Wayne Dyer

by jenpastiloff

There was the year when I was 18. I was obsessing on something so much that it ate that year whole. That year disappeared in the way that some years do and the only way I can reconcile any of that year is sometimes in a dream or in a photograph. Gone. Annihilated. Poof. Eaten up by worry. Truly it’s an art, I tell you. Not everyone could be so good at it. The thing about worry, the real tricky thing is this: it begets nothing, nothing but more of it. And it’s addicting, a drug in its own right. You know it’s bad for you and you want to stop, or maybe you don’t, but you can’t. It satisfies some deep craving where you’ve been broken, and nothing else does that, not yet at least, not that you’ve found. So you keep doing it, you keep slipping until you are so far gone that nothing makes sense anymore except your secret language filled with broken letters. That place where you worry is like a safe nest and even though all the things you obsess over will most likely never happen, nor do you want them to, it somehow feels safer to be in there, in that cracked world where you can spin and spin and never have to look at what is really happening outside of your mind. So yes, worry is an art. A skill and a commodity. The more you collect it, the more value it will have. Until eventually it is all you have. Walls of your worry. Looking back they will demarcate the eras of your life as if they really happened. Sure, I still want someone to tell me "it will all be okay." My great big fantasy. I like to feel safe, yes. Sometimes I still obsess like a parrot with a three word vocabulary, but mostly I catch myself in these moments and open the door to the cage and fly away. I allow myself my humanness. I astound myself at my own humanness at times, in fact. But I refuse to be swept up in the arms of this clever nonsense. No Thanks, I say, I am just passing through. TAG SOMEONE YOU LOVE. #thanksbutnothanks #beherenow #bepresent #manifestationyoga #beautyhunting see you at my London 2/14 workshop then @Kripalucenter, nyc, nj, philly All info in link in profile & manifestationyoga.com

by jenpastiloff

The idea of balance has always been foreign to me, a romantic notion, a myth, one that I was certain must have existed somewhere in time—for other people. Watching my father struggle with drugs definitely didn’t do wonders for me. I seemed to have been born into the world with the word EXTREME tattooed on my forehead. I’ve always veered more to the side of extreme rather than moderate. You might think this all sounds strange coming from a yoga teacher, somebody that is supposed to be an “expert” on balance. I am also a human being, and that trumps everything. I struggle with balance. Some days I stay in my pajamas all day to write. (Some days I don’t even get any writing done. I just sit and stare at Facebook all day.) Some days I drink too many cups of coffee and not much else, then I have to go out to teach my yoga class at 7:30 p.m. after not having spoken to a single soul—unless you count my computer. Several months ago I made an important life decision that would once again challenge me to find balance. I decided to go off my anti-depressants. Would I fall back down the rabbit hole inside my mind? I knew that the process would take time and extreme care on my part, as the withdrawals from this medication could be severe. I backed off drinking and I cut out gluten and dairy and all the other culprits that I knew aggravated my nervous and digestion system. Balance was on the horizon. The weaning off was actually a lot easier than I had imagined. (I imagined it as the worst possible experience after googling what it would be like and reading comments from people with names like Spaz77, iHatemyLyfe21 and Depressed4life.) My doctor suggested I start the weaning process by taking the meds every other day and adding Prozac to the mix. Wait, I thought. Adding a medication when I am supposed to be subtracting them? How is that balanced? Again, I started to feel as if the idea of balance was elusive, perhaps imagined. "I don’t understand how this works," I wimpered. TAG SOMEONE YOU LOVE. (Continued in comments section.)

by jenpastiloff

You will believe me when I tell you that if you let yourself be the beauty and never stop seeing the beauty, no matter if you are in Bali or traffic or a yoga class, that you will never run out of time. That although your father will still have died and you cannot take back what you said, that although you will still have had your heart broken or gotten hurt, the offering is this: You. You are the offering. I am the offering. We must place the beauty in our hearts right there next to loss and pain and whatever else is we have in there and we must pass it on. We must love like the Balinese do. Shamelessly and fully without any but this might not last. With acceptance and duty and honor and grace. When Agung, our beloved driver and host brought us to his home for dinner and so his twin 11 year old daughters could do a traditional Balinese dance for us, he spoke of his son. With a huge smile he said his son was artistic. So proud he was. We then realized he was saying “autistic.” His son came out and said hello to us, and Agung hugged him close and with a pride I am not sure I have ever seen as he introduced his whole family. They all live together in the compound with his father-in-law (it was his wife’s home first, a rare thing in Balinese culture.) A lot of the girls on the retreat cried, as I did, not because it was a sad thing, but because the love that came from them, that little clan standing there in front a of a bird cage, was more perfect than anything I’d seen. With its lack of judgement and story and shame it was a divine moment in time and we all felt blessed to witness it and we all made a mental note to love more like they loved. To be happy in the way they were even though a few of them shared a bed and the son was autistic and they had never left the island of Bali. And so what? What did they know besides love? No, they aren’t perfect. But they were loving in time. May we all love in time. xo jen #beautyhunting #love #bali #manifestationyoga #yoga #loveintime. Photo by @gabbyoltean Tag someone you LOVE! See you next in London, nyc, nj, philly, dallas, Atlanta and annual Italy retreat. all info listed in link in bio under retreats/workshops

by jenpastiloff

Some days I am a vessel of ideas and words and firecrackers, and other days, a body in a chair, a body in the car, a body going through the motions. I post "I’m going to write a post from the plane. What should I write about?" #Distractingmyselffromwritingmybook. Someone suggests I should write about the fear of flying. What?! I am not scared of flying. Or so I thought. I used to have heart palpations every time I was on a plane and there was turbulence. This this happens: you start to fly more and more and one day you wake up and that fear is gone. Oh, the things we get used to! People dying. People leaving us. Flying! Wi-fi in the air! We can get used to anything. (With time.) I realize that I am scared still, of heights, of expanding past what I think I am capable of. What am I afraid of, really? These are all questions I ask myself as I buckle into my seat and get ready for take-off because once you are soaring there is little you can do to change what is behind you. Even though I have spent most of my life thinking I can change the past, and alternately, living there. Recently I was the guest speaker at @CanyonRanch & this woman stood up in my workshop and said that she was scared of the dark. She was fifty-seven years old, and scared of the dark. She told the room how she came a day earlier than her group so that she could challenge herself to stay in her room all night with the lights off. After the workshop, she came up to me and said that when her husband was in the room or her kids, she was not afraid. She said, “So, maybe I am not really afraid of the dark? Maybe I am afraid of being alone?” My arm hairs stood up. The next day, there was a note by my (pot of) coffee (yes, I drink a lot of coffee) which said: Dear Jen, That was the best workshop. I had the best night of sleep in my whole life. I will see you at your Tuscany retreat.” Wasn’t signed. I had no idea who it was from until I bumped into her. She had slept the whole night with the lights off. What did it? (continued below.) TAG SOMEONE WHO CONQUERS THEIR FEARS DAILY!!

by jenpastiloff

Upcoming: London, Massachusetts Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, #nyc, Princeton, philly, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Tuscany and more. Tag someone you want to come! Love you guys! #beautyhunting #manifestationyoga #writing #yoga #vulnerability #truth #onbeinghuman #senseofhumor #heart #healing #human