Tag: wild woman

baby steps

by L. Valdez Karl

writing

I hope that everyone who told me since I started this blog in 2005 that I should write a book will buy it when it comes out.  Y’all, put your money where your mouths are!

OK, it’s not published yet but I am taking baby steps.

I wish I had a $1 for every email I received over the last 13 years from every person who told me I inspired them.  Or helped them get back on track with Yoga.  Or told me my “fierce voice” was needed in the world.  Or told me that they went to India to study Yoga because of this blog.

Or who emailed me just to say THANK YOU for my emotional labor.

Forty-five years ago my creative writing professor told me that I oughta write and if I don’t oughta get kicked, hard and swift. Mr. Brooks, I’m finally listening to you.

I’m also listening to those people from places far and wide who told me that I have a fierce voice that the world needs to hear, that there are people who need my insight and wisdom.  They had more faith in me than I ever had in myself.

My writing was always stream of consciousness.  I wrote in spurts.  So I will take baby steps: I joined an online writers’ group that concentrates on writing memoirs.  I am hoping it gives me focus and helps me discipline myself.

I’ve always written SOMETHING, way before I started this blog.  I was an English major in college and made it half way through a Masters.  I wrote poetry in high school and was named one of Illinois’ “best high school poets.”  I also won a few writing awards in college.  Back in the day I wanted to teach English in a junior college but life got in the way.

In the past year I have felt a change coming up, a life turn, so to speak, where I must do something different.  I have not done a yoga training since 2015 because I don’t see the point anymore what with the Modern Yoga Scene.  I’ve taught in India and Africa but does anyone invite me to teach anywhere anymore?  Not for many years.

I became a Certified Yoga Therapist (IAYT) only because someone might find the piece of paper important if I shop myself around, not that I thought it actually meant anything.  Only to people who are impressed with pieces of paper because no one gives a shit I studied for 10 years at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram.

I thought about going back to school for a Masters in mental health counseling because I figure I’ve been doing that for 17 years of  yoga teaching anyway.  I hate to say that age has anything to do with going back to school, but for this subject, yes.  I’d be too old once I graduated, had to intern, etc.  Ageism is real and I’m not stupid.

But writing….the Universe was telling me something again.

My writer friend, a pissed-off yogini, asked me for some advice.  After I gave her my two rupees she had a few things to say:

“The writer in me wants to request that you write a book on these topics.  Right now we are flooded with spiritual books, practices & such. But very few really nourish.  It’s like eating donuts with pink frosting.  I truly value your journey in this lifetime & your insight. Your insight sparks — it really does. It cuts thru the bullshit. Goddess, it’s such a necessary voice.”

She suggested a memoir.  Hmmmmm…..

  • I have my Yoga journey — DUH, go back to my very first post here.
  • I have my upbringing — abuse and finally finding out my true roots, my real ethnicity.
  • My teenage and college years — running away, drugs, sexual assault, domestic violence, surviving what would have killed others.
  • I have my 13 years of India travel.
  • I have my gardens that I can use as a metaphor for growth and life cycles.

garden 2

garden 3

We shall see.

Get your popcorn.

And hold my beer.

feel good friday

by L. Valdez Karl

Staying with the latest theme of passion and women of a certain age, I am repeating this post (hey, recycling is always good!) from July. Good videos get lost as they move down the line and I’ve been thinking of Cyndi’s version of this song lately, a song written by another vibrant, creative, fabulous woman of a certain age. As a performer and woman, Cyndi has definitely evolved and moved beyond her original persona. Would that a certain pop queen of late do the same….Brit honey, here’s a tip…life really DOES get better as we age and gather wisdom, it’s just gonna take ya some time, but you’ll get there!

“Before Britney was a Pop Queen, there were singers like Cyndi Lauper — yes, I mean Cyndi Lauper who sang “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” I remember being blown away by Cyndi’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s song “Carey” in a television tribute to Joni. I found the video on YouTube and was blown away again as I watched Cyndi become one with the song…everything comes together in a perfect musical moment. Cyndi has total connection to the music, to her band, to herself, and to the moment. The look on her face when she dances is the way I feel when you hit that sweet spot in vinyasa and you feel like you’re the only one in the room and it all comes together, body-mind-spirit.”

And if you’d like to read my previous posts about wild women and crones, check out here and here

Feel good on Friday, y’all!

Be peace and be here now.

shanti

wild women

by L. Valdez Karl


WILD WOMEN CREED

Girls at any age
seeking to live life with volume & verve,
to be outrageous & offkey,
mismatched & mischievous,
breathless & bold,
cosmic & clever,
brazen & boundless,
with a passion for the possible.
Wild Women make it happen,
gathering to celebrate
the secrets of a sisterspirit.
Are you a Wild One?

Pam Reinke, 2004

I’ve always been a Wild Woman, “contrary to ordinary, even as a child” as Jerry Jeff Walker sings in his song of the same name. As my astrolger told me, I came out of the womb wanting to get out of the box. I’ve had many nicknames over the years (including “Kozmic” when I was a young hippie chick), and “Loba” is one of them. A friend gave it to me because he said “wild women and wolves have always been misunderstood.” Ain’t it the truth? “Loba” is the Spanish feminine for wolf. Maybe that is why I am drawn to the Hindu goddess Kali because she is misunderstood by people who don’t know her full story, they only see the demonic side of her.

When I found the Wild Women Creed in a hip little boutique, I knew I had to have it, and it’s displayed where you can see it immediately when you walk into my house. So when I read the Daily Om today and clicked on the Daily Om Library, I knew that I have to get this book…check out the excerpts…

The Daily Om

Wise Talk, Wild Women
From “Wise Talk, Wild Women” by Gwen Mazer, with portaits by Christine Alicino.
Posted by: DailyOM
“…In the community where I grew up, I experienced older people who were not encumbered by age. One such person I was especially fond of was a…woman (who) must have been “old” when I was a little girl, but she practiced yoga, meditated, traveled, and told tales of fascinating places…

So much emphasis, especially in advertising, seemed focused on the value of youth and the need to appear young by any means possible. Young women worried about being old at thirty, just when they were gaining the tools to create meaningful lives. I looked into the cultural mirrors held up to women my age in television, advertising, and cartoons, and I saw elders, crones, fearful seniors, women fading invisibly on the edges of life. I did not see myself in those mirrors. On the contrary, I felt excited, vibrant, sexual, and curious, with rising energy for the quests of this new phase of my life….

(In this book)…Each was her own individual. Each danced to her own drum. Even if she had tried to force herself into a cultural mold, her individuality and need to create kept popping out. Each one needed to create a life and an identity, an expression in the world, and each one seemed to find her own purpose, her own center. They could not be damped down. They were wild women in the truest sense.

One of the most crucial things the women shared was the ability to operate from intuition, and many believed this to be more and more important as they grew older. Many felt their spirituality and their intuition to be entwined. There is a difference between the inner voice, which I like to describe as a quiet whisper, and the loud voice of the mind or ego that is chattering away with opinions and ideas, what we did and what we didn’t do, what we said and what we didn’t say. When we begin to discern between the two, our minds can clear. The sediment settles to the bottom, and we start to see the wisdom we’ve gleaned from our life experience. Inner listening-and trusting and following what we hear-is the most important skill we can cultivate. The wise woman within will never lead us astray…” (Emphasis added.)

I’ve been getting lots of messages from the Universe lately. Due to the nature of these messages I feel like the Universe is kicking me squarely in my yoga butt (the one I’m supposed to get in ONLY 20 MINUTES A DAY!) to indeed listen to my intuition and to act on certain things, like my own line of yoga clothes. I am also hearing whispers about starting my own yoga teacher training program, but that won’t be a few years yet, all things manifest when they are ready. My intuition is telling me to take it to a new direction, that is must somehow be connected to social action. Time will tell.

I attended a workshop by Max Strom yesterday. He was awesome and I highly recommend taking a workshop if he is in your area. The title of the workshop was “Yoga: An Act of Remembrance” and he started out talking about memory. He asked us to remember when we heard a song that we deeply connected with, or a place that when we arrived it seemed so familiar to us even though we had never been there before (like India instantly was for me), or a book that when we read it we said to ourselves “these are my words, I could have written this.” He said that these experiences are coming from deep within our cellular memory, that we have lived these things before, that these experiences were not learned in this lifetime. He said that is the reason why some of us connect so deeply and passionately with the totality of yoga, not just the physical part of it, but the total package of asana-pranayama-spirituality.

When Max talked about memory, it hit me that whatever I am feeling now, whatever I have been intuiting at this stage in my crone life, I have been here before. For whatever reason, the seeds could not sprout earlier, or else they sprouted too early and then died, as a baby plant sometimes does for no apparent reason. The feeling in my bones is that the seeds are being watered now for manifestation in this lifetime.

I also had an aura photograph taken over the weekend, which turned out to be a little freaky, in a good way. When she first saw it, the aura photographer (who is also an energy worker) let out a little gasp and told me that I have some “biggies” guiding me right now. My aura was mainly blue and violet with a large splash of green on the right side, but it also had five white “globes” surrounding me. My guides? Angels? Who knows, but she said that they’re guiding me to follow my own path. She told me to enlarge the photo to 11X17 to it’s highest resolution because then I might be able to discern faces in these white globes.

“Inner listening – and trusting and following what we hear – is the most important skill we can cultivate. The wise woman within will never lead us astray…”