Charlie Rose: "Was it easy for you? Easy?"

Willie Mays: "Everything that I did in baseball was easy. My job when I played baseball was to make the people around me better."

One of the things that I find myself repeatedly saying out loud is: "It's so hard to teach. It's so hard to make a living being a yoga teacher. Life is hard..." Willie Mays' words got me thinking about how often I can make things harder than they really are with my attitude.

And it got me thinking about how often I stress myself before teaching a class. How I put pressure on myself to teach something brilliant, mindblowing, to change the lives of the students. Instead of showing up and being of service. 

This exchange reminded me to continue to practice the quality of ease in my life. That my job is to make the student's practice better- to help students practice with ease. To make it easy on myself as I prepare for classes. So years later when people ask me how it was teaching yoga for a living I will say: "It was easy."

John Friend is coming to Los Angeles in a few days. John in LA! What a fiery combination! And on top of that it's the Advanced Intensive, the hardest workshop John teaches all year. I've found myself stressing myself out: 'It's going to be really hard. I'm not in shape. I won't be able to do it..." You see? There it is... My unofficial mantra: "It's all so hard..."

What if I changed my attitude?

What if I just showed up and did my best at that moment? At every pose? 

What if when I'm doing my poses I do them fully and when I'm choosing to rest, I rest fully?

What if the Advanced Intensive ended up being easy, and I helped others experience that as well?