finding atman

we can do better

By heather | February 8, 2010

I have the kind of job where people are compelled to ask me what my major was in college. For the record, my degree is in Advertising and Public Relations with a minor in Business Administration and has absolutely NOTHING to do with my job.

My engineering-major husband liked to joke that to earn my degree I watched television and analyzed commercials. This is true. I would rather be watching commercials than plowing through hours of complex math problems that take 4 sheets of paper to solve when both paths resulted in a college degree.

Therefore I feel somewhat qualified to rant on the Dodge Charger spot from the Super Bowl last night. When the commercial started with those tired looking guys listing all the things they do everyday I had a feeling where it was going, and I wasn’t wrong. It was described as a “defeated man launching into an internal tirade against a castrating little wife” and ranked as one of the ”best” ads in unscientific polls.

Seriously people…WTF?

I’ll stay away from the fact that Chrysler is basically owned by the government and that its only thanks to a gigantic bailout that this brand even still exists. I’ll also refrain from a discussion of how much this commercial cost to produce and air, again if not using government money then certainly thanks in part.

I would like to point out that in playing into these same sexist stereotypes of men always being nagged by the woman and never getting to do what they want because they appear to be dragged down by marriage and family, Chrysler proves that they didn’t learn anything from events over the last 2 years and they still believe perpetuating the good ol’boys network is the way to go.

I should mention that numerous studies show marriage is highly beneficial to men in terms of longevity, happiness, and overall health while having the opposite effect for women. Poor you commercial-guy, for having a job and all those responsibilities. I know plenty of people who would love to have a job and a family – some have neither.

At the risk of sounding hyper-sensitive, I was really offended by this spot.

Perhaps it was the fact that I’ve been spending a lot of time immersed in yoga teachings lately, learning that THINGS won’t make you happy and neither will negative perceptions about how much your work and life suck. If you don’t want to do those things, then don’t. If you don’t want to live that life or be in a partnership, then don’t. It’s as easy as that.

Perhaps it’s because marriage should be a relationship of equals and when it comes to major purchases there should be none of this “I’m going to do what I want” garbage. Maybe if more people had actual conversations about finance there would be less debt and less divorce.

Perhaps it’s because I have a better marriage than that, and I want my daughter to have better than some loser who thinks she is a burden to his imagined free-wheeling lifestyle.

Perhaps I just took offense to the amount of money spent on continued stereotyping rather than original thought. I’m starting to despise the advertising industry for their lack of creativity and perpetually enforcing and teaching notions that degrade both men and women. Then again, I am more astounded by the number of people who, lemming-like, think this qualifies as a great commercial without taking any time to really think about it.

There is a theory that every single thought and action affects the overall happiness of the world and that we are all affected by problems other people are having, no matter how irrelevant it may seem to you. Think of us as all standing in one big giant line, waiting for help from whatever God or god you pray to. By clearing out some of the negativity you hold on to, you make room for other people to work on clearing theirs and then you are in a position to help them do so. Further, if you can approach things positively you never get in the line in the first place.

If you watched the show Undercover Boss that was on right after the Super Bowl, maybe you were inspired by the people working hard clearing up trash and cleaning port-a-potties and never bitching about the work. Those are the people who are contributing to the happiness of the world and putting that theory into practice.

I recognize that there probably was very little thought put into this ad other than trying to make it funny. Certainly, suited execs sitting around the table while some eager creative director pitched it to them didn’t stop to pontificate whether some over-burdened guy would then go out and buy a car without discussing it in the grand scheme of family finances, thus leading to a marital rift.

I remember clearly the PR mantra that there is no bad publicity, (at least that’s what we would tell ourselves in the midst of a PR debacle) so any discussion over the ad is probably considered good for the brand.

I just think we can do better. Better than accept this as one of the best, most creative commercials out there. Better than to accept that any married, employed man is burdened by those things and that no matter what the person he’s talking to thinks he’s going to do what he feels like.

Come on Chrysler and Go-Daddy (not touching this one, BTW) and my fellow Ad/PR grads…YOU CAN DO BETTER.

Topics: corporate disappointments, yoga | 2 Comments »

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teacher training

By heather | February 4, 2010

I’ve been teaching yoga for nine years now.

When I first started practicing yoga I was a fairly hardcore group fitness instructor, teaching 9 classes a week on average. Step, kickboxing, boot camps – as long as I could sweat and exhaust my students I did it. Yoga bored me, because it was hard for me and I wasn’t in charge of the workout.

I don’t even remember what convinced me to start teaching yoga, probably because I wasn’t in charge of the workout. Or maybe it was taking a class with a not-great teacher, throughout my life and career some of the biggest changes I’ve made have been a result of someone else doing something and suspecting (oh all right, KNOWING) I could do it better. (Confidence has never been a problem for me.)

My only qualification to teach yoga back then was a fitness yoga weekend certification. I look back now at how little I knew and think about what a danger I was to myself and others, especially special needs students. A few years later, injured and on the verge of giving up yoga altogether, I attended an Anusara workshop and my teaching style was forever changed. All of a sudden I could see myself doing yoga for the rest of my life. Every workshop and training I’ve attended since then has focused on that style.

A few weeks ago, I took a hot yoga class that was team taught by the studio owner and a trainee. The trainee was terrible, mostly because her lack of confidence and self-deprecating comments distracted me from the zone I usually get into when I take a class. It wasn’t that she was new, but that she pointed out her errors during the class while giggling nervously, and afterward kept talking about it.

My experience teaching is that when you screw up, 80% of the class doesn’t realize it, 19% only suspect, and 1% know. That one percent is usually another teacher. Confidence makes all the difference.

The difference between this trainee and me is that she was a RYT-200, an official Registered Yoga Teacher. (For those unfamiliar, the 200 hour training is a regulated curriculum overseen by Yoga Alliance.) I had experience, but she had the education. She was official, I wasn’t. It suddenly became very important to me to find a teacher training program.

I had never been particularly interested in pursuing a RYT before that moment, partially because I had been holding out hope that I could somehow overcome distance, financial, and family commitments to train at an Anusara studio 3 hours away. Which is truly ridiculous, not only because teaching at a gym requires absolutely no yoga training beyond that first weekend workshop, but because realistically with two kids under 3 and a full-time job it was never going to happen.

Last weekend I started a teacher training program at a local studio training in multi-style – hot yoga, vinyasa, and Iyengar. Just reading the first book assigned has shown me how much I don’t know about everything from history to breathwork to meditation. I will spend the next six weeks learning Sanskrit pose names, observing other teachers, reading and writing about yoga, and practicing, practicing, practicing.

At the end I will emerge as an official yoga teacher. On the surface everything will look the same – I’ll still go to work, and parent, and teach yoga at the gym. I suspect underneath I will have a whole new perspective.

Topics: yoga | 2 Comments »

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january resolution update

By heather | February 2, 2010

In keeping with the notion that it’s suddenly passe to make resolutions, this year I’m going month by month and making To-Do Resolutions. It included some things that are resolution-ish, but others are things I’ve been meaning to do for a while that I never got around to doing. That way I get the list-like satisfaction of crossing things off, as well as improving my stick-to-it-iveness but not in an overwhelming kind of way.

My January items revisited:
Hot yoga twice a week: Surprisingly, I actually did this one, in addition to my regular classes. I decided my weeks would run Sunday to Saturday, and was greatly aided by the 8pm classes at my studio that I can attend guilt-free after the kids are in bed. I almost made excuses, but I think Brett is also enjoying some evening quiet because there was one day when he literally (gently) shoved me out the door (which I was grateful for after the fact). I’ve found that I am really enjoying being taught, and attending classes as an anonymous student. I’ve had a few people comment that I’ve lost weight, and this most certainly cannot be attributed to any other physical activity, because my cardio workouts have been sloth-like or non-existent (mostly the latter).

I would like to note that I attended one class where more than FIFTY people were packed into the room, including one guy right in front of me who was twitchy the whole time. This is notable because fifty people doing hot yoga together is not only super hot, but also panic-attack inducing with how close everyone was to me – literally inches. But I stayed, and tried very hard not to freak out, and then forced myself to stay in savasana until almost everyone had left.

Pack up the baby swing: Done! There is now a big empty space where the baby swing has sat for 3 and a half years. My womb feels not a twinge.

Organize the photos: Almost done, and only sort of done well. I started this project all gung-ho to organize and label places and people so my grandchildren would be able to reconstruct every detail of my fabulous life. I ran out of labeling steam around the time I got to photos from my sophomore year in college (it should be noted that I opted to ignore high school and earlier and started sorting the college years, so this is really an unimpressive stat). I did learn some important things about myself though, namely that my hair size grew in proportion to the grade I was in and that I have a tendency to become VERY fat if left unchecked.

Regular blogging: I did better. Not as often as I would have liked, but in my defense it took me half the month to figure out the iPhoto (and everything else) on my new laptop.

On to February!

I have no motivation to list new things for February. I resolve to take a day to think about it.

Topics: self improvement | 4 Comments »

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snow day(s)

By heather | January 31, 2010

Having lived here for almost 10 years, I’m kind of become immune to weather forecasts because this a wanna-be kind of weather town. Wanna-be in that the weather forecasters WISH we would get huge snowstorms and hurricanes and they love it when we get floods and heat waves because it’s really pretty nice here most of the time, at least compared to where I grew up. I would think that only weather forecasters in Phoenix have less to talk about.

Anyway, it occurred to me Thursday afternoon that I should buy a few things just in case we got a few inches and I couldn’t do the regular Saturday shopping. As is my way, I kind of meandered around Trader Joe’s throwing things I thought were necessary into my cart.

Things I bought:

milk (a nice addition to the unopened gallon already in the fridge)
eggs (ditto for the dozen already there)
a pork tenderloin (no I don’t know why either)

Things I DID NOT buy that I totally should have if I were seriously planning to not go anywhere for the next 3 days:

COFFEE ( We are out OUT of everything but decaf and may not survive another day in the house without)
butter (necessary for everything from pancakes to cookie baking to mashed potatoes)
salt and pepper (again, necessary for everything)
mandarin oranges (one of the only guaranteed kids will eat it foods)

So that said, for once we actually got the worst case scenario. In fact, our street is now a solid sheet of 3 inch thick ice. Total we got about 8 inches of snow topped with ice topped with more snow.