Pass the Kombucha

One evening years ago - when I was fairly new to Los Angeles and running all over town teaching yoga classes from morning ‘til night - I pulled into a Whole Foods on Fairfax and grabbed some sushi for dinner. I was on my way to my last class of the day and needed to eat something fast and light. This was back when I taught so many public classes (twenty-seven a week) “mealtimes” happened in the car as I was driving from one studio or gym to another, and I’d run home in the middle of the day to take my dog to Runyon Canyon for a hike. It was just me and my dog back then, and a very few people I’d gotten to know in the short time I’d been here.

The next morning I woke up at 5:30am and went to my Ashtanga class. That was my practice in those days. I’d get to the studio at about 6am, and on this particular day I was doing all of 2nd series and the first three poses of 3rd series - which doesn’t have to mean anything to you - just know that it was intense and sweaty. My practice time was close to two hours, and I felt a little strange at the end - dizzy or woozy. I showered, changed, got in my car and started making my way from Brentwood to the studio where I taught a 9am class, back on Fairfax. As I drove, I noticed streaks of color trailing behind everything I looked at - cars on the road next to me, people walking across streets, trees, streetlights. I started to feel really not okay, and it occurred to me that I might have food poisoning since I also felt like I might throw up. I started making calls to see if I could get my class covered, but it was too late. This was a studio with no front desk, teachers had their own set of keys and checked in their own classes, so there wasn’t even anyone there to let people know I’d had an emergency. The thought of people showing up to a locked studio with no explanation wasn’t okay with me, so I went to class. I hoped I’d make it through the ninety minutes, and then get the rest of my classes covered for the day.

This was a studio where the room was heated to 90 degrees, which is exactly what you want when you feel like you’re tripping and might hurl. The class was full, and I didn’t want to make my problems their problems, so I didn’t say anything, I just started teaching. It was going all right, I was managing to focus on the people in the room and the class I was teaching, until about the halfway mark. Just as I was leading them through the final poses on the second side of the standing sequence, my eyes started tearing up and my mouth started watering in that way that it does before you lose it, not the way that it does when something looks tasty. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer, but I finished the second side, put them in childs’ pose, and said, “Y’all, I think I might have food poisoning, so please do a few rounds of bridge pose and I’ll be right back.” I noticed a few people look at me with alarm and sympathy, and I sped out the back of the studio. 

This might be a good place to mention that the restroom for this studio was outside, down an outdoor walkway - it was a shared restroom for all the businesses on that landing, one of which was a pilates studio with floor-to-ceiling windows, right next door. I grabbed the key to the bathroom and started to run-walk toward the restroom. You know, the way you do when things are about to get ugly and actually running is not a possibility. It did not matter how careful I was, I got to the edge of the pilates studio window and some kind of Linda Blair/Exorcism thing happened that I will not describe in detail. What I will tell you is that as I stood there and Satan left my body in spectacular projectile fashion, I saw in my peripheral vision every person in that pilates studio come to a stunning halt and turn to witness this utter betrayal of my body. The only thing I managed to do was not look back. I held my head up, and walked the rest of the way to the bathroom, opened the door, and laugh-cried over the sink because it was just so mortifying, and also hilarious. It’s bad enough when your body is on its own journey and you’re along for the ride, but to have several witnesses you don’t even know? Excellent. Thanks for that. Anyhoo, I splashed water on my face, walked back past the pilates studio (again without looking), apologized to the custodian who was already hosing off the landing, and headed back in. I taught the second half of the class even though a few people told me it was totally fine if I needed to go home, because these were the days when I was trying to win some kind of medal for never not being okay. I made it, I said goodbye to everyone, locked the studio, and went home to have a horrific twenty-four hours of hell that only my dog witnessed. He didn’t mind, he loved me through everything.

This is on my mind for many reasons, but I think the main one is I’m grappling with an intense feeling of vulnerability right now. Sometimes you get to decide what you want to divulge and what you want to keep private, like when you write an essay, and sometimes you don’t, like when you hurl in front of a pilates studio. There is a shared humanity in experiences like that. It’s a club we’re all going to join at some point or another if we haven’t already. People who look at you in judgment and horror are on borrowed time whether they know it or not. And there is something freeing and funny about being reminded that you are not in control of almost anything. Also, I grew up in a house where appearances were everything and it took me a long time to shake that, so living through a public humiliation was - at least on some level - possibly a good thing. 

Then there’s the part about teaching the class in some kind of hallucinatory state, being in that extreme heat, and not saying anything about what I was going through until I had no choice. And also the Type A insanity of finishing the second side of the sequence before I left the room. God forbid people didn’t get that wrapped extended side angle pose on the second side. What did I think would happen? I’d send people out into the world and they’d walk in circles all day? Did I think I’d get a gold star? Looky here, there’s a yoga teacher with food poisoning, but my god, she is finishing that sequence before she heaves. She is really something! Or did I just need to have things be exactly right that much? 

I think having children is the thing that cured me of any delusion that I could make everything perfect. I mean the actual experience of growing people in my body, the experience of childbirth twice, but also the mayhem that happens after. The loss of control over your schedule, your sleep, your priorities, your days. All it takes is for someone to wake up with a fever, and whatever your plans were, they go out the window. Just when you think you have your baby on some kind of schedule you can count on, they start teething or have a growth spurt and it all changes again. Then if you’re like me and you have a second kid, you’re in the crazy whirlwind of managing two small people with changing needs and rhythms, so if your first kid didn’t cure you, your second one surely will. At a certain point, you stop trying to make everything perfect, and just focus on making sure your kids are fed, happy and feeling loved. And if you decide to open a business six weeks after the birth of your second baby, that is called next-level chaos. But sometimes it’s not up to you, timing is what it is and you do what you have to do. What you don’t realize is that all of it is giving you an advanced degree in vulnerability. You’re earning your Masters so that later, when other things you can’t control come rolling in, you have experience. You’ve loosened your grip. 

There’s a lot of good stuff that comes along with loosening your grip. You go easier on yourself and on other people. You don’t take things personally nearly as often, because you realize everyone is dealing with their own feelings of fear in an uncertain world, and most people are doing the best they can. It isn’t going to be perfect. That doesn’t mean you have to accept or brush off crappy behavior from yourself or anyone else, because the reality is, we all have to learn how to show up and try to do the next right thing, and to consider how our actions impact the people around us. But I think it does soften you, or it’s certainly softened me. There are people I keep at arms’ length because they’ve shown me how they respond to the never-ending stream of precariousness we all live with - and the way they deal with it isn’t something I want to be near, but for the most part I wish people well.

Things get difficult when someone’s fear of uncertainty makes them rageful, or it twists them into the kind of person who wants to dominate other people, or who believes anyone making a choice different from theirs is casting judgment on them. That is a very “it’s all about me” way to think about the world and the things happening around you. It’s kinda weird, tbh. People who love differently or pray differently or don’t pray at all are seen as threats that need to be overpowered, managed, and shut down. You may or may not know where I’m heading with this, but the reason I’m feeling intensely vulnerable right now is due to the political environment I’m swimming in every day in this country, whether I like it or not. There have been times in the thirty-plus years I’ve been teaching yoga that people have gotten angry with me for “getting political” because they just want to have their kombucha and chill, man, but I’m not the right teacher for those people. Your politics are your philosophy in action. Whatever your spiritual practice, if it isn’t making you a better, kinder, more compassionate human being, then what the hell is it for? If it’s just for you to feel good, carry on I guess, but I think you’ve lost the thread.

I couldn’t sleep last night because I had so much anxiety coursing through me. I could have done all kinds of things - slowed down my breathing, run my legs up the wall, meditated - but I didn’t want to because this is real life, and there’s so much on the line for so many people. It is maddening and impossible to believe that this is where we are in 2024. Are we really at a place where we have to defend ourselves against the idea that a girl’s or a woman’s value is as a baby maker and nothing else? Why can’t people love who they want to love, how on earth does that affect anyone but the two people loving each other? Are people seriously holding up signs that say “mass deportation” like that is normal or okay? Can we not agree that loving assault weapons more than children means we are very, very sick and need to do something about it? Something tangible? Here’s a thought - how about we ban assault weapons instead of anyone’s bodily autonomy.

I cannot fathom the arrogance needed to be sure you know what’s happening here on earth, what it all means, or what is going to happen next, but god bless people with that amount of hubris. Any god they like, seriously. And here’s one more thought - let’s say, just for the fun of it, that they are right, and people who don’t believe what they believe will burn in hell for all eternity. Let them. How ‘bout that? Everyone gets to be a grownup and make their own decisions, why is that so scary? I just can’t anymore. I don’t expect things to be perfect for any of us, but I was hoping for some sense of shared humanity. It’s bad enough to wake up and kiss your kids goodbye and silently pray they’re going to be safe at school or at a movie or the grocery store, but to be thrust into an environment where the things at stake are the most basic and obvious rights of everyone (except for straight, white, well-off men, they’re safe) is just horrifying and dizzying and deeply, deeply upsetting.

My essay is late today because I’m grappling with how much to share and how much to hold back. I have paragraphs I’ve cut and pasted at the bottom of the page because my rage is so intense I wonder if it’s too much to let loose on you. It’s the rage of a mother with a daughter in this world. And it’s the difference between choosing to make yourself vulnerable (like in an essay, or with someone you trust when you want to be seen), and being thrust into a situation where you’re vulnerable whether you like it or not because there are an alarming number of people who seem ready to vote away the rights of a vast number of people, some of whom mean everything in the world to you, and some of whom are…you.

If you’d like to meet me in real time to talk about the difference between choosing to make yourself vulnerable, and having your vulnerability thrust upon you, I’ll be here 7/19/24 at 11:15am PST, or you can wait for the Come As You Are podcast version. As ever, I’m sending you so much love and my gratitude for spending some of your time with me.