Yoga will never be the same for me after this year. I don’t know how it will effect my teaching, but I know that the practice of yoga means something completely different for me than it did just 365 days ago.

Yoga means union.

For me, yoga, just 10 years ago, meant a whole bunch of poses that made me feel peaceful, breathe deeper and look awesome and strong. Little did I know how yoga would effect, change and mold my life. It really is a style of living in connection with all beings and experiences. I didn’t know that yoga would BE my life and how I see yoga in ALL of life.

The challenges I’ve faced over the last year aren’t more difficult than anyone else’s, but for me, it’s important, now that I’m living the most difficult of my trials to date, to liken and unify the two things in my teaching and writing. To do it in a way that can be useful for me and all the yogis that want to understand how to bring that same peace, deep breathing and strength into all of life’s ups and downs.

In addition to all of our own personal trials and celebrations, we as communities and as a country our transitioning into a new phase, historically speaking. It’s my mission, in my own small way, to unify our yoga and it’s purpose in our daily life, besides getting a great workout and feeling good.

Here’s the deal, life happens in ebbs and flows in order to add perspective like a new ingredient to your tasty dilemmas and delights in life. It’s the only way.
~~
Where am I?

I’m home in LA.

I’m home in NY.

How can you have such a sweet tug to both coasts, loving and feeling so connected to both places.

Home.

I’m at home in my car.

I’m at home in my blog.

Right now, I’m at home at Starbucks in New Rochelle, NY, freezing my bum off and getting caffeinated. I could be anywhere right now. Starbucks, USA. They all look the same and provide the same comfort, of, well, home.

Home is where you are comfortable being yourself.

No matter how long it’s been, NY is home. I’ve forgotten some of the street names. Storefronts are still there, but with different names. Subways are still crowded. The buzz is still the same – intense, alive and remarkable. NY, like LA is always filled with possibility and energy no matter how it changes. I’ve been away from NY longer than when I lived here in my childhood.

Home.

Home, where all my old clothes come to die.

I bring back from LA the things I’m not quite ready to give up but would certainly wear while bumming around the house or working out in the basement gym of my parent’s home.

I always travel light but always bring too much because no matter what, I always end up wearing the same thing, for several days at a time in fact, as I catch up on food and sleep.

I wear a uniform. Snowflake pajama bottoms and my New York Road Runners Club Sweatshirt, cut 80’s style at the neck.

In the summer its shorts and that same sweatshirt.

If I go out, I’ll wear earrings.

I love coming home, where time can stop a bit.

I unpack the bags under my eyes and stop counting calories. The edges of my hips get a little rounder, my cheeks a little pinker and I take care of myself. I indulge. I let go.

NY, where I came to get a reprieve from a difficult year.

NY, home for the holidays.

Holidays, always a time of possibility and magic.

Home, three sisters, a mom, a female dog, a cat and my dad. Poor guy.

So, leave it to my dad to beg for attention and get cancer again.

It’s metastasized to his lung.

His first chemo treatment is on Christmas eve. His second, on New Years eve.

Happy Holidays!

Two weeks on, one week off.

We’ll bring some champagne and fruit cake at the center to celebrate.

We’ll be together.

We don’t know what’s next.

But it doesn’t matter. I’m with them. And I’m home.

This blog...

is like an addiction for me…

or a new love.

I love the first feelings of meeting someone new.

Don't you?

I love what happens to the mind - exploring daydreams, seeing yourself in new, fun and different circumstances. You get inspired. You start to get to know yourself again as you teach the other person about yourself.

What about rediscovering the familiar?

Revisiting feelings that are fantastic, romantic and provide that ‘time stood still’ feeling that often gets spent solely on childhood memories.
The first time you ever kiss someone, the first time you fall in love, get your heart broken, accomplish something great, get recognition from a loved one, witness something breathtaking, take part in something amazing, feel beautiful, touch someone's heart.

As we get older, we feel it all again and again, if we are lucky, but sometimes get desensitized to the magic of living with feelings that are no longer new, but just, part of life, happiness, success, pain and failure.

It's been a few weeks that I've been back in NY and I feel like time has paused, there has been no holiday, no one else exists, there is no life in California, there is just my family and the fact we are facing, as a unit, the battle against a disease.

Everything was still up in the air for me before I left LA.

The medical 'band-aid' I was using to substitute for surgery was not the appropriate fit and I was either to live in discomfort for the three weeks I would be in NY with my family or go down to Long Beach and pick up the new prosthetic (see previous blogs for details). Ok, I don’t have the time to go to Long Beach, so I will have to live in discomfort until ’09 when I can get down there and get re-fitted.

Time was still ticking away for my homelessness but I was resigned to let it all go and deal with the greater needs of my family. I’ll still be homeless when I get back.

I was fully riding the crap of my current life and new that better was just around the corner.

Two days before I left for NY, I just so happened to look at the Westside Rentals on line rental list, one more time, to see if they had any new listings. Surely there wouldn't be a new post, with my requirements, in Santa Monica less than a week from Christmas....

But there was.

A single,

with a kitchen and a bath,

in my price range,

in Santa Monica,

with parking,

AND, 1 block from the ocean!!!

This one is mine!!!!!!!

I woke up early the following day so that I could be the first to see the apartment.

It was the one day this year that we had pouring rain alllllllll day.

I recruited Bryan and we went to look at the place together.
He's extremely finicky when it comes to searching for a place to live and since we've had four apartments, two cities and eight years together, I knew he would give me the unedited, crucial opinion I needed to make the decision as to if this would be my next home or not.

I didn't know the area he lived in too well, so after I picked him up; I told him he could drive us back to Santa Monica.

As soon as we got into the car and drove around the corner, with the roads as slick as they were and one LA driver's head in the clouds, we were rear-ended.

One should always be as cool as I was in this accident.

After I told a friend of mine that I was in an accident he said, "Really? What more?"
I said, "Of course!" and, “it’s ok!”

I took it in stride as just another thing to add to the list of voodoo magic making its way like the flu, through my life.

Soup and toast, is right around the corner.

It was a lesson. It is like that thing that happens when you are in love and in the best mood ever.
Then you get a parking ticket.
It just doesn't seem to matter much.

So, we know what its like to feel such happiness that we don't care if little things happen.
The same goes for extreme pain.
Things already suck.
Then we were rear-ended.
Everyone was ok, physically.
The cars would have to be repaired, but it's just another thing to take care of and it will be taken care of.

Besides, I'm on my way to see my new home and nothing, not even a car accident or rain is gonna keep me from seein' it!

There it was.
And there I was.
On the floor, crying with glee and relief.
Bryan, laughing away at me.
This is it.

To save you the details of the rest of this story, it was not, in fact, easy to get this place.

Self-employment aside, they wanted something more and I was rejected.
I got the call that night, as it was still pouring, right before a jeep cut me off on Sunset Boulevard and ricocheted a stone off its wheel and smashed my windshield.

The day before I left, I felt like Kiefer Sutherland AKA Jack Bauer in the critically acclaimed TV show, 24.

I had with a ticking clock in my head.

Six hours before I left for NY, I called the apartment management company and asked them to take a cosigner.

I faxed the paperwork to my mom and she filled out the info.
Only, she was worried that because she was a self employed realtor, that she might also be rejected. She filled out the information for my dad and in his weakened state, he signed his signature and my mom faxed the lease back to the management company.

And I waited.

Five hours before I left for NY, my doctor called. He was driving up to LA. I could meet him to pick it up the new prosthetic, if I want.

I want.

Four hours before I left for NY, I meet my doctor at a Starbucks. It looks like a drug deal, on caffeine, as he takes out his medical bag and hands me the latex insert to help my bladder.

I laughed so hard, I almost peed my pants.

He told me, “well that’s what we want to avoid!”

I gave him a hug and happy holidays.

Three hours before I leave, I get the call from management that my father and I have been approved for my worth the wait, better than all the rest apartments. I need to drop off a very large certified check before the office closes in one hour.

I have the money in the bank from the last apartment I lost so now, all I have to do is get to the bank, get the check, get to the office, sign the lease and it's mine, January 8th. Woo Hoo!!!!

Two hours before I leave for NY. The sun is setting.
Washington Mutual, apartment management 10 minutes before they close.
I see the lease with my name and the name of my dad, Richard Searle. It's sad and sweet. The idea of him, having an apartment in LA, with me,somewhere warm, where he would love to be, where he will never see.

1 hour, get my bag and crawl through traffic to get to the airport.

Crawl.

Be prepared to arrange for another flight.

Get to the airport.

Check in.

Sitting on airplane.

Chatting with make-up artist to the stars.

Cute, but gay as the day is long.

Take my Xanex-like-drug left over from my last medical procedure.

Wake up.

Descending into JFK.

Bag is the 43rd one out.

Sister is around the corner.

Coffee is even closer.

Home is soon.

I've come so far.

We've only just begun.

I thought it couldn't, but alas, I was mistaken.

I love yoga. I don't know what I would be without it. Especially under the circumstances.

I was drugged up for my final 'test' before the surgery that was scheduled for the 10th, this week.

I hate drugs and the idea of surgery. But, I had taken so many tests, I couldn't bare the pain any longer. Bring it on, I told my doctor.

After the test, My doctor tells me that the scheduled surgery would be done with an out of network doctor and would cost me 10K more than I had planned.

Originally, I had this surgery scheduled for August. I had everything planned and prepared with my insurance and another doctor here in LA.

After leaving my class at Liberation Yoga in Hollywood, a particularly blissful and inspired class, I received a message telling me that I was not going to be covered for the procedure under my insurance. But I had done all of the preparation? What the fu? I had dotted the t's and crossed the i's. I had fasted. I did not drink caffeine!!

Many people, including my mother, told me, perhaps I dodged a bullet. Perhaps, I was not meant to have an invasive procedure that may or may not fix the numerous problems that have slain me this past year. Issues that, for months, I had seen acupuncturists, specialists, internists, healers, psychics, cellular empaths and most recently, shamans, anything I could to avoid drugs and surgery.

Nothing helped. Well, sometimes, I felt good, relaxed et al, but only temporarily.

After much insistence, mostly from my mother, of course, I had gotten a second opinion from a doctor in NY who was against surgery, but had no resolve to the problem. He referred me to someone in Long Beach. I had gotten a third opinion from a 'team' of doctors there and a series of frightening and painful tests, scans and retests that all confirmed that surgery was the ultimate option for my issues. But there was one last test to take. A young, very cute doctor told me that perhaps there might be something that I could do, use, that would not cause me issues down the road if I, say, wanted to have children or something, or have a series of side effects that could occur if I were to elect to have the procedure at this time in my life.

Ok, I guess.

I couldn't bare taking another test after the last one (see doctordrama blog - scary, yet humorous, Oct. 08) without drugs.

I actually insisted on being seriously high for this one.

I took two pills, a xanex tranquilizer type concoction. I don't remember much actually. I do remember wildly flirting with my doctor, amidst spread legs and every orifice probed with long sharp objects.

Sorry to be TMI, but this is the reality.

When he brought me into his office, post exam, the nurse came in and told me about the out of network issue that basically told me that I would not be able to have surgery AGAIN despite the preparation I had made with my insurance company and hospital. There is always a glitch. God bless America. Hope.
Perhaps it's still better that I got the info before getting a fat bill in the mail.

My doctor offered me the other 'option', a 'band aid' for the issue until such times as I can afford the time, mental space and finances for a surgery. So I agreed.

What can you do?

I resigned myself, AGAIN, to not go under.

Ok, well I guess I can focus on the next drama...finding an apartment. The lease is up on the apartment I shared with my ex and it's time to move on.

I've been accepted to great apartments that cost a fortune and rejected from the sweet deals I can afford because I am self employed and in this economy, managers are frightened to rent to me.

I have a scarlet letter.

I have a successful business that people would kill or bribe to be able to do in this city. I should be thankful.

And yet, I am shunned.

Rejected, like an actor and their dream role.

But it's not that I'm not tall enough or don't match perfectly with the co-star. It's because I do what I do.

So, nothing is in my control, right now. In the words of Oprah, I surrender all!

I'm a Virgo, type A and a New Yorker. A triple threat of high strung madness. No wonder I found yoga. Or, did yoga find me.
I digress.
I still try to do anything I can to control. Going to CVS, usually alleviates that problem. Looking at the rows of neatly organized items soothes my nervous system in ways that yoga and meditation can't at this point in my trials, immediately!! I am in charge of what I buy and what I don't. But even that doesn't help, today. I buy Alacer Vitamin C packs and a lip gloss I will probably never use. I'm satisfied temporarily. Until Starbucks. No sugar free vanilla, so I opt for cinnamon dolce. A taste of Christmas in small cup. Life is good. Temporarily. Until I listen to my Hang drum music in the car as I dodge traffic. I feel like I'm going to fall asleep so I sing my choir's music and that helps, temporarily. I take a class and I am at peace, temporarily. This crap runs deep and I remain conflicted.

Then I get the phone call. From my older sister. She never calls, so hearing her voice made me feel safe, secure and loved as she informed me that my father was admitted to the emergency room.
I save her message, not to relive the horror, but to hear her sweet soothing voice. I love my sister. I love both my sisters. I talk to them often over the next couple of days. This time is different. This time, we are rehearsed. We have all been here before.

Cancer, has made it's a revival again in my dad's body. Part three for him. After prostate, gastric, we are now taking place in the lung.
He's a heavy smoker, but this time, he isn't overweight. Being overweight helped him the last time he was under chemo and radiation because he could afford to lose the padding under the stress of the treatment. Now, he is frail, small, weak, hollowed, stale, miserable, empty, sad and lost.

I don't know what I did next. I wasn't on any drugs, but whatever I did and without belaboring the issue any further, I f-d up my computer, lost everything I had, contacts, emails, files.

It does get worse.

But, as soon as the 'issues' turned into something out side of me, I became someone else. The tears I shed for my shit, no longer mattered, but they still existed. There was nothing I could do.

It seemed like everyone I met, I couldn't keep it together. The yogi, the teacher, the whatever, I was now anonymous. I was small, weak, frail, stale, miserable, empty, lost and couldn't get found.

By the way, in case I haven't mentioned this before, don't flip the guy off in front of you for cutting you off, or take it personally, for you don't know what his trials are. I cut someone off the other day desperately trying to get to the other side of the street. I didn't mean to do it, but I knew he was pissed. I said sorry inside my car but I know he couldn't hear.

So, I had originally called this Mac genius to help teach me how to use the Mac as a super yogi, online, streaming videos and pod casts, downloading, uploading and super navigating the world of technology that yoga and fitness is riding and that I am trying to hitch onto.

Unfortunately, he called me back right as I lost my entire technological life. The wrong time, but the right time - right after the phone call from my sister, then erasing my computer.

This complete stranger, agrees to meet me in a Mac minute, a computer emergency. I told him my Mac problems and then for some reason, the water works open. All of a sudden, I became the crazy girl at the bus stop on the corner with a cardboard sign that reads, 'I NEED HELP.'

I told him about my dad and sobbed like a freekin' child.

He sat across from me and took it all in.

An angel, also a devout yogi, just morphed right in front of me. He became my teacher. Not in a Mac way, but in a human kindness way.
I have kept it together for my students and clients and here I am, listening to this guy tell me things I have heard a million times before at times I didn't need but need right now, stat.

I'm amazed at how vulnerable I have become. Perhaps it's part of myself I needed to explore. I've always been the one people come to for help. That's how I found myself as a teacher. It was inevitable. I've had it together, been tough skinned, independent, a lone ranger. And now I sit across from a stranger, open to his view on things and I listen and take what he offers.

I think to myself, I cannot afford what he is giving me. What can I give him to repay him for his kindness. I get paid to do something I love so much but I know that if someone needed me, without taking a thing, I would give it all away to make someone feel better.

Yoga. A student can have a horrible experience in one class and be closed off from it forever. One might give it another chance and try different styles until they find the one that speaks to them. Some might take yoga and do yoga and practice yoga and feel yoga but not experience yoga until something clicks and they are hooked. Some might hear and feel the same dang thing over and over and one day, they listen, physically, emotionally, subtly and they shift.

I can't express enough how yoga can save oneself from oneself and their issues, external and internal.

Amidst the mess, I am aware, not escaping the reality (except for the xanex) of the situation that is at present, for my family, for my friends and for myself. I would not be able to get through it if it weren't for the heavy hands of love that surround me. To be able to feel that love now is surreal. To feel it always, when things get brighter and better, well, it's just a priceless joy. I don't know what I do when I teach. I just know it feels good to give. I hope it feels the same for you.

I don't know who this Mac guy is, but he literally snapped me back into reality with a few words. Words I use in my class. Words that I hope help you if you are in a bind. I would be nothing without these little angels I have found around me during this strange time. I'm so grateful and humble by their presences. I feel, sometimes, guilty, because they are so giving. Then I think to myself, if I knew someone going through hard times, I would do what I could to help them. Wouldn't you?

Of course, I haven't received his invoice yet. So, if it's a lot, can I borrow a few bucks. Just kidding.

I don't care about my health, it's not grave.
I don't give a shit about my Mac, it will be obsolete in a day.
I don't care that I will not have a home in two weeks, I'm going home to be with my family in two days.
I don't care that I ended a relationship with my boyfriend of eight years, he's shown himself as a true friend in trying times, even if we couldn't 'make it work' in other ways.
I don't care that as my sisters and mother were in NYC, I was here, just listening to them as they called with updates. With CANCER as the topic, we still laughed maniacally among the tears.

Amidst my own inner chaos, I decided to get my hair cut today, I sat in my hairdresser's chair, shedding tears as Persian and Israeli beauties flurried about. My normally self absorbed hair stylist actually listened as he sheared layer after layer of hair and told me that as long as I kept laughing, I would be ok. For three years, he's only talked about himself and his 'PHENOMENAL' life. Today, he listened and in Gwyneth Paltrow circa Sliding Doors form, I put myself in his hands and let him cut all my hair off. The weight of my life, even a little bit, is gone, but it's super fabulous. And every beauty in there told me so. Even with deep dark circles and bloodshot eyes, I hugged that man, paid him, put on my shades and felt beautiful as I walked back to my car, drove home, strapped on my ipod, went running, listened to A.R. Rahman, ran into the sunset, cried at the beauty of it all, curled every newly and neatly manicured hair into a sweaty mess and didn't give a shit.

I came home and called my mother. She was making cookies.
She said, I'm thinking of you as I make cookies. I always think of you when I make cookies. I said, that was the nicest thing anyone ever said to me. She said she doubted that and we both cried and laughed as we recounted the day. My mom raised holy hell at the hospital my dad was admitted to and not cared for properly. She took my dad home, fed him well and loved him well, even though his misery distanced himself from us all. He showered and is asleep in his own bed...tonight. Next week, he will be at a new hospital, with his old cancer doctors and a brand new regime of chemo. And we will all be together.

It's not what I wanted from Santa this year, but perhaps I should have been more specific. I missed last Christmas at home. It was my first Christmas away from home. Never again. I don't know what any other Christmas will be like, but this Christmas, I am grateful, for I have my mom, my dad, Karin, Kathy, our dog, Daisy, our cat, Chloe and all the little angels around me, Bryan, Beau, Rona, Rashmi, Becky, Carolyn, Patty, Diane, April, Andrea, Molly, Michele, Chris, Susan, Scott, Nathalie, Daniele, Art, Dedi, Christie, Gail, Kyle, Lee, Anna, Gonzalo, my dear students and teachers at Liberation Yoga and the Easton Gym, my cute doctor in Long Beach, this blog, anyone who reads this freekin' blog and my Mac guy, Steve.

There is a debt of gratitude that I owe all of you.
I hope you accept credit, or layaway.
I'm signing off until the new year...I think.
To you, I offer the only gifts I can, which is the same love and support you have given me.
Jai Ho,
Laurie
PS much more instructional fitness and yoga blogs and not so personal in the new year.