love.life.eat
a relentless pursuit of the perfect home + dish
the gathering kind: new friends + brunch @ buvette
Posted on February 25, 2013
In Sanskrit there is a term, “kula,” which loosely translates to kin or community. When I first heard the term I was at a yoga retreat deep in the woods of Maine, where I found myself trusting people whom I just met, barely knew, because they didn’t let me fall. Frightened of inversions, I would plead with my partners to hold my hips, tight during my handstand practice, because the idea of falling backward was unimaginable. During a two-hour class, strangers held my hips and whispered, just breathe. In that rare stretch of time I felt my hands pressing deep into the grass and I closed my eyes. Knowing my kula would never let me go.
Fast forward the tape to now where I’ve done some heavy editing. A few weeks ago I talked about getting surgical with the barnacles. You know the type: people who drain every inch of life out of you, people determined to claw, wheedle and ruin. People who preach fear like sermon.
People who are not on my bus.
Over the past two years I’ve excised all the people who made me feel like a lesser version of myself. Whether they expressed doubt about my life choices {my being single is highly comic and tragic to the motley married few} or imbued every inch of light with darkness {Good luck with that French class! I dropped out after the third week. What a waste!}, or prattled on endlessly about their connections and how I could achieve a higher state of microfamery {You should meet that person; she’s ‘good to know’}, they had become a coat worth shedding.
I’m wholly selective of whom I allow trespass into my small, strange world. I do this because my relationships have depth and meaning. I invest, I get involved, I care. I don’t care who they are or what they’ve done, rather I consider how present they are in my life. How they add light and energy rather than deplete it. If they’re the sort of person who would hold my hips tight, never let me go.
From now on my first experience at Buvette, an extraordinary spot with simple, extraordinary eats, will be marked by spending time with a new friend. Jamie’s the sort of person you want to be around because her energy is infectious, and there’s something pure and honest in the way that she draws you in, and warm about how she keeps you there. For two hours we were never short on conversation, there weren’t any of those ubiquitous pauses, and I came away feeling invigorated.
Because now there’s time to let all the right ones in. To open up the kula and let in all the light.
spinning with soul: soul cycle, new york
Posted on November 24, 2012
Do you know what at acolyte is? It’s a beginner. Someone who wants to be like someone. Follow in their footsteps. By definition, it’s an amateur. – Acolyte
It’s true that I spent months loathing Soul Cycle and plotting its demise. I made it my business to tell everyone in a five-mile radius that dancing whilst on a spin bike was SIMPLY NOT RIGHT. In fact, it was downright criminal. Who can remember to shimmy and shake when one is panting just to keep up with the frenetic pace? When it comes to working out I’m not a multi-tasker, so the instructor’s frequent requests to “tap it back” and “bump it” made me seethe, and I left class feeling like the time in college when I was kicked out of step class because I couldn’t keep up with the beat — small. Thus the world would know that Soul Cycle was the center of my discontent. I abhorred its cult-speak (party ride! ride with SOUL!), exorbitant prices and the fact that I have to pay to rent spin shoes as if I’m in some subterranean bowling alley in Times Square.
And then I realized that I was recoiling from Soul Cycle because being in another studio setting, albeit a different one, reminded me of a yoga studio in which I used to practice. For years I followed this one teacher as she studied vinyasa at Movement Salon to setting up her own studio as a practitioner of anusara (when it was less shameful to speak of John Friend and the principles of alignment). I purchased all the eponymous t-shirts and expensive be present pants, I recruited hoards of people to patron the studio and I forked over hundreds of dollars to attend yoga retreats where I was guaranteed a week of idyll. And after five years I started to see cracks in the proverbial pavement. The constant “come here, be here, as you are” was mostly about getting people into class packs. Handstand demos were now done by famous models who were friends of the owner or the new acolytes who fawned over this charismatic studio teacher’s practice.
Suddenly I could see clearly and I wanted out. A nearly advanced yoga practitioner with seven years under my belt, I left the practice because I didn’t like the kula I was keeping. People who wished one another goodwill gossiped behind one another’s back. And everything was about money. Always the money. Who had more of it. Who could keep up. What it could buy you.
Perhaps I brought all of this baggage to Soul Cycle. I didn’t want to be a part of something; I just wanted my own practice. A space of time with myself working through it, under it, above it, around it, beyond it. But I loved spinning — there’s no denying that.
So I went back. Quietly. With a work colleague I trusted. I sat in the back and found my own private rhythm, enjoying the fact that the room was steamy (reminding me of the tapas in yoga) and it felt good to use weights while spinning. In other classes I used overhead bands as resistance training while I cycled uphill, and believe me when I say that my arms and back felt it FOR DAYS. I found a few teachers (Marvin, Jenny, Christine) whose energy is infectious; their classes are less about the wild dance party and more about cultivating a deeper relationship with oneself by riding through the tough terrain and breathing through it. After a while I found a sense of quiet in the dark room, amidst the noise, music and click-click of the bike, and I knew I’d latched on to something.
See, the thing is this. The thing that annoys you, gnaws at you, annoys you as much as you let it. Picking at a wound never allows it to heal, only makes it fester and hurt. Separating yourself from the the noise allows trespass to clarity. So if I ignore the tap backs and focus on the fact that I’ve found a few teachers that help me bring me closer to myself, well, this is worth celebrating. You alone determine the kind of energy which inhabits your life, so if I walk into class skeptical and negative I’ve only ruined the experience. However, if I walk in and forget all those yoga studio years and yellow Soul gear, there’s just me, on my bike, by myself, on the road. And while I’m not a Soul Cycle zealot, I’m now a proud fan and I’ll keep going back. The classes, and what they give me, are worth it.
Time with yourself working through the ugly bits? That’s worth getting out of bed for.
