Having attitude

My husband is a tall, 200 pound guy, covered in tattoos and he looks like a cross between an American Indian and a Viking.

The other day he drove, late at night, with his bicycle through a rough neighborhood in San Francisco and had to stop for a red light. He noticed a couple and an older lady talking animatedly, occasionally glancing over at him. He thought they probably were afraid of him, which is something that happens regularly, especially when he is on the road with our all black but incredibly sweet pitbull mix.

All of a sudden the older lady spoke up. “Excuse me, sir?” Obviously she was talking to my husband so he turned his head. “Yes?” he said. The lady went on “I’m going to a place a couple of blocks ahead and was wondering if you would accompany me, so I can get there safely, - please”? Joshua was in a hurry that day, as it was late and he tried to get to the BART station on time so he wouldn’t have to wait for another train 30 Minutes later. So he said” Look, lady, normally I would, but I’m in a rush today. But here is what you do, you hold up your head, and you march with an attitude, as if you know exactly where you are going, as if you had to go to the bathroom in a hurry, okay? You don’t look right or left, just march!”

The woman put a determined expression on her face, lifted her chin up and looked at my husband and said: “like this, is this good?” To which Joshua replied, “yes, exactly – you can do it, don’t let anyone give you any grief!”

Living in the wild

As a child, I wanted to be an American Indian child, because of Karl May and his novels on Winnetou, a series of books written about the Wild West that were insanely popular when I grew up. Those books, although written by an author who had never left Germany and literally created all the stories out of imagination, created a deeply compassionate and interesting portrait about American Indian Values. Peoples in the German speaking world actually knew about the genocide that happened in America, long before the United States admitted to it.

Now we are moving to the Wild West. Literally. Both Joshua and I are drawn to this life-style that involves living in wild, spacious territory, with horses and dogs. I can’t help but thinking that I trained for this life very early on. I spent most of my childhood, after recovering finally from my illness that plagued me the first 7 years of my life, outside, in trees, stalking, observing, hunting, playing. I was obsessed with knifes, wanted a tomahawk for my 9th birthday and drove my mother crazy with elaborate but rickety chair/table constructions that I used as a pretend horse.

I can’t help but thinking that this was all in preparation for the life I’m yet to lead. For the first time I’m having dreams that are outside of yoga – or perhaps they are the culmination of my practices so far. I’m dreaming about a life that is simpler, more sane, more in rhythm with nature. That involves horses and dogs. But mostly a life that is based on sanity.

Bad habits

I believe that most of our bad habits begin in the mind. This is how we limit ourselves and stop ourselves from reaching our full potential. Like the bear that was left out of it’s cage after 20 years, but it couldn’t even appreciate its freedom but could only do the exact 20 paces it had done inside the cage for so long. This is how our mind limits itself.

Just to imagine that we had a mind so free, that it actually became our friend and ally in order to reach our potential. The training we do in yoga is really ultimately not for the body, but its for the mind. To free the mind from the limitation it has created.

What exactly is a bad habit? I don’t think, drinking, smoking consuming sugar or coffee are necessarily a bad habit. Some of us do quite well on a cup of coffee, a yummy desert can be very good for your soul, a smoke can be sacred experience as the American Indians have practiced for centuries. A glass of red wine can even lower your blood pressure and is good for your heart.

So what exactly is a bad habit anyway? It’s something that we do but feel insanely guilty about. It throws the mind into a loop of shame, guilt and then the compulsion of doing it all over again. That is when a bad habit becomes bad and limiting for your entire organism. It’s when we think we can no longer be happy without the substance of choice, that it becomes a problem and it is time to intervene. We should be exited when we find such a loop in the mind! Because it’s a great opportunity to practice and find the vast unlimited potential of our mind. Everytime we manage to adjust a bad habit and replace it with something that we feel good about, (or adjust our attitude about it) it shows us a way of being free.