Flash post: This Light

This Light

May this light surprise every one of us with what we are capable of.

May it show up and show up big,

even when we only see dark.

May it radiate connection

to our power, to the greatest power,

to love within, between, among, throughout.

May this light spark connection

even in times when separation is obvious around us.

May it surprise us with the simplicity of closing a gap,

making what’s stopping us visible,

not hidden.

May it take away the power the unknown has

by making it known.

May it touch

everything.

I wrote this piece at a yogic winter solstice workshop led by Karina Mirsky on December 19, 2014. Not today, not yesterday, not after the election of 2016. Light and dark are always present. Ask yourself what today’s light can bring for you, for others. This light, now.

I caught this photo one week after the summer solstice this year, when my sister Amy and her kids took me to watch the sunset over Lake Michigan at Tunnel Park near Holland. This light, this night, timeless.

Categories: Uncategorized

YOU Get to Say What Deserves Your Time

Mary McInnis

Posted on June 10, 2018

I had my first tarot reading, and it was four years in the making! It’s a wholly unexpected full-circle story that started when the person who would end up turning up tarot cards for me first turned up in my life. And the cards she turned up now were delivering the same jump-starting message that my interaction with her years before had. So settle in. Maybe your life could use an upturn, too.
The upturning message: Cut right to and right through your daily rationalizations. They are lies. See the ways you’re not being true to what’s important to you. And start being true.
Four years ago I published my first creative writing piece after a five-year drought. In the magazine edited by Marybeth Bonfiglio, my future tarot card turner. This very story you are reading now was in motion.
[Stop for a moment, people. Stop. Because magic is everywhere. There is magic in every life.]
Maybe you don’t care about writing. But there is something important to you that you haven’t been true to. You, like me, have been doing things daily that don’t deserve your time. Read on.
Leading up to my publication four years ago, I came across an article on biorhythms and brains and the best time of day to do different categories of things, like, oh, writing. You see, I was feeling the truth of the words in me trying to come out. But I wasn’t writing. You see, I was feeling the truth of words trying to come out.

I was feeling the truth of words trying to come out.

I expected to get another shaming from Hemingway’s ghost for my inability to write daily at dawn. But it said something different. Something instantly liberating! The best time for creative pursuits was not the optimal on-brain times, but the opposite. It told me to cut through my shit about not having time to write in the morning when you’re supposed to write – because I could do it at shitty times and it would be even better than the “best” times!
Whoa. I knew I had been caught in the trap I had warned plenty of my yoga students about – imposing ideal conditions in the name of doing your best work, but those conditions become obstacles that keep you from doing the work at all. But I didn’t know this: the ideal conditions weren’t actually ideal.

The ideal conditions weren’t actually ideal.

So I went on a mission to write at shitty times.
[Stop for a moment, people. Stop. You must be so proud of me.]
My first shot at this was, appropriately, when I was absolutely shot. It was after a long day of bad parenting, too much yoga studio marketing, meetings, conformity-railing, and late evening yoga and meditation teaching. Normally, I’d have put on a Grey’s Anatomy rerun, nothing could be accomplished anyway, just wind the fuck down.
But instead I sat at the kitchen island, poured a glass of jammy zin, and I wrote late into the night. I finished a whole piece. I edited and submitted it the next day, to a really out-of-the-box publication I found called Amulet Magazine. And it was accepted. And the editor Marybeth Bonfiglio sent me some edits, we did the editing dance, and then it was out there.
Just one single day, one single previously rationalized undeserving use of my time cut. One quick slice. Boom. Or whoosh. Yeah, whoosh. The sound of a blade through the air.
Two months later, I started this blog. Whoosh, whoosh.
The Daughter of Swords. This card came up in my Tarot reading with Marybeth four years after all that whooshing. Ever have a tarot reading? So you’re supposed to ask specific questions, and this one was, “What do I need to do to get around the corner with my writing and other neglected aspects of my life’s work?” I mean, I do a lot of things, I’m always moving on something. And sure, I’ve been moving forward in some important aspects of my life, but inert in others that I have a feeling could really pull it all together. The truest things in me. Like what I pull together with my writing.

Always moving, but inert.

“You cannot force anything. What you can do is stop everything that is pushing you forward and instead slow the fuck down.” – Marybeth’s Instagram post recently. Yeah, I’ve heard it before, friends. But this time, I heard it. (Hell, I’ve been rajas-shamed by so many yoga colleagues that “slow down” just meant hackles up.) So, Marybeth was getting through to me. And I totally had to tarot with her.
Marybeth said the Daughter of Swords card was about mental transformation. About night vision – seeing through the dark. (Did I mention the name of the piece I published with her four years ago was “Dark, dark, dark, LIGHT”?) This was an air card. Swords and air. It was like “a cut through the air” at the things I haven’t been able to see but that need to go. “Change how you’ve rationalized things” she said. “We all have an extra hour in the day,” she said.
Do you believe her? I do.
[Stop for a moment, people. Stop. “Hold the magic,” she said.]
So, it’s time to choose. We can continue with our habituated daily rationalizations and justifications. We can continue believing we don’t have time and we aren’t in control and the demands of our day-to-day lives don’t allow us to pursue our long-reaching, heart-longing goals.
We can continue not doing the things we wish we were doing.
Or we can take a new look at how we spend our time. See what we haven’t been seeing. We have to carry our swords and poke around in the dark and when we find something, be ready to cut through it.
We will see how we’ve justified doing the things we don’t even want to do. My nightly Twitter “current events check-in” that turns circuitous, landing me in arbitrary accounts of people I don’t need to know anything about ever. And we can say fuck this shit, I don’t want to hold up my life this way anymore.

We can say fuck this shit, I don’t want to hold up my life this way anymore.

Whoosh, it’s gone. What, it’s not that easy? Right. You’re right. It’s hard. But swing your sword at it the next time you find yourself in the middle of it. Just set your fucking phone down on the counter. And smile. It’s how it starts.
[Stop. This moment is the magic. The way you stop barreling down a life course you don’t have to go down any more.]
In one week of telling Twitter to fuck off, I actually started to feel a longing to read a book at night. A book of all things.
There’s another way of justifying things that our swords will root out in our respective darks. We will see how we let ourselves do things that take more time than what we want to spend on them – even those things we can legit justify as “necessary” or “good for us.” That stellar healthy kale and eggs breakfast I’ve become attached to making with all the pans and clean-up? I don’t have to do that every day. Whoosh. Instant 40-minute gift to myself. That organization project I want to do in my son’s room so important things aren’t lost in the rubble? I don’t have to spend two hours online finding the coolest way to do it and price-comparing. I can just buy a couple decent fucking racks and bins. Whoosh. Magically I have an extra hour in the day.
We will see, we will cut. One moment at a time. Stopping in the state of what it feels like to choose your future and not your past. Did you hear that? Every time you just stop yourself from barreling down the course you’ve taken in the past, you are choosing your future.

Every time you just stop yourself from barreling down the course you’ve taken in the past, you are choosing your future.

And then there will be space. Space for the things that keep you true to your process for meeting your long-reaching, heart-longing goals. These things will take their rightful place in your life. For me, that means Aya mindful dance practice, when so much comes to light for me. It means getting dirty and grounded doing trail work with friends. It means reading contemporary creative stuff. It means meditating daily and finding out what I really feel. It means blogging frequently and finding out what I’ve been trying to say. It means creating yoga-integrated programming for people wanting to move in the direction of their desired future. It means writing for publication. It means paying more attention to who I spend time with or on, and re-establishing connection where I’ve lost some – my sisters, my mom, my yoga sangha, my writing community.
But, I didn’t have time for all these things, right? The things that lead to a future I’ve wanted for decades? Yes, I do. Now I carry a sword. Time isn’t my enemy. Time is there for me. My daily rationalizations and justifications of my time are my enemy. And one by one, they are falling. Not every day. Sometimes I lay down my sword. Trusting that I will pick it up again. Trusting that I will continue to be true.

Time isn’t my enemy. Time is there for me.

[Stop. There. That is how we slow down.]

Categories: authenticity, awareness, beliefs, discernment, goals, intention, time

Tagged: goals, justification, rationalization, time, time-management, writing

We Hold 1 of 3 Governing Beliefs: We are Better, Less or Equal

Mary McInnis

Posted on December 5, 2017

As human beings, you and I have exactly three choices for what we believe about ourselves and others:

1) I am better than others

2) I am less than others

3) I am equal to others.

I’m calling these the Three Self Belief States.

And what we believe about ourselves is also what we believe about the groups we identify with. Our group is better (the “haves”), less (the “have nots”), or equal (wait, what?).

Fact: being identified with our groups (religious, cultural, racial, socio-economic, vocational, avocational) causes self belief to become elevated for some and eroded for others. The consequences of this are very apparent today. The division between the elevated and the eroded is a self-fulfilling (ironic, I know) process with an outcome of more division, more polarized self beliefs (one way better, the other way less), and a loss of ability to sense our shared humanity.

Disclaimer: This won’t be easy to read. Read it anyway. It’s not that long – and therefore it is blunt. It is meant to shake you up, no matter the group you identify with. And maybe, shake you loose of some things that can stand to go.

I am going to start with the Self Belief State of being LESS. Trust me on this.

Self Belief State: LESS

In this belief state, I believe my group and I are less than others, don’t deserve what others have.

(This is what life is like for many who are in a marginalized group. And in our country now, more and more are being marginalized.)

With this belief I will either feel (a) eroded, (b) betrayed, or (c) awakening.

Eroded

I see all of society’s proof that I am undeserving and I believe it. I have witnessed the “truth” of my situation from the eyes of the “haves,” those in power. My self belief is eroded. Hope is not on my radar.

I am eroded.

Betrayed

I see hope – but only through conformity, adopting the norms of the “haves” even when it goes against things that really matter to me. It requires me to betray myself. It is not true hope, but it is all I have.

I am betrayed.

Awakening

I am not undeserving. I question the “truths” I had accepted. And hope starts to become true, belief in self starts to become true, and deservingness starts to become true.

I am on my way.

Where? To Self Belief State: EQUAL.*

(*Note that oppression can cause someone to flip to Self Belief State: BETTER as a temporary measure to overcome debilitating self beliefs. More on that in Self Belief State: Equal)

Self Belief State: BETTER

In this belief state, I believe my group and I are better than others, more deserving.

(We can see this clearly in many groups in our country now. Supremacism, nationalism, isolationism are happening.)

With this belief I will either feel (a) rightful, (b) conditionally caring, or (c) awakening.

Rightful

I will rightfully base my decisions in the interests of me and mine, upholding us as the deserving ones. If my decisions hurt those not in the deserving group, so be it.

I am rightful.**

(**I originally had “self-righteous” here. Yeah. That’s a trigger. And it’s also a word, with a definition, that has an application, and this is that application. But I cut it. Oh, and I told you about it so I kinda didn’t.)

Conditionally Caring

I will “help” others to become more deserving – coerce them to comply with my group’s norms, what my group professes as true, and abandon their own truths (i.e. “mission work”). I will care about others only if they elevate my truths above theirs.

I am conditionally caring.

Awakening

I begin to realize my group’s deservingness is based in a paradigm that I have either been born into, or have had the privilege to be able to choose. I begin to consider other measures of deservingness on my way to doing away with the concept that some are more deserving than others altogether.

I am on my way.

Self Belief State: EQUAL is in sight.

Self Belief State: EQUAL

This one is the hardest. We have to fight to establish ourselves here, because ingrained biases and daily societal treatment tell us the opposite. At any given time we may feel better than or less than another. And we have to intervene when we do, look at what’s at work, why we feel what we do, and correct ourselves.

Yes. We must repeatedly correct ourselves – bring ourselves back to a place where we recognize the bias at play and see it for what it is: a lie. Bring ourselves back to a place of truth. A place where I am deserving, you are deserving – and the very concept of “deserving” can be eliminated.

The Self Belief States of Better and Less were never meant to be permanent human experiences. The irony is that people get stuck in them so deeply that even the idea of a state where there are no “haves” or “have nots” is inconceivable. We choose to live permanently in states that are meant to be temporary – states we should only have to be in long enough to get woke enough to move out of them. And while we stay in these states, we are choosing to uphold biases, untruths.

Getting out of the Self Belief States of Better and Less requires taking hard steps to move into the only truly sustainable, truly permanent, state of truth: unity. All who are in this are equal. All are one. We are the same.

The only true, enduring belief about yourself, then, is that you are equal.

So I fooled you. There is really only one Self Belief State. And it includes every single self on the planet. Can you establish yourself there? It is where you belong, it is where I belong, and it is the only place where everyone belongs.

Categories: awareness, beliefs, compassion, connection, politics, sociology

Tagged: Beliefs, deserving, group norms, In Group, isolationism, nationalism, Out Group, superiority, supremacy

Surrender… for the Win?

Mary McInnis

Posted on September 11, 2015

Me, at Gravelpocalypse, spinning my wheels. Photo by Richard Biechler

Where the hell is this gonna go? Just gonna let it go. Using surrender to write about surrender – for the win!

So I had a major bike crash in a gravel race with a telling name – Gravelpocalypse. I hit rock-bottom literally, and now I’m dragging my body around, can’t ride a bike for a while. This has been a bit of a recurring thing for me this year, this crashing. No need to get into it any more. Just know that the circumstances of this crash were such that, you know, dying could have been an outcome. It made me think all kinds of things. One example: what – so now I wanna die, is that it?

Look at me. All happy and connecting.

Maybe trying to figure this out ain’t the thing. Maybe I’ll just look at it. All objective-like.

I JUST LOOKED AT IT AND OMFG FREAKY SHIT ALERT! You know what? Until my crash, I had been on a year-long winning streak. Exactly to the date. One paragraph ago I didn’t even know that! Yeah, September 7 – the date of my crash – was the date I won my first adventure triathlon in 2014. And the date I began to believe that I had what it takes to win shit. My partner in kayaking crimes (Kayoga October 3 – sign up!) Darrin Siefken had said so the night before that race. That night, I got mental game, man. I had been wrong about my limits, and it was time to step up and challenge them. (I even wrote about limit-busting in this blog a month after that.) This year, I won three more races.

Exactly one year to the date before this crash, I learned I had been wrong about my limits, and it was time to step up and challenge them. It was the day I won my first adventure triathlon.

(Ok, seriously. How am I not supposed to get all jacked here – the same fucking date! WTF? I mean – meaning, man! All right. Objective mode activate! Sigh. No fun!)

Lately, I’ve been very aware of the red flag word “figure.” If I hear myself say, “I’ma figure that out,” I know I gotta check myself. And I have learned what to do instead: I gotta feel it out. Get out of my head and into heart smarts. So, yesterday, I told my obviously superior intellect that I was sick of her. She was so sick of herself that she said, “I surrender!” It wasn’t that hard. Because at that gravel race, she had landed 12 feet below the road edge at rock-bottom, too.

So, instead of trying to figure it out, and instead of trying to feel it out (whoops), what’d I do? I played a fun game! (Come on! Things were heavy enough.) I asked my Facebook universe to tell me what The Universe was trying to tell me. Why? Because honestly, I had made some changes in my life in the last few weeks that I thought the Universe would be all high-fiving me on. I had gotten the message from my last crash, man! And I was feeling things out like a pro yogi. So why had the Universe bypassed my raised palm and hit me with a total Universe smack-down?

I love that many of those in my Facebook universe reminded me that sometimes shit happens. This is another way of saying, “It’s not all about you, dumbass!” It’s a profound lesson we keep learning our whole lives. High-five.

And I was all about the responses I was getting from my bike bro Facebook universe: what I am experiencing is a normal stage for someone who gets all-in on something and is learning just how much to challenge their limits. And by definition when you’re progressing, your limits are moving – and you’re trying to hit a moving target. Sometimes you overshoot. And since I’m all rah-rah about not limiting yourself, well, elementary, man. High-five.

(Alright, I can’t help going here – anyone else? I overshot my limits exactly one year after I learned the opposite lesson – not to underestimate my limits. WTF does this mean?!? Jump back! Objectivity check! Move on.)

But then there were messages I didn’t love. No high-five for you!

Case in point: I mean, who would suggest that I have attached my happiness to biking, coming to rely on it too much, when it exists in many places I may be ignoring. Dammit, wise preacher woman! (She really is.) (But do I have to high-five her?)

Disclaimer #20: Let’s not go into happiness lies within. I know. I also know none of us lives in a vacuum where we are unaffected by what we’re doing, where we are, who we’re with. Outside circumstances do play a part in our happiness – they have to allow us to experience it within, and some outside circumstance are truly barriers that need to be removed. The hard part: is that outside thing the barrier, or is something in us the barrier?

The hard part about happiness: is an outside thing the barrier, or is something in us the barrier?

That leads me to the hardest message of all, the one that started it all off – a text from a beloved yogi friend: “If you refuse to slow down and take inventory of what is causing you to run so hard the Universe will keep doing its best to derail your running.”

Damn barrier to happiness right there, man. That’s right, friend, keep your palm up, you ain’t gettin’ any. (You know I’m messin’, girl. I hear ya. I just don’t want to.)

And a few others in my Facebook universe had variations on this theme. “Something else needs your attention that you’ve been avoiding.” BLERGH.

So, honestly, bitches, even if I don’t do no figurin’ on this, even if I poke my objective lenses into my eyes – I don’t know what it is that needs my attention! It’s not what I thought it was after my last crash. Huh. I got nothin’.

Great job, Universe! Highly effective methods, yo!

But guess what? My super there-for-me friend Suzanne texted me yesterday that she’s “got nothin’” on a thing in her life that she’s looking for answers on. Here’s what I texted back:

“Nothin’, huh? The surrendered place is where something comes.”

Damn I’m good, aren’t I? (Disclaimer #21 : When this tapped-in shit happens, taking the “I” out is assumed.)

Seriously, we yoga teachers have this thing we believe – that when you say something that’s kind of a “WTF – where did that come from?” in class, it’s because there is someone in the room that really needed to hear it. True or not, who cares, it makes me feel good. And hell, often someone will come up after class sharing how they really connected with that WTF thing I said.

Sometimes, I’m that student. I find myself writing down something I said with an under-my-breath “holy fuck!” while students hold a really long down-dog.

And, I am that student now. Not the student holding a down-dog, can’t do that for a while. I am the student who the message is for.

Dear Mary,

Nothin’, huh? The surrendered place is where something comes.

Love, The Universe

So then, this morning, when talking about my upcoming blog to my yoga students, shit happened. I don’t mean “shit happens, shake it off!” I mean, I was talking about what happened at the gravel race, all surrendered about saying anything worthwhile, and revelatory shit happened. I told me something I needed to hear. Here’s what.

My new bike bros at the race showed me something I had known but not experienced so directly before: my biking community is an amazing, connected, supporting group that were 110% there when I needed them. Three riders – Jason, Travis, and Robert – stopped and waited ‘til I was loaded in the ambulance. An hour. Then they went on to finish 94 of their 112 gravel miles (or Jason, on the 44 mile course I was on, still had 26 left). These guys were not about winning. They were about being there, knowing somehow that this was where they were needed. Surrendering expectations of any certain finish time and just being there.

Okay, highly relevant ugly realization time! At the beginning of the race, before we even hit the official start and were on pavement, a guy right in front of me looked back, lost control, and splatted. I had no choice but to fall on top of him. I hopped right up, asked him if he was okay, and he said yeah. “Your bike?” I asked. “I think so.” And that was good enough for me. The pack was gone, the race director was hustling over to check shit out, and I was gonna try to make up some ground.

But that disoriented dude didn’t know if he was okay. He didn’t know if his bike was okay. He didn’t know jack. And I didn’t know how to surrender. I only knew how to win. Well, I knew I wasn’t going to win – gravel is a whole ‘nother game – but I was going to hit it like a competitor anyway.

What is surrender? The opposite of winning. By that I mean, it takes absolutely opposing qualities. Winning is fighting and control. You fight for it with all you got – maximized physical exertion, mental toughness, grit – and you control the outcome as much as you can – training, course previews, race day “fueling.” Surrender is giving up and being. You give up the fight, you be there. And you see what comes, you don’t fight for anything in particular to come. And you wait.

My bike bros were masters of surrender.

So, here’s where I’m at. What I need to take away from my crash isn’t for me to figure out, or feel out, or anything out. It is for me to give up on. Put it in higher hands. Let myself be guided toward meaning that is instead of forcing meaning that I could be right about. Like, I was actually trying to win the meaning game!

Yes, I said “higher hands.” What do I mean by that? For me, I mean both my higher Self, and The Highest Self. What do I mean by The Highest Self? A kind of interconnecting power that you can call all kinds of things – the Divine, God, The Universe. My higher Self is a part of the The Highest Self, and sometimes, my actions are aligned with it. Other times, they are not. If I’m moving a way that isn’t aligned with The High, or staying stuck in something instead of moving in a way aligned with The High, shit doesn’t really come together for me so well. Sometimes, it falls apart.

If I’m moving a way that isn’t aligned with The Highest Self, or staying stuck in something instead of moving in a way aligned with The High, shit doesn’t really come together for me so well. Sometimes, it falls apart.

Another friend of mine who has been there for me, talking about shit no one should never talk about, (read: shit everyone should talk about) told me her prayer she used at a time when she was at rock-bottom, or in her case, linoleum-kitchen-floor bottom. Here it is: “Help me. Help me. Help me.”

I have started using this at the end of my meditation practice. I think it is – wait for it – helping me!

So. I got nothin’. Thank God/The Universe/The Divine. Because I am here in the place that the real something comes out of. Something will come. And I won’t make it. I will wait for it. When my bike bros surrendered, they saw what needed their attention – me. Someone in need. The one in need in that moment. And I am so grateful.

And so I wait. Since, you know, I can’t ride my bikes and all. What else am I gonna do?

Categories: awareness, beliefs, connection, gratitude, guidance, surrender

Gettin’ Flow: Mountain Biking Meets Yoga

Mary McInnis

Posted on August 20, 2015

This shot of me at my race was caught by fellow MTB shredder Annie Kappelman of my Nature Force crew!

Look at my social media, and you’re prob all, “Where’d the yoga go?” Just yesterday, a really close friend texted me: “I’m super excited about all your mountain bike successes, but girl, what happened to the yoga?!?” It’s there, girl. It has taken its seasonal place, following the pulsing rule of life, like all things natural. It’s not out front, but man do I got my yoga goin’ on. Because right now, it’s fucking racing season.

So, this 46-year-old yogi who got all competitive this year is gonna tell you how yoga played in with my mountain bike (MTB) race last weekend, and how it is the core of the experience every. time. I. ride.

It was my first time doing one of these crazy mass-starting, dude-dominated, beer-tenting races, and I wasn’t all “I got this.” Don’t get me wrong, that element is my thing. 😉 I knew the George Wyth MTB Race expertly put on by Cedar Valley Association for Soft Trails (CVAST) was the total shit. It was what I didn’t know that had my head feeling off. Things like, If I hit the singletrack trail entry ahead of a faster rider, holding them up, I’d be an assy newbie. And a fall I had two days before had left me riding uncharacteristically cautiously, tight, not applying what I knew. And my legs. My legs! They were sluggy. They hadn’t been the “these legs don’t stop!” legs I’d bragged about on the final days of RAGBRAI (the epic annual 500-mile road ride across the state of Iowa). So – was I gonna totally bomb my first MTB race?

Enter race day yoga. I rolled in enough time the morning of the race for a yoga practice. Just 20 minutes. It was 3 parts – physical, physical + mental, and mental – with the purpose of prepping for free-feel riding, and to loosen up from that recent fall in more ways than one.

Part 1: A brief physical yoga practice consisting of targeted dynamic range-of-motion movements for freedom where a mountain biker needs it most.

Part 2: Add vision, using vision to lead movement into dynamic stretches, replicating what a mountain biker’s whole system does as they ride a trail.

Part 3: (a) Meditative presencing of my body, (b) Visualization of successfully navigating tricky race thingies, and (c) Embedding of specific race day intentions.

So there’s the yoga, bitch! (She said with utmost love!) Now – who wants some o’ that? Hmmm. I should post a video of Parts 1 and 2 some time, and get it on Singletracks.com or some shit. 🙂

Now I’ll get all personal. What exact things did I do in that Part 3?

Presencing My Body

Presencing my body was a simple practice I include in the centering part of every yoga class I teach. (I feel like the more I say “yoga,” the less you gonna worry ‘bout me bagging on it. That was number 10, for the record.) I got this practice from my main teacher, Karina Mirsky. Here’s the statement to cue yourself into it: “Rest your awareness in the entire space occupied by your body.” There. BAM. I like to remind people it’s not mind over matter. It’s mind with matter. Mind and body in one field. That’s what you get to feel when you do this. It’s a great space to be in when physical performance is a priority.

Visualization – Seeing and Feeling

Visualization that morning covered those unknown things that had me ungrounded. You know, how not to be the assy newbie holding people back, or the locked-down me still living in my crash two days before, or the heavy-legged grinder. I saw – and sometimes felt – myself in positive versions of these situations, executing specific strategies to be successful in them. I saw myself successfully shredding the first section of singletrack, doing my thing, no concerns of anyone who may or may not be on my tail. I saw and felt myself use proper weight shift entering tight turns, to avoid the wash-out kind of crash I had experienced with the dry hard-pack too-smooth trail conditions that continued. I felt myself riding light – arms, legs, whole body responsive.

Embedding Intention: Gettin’ Flow

And that leads me to my last pre-race mental practice: intention. Oh how I love thee, intention! Give me intention or give me… a sucky dead race!

I knew that “body responsive” thing was key. Fear-based cautious riding = seizing. An unresponsive body, locked up. So, I had three things I wanted to feel that day, in this order: Soften. Be responsive. Flow. You soften to be responsive. When you’re responsive, you flow. Literally, flowing on the flowy trails, sure. But also, that mind and body together thing. That way you feel when you’re all-in on an experience.

What is that kind of flow? It’s what happens when skill level = level of challenge. That’s the fascinating psychological state of flow that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified 40 years ago and continues to study. Another phrase he uses for it is “optimal experience.” Yeah. I be likin’ all over that.

Flow in this sense is something I’m getting involved with now, in my community, thanks to Gary Gute and the Creative Life Research Center he built here at the University of Northern Iowa. Gary’s hatching up some amazing things, working with The Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. And I’m actively supporting what Gary’s bringing to my community. Because I can’t resist me some solid karma yoga – the yoga of action, and better yet, activism. (Plus, that Gary always “likes” my MTB flow posts on Facebook, and writes gushy comments.)

Flow theory explains why cautious riding = seizing: because when the challenge – actual or perceived – is greater than your skill level, the state you experience is anxiety. This triggers sympathetic nervous system responses to seize, defend. The opposite of soften, respond. See how I got all that to flow full-circle? 😉

So, I sat for a bit the morning of my race, and I let myself feel my first two intentions. Soften. Be responsive. I felt them, and through that, I could believe they were available for me to feel any time. I was ready to flow. I visualized myself on the trail, softening, being responsive, and damn if I wasn’t flowing like a badass shredder!

Flow state in yoga is the pre-meditative state known as dharana. (See that? I said yoga! Again! And I used a Sanskrit word!) Dharana is an intense, all-in focus on the one thing you’re experiencing. It’s like mindfulness, if mindfulness was on crack.

Often, experiences of flow happen when we are engaged in something with a significant physical component. Because it’s easier to get out of treating our heads as a separate thing, to get free from following all the flow-stopping shit running around in them. I’ve got some challenges in my life right now. Some things that are hard for me to hold but are mine alone to hold. So I won’t be sharing them. I’ll just let you know that when I’m mountain biking, I’m freed from the painful places my head sometimes goes.

How’d all this yoga shtuffs work for me, then? I rode clean. I was zoned in. Legs weren’t all they could be, and over-caution reared up a few times, but I was feeling so alive out there. And then – I won my race. Good feels.

So, now ya know. I get my yoga on every time I’m on the trail. I do conscious yoga practices when I’m not on the trail, for personal growth – including growth in mountain biking and all the empowerment that comes with it. And I scored the word “yoga” over 20 fucking times in this blog, baby! (And only two f-bombs!)

So let’s yoga on, ride on, flow on. Give yourself permission for optimal experience – being all-in on something you love. Know that people may worry about you. They may judge you and they may question your judgment. So what. Get it. Get it anyway.

Categories: flow, intention, meditation, yoga

Tagged: competition, CVAST, dharana, flow, focus, intention, meditation, Mihaly, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, mountain bike, MTB, optimal experience, racing, singletrack, visualization, yoga

They Say to Play Memory Games. I Learned a Rap.

Mary McInnis

Posted on June 10, 2015

My memory, man. It ain’t what it used to be. I got 46 years on this organic memory card. A lot of studies out there tell me to do boring shit to improve it. But if I do, will I gain memory and lose my fire? Not goin’ for that. Enter Macklemore.

So, I’m driving to Des Moines to meet a guy who’s selling me a bike. (Not Macklemore!) It’s two-and-a-half hours road time. I often listen to an audio book on trips like this, but I was too excited about that damn bike. I’m pumpin’ tunes in the family Explorer, sporting my favorite sunglasses, feeling it all. Feeling it all, man!

The moment is perfect when Arrows by Fences comes on, featuring Macklemore.

I start to sing along, with, you know, the regular music-y part, and then Macklemore hits it, and I keep singing and trying to put together what he’s saying and I can’t even sputter one word in 20 and I’m all, “What the fuck, Macklemore?!? How many words can you get into a 30-second rap?”

So, ding! Idea so bright! I love this rap. I used this song on the playlist for the last Amped Yoga Project I held. (Disclaimer #17: I realize right now I am stetting myself up for copyright infringement all over the place here, but Fences and Macklemore, seriously, only, like 20 people in the middle of Iowa heard it. And come on, who’s gonna watch this video of a 46-year-old woman trying to keep up with a rap? Oh – and here’s some major traffic for you: Arrows by Fences feat. Macklemore official video.)

So the best part of me says to myself, “Why not learn this rap? Why not?”

So the best part of me says to myself, “Why not learn this rap? Why not?” So, I start. Play, rewind. Play, rewind. It’s not much different from what I do with my yoga friends in call-and-response chanting of Sanskrit mantras. You have no clue what these words or sounds are, your brain just slowly starts to put them together. And man, Macklemore sure coulda been using Sanskrit from what I picked up on my first few listens. But, I keep at this for 35 minutes. And my brain is fried. It’s so spent I can’t even send clear signals that should move my mouth. So, I rest. Jam some other tunes. And eventually, pick up a dream bike for my kid in Des Moines.

Then, I’m driving back. I try the rap again. I totally suck! It takes me five minutes just to retrieve the whole rap from the organic memory card, things loading soooooo slow, then I’m back at it – play, rewind, play rewind. I’m now losing my voice. It’s kinda that cool sexy raspy now. After 30 more minutes, I got it. I got it down. A 30-second rap, up to tempo… in a little over an hour. Here I am, in my kitchen, two days later, rappin’ it:

This isn’t my first brain-hack rodeo. I’m doin’ it all the time. But this was the most fun one!

I was never bored. I was fully engaged. And I learned something. And it was a memory exercise no matter how you look at it. Such an esteemed undertaking!

Can’t we find our own meaningful things to learn, no matter how low on the esteem scale they may be judged to be?

Let’s talk about that. We tend to judge the value of what people know. Like, if I knew a Shakespeare soliloquy, I’d be held in quite high esteem. (The number of words in a Macklemore’s 30-second rap is equivalent to a 10-minute Shakespeare soliloquy. Absolutely no fact or research behind that statement at all.) But why diminish the value of anything? And who cares how highly esteemed something is if we don’t ever learn it – because, boring. Can’t we find our own meaningful things to learn, no matter how low on the esteem scale they may be judged to be?

Yes we can. And you will. It starts by remembering that you love some things. Some things you forgot because you were too busy. And maybe because you’re 46. But you eventually remember them, or they just show up for you and say, “Hey! Let’s do this!”

Memorize something you love. Who cares what it is. What about that quote you geek on that you’re always saying, “It goes something like…” Memorize that em-effer! And some of the stuff before it and after it, why don’tcha. Or if you’re a yogeek, hit one of those mantras. Hard. Or what about that song you kinda mumblize: “Never danced like this before… mmmble mmmble talk about it…”? And oh, dang – what about a dance? Watch some music vid choreography and learn it!

Memorize something you love. It starts by remembering that you love some things.

Disclaimer #18: I’m not gonna go into all the “learning type” talk here, just click on this link and blow your mind about how the way you like to learn – auditory, visual, kinesthetic – doesn’t really matter. You’re not really better off learning one way. So don’t rule out learning in all the ways learning is possible.

(I didn’t look up the lyrics to this rap ever, by the way. I’m probably not even saying that line with “ricochet” right. But I’m saying what I hear. Exercise complete.)

Learning something you love is self-motivating. So it’s more than feeling like something is fun. I thought those Lumosity memory games were just fine fun. But I had to summon up a shit-ton of willpower to do them. I do “my” rap on the way to physical therapy, loading up recyclables, shit – I always wanna do my rap!

I’m focusing on memory with this post, but you gotta hear this. It’s about biking. But, you know, I mentioned a bike in the beginning so I’m good.

There are all kindsa things you can gain besides better memory. I did a ride with a hardcore cyclist friend last week. He kept going hands-free. On gravel. And I was all, “I used to do that. Why don’t I do that anymore?” (Disclaimer #19: Yes, cyclist friends, I do realize he was doing this to give me a chance to pedal up.) So, the day after, I started letting go of the handlebars on my commutes. Two days later, I can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handlebars, no handlebars. What’d I gain? I just told you. A skill that makes me happy when I do it. And underneath, there are a lot more connections firing. Brain growth. Not for brain growth’s sake – for fun.

Gain a skill that makes you happy when you do it.

If you listen to the whole song my rap comes from, there’s more to rap. It gets all powerful and f-bomby! I am so learning the rest of it! And when I do, I’ll be putting a most esteemed check mark in the “memory exercise” box.

And that other box that no one ever puts on forms? You know what I’m talking about? The one that says “FUN”? I’ma put my mark there, too.

Categories: authenticity, awareness, connection, discernment, guidance, Uncategorized

Tagged: Arrows, bikes, brain hack, driving, Fences, fun, learn, Macklemore, memorize, memory, no handlebars, rap

Free Drugs! Book Review of Mudra: The Sacred Secret

Mary McInnis

Posted on May 22, 2015

Indu Arora had me at “hello.” Well, a very unique “hello” that went like this: “What I’m talking about is not normal intelligence. It’s connection-derived intelligence.” Helloooooo, right?!?

Indu said this at a workshop at my old studio, Field of Yoga, a year ago. I have a big star by this quote in my notebook. Not only was Indu speaking my language, but she was speaking our language. A highly connected language. It comes through in her unique way of expressing concepts so that you can’t help but connect to them – even if you don’t want to. Like now – as I write this blog in my kitchen, I am recalling Indu’s words about the effect of our modern “open” kitchens: “The craving clock stays on.” Look at that leftover cinnamon roll! Ooooo, someone left the peanut butter out! Hell, I can’t stand the heat, I better get out of the kitchen.

But I don’t want to. I wanna work right here. And, thanks to Indu, I’ve got another option, if I gotta be a rebel. (All the pittas in da house say HEY-O!) At that workshop, Indu gave us a practice she prescribed specifically for cravings. Hold up. I’ma go get a hit of it. Meanwhile, you go meet Indu in this 2-minute video that I love beyond words!

[2-minute time lapse.] Isn’t she awesome?!?

Indu has a unique way of expressing concepts so that you can’t help but connect to them – even if you don’t want to.

Ahhh. I’m back. As someone with an eating disorder history, I need all the help I can get when it comes to food triggers. (Q: So why am I still in the kitchen?!? A: Because – pitta.) The practice I just did involves a mudra. Yeah, a mudra. That “yoga of the hands” thing. That “energy sealing” at termination points in our nervous system thing. Or, maybe it’s even more than that….

Let’s find out! Indu wrote a book! And it’s on mudras! And it is vast and informed and has all that wonderful wisdomful connecting language that is Indu. Mudra: The Sacred Secret makes clear connections between a slew of fields having to do with energy, from reflexology to astrology. And, if you’re a yogeek, it connects all those energy classification systems in the yoga compendium, like chakras, shaktis, gunas, and pranas (aka vayus).

In fact, the first 100 pages of the book are all about helping you make these connections. The charts in this section are gold. Gold I say! Case in point: I’ve always had a bit of a palmistry crush. Palmistry is like taking the solar system and putting it into your hand, and seeing patterns in it that translate to patterns in your life. Indu’s chart on the planet-hand relationship really helped me see a connection between my weird palmistry fascination and my main support system of yoga. Huh! Maybe I’ll be hanging out that “Palm Reader” shingle after all!

Oh, wait. This is about Indu. 😉

Allow me to recover (is there a mudra for that?). Ahem. It’s important to gain an understanding of how and why something works, so you can get on board with actually doing that thing. Indu handles this brilliantly in these first 100 pages, so you are informed, and empowered to use the practices that follow effectively.

A mudra gives you an immediate hit. But unlike a drug, if you do it regularly, you won’t develop a tolerance that lessens its effect. Nope. You’ll get the opposite – cumulative awesomeness.

Back to me! I’ve noticed that human nature is to go for the drugs, the supplements, the essential oils – the immediate things you “take” rather than the longer term things you “do.” And get this – mudras are like both. Both! You get an immediate hit. But unlike a drug, if you do it regularly as a practice, you won’t develop a tolerance that lessens its effect. Nope. You’ll get the opposite – cumulative awesomeness. Just like the longer term “doing” that makes you healthier. So, as I’m always recommending, if you can find ways to hack into your system, right past all the resistance, and make a healthy change with little effort, do it! (If you need a mudra pusher, you came to the right place.)

So, how does a mudra for “Cajoling One to Sleep” sound? Or, how ‘bout one to “Release Negativity”? Dang, how does “Supreme Wisdom” sound, man? “Divine Expression,” hmmm? Or something more directly physical, like “Aiding Digestion” or “Relieving Headache”? It’s all in there. And more. (Disclaimer #16: Most mudras have not been proven via evidence-based research. They come from a wisdom tradition rather than modern science. When using resources that aren’t evidence-based, it’s best to go to a source that’s as rooted in the wisdom tradition as possible, someone with a direct line to the wisdom as it goes way back – a lineage – as opposed to someone dabbling. Indu is rooted, baby. She’s the real deal. Oh – and don’t come to me for palmistry. Yet.)

In summary, I think mudras are cool and worth doing. And I think we should be as informed and empowered as possible when we do them. And I think having, like, 140 photos of Indu doing mudras, with all aspects of each mudra visible and described, is totally bitchin’. I mean – I think it’s indescribably valuable. In case, you know, I get quoted.

Who’s the modern-day sage I recommend you learn mudras from? Indu.

Who’s the modern-day sage I recommend you learn mudras from? Indu. Indu’s book brings a lot of things home for me as a longer-term yoga practitioner, and it presents so many options for people just looking to get started in a healthier direction. It’s touted by some biggies in the yogasphere, from the more spiritual-philosophical side like David Frawley, American Institute of Vedic Studies Director, to the more physical-based, like Beth Shaw, YogaFit Founder. You can pore over the first 100 pages of charts and energy talk, or if the idea of that nauseates you, flip it open to the mudra “for Nausea.”

Take advantage of Indu’s “connection-derived intelligence.” And build your own. Go on, do some mudras. Take a crack at it.

Categories: connection, guidance, meditation, Uncategorized, yoga

Tagged: ayurveda, book, change, connection, energy, hands, healthy, indu arora, meditation, mudra, mudra the sacred secret, mudras, palmistry, pitta, prana, yoga

Start Not Stopping Yourself: Lessons From Mountain Bike Camp

Mary McInnis

Posted on May 2, 2015

Why’d this Iowa girl up and drive 16 hours to mountain bike camp in Colorado? I didn’t know in any specific way – I just knew. It was easy to trust with all the kismet that blasted me there. Check it:

I just knew that if I didn’t act on that conversation on April Fool’s Day with my bike buddy Dave, I’d be a fool. I just knew that a dude-heavy edition of the camp Dave recommended in May in Des Moines didn’t exactly have my name written all over it. I just knew that the women-only edition of the same camp taking place in Colorado’s McInnis Canyons three weeks away did have my name written all over it. I just knew that the one spot left was mine. I just knew I’d have enough range of motion in my recently repaired broken elbow to ride dirty. I just knew I had to bag on the yoga conference I had scheduled the same weekend, and that I had to tell them the truth when I asked for a refund: “Yeah, so the Universe wants me to go to this mountain bike camp, see…” And they gave me a refund. And, for the final Universe upside-the-head slap, my friend Suzanne, notorious for representin’ when it comes to the Universe, kept telling me that I just knew – what more did I need?

So, I pressed the button. Turns out it was a start button. The start button – the start of not stopping myself.

I made it to Fruita, Colorado, smooth. I checked in to my hotel. Normally I have mega nerves at things like this, and it hits the night before. You know, that big step out of comfortable territory thing. I mean, what even goes on at mountain bike camp? Who even goes to mountain bike camp? And how crazy is this Colorado territory gonna be literally? But my head wasn’t really going there. Instead, I deftly packed up my brand new Camelback as if I had done it a million times. I slept well. At the continental breakfast, I was the only one eating alone, and I persona’d up: Yo, I’m Mystery Lone Mountain Biker Chick. I don’t wear make-up. I eat hard-boiled eggs and black coffee.

I checked the weather. Seemed it would be raining before our camp day was up. And it seemed it would be raining through the entire two following camp days. Nice one, Universe. I loaded up my rain jackets – plural, in case others hadn’t brought one. But I also did this: I chose not to believe a forecast was any kind of real thing. Mystery Lone Mountain Biker Chick says a forecast is just a fucking human guess – how likely is it to be what the mystery Universe actually has in store?

(But there was a part of me that liked the idea of escaping into the comfort of “Dang, it rained, and I didn’t get to pop a gnarly jump off that cliff. But I woulda, you know, if it hadn’t rained.”)

I drove in to our first meet-up, past the “McInnis Canyons” sign, into a parking lot at Kokopelli Trails. We circled up by the Better Ride Camp coach’s spiffy white Mercedes van / mobile bike repair station. There were eight of us women. We all repeated each other’s names, mixed each other up, laughed, tried again. Our coach, Chip, announced that camper Kathleen was his wife – and she was there only because someone had to cancel due to a broken elbow. A broken elbow! Surely another sign!

So, who were these eight mystery mountain biker chicks? Well. Kathleen (Colorado) competes on the national swimming circuit. Sasha (Colorado) is an XTerra racer and Ironman. Stacy (Colorado but from the South with a wicked fun accent) races MTB. Tanya (Colorado) does some MTB racing, too, I think. Sharon (Minnesota), Ann (Colorado but formerly Minnesota), and Liz (Colorado), were in it for lower-key reasons. Me? “In the Midwest we have to make our own fun, so we have these kayak-MTB-trail run triathlons that I like to do.” I also told them about breaking my elbow three months ago, and how my physical therapist was not-so-secretly hoping I’d bust through some stubborn adhesions on this trip. (I came to camp with the ability to bend my arm 120 degrees, 40 degrees away from normal. Spoiler: I did not leave camp that way.)

Lesson time! Day one, Chip started us off on a dirt road learning basic riding position for uphill and downhill. Then some obstacle serpentining around a few rocks he tossed out. Then the thing that floored us all: vision. Where to look and why.

“If you’re looking at the obstacle when you get to it, your mind and your body respond to it like it’s an obstacle. They stop you. ‘Oh-no-big-rock-STOP!’” Chip said. He explained some nifty stuff about direct vision and peripheral vision. And he got us seeing the obstacles when we had time to plan for them, so when it came time to execute our plan, what we were seeing was well beyond the obstacle. We came up to the obstacle knowing we already had it handled. And that day, eight women started not stopping.

“You’re all gonna be doing wheelies,” Chip said next. And he was right. After Wheelies 101, we ate lunch, and it was time to hit the trail. The real stuff. And it wasn’t raining.

“We’ll be riding Mary’s Loop today,” Chip said. Yeah. Sign. (Only later we found out it was Rustler’s Loop. Whoopsie, Universe! No one named “Rustler” here!) We practiced our vision. I made a tight turn near an edge by looking at Chip, who was standing around the bend, subtly coaxing me to get out of my habit of stopping myself by bellowing “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” I looked at him. Chip’s testosterone-heavy “Yeeeeeah!” rang though the canyons as each of us came through that curve. We were practicing not stopping.

The 7 on Day 2: Ann, me, Sharon, Kathleen, Stacy, Sasha, Tanya

By day two, one woman had stopped. We found out Liz had left camp the night before, feeling like she was in over her head. Chip had said, on that first day, “The one who gets off their bike and walks is the bravest, smartest one.” Liz had walked through several sections. But she hadn’t felt brave or smart. We women do like that. We are too easily stopped by the obstacle of feeling that where we are isn’t good enough. But where we are is just where we are – we can’t change it, it’s based on what came before. But it’s what comes next that we’re here for. If what came before is stopping us, when will there ever be anything next?

Liz leaving was a bummer, but that day, we took to killing it on our gravity-defying turn leans. Yeeeeeah! In an elementary school parking lot! 🙂 It was in that parking lot where the seven of us got to know each other. Kathleen would pull up alongside someone to point out something they really “got,” or to support someone who didn’t feel like they “got it.” Chip worked a lot with Stacy, who was doing something funky with her butt at first, and when Stacy “got it” and felt the lean, she let out some adorable Southern yelp-like thang. Tanya was quiet and focused, and hilariously dry if you were lucky enough to hear her. Ann, the oldest of our bunch in her early 50’s, was game for anything. And get this – those racer chicks were in their early-to-mid-40’s. And they looked 20’s or 30’s.

It became really clear that day that all of us had a tendency to say, “Sorry!” and “Yeah, but” even when we hit a pretty good lean. Even Sasha the XTerra-racing Ironman. She had a real sweet bent, and “sorry” just came with the territory. (She also had the fittest smiling muscles of the bunch – I realize now that I have no clue what she looks like without a smile.) Chip, though, promptly removed the apology obstacle, and no one was allowed to say “sorry.”

After a downpour the night before, and an 80% chance of rain in the afternoon, we hit the trails ready for a rain-out. But the weather held. On the trail, when I came up on Minnesota Sharon as she was stopped in a good line, I elicited a “Sorry!” from her. It wasn’t her fault. It was the fault of my Inner Awful Bitch that had said, out loud, “Aw!” as I stopped, lamenting the climb in front of Sharon that Inner Awful Bitch thought she could’ve made.

At the end of the ride, I told Sharon I was sorry. Kathleen overheard and said, “No saying ‘sorry!’” “Rule does not apply,” I said, “I am sorry, because I made Sharon feel bad.” Because breaking the apology rule was the more connecting option here. (Real is the New Good is all about discerning the most connecting choice.) “Sorry” isn’t always bad, or good for that matter. There are times when it’s necessary, real, connecting. Use it then.

We circled up after that ride, did some Q&A, and wrapped things up. As soon as we got to our cars and no sooner, it started raining. Yeah. Charmed, this group. Charmed.

Every morning I had fun at continental breakfast being Mystery Lone Mountain Biker Chick, geared up for the silly human forecast of rain.

Okay, so, the final day, I got a new lesson. It was curb day. Getting up shit. And it was almost inevitable that it would rain. I ran 3 miles on the treadmill at the hotel that morning as it poured, sure of a rain-out.

But it cleared. Kathleen, who had never been able to do curbs before, was “stoked!” to learn and apply the technique, curb after curb after curb. She must’ve done a hundred. That’s how it was for some people. And for some people, it was kind of a freak-out. I was having trouble with timing, and shit if I wasn’t shaking. I wanted to cry. Everyone else had gone up a curb or a hundred, and I still hadn’t. I rode up to a couple, and skidded to a stop. A stop.

But this is just where I was. Because of what happened before now, which hadn’t included curbs, or Colorado topography. I was just here. And still, I felt like Liz – our fellow camper who left after the first day. I wanted to quit. I couldn’t believe in moving ahead. “I’m freaking out,” I said to Chip. “I haven’t done a single curb yet.”

“It’s your timing,” he said. “Just go back to wheelie-ing over the painted lines, and get it down. Then come back.” Damn empowering rational thinking coach. That’s the last thing I needed.

But I was still here. I hadn’t quit. Starting where I was hadn’t stopped me yet. If you don’t want to cry, if you don’t want to quit, you haven’t yet blindly banged up against a long-standing curb that you believed was a wall.

I had found a long-standing curb. I had to get past it. And I did. Lines first. Lots of wheelie-ing over yellow paint. And pretty soon, I did a curb. I wheelied-up. And then, I was wheelie-ing up and doing a back-wheel lift onto the little boulevards. You know, until that bad one.

My elbow got pretty wrecked, forced flexion, on one of those wheelie-up back wheel lifts with the timing a little off. My PT would have been proud. But man did it kill. I stepped off. Hugged my arm. Kathleen made sure I was all right, she was ready to ice me. I said, “Nah, this is good for it, it just hurts.” She nodded, did another 100 curbs or something.

Not long after, on the trails that day, rain holding off, I was really hurting. Elbow screaming at the simplest of things. Add to it my knack for not getting clipped in to my pedals in time for some looming feature (I’d only left flat pedals a few weeks before), and I was not feeling prime at all. I wondered, should I go on? Could I turn back? Would the rain show up and save me? I asked around about ibuprofen. Sasha was equipped. I popped 800 mg.

Then, Ann got hurt. A fall on a downhill rock step. And I got to see Kathleen, firefighter and EMT (did I not mention that?), in action. Totally pro rescuer mode, and 100% trustworthy caregiver. She did some real pro-looking sign language to Chip (also a firefighter and EMT – what?!?) that seemed to mean broken collar bone. And Chip – well, he made a bike tube into a sling. Wow. Kathleen and Sharon gathered up Ann’s bike to walk Ann back. Chip asked if the rest of us we were too shaken up to go on. There were four of us left. And I thought, “This is my out.” And then, a new thought – a stronger one, that I could feel in my heart, my gut: “But I want to ride.” So, I had an out, and I didn’t want it. I saw what was out ahead. And I liked what I saw better than what I’d see if I stopped: a goddamn proverbial curb I’d be looking at forever.

Tanya spoke up. “I’m kinda shaken, but I think riding will help.”

“It will,” Chip said. And we four – Tanya, Stacy, Sasha, and I – got our badass MTB chickness on.

The 4 on Day 3: Stacy about to wheelie-up like a pro with Chip out front, Tanya, me, and Sasha ready. (photo: Dan Wyszynski)

This day was different. We weren’t allowed to just plow through things inefficiently. We had to apply what we learned. And Chip was all about the do-over (or do-it-right-over.) We tried climbs with wheelie-up after wheelie-up. After three tries on one tough section and a buckling elbow, Chip told me, “Three tries. That’s good. Call it.”

I got up SOME shit. (photo: Dan Wyszynski)

I plodded up to where Stacy, victor of said climb, was, and wondered out loud why I kept referring to my reaction to the challenging stuff as “freaking out.” I knew better. If we treat stress like it’s harming us, it will. It will stop us. I remembered something PhD psychologist yogi Kelly McGonigal had said about stress, and shared it with Stacy.

“When we feel the stress response, all we have to do is say, ‘this is my body rising to the occasion,’” I told her. “Way better than, ‘I’m freaking out.'”

“I am so taking that with me,” Stacy said. She needed it. She’d been surprised by the stress of her recent move from Arkansas to Denver. And then, enough talk, we had to look back. Because XTerra-racing Ironman Sasha was on her fourth try.

Sasha wasn’t going to stop. The three tries rule? Nope. She was doing the more connected thing – for her. She was the picture of perseverance. And she was strong. And she was so much more than an XTerra-racing Ironman. She wanted this because she believed in what was ahead of her. She was already past it. And on her fifth try, she made it.

And quiet, dry-humored, flat-pedaled Tanya kept at it until she was just teetering at the last wheelie-up and Chip reached over and gave her a final boost. “Yeeeeeah!”

That day, the four of us each did some pretty remarkable things. We looked past things that used to stop us. We stopped stopping. Kathleen caught up with us after getting Ann medical care. Turned out nothing was broken. And Kathleen joined right in with the wheelie-up climbs, stoked.

We circled up. We said goodbye. There were hugs.

And I hit the road. I started an audio book as I set out on the 16-hour drive back, the rain just setting in, you know, since the charmed mountain biker chicks were done and all. I turned up the volume over the rain, and this hit me:

The scar stories, not the sword stories, are what empower us and others. Tell your scar stories.

(I’m paraphrasing from Paulo Coelho’s Manuscript Found in Accra.)

So, I struggled, people. I wasn’t a sword-wielding victor. But Paulo Coelho talks about how victory is only possible if we have faced stopping, and gotten past it.

“There are people who have never been defeated. They are the ones who never fought. Such people can say with pride, ‘I never lost a battle.’ On the other hand, they will never be able to say, ‘I won a battle.’” – Paulo Coelho

On day 1 and day 2 of camp, I hadn’t really lost a battle. On day 3, I did. Many. So since getting back, I’ve been fighting more damn yellow painted lines and logs and roots the size of logs. I sometimes lose and my elbow gets a PT-approved beating, but hey, I’ve got, like, 8 degrees more flexion now. I’ve literally moved past a stop in my elbow.

Sometimes, a log defeats me, sure. But I am going to keep working until I can see the obstacle, prepare, and trust enough that I’ve got it handled as I move my vision to what’s beyond. And then, I’m gonna ride on, solid in the knowing that I’ve already won. Moving beyond where I am, no matter where I am.

We start from here.

Categories: awareness, beliefs, discernment, guidance, relationships, Uncategorized

Tagged: awareness, badass women, Better Ride, Colorado, connection, empowerment, failure, Fruita, Kokopelli Trails, learning, mountain bike, mountain bike camp, MTB, small steps, technique, vision, wheelie, women

What happened is hard. Who happened is way better.

Mary McInnis

Posted on April 18, 2015

Three months ago, I announced to the world that I was closing my yoga studio. I blogged on it, and YogaDork picked it up. It wasn’t the whole story, because it couldn’t be. It was just enough words to say, “I’m okay. I’m gonna try this yoga thing without all the trappings. The trappings ain’t any sign of success, they’re just trappings. I’m ready to break loose of ‘em and redefine success with a new target of effective yoga education.”

So, the studio is closed. The whole story is a book. It’s coming. Meanwhile, here’s what went down from studio closing announcement to studio closing. It’ll seem kinda heavy, but take the weight, it’s only one paragraph. I promise the weight will come off. It could get pretty light, even. And, as always, I’ll serve up one motherfucking moral to the story.

I broke my arm (in two!) on a winter bike commute. I got my arm bone screwed back together. I was unable to teach for a week. My hot red car kept dying and leaving me stranded places. I missed biking. I joined the SportsPlex and reluctantly stationary cycled. I got studio affairs in order. I liquidated a studio full of good crap.

On vacating day morning, we had a crying party. There were mimosas and bloody Marys and I had just one. There was dancing. The party ended late morning. Late afternoon, I sent the two yogis home who had hung on helping with the move. “Go! Have a fun day!” Alone, I turned up the tunes but did not break to dance. The neighbor told me to turn down the tunes. I turned down the tunes.

I hauled out on my own much of what I hadn’t liquidated. One able arm wasn’t enough to drag the massive teaching platform out. I made a late call to some friends to rescue me. I enlisted the help of my husband for three hauling trips that day. We cleaned the studio right up until midnight of the vacating date. I said goodbye to a space that I would come to miss as if it were a person.

As if it were a person.

So that was what happened. Here is who happened.

Close the doors and see all the people.

Scene 1: bike crash. People: two strangers.

Linda and anonymous, bus drivers who were having a smoke after their route when I crashed my bike in front of them, helped me pick up my pieces, let me use a phone, offered me a smoke (okay, that’s not true, but I bet they would have if they hadn’t thought I was such a healthy sporto) and were my professional drivers from the scene.

Scene 2: Field of Yoga, morning of bike crash. People: a whole room full of students.

Lucy the underspoken encourager was the main influence, but all my students who showed up the morning I had fallen down proceeded to practice yoga together without a teacher. They took turns cuing things they could recall me saying, and only making fun of me a little bit since they didn’t know if I was alive or not.

Scene 3: Urgent Care, hospital. People: several nurses, X-ray technicians, a couple doctors, an anesthesiologist.

Okay, so all I can remember is the surgeon’s name, Dr. Crouse, who has the face of a gameshow host and the skills of a, well, orthopedic surgeon thank god. They all gave me great care, appreciated my smartass attitude, and at my recent follow-up appointment Dr. Crouse called all 46 years of me “kiddo.”

Scene 4: my house in the days after my surgery. People: several friends.

Amanda, Carrie, Suzanne, Lori, Sherry, maybe more but I was a little high, brought me food and/or company. These are my bitchez. I love them. Even the ones I forgot.

Scene 5: the SportsPlex. Person: a stranger.

Melissa, who I’m now Facebook friends with and you really should be, too, stopped to chat with me when I was doing one-armed yoga after stationary cycling at the Sportsplex. She is a real life-grabber and pretty much 100% hope. Plus, she reminds of an elf. A real elf.

Scene 6: Field of Yoga the week I was down. People: five teachers.

Laura, Greg, Donna, Yuko, and Eliz, who have qualities like dependability, flexibility, and “I-got-this” ability, each said, “Yes” or “Sure” or “I guess…” to my every plea for a class sub.

Scene 7: Studio Crying Party, vacating day. People: two students.

Melanie and Carley, who both have a knack for lighting up places with warm mischief, were responsible for getting people lit with their impromptu mimosa and bloody Mary bar at the Studio Crying Party.

Scene 8: studio, afternoon of vacating day. People: two teachers.

Donna, whose metamorphosis from injured workout freak to compassionate yogi I was honored to witness over the years, and Yuko, who had always enthusiastically supported the studio’s direction, stayed to help with the packing on vacating day. Donna even fed me, and they wouldn’t leave until I booted their perfect little yoga butts.

Scene 9: studio, very late on vacating day. People: three friends.

Val the magnificent life satirist, Susan her twin sister whose unique identity doesn’t need to be acknowledged here because she’s a twin, duh, and Steve who is married to that first twin, all came late on a Saturday evening to drag out a teaching platform that some dumb bitch once bought. (Can you say “trappings”?)

Scene 10: the very last hours of vacating day. Person: my husband.

The guy worked really hard all day long on vacating day, was there at midnight, and never said, “I told you not to buy X” about any of the decisions I had made over five years of operating a studio that would close. He could have said “trappings” many, many times – but he didn’t.

(Disclaimer #15: This is just a snapshot from broken arm day to vacating day. There have been many more people I could mention who have been there for me. You’re in the book. And of course, much has happened since all of this. More to come on that!)

Many People, Two Things

These people held the space for me, and in doing so, they let me find my way to two things I believe are instrumental to resilience, or coming back from hard times.

Thing One

Thing One: the ability to be amused by your sorry self in the hardest of circumstances. Not denying the circumstances. But not believing you have suffered a blow that disconnects you from any light. This amusement thing is just a little reminder of the light. It says, “Hey, look at this from the place in you that isn’t drowning. Remember that there’s life above the surface, and you’ll emerge again.”

And guess what? When people hold the space for you, when they don’t try to show you the bright side, you are more likely to find a little light yourself. Instead of defending why you have every right to feel low and dark, you might see your circumstances in a less weighty, lighter way. You might raise an eyebrow and say, like I did to the X-ray technician at Urgent Care who simply showed me the break without any qualifiers about how bad it could have been: “Well shit. Now what do we do?”

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend a live TedX event at the University of Northern Iowa. I was really excited about the chance to see one presenter in particular – Amit Sood, Chair of the Mayo Mind-Body Initiative, among other ridiculously amazing titles. The whole event, though – every damn speaker – struck me. These people. These people! They are what it is all about. They masterfully use their work and their expression to amp up connection. They are connected to the divine stream of humor that reminds us that being amused with ourselves and our situations is sometimes the healthiest step we can take.

This brings us to the second thing I was able to find my way to, thanks to the people I am fortunate enough to have had intertwined in my unfortunate circumstances.

Thing Two

Thing Two: gratitude. Amit Sood took us through a mindfulness practice in his Ted talk, and gave us practices to do at home. The one that stuck most was a gratitude practice. When you wake up, he said, before you even get out of bed, call up five people you are grateful for, one at a time. I’m gonna paraphrase here now, please don’t quote the respectable Dr. Sood with what follows.

Don’t just think about five people. Call those em-effers up. Maybe it’s one of your bitchez. Maybe it’s a bus driver who didn’t offer you a smoke. Maybe it’s a bearer of bloody Marys, or someone’s twin sister who broke the same arm bone a year before you did and has been holding the space for you even though you joke about her not having her own identity. Take your time with each of these glorious people. Acknowledge your connection to each one. Get into your heart where you can really feel what they each mean to you. Hell, put both hands over your heart when you do it. Breathe and feel.

And then, get up.

Categories: awareness, connection, discernment, gratitude, relationships, resilience, Uncategorized

Get a Life, Yoga: Kill the Studio Paradigm

Mary McInnis

Posted on January 16, 2015

Field of Yoga closing Let’s say you hear that a yoga studio is closing. You might be all, “Fail!” Hey, that’s how we’ve been culturally trained to see things. Closing = failing.

What we think a successful yoga operation looks like goes something like this: a beautiful zen space, a perfect-setting location, a huge schedule of 4+ classes a day 7 days a week, a large diverse line-up of teachers, and classes that anyone can walk in to – and anyone can be challenged in.

This is the current reigning premise that most studios have been set up under. It’s a near impossible goal. And that shit costs money. But guess what? I did it. I could keep doing it if I want to “look” successful. But I’m not going to. I think I’ll do something I can handle easier. I think I’ll change the world.

But before you listen to me about anything, like, oh, say, changing the world, we better find out if I’m a reliable source. I mean, I’m closing my yoga studio. I could be a total fuck-up. But damn, check out the company I’m keeping: Cindy Lee closed Om Yoga, Elena Brower closed Virayoga, and Rusty Wells closed Urban Flow.

Peeps, I think there’s a yoga studio paradigm problem here. We see the needs and only one way to meet them. But that way isn’t the only way. The pieces don’t fit, so let’s stop shoving ‘em together.

There’s a yoga studio paradigm problem here. The pieces don’t fit, so let’s stop shoving ‘em together.

A successful small biz in the service sector has a pretty clear definition:

a service that meets a high mainstream demand
a price the mainstream demanders can justify
service times when the mainstream demanders want them

At first glance this may appear to have plenty in common with the current yoga studio paradigm: offer what yoga looks like in mainstream media (beautiful zen space thronged by the skinny young spandexed masses getting their flow on), a justifiable payment structure (set rates that can compete with fitness centers), with ultimate service flexibility (lots of “all-level” classes all the time).

That’s one way to connect the dots. But just like anything else, a more sophisticated analysis will reveal a more true truth. (I’m a big fan of getting sophisticated on shit.)

Mainstream Demand

Yoga doesn’t have one. There is no mainstream demand. It is way too misunderstood. The closest thing to a mainstream demand for yoga is actually a mainstream demand for a misconception of yoga: that it’s a bliss-out for young, skinny, flexy, women. So, one solution is to shoot for the Misconception of Yoga market. This makes yoga studios successful. Oh yeah – and it leaves out nearly everyone yoga can serve. The people not demanding the Misconception of Yoga. The majority of people out there.

The closest thing to a mainstream demand for yoga is actually a mainstream demand for a misconception of yoga: that it’s a bliss-out for young, skinny, flexy, women.

Damn, peeps. This means I’d need to stop putting studio resources into reaching and serving real people needing yoga. And guess what? I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to put resources into perpetuating the external focus of the Misconception of Yoga – how hot you can look, or even limiting it to how good you can feel immediately afterward. I don’t want to keep to the all-level fitnessy flows in a heated room that are the means to this misconception. And guess what? I don’t have to. Because there is another way.

Maybe I could take the yoga message to real people. Lots of them. Maybe I could set up a model that includes the kind of juicy yoga goodness that is usually only offered in yoga teacher trainings. Maybe I could show this truth of yoga – this comprehensive system for personal and professional growth – to people with no aspirations of ever becoming a yoga teacher. People who just want to learn how they can live their lives based more in the things that really matter to them. I bet that’s a lot of people. I bet that’s a mainstream market.

Justifiable Rates

What we justify as payment for anything is based in our understanding of it. We pay $100+/month for our unlimited data plans on our phones, because we know what the service is and we know we want it. When we know what it is and we know we want it, we are less likely to question the expenditure.

With the rampant Misconception of Yoga, nobody knows they want it. Nobody knows it’s the foundation of total well-being and a better life than they’ve ever imagined. Nobody knows how it can change how you look at the world, and change the world’s response to you. What they “know,” is that from the outside, professional yoga looks just like that yogapilatecoreburn class at the fitness center that you can go to as many times as you want to for $40 a month. We question a professional service yoga program that costs $100/month. Wait – most people don’t question it – they don’t even consciously consider it. It’s an unconscious dismissal – gone before any conscious information-seeking for decision-making about its value can even enter in.

With the rampant Misconception of Yoga, nobody knows they want it. Nobody knows yoga is the foundation of total well-being and a better life than they’ve ever imagined.

It took me the same contact hours to acquire my Masters degree in Engineering as it took to acquire my RYT-500 certification in yoga. Working in one field, my education is highly valued and considered a huge part of my service. I get a 6-figure salary. In the other, my education is often trivialized. I get a poverty level salary. Guess which is which? 😉 (Not-so-side note: successful yoga studios are made up of workers under the poverty level.)

After “retiring” from engineering and starting my yoga studio, I attended a work gathering of my husband’s – who is also an engineer. One well-meaning (engineer) guy asked me how my Jazzercise thing was going. Not to slam Jazzercise or anything, but I don’t think Jazzercise offers a comprehensive training in mind-blowing Eastern psychology and its life-changing techniques that max out your human potential. I don’t think.

I just told him, “Goin’ good.” You see, this kind of thing happens all the time, and you learn not to deplete your prana on it. And hey – this guy ain’t in no place to take in anything about yoga. Maybe next lifetime, someone else can hit him up.

So. It’s gonna take educating. So that the cost has a justifiable value. I know that I have never regretted a cent I’ve spent on yoga classes, workshops, private sessions or trainings. But I’m a discerning yoga consumer. I seek out the best because I know what to look for. I only buy from teachers of the “deep well” variety, and I know how to divine the water. (Score! I’ve been waiting my whole life for a great divining rod metaphor.)

It’s gonna take educating. So that the cost of yoga has a justifiable value.

So, I’m gonna help other people see what I see. Help them become a sophisticated consumer of yoga. Educating the public like this can not only help real people benefit from the huge value of yoga services, but it can help those deep well yoga teachers everywhere creep over the poverty line.

Service Times to Meet the Demand

Is the answer really yoga classes all-day every-day? Or is the answer yoga when people are more likely to be available? And – bonus! – when people are more likely to have the willpower to do it?

My studio built on the current yoga studio paradigm never pulled a profit between 8:00 am and 5:30 pm. And these hours… they look a lot like most people’s work hours. Huh. Too bad the world ain’t set up with magical yoga spaces that could pop up before and after working hours and not cost a full-time rent plus a full tax/maintenance “NNN” plus the overhead of heat/A/C/utilities during work hours.

Waitaminnit! They popped up a long time ago! They are called existing businesses. Sure, they’ll have to meet certain requirements like having the right kind of floor and movable fixtures – but they’re there. Sitting unused at the times we need them. Ho. Ly. Shit.

Part-time space-sharing makes sense. It’s downright conservationist. Let’s jump that train.

This makes sense. It’s an efficient use of a valuable resource – space. It conserves resources. It’s downright conservationist. Let’s jump that train, yoga bitches.

A New Yoga Delivery Paradigm

It looks like this:

Teach the entire empowering full-faceted system of yoga that can serve everyone
Include resources that educate and make the value of this powerful system ridiculously clear
Ditch the full-time yoga tomb and get smart about part-time space-sharing

So, FAIL! No more full-time lease of a zen space that only breaks even during a small window before and after biz hours. No huge schedule with a perception of flexibility that actually works against students’ willpower and motivation. No more selling yoga short – limiting what it is to a fitness foray. No more throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater.

No more selling yoga short – limiting what it is to a fitness foray. No more throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater.

Now for the mushy stuff: I will miss my studio dearly. For every person who gathered there in real community. For the energy everyone put into it – the very real energetic imprint of real people aligning with some greater guidance.

And, paradoxically, that very energy has driven this decision. Authentic guidance – it can be a real bitch. I have a responsibility to not only say what I know, but to act on it. To not just think different, not just say different – but to do different than I have been. To shine a light on the things holding yoga back. To pull yoga ahead.

There’s a lot of pull on the other end of the rope – a lot of momentum going toward a paradigm that’s not working. So I’ll pull harder. And maybe some other yoga leaders will grab hold and take a chance with me. Be vulnerable to judgment. Proudly sport a “Not a Fuck-up” team shirt. Yeah. Let’s do this thing, Tug-o’-Warriors! Whether you’re a teacher ready to escape the studio paradigm or a student trusting that you could be served a better way, let’s do this. All together now. Pull!

Categories: authenticity, discernment, guidance, shame, Uncategorized, yoga

Tagged: closing, failure, judgment, justification, misconceptions, paradigms, value, vulnerability, yoga, yoga fail, yoga studio

Posted on July 29, 2018

Flash post: This Light

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Posted on June 10, 2018

I was feeling the truth of words trying to come out.

The ideal conditions weren’t actually ideal.

Always moving, but inert.

We can say fuck this shit, I don’t want to hold up my life this way anymore.

Every time you just stop yourself from barreling down the course you’ve taken in the past, you are choosing your future.

Time isn’t my enemy. Time is there for me.

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Posted on December 5, 2017

Self Belief State: LESS

Eroded

Betrayed

Awakening

Self Belief State: BETTER

Rightful

Conditionally Caring

Awakening

Self Belief State: EQUAL

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Posted on September 11, 2015

Exactly one year to the date before this crash, I learned I had been wrong about my limits, and it was time to step up and challenge them. It was the day I won my first adventure triathlon.

The hard part about happiness: is an outside thing the barrier, or is something in us the barrier?

My bike bros were masters of surrender.

If I’m moving a way that isn’t aligned with The Highest Self, or staying stuck in something instead of moving in a way aligned with The High, shit doesn’t really come together for me so well. Sometimes, it falls apart.

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Posted on August 20, 2015

Presencing My Body

Visualization – Seeing and Feeling

Embedding Intention: Gettin’ Flow

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Posted on June 10, 2015

So the best part of me says to myself, “Why not learn this rap? Why not?”

Can’t we find our own meaningful things to learn, no matter how low on the esteem scale they may be judged to be?

Memorize something you love. It starts by remembering that you love some things.

Gain a skill that makes you happy when you do it.

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Posted on May 22, 2015

Indu has a unique way of expressing concepts so that you can’t help but connect to them – even if you don’t want to.

A mudra gives you an immediate hit. But unlike a drug, if you do it regularly, you won’t develop a tolerance that lessens its effect. Nope. You’ll get the opposite – cumulative awesomeness.

Who’s the modern-day sage I recommend you learn mudras from? Indu.

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Posted on May 2, 2015

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Posted on April 18, 2015

Many People, Two Things

Thing One

Thing Two

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Posted on January 16, 2015

There’s a yoga studio paradigm problem here. The pieces don’t fit, so let’s stop shoving ‘em together.

Mainstream Demand

The closest thing to a mainstream demand for yoga is actually a mainstream demand for a misconception of yoga: that it’s a bliss-out for young, skinny, flexy, women.

Justifiable Rates

With the rampant Misconception of Yoga, nobody knows they want it. Nobody knows yoga is the foundation of total well-being and a better life than they’ve ever imagined.

It’s gonna take educating. So that the cost of yoga has a justifiable value.

Service Times to Meet the Demand

Part-time space-sharing makes sense. It’s downright conservationist. Let’s jump that train.

A New Yoga Delivery Paradigm

No more selling yoga short – limiting what it is to a fitness foray. No more throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater.