Kafi's Eat Pray Love Experiment

Is it East vs West?

2010-01-28T06:23:00.000-08:00

My dad’s a psychologist. He’s also a big Ayanna supporter. I called him at his office to talk about Reiki. My short term goal was to show him the undeniable benefits of a Reiki session but long term…I’m insanely curious about Reiki’s ability to help mental illness, brain damage and conditions like autism. Could energy work help people who live in uncomfortable to hellish mental realities find peace?

I started this line of thought a few months ago on the bus. Was riding home when I saw a child and his mother. The boy was 8 or 9 and clearly had some issue with controlling himself and relating in the world in a socially acceptable way. His mother seemed embarrassed but not surprised. She hit him for singing at a screaming volume. She fussed for him racing a car in another passenger’s personal space. She stared out of the window when he was quiet. The boy resorted to humming and banging his head on the bar attached to the back of the sat. He seemed to be calming himself. I’m sure, like most children, he wanted his mother to be happy with him. So he calmed himself in the way he knew how. My heart was automatically captured by him.

I watched and learned all over again about the smallness of a child’s world view and the intense openness of a child’s heart. Open even in the face of rejection. That’s why they cry so much. They can’t feel anything without feeling it fully. Adult’s hearts are like Venus Flytraps. We have to ability to open and close at will. Only allowing the desired things inside, leaving the rest out. I strive to have an open heart like a child. What’s more difficult is to stay present with all that my heart feels. This is why when my dad didn’t want a Reiki session I was shocked…although I shouldn’t have been. He's not a stranger to me. As he says, he's a western medicine kind of guy and that going to my yoga class was stretching it. Besides, doesn’t believe in Reiki. It's really not as big of a deal now that I think about it.

But it was then. I could now take this post in a direction where I talk about our need to over come the road blocks between us and the non believers. I could say that he’s terrible because he doesn’t want to have a Reiki session. I could make all kinds of judgments about this but that’s not what I want to get out of the situation. What we need to over come are our reflexes to close our hearts. In situations like this we tend to find any focal point other then dealing with the work that needs to be done inside. I’m guilty of it and so are most people. The work is never done. You can chop down a tree of issues or habitual patterns but the roots are still in existence. They are alive, growing twice as fast and as strong as weeds. We don’t have to beat them with brute force. We just have to stand still with open eyes and open hearts. Commit to let the work be done.

Kashi's Classical Yoga Teacher Training

2010-01-27T11:15:00.000-08:00

I only have a few minutes to post but I wanted to share my gleeful moment with anyone who happens to read my blog.

After the Reiki session that my mother and I had on Monday, she remembered how much she missed yoga. She spent a lot of time thinking and by Tuesday morning she had put in an application to Kashi Atlanta's Classical Yoga Teacher Training program. This is the same program that I graduated from last year. My mom said that whenever she gets a Reiki session from a practitioner that she really connects with, she gets a sense of clarity and directedness that she doesn't get elsewhere. Early last year she had a session with a woman we know who graduated from the same teacher training as I did. My mother decided then and there that she had to make some changes with her body and her health. All of you who know my mom know the depth of what I'm saying. Reiki is a very powerful tool for her. I'm realizing how important my role as a practitioner is. I am able to help guide people in a way that can change their lives. By me being balanced, centered and open, I can bridge the gap between people and their needs. This is a lot to think about.

I opened an email from Kashi a few minutes ago and found on the side bar this video. I shot my portion of the footage in the middle of a meal right after a very deep asana practice. I think it was our last day of teacher training. It's very quick and I'd love it if people would take the time to look at it. I really loved the training and would suggest it over and over to anyone. Swami Jaya Devi and the entire Kashi Community are amazing. There really aren't words for the program. It was a irreplaceable experience in my life and if I had the money, I would take it 3 more times!

I Got Linked!

2010-01-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

I'm new to blogging so it put a smile on my face when I found out that my Reiki teacher, Dana linked me on her site. So yeah, I got linked.

Hold your breath, make a wish, count to 3...

2010-01-26T06:51:00.000-08:00

Monday morning at 11:50 I was putting the final touches on a quick Reiki session in my mom’s office. After discussing the state of her chakras, energetic problems and me giving assignments, we began to discus yoga. Mom mother’s in the middle of the biggest break up or make up with yoga of her life thus far. She’s in Shambhala directors training and has little time to devote herself to a practice but can’t shake the amazing hold yoga has on her. I know the feeling. So I gave her a LONG lecture starting with the fact that you can have a 5 minute asana practice and still be a yogi. A yoga practice for her should be based on quality. For people who aren’t so experienced with meditation (she sits for hours at a time) it can be based on showing up and focusing for a particular amount of time until it becomes natural.

There’s this girl I know. Most beautiful pigeon with a yoga mudra I’ve ever seen. I mean, she looks like poetry. She’s also the most competitive yoga student I’ve seen. She spends most of her time on the mat showing off her skill and anticipating what the teacher will say next. One Sunday I encountered the type of person who I like to call “the happiest little yogi”. She used a prop or a very basic version of the pose for practically all of the asanas that I lead. But she had the sweetest, most blissful look on her face during the entire practice. This is because her head was in the practice. I spoke about this in the previous post but I want to stress that there is little that’s more important then showing up for the moment. Sometimes lives depend on it like if you’re a surgeon or a child’s care taker. But your life is always at stake. Living outside of the present moment is dangerous for your mind like cigarettes for the lungs. Visualizations, mind games and fantasies all have their place in life but I worry for those who spend the day in a world of make believe. A reality separate of the one they walk in. We need to take the moment back. Make our life more like a fantasy instead of spending all of the now in a thought bubble. I commit to spending my time in the world I live in instead of one of my imagination. I will make everything around me beautiful like a world wide chocolate factory.

Assignment Time: Spend some time thinking of the safe place you go to in your mind. What’s so wonderful and magical about it? Now bring some of that majestic quality to life! It could be volunteering with your teacher to give discounted sessions, wearing brilliantly pigmented lipstick, applying for grad school without thinking about how long it will take to finish or writing a letter of thanks to your day care teachers. You can do anything you want. Just do it with a joyful heart.

I need a drink of cool cool rain

2010-01-25T07:09:00.000-08:00

I took Reiki I with Dana of Dragonfly Reiki on Saturday. It was an intense 6 hour workshop. The first thing I noticed about Dana was how present she seemed. I’ve been battling with presence all my life. I’m a daydreamer. I love to get carried away on a whim. I respect a person who can find the moment and commit to it. We started the workshop with introductions. There were 4 of us besides Dana. We dove into Dana’s presentation on the history, philosophy and use of Reiki. After a great amount of information retained, we had our attunement. I’m sure people do them in different ways but I was blessed with a teacher who has a respect for ritual. The actual attunement process is just an initiation to the Reiki Practice. It formally introduces and connects you to the Reiki energy. We sat together with hands pressed together at the heart chakra marking the oneness of our lower and higher Self, the joining of the poles, Ida and Pingala, Male and Female, right and left. Dana spent time on each of us, opening us up and giving blessings. It was a psycadelic experience to be attuned. During the time I worked to keep myself present and grounded in the experience. It reminded me of Yoga Teacher Training, how I was told that you think of your practice while on the mat. Otherwise you create duality and cease to be practicing yoga. Yoga is union. That doesn’t mean practice asanas while recapping your grocery list. In yoga and in Reiki, I have found that it is imperative to surrender to the process. To the act, energy and moment. After we were attuned…and after the group found their ground again, we did a session on ourselves. Have you ever done drugs? Smoked a cigarette? Had a caffeine or sugar high? Eaten "the best cheese cake ever"? During that unforgettable post attunement session, I found out that nothing I can ingest can touch the massive openness of Reiki healing. I experienced a fullness and satisfaction that I’ve been looking for in my meals during the self healing session. We did all of the hand positions on ourselves with Dana’s instruction. When I attempted to pull energy from outside of me before it was just that. PULLING. I felt like I was pulling a rope of prana into myself and then pushing it into someone else and instructing it to heal them. It always relied on how strongly I was able to pull. Reiki’s different. I placed my hand on a chakra then asked the energy to flow through me. Usually before the words are even formed, my intention has linked me to the source of Reiki energy. Where I once felt like I was pulling energy in like a rope attached to a rock, I now felt the energy pouring into me like I as standing under a showerhead with amazing pressure. And this is how I experienced the energy through all of the practice I had during the remainder of the afternoon. Flowing water. When 4 of us worked on the 5th, laying on the massage table I felt like water was pouring into all of our crowns and flowing out of our hands into our temporary patient. When we all got so hot in the hands, toward the end of that person’s session, the energy was bubbling like boiling water under our hands.

I hope that what I’m saying is not taken as “Reiki changed me”. I don’t feel like that at all. I feel that the energy came through me and helped me focus. Yesterday afternoon I rushed to Kashi in the rain with my long time buddy, Dante. I was to teach the 4:30 class. Usually it takes me 15-30 minutes to take my seat as a teacher during each class. I’m a good and natural teacher no matter what my class conditions are but yesterday, when I sat on my mat I was ON. I spoke from my heart and only used my note cards as a suggestion of where the class should go. The focus I experienced was great. Never have I been this comfortable improvisational teaching a class.

Last night before bed, I did a full session on myself. It was lovely and I fell asleep quickly despite the video games being played in the living room. Woke up with incredible peace this morning. Instead of dragging myself through an workout, I decided to sit on the couch and turn myself over to the beast that is creativity.

My advice to anyone thinking of taking a Reiki workshop of any level is to follow your heart, meditate on it and find the right teacher for you. Above all, stay connected to the moment and to your breath. Quality breath makes any moment all the better.

The entire time I was practicing, I kept hearing the following song in my head. I’m just going to go with it and let myself have a Reiki theme song for as long as it makes me smile.

on creation

2010-01-07T05:22:00.000-08:00

I’ve been writing everything but in my blog. How fair is that? Not fair at all, least of all to me. I feel that I’m cheating myself out of something amazing by not fully participating in this project. Part of the participation, is bloging it. Not because other people are doing that but because I love to write. I love to communicate. And because I never give that to myself anymore. This is an opportunity to focus on me…why is that so hard?

A note about new years

I didn’t actually think we’d be going out but there I was, at Issac’s friend’s party dancing to a great dj. I know he was great because it takes something special to get me to start dancing. I get nervous at parties. When I first walk in, no matter how many people I know, it feels like the first day of summer camp. So I was on the edge of the dance floor, hooping it up and feeling like I was in another world. It felt surreal and real and simple like a gundum space colony, I felt so spaced out. I was in and out of a dance trance. When I hoop, it feels honest, like yoga. I never get better or worse, just different. And that’s why the fear, anxiety and self doubt come up so often. Inside the spinning circle, I can’t hide. I become transparent. It was then and their, starring up ant the full moon, letting my hands get pretty without the burden of self consciousness, doing tribal arms that I’ve seen countless times in Fat Chance and old Rachel videos on youtube, that I began to understand the possibilities of my life. How I’m not bound by anything and what I can actually do with that.

A shorter note on writing

I’ve had to write a lot recently. I remember from before that I would drive myself insane with redundancy. I couldn’t use the same word (other then a, to, me, I, like, we…) more than once within a few lines of each other. I remember sitting on the train, pen in hand, frozen for the entire ride because I was trying to find a synonym for something like “wind”. I can get so uptight about things and that’s something I have to know about myself. I have to combat it instead of feeding it. Like the word “space” that I used twice within a few words of itself. These things make me laugh now. Something once so important reduced to a personal inside joke.

I’m obsessed with words like “bound” and “limit”…and of course their variations.

Art is an extension of the person. Never allow it to be the other way around.

Off that map and onto a new one

2009-12-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

I started the EPL Experiment thinking that I would have so much to say about my meditation. Unfortunately I became very self continuous about the mental space I was in post concussion. I continued to meditate daily and am pleased with the results. My time off from life was one of the best things I've done this year. I spent my days sleeping late, barely working out, dreaming, meditating, cooking, being with my daughter and being...simple. Nothing could replace what I gained over the last 2 weeks. I thought that at this point that I would be ready to kick start the new year with a hard core dance boot camp but I'm unsure. Instead I think I will broaden the subject of next month to a learning boot camp. I will turn myself into a sponge as I take classes, go to events, read books and teach. I'm intending to soak up everything my life has to give me.

My Experience of Meditation

2009-12-09T06:50:00.000-08:00

Before my daughter, before I met my husband, before I found yoga or dance, there was meditation. I’ve always been more then aware of its ability to quiet the mind so that the real mental work can be done. My parents are meditaters and now I am one. From my understanding, people meditate so that the mind no longer stands in the way of being, doing and realizing exactly what we want. At first it's so hard and almost hopeless. I felt like I would never get to a point of any true enjoyment (other then the pride I got from saying I was a meditater...but that's a mental trap in its self) from working with my mind. I wondered if I wasn't strong enough to tame my mind. After some hard work and experimentation, my mind softened. I was able to play with it and enjoy it like a friend. I'm not saying that I am THERE but I've made some serious progress...I'm now at the point that I want to meditate. It's like a child going outside to the playground. I feel that I can gain some sort of freedom while focusing on the breath, moment, asana or half time shimmy. We meditate to be in the moment and come to terms with our true nature. I’m offering what I know in hopes that someone reading this will take my view and be able to apply it in their own self study.

Meditation is a beautiful practice. It’s about the true awakening but it’s also about truly living.

For the curious student of life, I suggest watching the video linked below. He is my mother's teacher and the leader of the Shambhala community. I've read both of his books on the topic of meditation and am constantly impressed by his understanding and ability to articulate the concepts surrounding meditation. I swear, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche could explain just about anything to me and I'd understand.

A Short Introduction to Peaceful Abiding

~~~Love
~~~Kafi

Concussed

2009-12-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

I got a concussion a few days ago. I’ll be exploring that a little deeper in another post but I wanted to share why I’ve been quiet. I’m in a very odd head space and am swimming agents the stream to get back to my version of reality. I’m so lucky to have my daughter who did everything in her power to make sure I was grounded and safe right after I hit my head. All of the people around me did at least a little something to help me in the past few days. I’m eternally grateful for the love!

I've hit the ground running with this project. Inspirations is pouring in and filling me up to the point that I feel I might burst! I watched the following video this morning before work. I smiled all the way through it. One of the things that I love so much about hoopdance is the honesty. Bellydance is not always like that although I wish it were. This video reminds me to be unapologetic about harmless mistakes. I will be spending a little time basking in the beauty of my imperfections…I hope you find a way to as well. I’ve been playing with breaks lately so I am having a love affair with watching the Hoop Pathers at work.

~~~Love
~~~Kafi

Love Burger

2009-12-04T13:45:00.000-08:00

I’ve been on a bit of a journey lately. I’ve committed (verbally) to adding, “personal trainer”, “group fitness trainer”, “professional dancer” and “hoop teacher” to my growing number of hats that I wear. My husband is working with me on the business aspects, which has freed me for the first time in 5 years to give myself to the art. I’ve felt like the floodgates have opened. This week if I wasn’t talking about an idea, I was scribbling about it in a notebook or finding a way to express it physically. I’ve just been creating constantly. I’ve also had a lot more love available to give. I truly think that the mantra work that I’ve been doing has had a gigantic effect on this. Chanting and meditating on a topic has the strange ability to, someway somehow, bring it into reality. At least in my findings. The breakthrough access I’ve gained to my love is truly a gift. I’ve been pampering myself in ways that I never do as well as spoiling my family with my experimental cooking and crazy fits of spontaneous cleaning.

When I got home last night I found my husband, 2 year old and resident basement dweller, Chris sitting in the living room watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with rumbling bellies. My brother in law and Ez were all on their way over. I ran to the refrigerator in hopes of finding a miracle. When I didn’t, I got a little creative on the cutting board (making my own miracles). Below is the recipe for the burgers I made last night. This recipe was intended to force more veggies into my family as well as being yummy. It took a bit longer in prep time then I would have liked (about 15 minutes) but the sight of my little one eating my tricky burgers was reward enough. She kept mumbling “yum, yum, yay” between bites.

Yummy Trick Turkey Burger

Ingredients
5 dashes of soy sauce
1 tablespoon Thyme
2 tablespoons Rosemary
1 tablespoon Savory
3 tablespoons Basil
3lbs Ground Turkey
2 Large Carrots, grated
3 Bell Peppers, sliced (fun colored peppers tend to make their way to my little one’s belly more often)
1 medium onion, sliced
Olive Oil (or your favorite cooking oil)
Buns/bread and burger accessories

In a large bowl combine the turkey, carrots, savory, rosemary and thyme. Mix it well! Form your ground turkey mixture into balls (a burger that is satisfactory to me is about an open handful of this mixture but feel free to experiment on the size). You have an option on how you’d like to cook these. I generally either drop them on the George Foreman or, like yesterday, cook them in a pan with olive oil. Let them stay in a ball until they’re ready to be flipped. Flip with a spatula and gently press the raw side flat into the pan. Be conscious not to squeeze all of the juice out of the burger!

In a sauce pan pour a few dashes of oil in and let it heat up. Drop your onions in first and after about 30 seconds of sizzling, drop in the bell peppers. Mix them a bit to get all of the veggies coated with oil. Keep an eye on them while they are cooking, turning ever 30 to 90 seconds. After about 2 minutes, sprinkle on the basil and mix it in. Shortly after, throw on the soy sauce, reduce the heat and continue to mix. You will know that they’re done when the peppers are tender yet firm and the onions are transparent.

The cooked peppers and onions make a great topping or even side dish for these burgers.

Loving Kindness in the Chakras

2009-12-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

Loving Kindness Mantra Meditation

May I be filled with loving kindness,
May I be well,
May I be peaceful and at ease,
May I be happy.

Kafi's Instructions
Find yourself in a relaxed and open sitting or laying position. If you feel more comfortable standing you might want to try walking slowly in a circle or standing in a mountain pose. The main idea is that your spine is straight and your heart is open. The above mantra should be chanted 9 times. Bring your attention to your first chakra and let this chant resonate there. Let a few breaths pass after the word "happy". Just sit in the mental silence before moving to the second chakra. While you chant up the chakras, notice the difference in your mind. Just observe non judgmentally. You are not doing this to change how you feel, this is an exercise in awareness and well wishing. Take these words seriously.
After you've chanted into your crown, let the last 2 rounds focus wherever you feel they are most needed. When you're done with all 9 rounds, sit/lay/stand in silence letting yourself feel the difference or the sameness in you. Don't rob yourself of the valuable lesson that this moment is teaching you by fighting to feel something that you "should" be feeling.

Kafi's Notes
I have been working with this particular mantra/meditation all week. Last night was the most powerful experience. I lay in a reclined bound angle, let my eyes fall almost closed and brought my hands to a temple mudra on chest. I didn't really think out how I was positioning myself before hand, I just let it come organically. I've been taught enough formal meditation for this to work well. Sometimes my meditation practice flows beautifully without any structure. I feel in these times like tribal fusion improvisation...solid and disciplined technique with wild creativity. I wasn't very enthusiastic about starting with meditation but I'm surprising myself. I think I'm off to a good start on this experiment and have renewed enthusiasm!

This is how I feel about last night's meditation. Beautiful improv. Mira Betz's dancing sometimes makes me a little teary eyed.