibrate your GPS, and set a new course. Happiness is inside us. You don’t have to run or race or travel to find it. You really have to get quiet, so you can hear the voice of your intuition, so you can tap into that inner knowing. It’s got a very clear voice. It will tell you “yes, this”, or “no.” It’s just that sometimes we’ve drowned it out with a lot of shoulds.
It took me a long time to be happy. I spent a lot of my young adult years convinced I’d be happy, when…and you can fill in the blanks with so much stuff. I also spent a lot of time blaming other people for my unhappiness. Those are flip sides of the same coin. If your happiness lies in something or someone outside yourself, your lack of this person or thing or event becomes responsible for your unhappiness, but the truth is, no one is responsible for your peace of mind, or lack of it, but you. We each have our own work to do to unearth our joy, our passion, our gifts, those things that light us up, or terrify us, or inspire us. We all have to look at what’s holding us back, where we might be blaming, where we might be stopping ourselves with self-limiting beliefs. You have to know yourself if you want to be happy. A huge house isn’t going to help you with that, and neither is the “right” person. You’re the right person. Knowing yourself and accepting yourself is inside work. So if you’re looking for a road to get you there, pick the road inward.
Sending you love,
Few things feel worse than being betrayed, left, or rejected, and yet, most of us will experience all of these at least once. The first time something like this happens is the worst, because we don’t have a frame of reference for it; we’re left to piece together the “new normal”, even if it happens when we’re little. I still remember the morning I woke up and my mom told me my dad didn’t live with us anymore; I was four. I remember going to his drawers and closets, and opening everything up, and trying to make sense of this new reality. At four, you have no tools, you just have feelings, but it’s not much easier at twenty-four, or ever.
Everyone makes mistakes, it’s part of the reality of being human, but sometimes people cling to their rightness. I was friends with someone many years ago who could never say he was sorry. In his view, he was never wrong about anything, and if ever I went to him with a question or concern or disappointment about something that had transpired between us, he would tell me it was my own negativity and/or lack of gratitude. Needless to say, the friendship did not stand the test of time. In order to be close to people, you have to be willing to allow them access to your interior world. You have to be willing to stand there, with all your flaws and all your beauty, and hold the gaze. And when you do not show up the way you want to or mean to, you have to be able to own it and say, “I’m so sorry, I blew it” That way, you give the other person the chance to look you in the eye and say, “It’s okay. I see you for who you are, I understand you have some pain. I forgive you.” Then, you know you have a true friend.
It might sound strange to some, but you are currently, and have always been, in a relationship with your own body. Like any relationship, you may have healthy and unhealthy patterns, but thinking in these terms is a 
Few things are worse than feeling powerless. Sometimes we’re betrayed by someone we thought was a friend, sometimes our own bodies betray us, and sometimes we fail to act on our own behalf. Whatever the cause, when w
Most of us spend too much time looking in the rear-view mirror. It’s always good to examine our choices and behavior, especially when we’ve landed ourselves in situations we never intended and didn’t want, but once
When we allow outside forces to upset us, we’re giving our power away. Yesterday as I was driving, waiting to take a right on red, the man behind me started laying on his horn. He couldn’t see the oncoming traffic because his view was blocked by a van to my left in the next lane, but I could not have taken that right safely, so I was waiting. My kids were in the car, and as they do, they were asking me for a play-by-play of what was happening. “Why is that man honking at you?” “Because he wants me to drive.” “Why aren’t you driving?” “Because it isn’t safe.” “So why is he honking at you?” “Because he’s full of rage.” “Why is he full of rage?” Anyway, you get the picture.
We all have our stuff; ways we’ve been hurt or disappointed, longing that’s gone unmet, grieving we’ve had to do. We also have our histories, our patterns, those dynamics we grew up with that shape (but needn’t defin
Yesterday morning I woke up from a nightmare that I was on a plane with one of my best friends, and the plane suddenly started plummeting toward the ocean. Alarms were going off, things were falling from the overhead compartments, oxygen masks dangled in front of us, and people were screaming. My friend grabbed my arm, and I said, “We’re going to have a water landing.” Which is hilarious in retrospect, because if that isn’t a euphemism we’ve been taught, what is? All I could think of was my children. I woke up as the nose of the plane hit the water. Needless to say, it was not a great way to start the day.
Most of us torture ourselves at some point or another looking for closure regarding a heartbreak. Sometimes it’s something that’s happened with a family member or close friend, often it happens when we’re grieving th
Often people think of their weaknesses or mistakes as failings or short-comings, when really, they’re just places where there’s still some healing or growing to do. If you notice patterns in your life, repeated choic
Fear can hold us back in so many ways. It’s a completely natural feeling that we’ll all experience, but as with everything, it’s what you do with your fear (or don’t do), that matters. The root of the word “courage” 
Recently I was traveling, and happened to sit next to a man on a long flight. As these things go, we struck up a conversation that was interrupted several times by one or the other of my children, but over the course of the flight, I pretty much heard his life story. When he found out I was a yoga teacher, he perked up, and began asking me questions about his legs. He’s a serious runner, swimmer and cyclist, and has been for his whole life. He does triathlons and marathons and 5k’s and he’s done Ironman several times, but over the last year, his legs started giving out. He’d be running a few miles, or swimming a short distance, or cycling around his neighborhood trails, and suddenly his legs would lose their steam, cramp up, refuse to go on.
It’s easy to look around and blame external factors for our rage or unhappiness, for our boredom or dissatisfaction. (Please note: I am not talking about times we’re moving through grief, the loss of a person we don’t know how to live without, or the other huge heartbreaks we face in life, I’m talking about a day-to-day focus on what’s happening around us, instead of within us). It’s much harder to take a look at what’s happening within us, to take ownership of our lives and our feelings, and to make changes when necessary, but it’s also very liberating. When we give circumstances or other people the power to control how we feel in any given moment, on any given day, or for days and weeks at a time, we’re putting ourselves in such a weak position.
Thich Nhat Hanh also says, “To love without knowing how to love, wounds the person we love.” We don’t all enter the world knowing how to love, though. If you were very blessed, you might have learned this at home, but even the most loving parents don’t always have the tools to love with open arms, open hearts and open minds. So many people confuse love with possession or control, or they make it conditional. And, it should be noted, there are many people who were born into violent homes, and have a lot of unlearning to do, before the learning can begin.
For most people there’s a struggle between wanting to be known, and being afraid of that very thing. We all want connection, it’s natural to us, but how far we go is up to us. How much we share or edit or hide or are willing to expose our most painful places, our most absurd doubts, our perceived, or very real weaknesses. The places where we might still suffer from shame or doubt. If I share this, will I still be loved? Wanted? Understood? Do I really want to be seen in all my allness?
Let’s crack open the green-eyed monster. I’m talking about envy, but while we’re at it, let’s tackle jealousy, doubt, insecurity, fear, a history of betrayal, doubt about self-worth, and abandonment issues, too, shall we?
Sometimes what you don’t say is incredibly powerful. I’m all for speaking the truth, but there are times when taking the high road speaks volumes. This is particularly difficult when you come face-to-face with someone who doesn’t wish you well, or with whom you have a long and challenging history. We can get so caught up in what people think of us, as if they have the final say on who we are, but you are not here to convince anyone of anything, especially of your value as a human being; life is too short for that. You’re here to be you, to figure out what that means, to uncover your gifts and to share them. Your actions speak for themselves. You don’t have to throw a lot of hours and words at a thing to reiterate reality.
Sometimes our minds take us for a very unpleasant ride. We start thinking about worst-case scenarios, about all the horrendous things that could happen, terrible tragedies that could befall us or those we love. We imagine conversations that might take place, making ourselves sick as though this interaction were real, and happening now. You can raise your blood pressure with your thoughts alone.
When it comes to relationships of any kind, honest communication is everything. If you want other people to know you, you have to be willing to show yourself. It’s not realistic to expect others to read your mind, and as much as you might think you have someone pegged, the only way to truly know how anyone feels, is to ask. Sometimes we repress something we need to say out of fear of hurting someone else, and other times we don’t ask questions when we’re afraid of the answers, and what they might mean for our tender hearts.
Sometimes the gift is getting what you want, and sometimes the gift is not getting what you want. It’s fairly easy to celebrate when things go our way, but it usually takes a lot of effort to unearth the beauty in having some of our desires remain unfulfilled. I’m not an “everything happens for a reason” yogi, and I don’t believe everything is positive. I don’t go for platitudes like, “If you don’t get what you want, it’s because something better is planned for you”, but I do think there’s the potential for growth in every experience.
Sometimes it’s really helpful to understand that most people are not intentionally trying to hurt you. For the most part, people are doing the best they can with the tools they have. It takes time to figure out what your gifts are, and how you want to spend the finite amount of time you’ve got. Most people flail around in the process of getting to know themselves. We all have our pain, and our healing to do, it’s not easy. Timing has so much to do with all of this. The moment you arrived in your mom’s and dad’s world, for example, has so much to do with the parenting you received. If they were ready, if they knew themselves, if they were able to accept you as the miracle you were and are, if they were in a place to understand your needs had to come first, if they were prepared to make sacrifices when necessary, if they could embrace you and cherish you, nurture you, support you, and love you in all your amazingness, or not so much.
Clear communication is so important when it comes to understanding and being understood, but for many people, it isn’t easy. There are all kinds of reasons we don’t always say what we mean — maybe we don’t want to admit what it is that we want, because we feel 
Once when I was about seven years old, I left my mom’s house and headed to school for a field trip. My parents got divorced when I was four, and I went back and forth, four nights at my mom’s, three at my dad’s, the following week four at my dad’s, and so on and so on. For whatever reason, I woke up that morning and didn’t want to be away from my mom for the next few days, and I cried my way through The Museum of Natural History, past the elephants and tigers and bears, the scenes of Native Americans, the giant whale and the dinosaurs. I went to an after-school program, and I cried my way through that, as well. When my step-mom came to pick me up, the director pulled her aside and said I’d had a really rough day. She let her know my teacher said I’d been crying at the museum, and that it had continued, and that she felt my step-mom would want to know.
There’s no point trying to make someone “see the light.” First of all, you can never be certain that your ideas or opinions about how things should be are right for anyone but yourself (barring the obvious instances 
Sometimes we “boil ourselves” as my meditation teacher used to say. Something has happened, is happening, or could happen, and we obsess and spiral and get so caught up dwelling on this unwanted turn of events, we lose hours and c
It’s brutal when someone we once loved beyond words can no longer see us for who we are. Breakups are often agonizing for people on so many levels. There’s the loss and the grieving, even if you’re mourning something that didn’t exist. Sometimes we look back on a thing with rose-colored glasses, or we rewrite history, or we dwell on those times when things were good, and edit out the pain, neglect, abuse, betrayal, or disappointment. We cling to some idea we had, or still have, of how things could be, or might have been, if only. Sometimes our “if only’s” are insane. If only the other person were completely different at the core of their being, for example. We torture ourselves over the idea that this person stopped seeing us clearly, or has rewritten history in some way that reflects badly on us, as if their version holds weight, and maybe it does, or maybe it doesn’t. You know how you showed up. You know what you did or did not do, and hopefully, you know no one is perfect. If you’ve owned your end, if you’ve apologized for those times when you disappointed yourself, or the other party, if you know in your heart you did the best you could, at a certain point, you have to let that be enough. If their version doesn’t resemble any reality you recognize, why continue to feed it power by fighting it?
When we refuse to accept the truth, we set ourselves up to suffer. There’s no doubt that there are times we’re confused and things are unclear, but sometimes we know the truth of a thing, and just don’t want to face it. This can happen professionally and romantically, and it can happen internally, too. There are truths about ourselves that are not always easy to accept and integrate. Denying what’s real for you and rejecting essential parts of yourself is a prison full of pain.
Sometimes we hold on to all the wrong stuff; ways we’ve been hurt, wronged, betrayed, disappointed, abused or neglected, conversations or memories that feel like a knife in the heart, something someone said or did in anger, or because they were thoughtless, or drunk, or because their head happened to be up their own a$$ in that particular moment. I’m not saying any of that is okay, I’m just saying human beings can be lost and confused and lacking tools to show up for us in a loving way. Sometimes we’re so focused on holding on to that stuff, because we want to use it to justify our feelings, our version of events, our way of being, our stance…and maybe the stance isn’t serving us. Let’s just say for a moment that your version is totally accurate (it probably isn’t, but let’s just say that it is). Does it matter that you’re “right” if you’re miserable?
Nothing breaks my heart more than a child in an unsafe environment, whether we’re talking about physical or emotional violence. If something happened along your journey that made you feel terrified and powerless, my heart also goes out to you. You do not have to let your past dictate your present, though, and I hope this comes across in the most compassionate way possible, but I believe it’s your work to heal. I think that really needs to be your priority, because if you don’t, you’ll never uncover and share your gifts, and you’ll also take other people down with you. You won’t mean to do that, it’s just that when a person crosses your path, and they see the beauty within you, even if you can’t see it yourself, they’re going to want to stop, and they might even fall in love with you. If you’re still struggling with things that happened to you, through no fault of your own, through nothing that was or is lacking within you, believe me when I tell you, those people who love you and see you will suffer and you might even hate them for it.
There’s the good kind of “losing yourself”, and the kind that isn’t so good for you. When we lose ourselves in something we’re doing, when we cease to think, categorize, or judge, but are simply immersed in the joy of what we’re doing, that’s beautiful, powerful, and liberating. The ability to join the flow, to forget about the small self for a time, the one that’s so attached to “I, me, mine”, and just to breathe and to open and to experience, that’s one of the greatest joys we have as human beings. To lose yourself because you’re trying to be something other than what you are…that’s the opposite end of the spectrum. You’re not in the flow, in fact, you’re swimming against it.
We can never control what other people will do or say or want or need, nor can we control what life is going to put in our paths; our power lies in our ability to choose the way we respond to what it is we’re given. I get so many emails from people who tell me their relationships would be great, if only their partners would change some fundamental thing about themselves. You can’t make someone else change, or be happy, or kind or compassionate or patient, or in love with you. People are those things, or they are not. You might be able to inspire people to show up as the best version of themselves by showing them what that looks like yourself, but you can’t convince or bribe or manipulate a person toward growth.
Few things in life feel worse than being rejected, misunderstood, ignored, misjudged or betrayed, but we’ll all go through moments when we feel at least some of these things, and maybe all of them. Sometimes when I write about these very human experiences, someone will comment that this is just the mind; it’s just our thoughts about these things that are making us suffer and if we didn’t identify with these thoughts, we’d be fine. That’s wonderful. If you’re in that place, you don’t have to read further. Most of us, myself included, will have to grapple with uncomfortable feelings and thoughts from time to time, before we can bring ourselves 
Awareness can be incredibly liberating; if you’ve found yourself participating in an unhealthy relationship with someone — your partner, your close friend, your boss, your landlord — and you feel “hooked”, try to figure out what’s happening. Chances are, something deep is being tapped, some very old wound, something from your early history. Don’t think in terms of gender, think in terms of the quality of the interaction, especially if you notice a pattern of interactions that cause you pain when you look back on your life.
Most of us struggle with control and attachment to some degree, thinking if we just try hard enough, we can get life to bend to our will. We start dating someone and want this to be “it” before we even know the other person, before they know us. We’re ready to have a baby, and expect to get pregnant on the first try, or the second. If it hasn’t happened by the third month, we start to get upset. We have our plan, and life needs to get with it, right? Or we want our kids to do well, but maybe our idea of well, and theirs, is different. We want to be promoted, we deserve it, but our boss is a fill-in-the-blank.
Frequently when I’m teaching, I’ll see someone “force a pose.” I can talk until I’m blue in the face about the transition from bound side angle pose to bird of paradise, for example, I can emphasize the importance of a long spine, a top shoulder opening toward the sky, and of course, the ability to breathe with ease, and undoubtedly, someone will start hopping their back foot forward, even though they’re hunched over, grunting, turning purple, and can in no way begin to really stand on the standing leg. There are many reasons I’ll shut this down. Obviously there’s the risk for physical injury–straining the low back, compromising the bound shoulder, stressing the hamstrings of both legs, but there’s also the emotional injury.
Years ago, not long after I’d moved to Los Angeles, I took over the regular classes of a very popular teacher at a very busy gym in West Hollywood. The other teacher had moved back east, and I knew a lot of his students were bummed out, so I went in understanding I’d have my work cut out for me. After a few weeks of dealing with that understandable “I’m-not-sure-I’m-gonna-like-this” energy, things were good and the vibe in the room was awesome. We were having fun, people were focusing and breathing and sweating and laughing. We had a good thing going. Except for this one guy. He always stood in the same place at the front of the room, and he was there like clockwork, three times a week, but he was hostile to me, frequently shot me dirty looks in class, and often shook his head at something I’d said. Sometimes he’d even roll his eyes. I wanted to talk to him about it, but he always arrived right before class, and took off right after. I figured he was there because it was the only time-slot that worked in his schedule.
Sometimes our expectations of ourselves are completely unrealistic. If you tend to be a perfectionist, if you fall into the Type A category, I really feel for you. I often joke that after twenty-plus years of yoga practice six days a week, I’m a 93% recovered Type A personality, 97% on a good day. I spent years beating myself up, and I can still fall prey to that tendency if I’m feeling tired, tested, or vulnerable.