Perspectives from a Party

Life is a great storyteller - offering moments of insight into the mundane and the sublime, the tragedy, beauty and celebration of it all. The great storytellers all do this and it resonates for us because in their observations are embedded the very paradoxes that exist in our own lives.

Last night, life delivered one such a powerful response to conversations we've all been having about how short life is, and the mandate to overcome obstacles and put yourself fully into whatever you're doing no matter what, where, how or why.

Last night friend Sheena Mathieken threw a party to celebrate the six month mark of her really cool Uniform Project. In the Uniform Project, Sheena has pledged to wear the same dress every day for a year as an exercise in sustainable fashion. You can go onto her site and see the many ways she has injected creativity into it - looking, as she says, as if accessorized in the "Marquis de Sade's boudouir". She created this initiative as a fundraiser for educational initiatives for kids in slums in India. So far, the effort has won attention from the BBC, Elle, The New York Times, and The Times, London. Slightly over $28K later, with German press at the party and a room full of New York's creative influencers, it's clear Sheena is just getting her engines started.

Updating her about what's up in the world of corporate yogis, the focus on shifting consciousness she laughed, "if it were really about fitness or staying thin, my secret is following your passion AND keeping your dayjob - I have two full time jobs now and the energy alone is enough!". Even her boss acknowledged the energy this is demanding of her and that she is completly engaged and happy in what she is doing.

But last night after we left the party, someone in the building apparently fell down an elevator shaft and died. I'm not the first to report this - it's posted on Gothamist and ABC news. The tragedy to the deceased and his circle of loved ones is unimaginable. For the rest of us at the very least it is a powerful reminder to live our lives with passion and purpose, contribution and without complaint.

Which is what Sheena was already doing and hopefully will continue to do. Stressors clear, I'm offering up a prayer that this accident doesn't take Sheena off course either in this project and all the incredible contributions she has yet to make. I'm urging you to go to her site and tell her to keep going and if you have an extra $5 in your bank account make a donation.

The world needs the Sheena's and the you's and the me's to look life in the eye and give all we got while we're here - as you live your own greatest story, don't let anything take that offering off track.

Halloween & Savasana

I've long suspected that any iconographic element that exists on one culture must exist in every culture. Halloween upon us, Corporate Yogis, I'm looking for that all-is-one connection in this literal meaning behind this weekend's festivities.


The notion of remembering that we all die and that we are literally here to experience life UNTIL we die is particularly salient for many of us this year. In the midst of survival concerns, the challenge of remaining connected to life, to this moment, this breath in, that breath out, no matter what our external situation has sometimes given way instead to connecting to concerns about our external situation. The triggers for survival fears have seemed ubiquitous, popping up in our work, home life, health, the environment, political change, and world power struggles.

Having spent a bunch of time in Latin America, I've admired how Latin cultures embrace the concept of the circle of life, of continuity of connection, and of remembering the old adage "dust to dust. In Buddhist countries you'll often see the lifeline of the buddha expresed as a progression from baby to corpse decay, or the inevitability of death expressed in the beautiful mandala sand drawings painstakingly created and destroyed in an instant. And in yoga we recognize the impermanence of all our earth-bound concerns by practicing Savasana, literally corpse pose, at the end of every practice.

While sussing out what I want my hallow'een observation to be, I'm going back to these roots. Much like the wisdom paths we study, I want to face my deepest earthbound fears, tangle with the trappings of my ego, and see if I can't live through my worst imagination tomorrow night.

Having long ago befriended my inner sexy nurse, this means I'm going to have to set aside the fishnet stockings and reach a little deeper into my closet. Summoning the inner demons of failure, shame, poverty, homelessness, ugliness, aging and imperfection - I know I'll be facing the monsters that really keep me up at night.

I'm not sure how I'll bring it all together visually, but you know, in donning this costume, I'm honoring the worthiness, abundance, beauty, perfection and lifeforce within all of us no matter external circumstances.

Scared? Yes. But expressing these fears will make this the scariest and most liberating Halloween ever.