Hazard County Yoga

Don't be an asshole and worry about where you think you SHOULD be. Sunday musings. ps If you want to do cleanse I mentioned, sign up here http://amanifestingmom.com/2015/03/12-day-detoxcleanse/.

Sometimes, it feels like people just want to be pissed. If that's you, take a hard look at that and then.....let it go. For real. Life is short. What do I know ...of life is short? (Don't get me started.) My dad dying at age 38 is number one. I have more, but I've written so much about all of it. All I'm saying is that life is short and walking around looking to be angry and pissed and offended is, well, a pathetic way to live. Pathetic. (Who wants to be pathetic? Not me!) I stand by that statement. It IS a pathetic way to live to walk around looking for things to be offended by. Look for the beauty instead. 'Cuz it's there. Otherwise, why, in wine's good name, would I create a project and a book called "Beauty Hunting?" I'm as guilty as the rest. I get my panties all in a knot at times. My knickers in a twist. My mind in a nasty, stinky funk. But life is short and I ask "why?" Tonight I saw that someone thought my retreat would have more yoga (even though I am VERY VERY clear, as clear as can be with something that has no way to describe it, that it is NOT about the asana) and this someone went online and slandered me. I get that there will be bad reviews. I really really do. Otherwise I wouldn't be okay with writing a book and sending it out into the world. I am not naive, although I am (or try to be) kind. I try not to be an asshole- that's my golden rule. Anyway, it made me sad because I thought: life is short. Life is short and here we are looking to be all pissed and right and having the last word. It made me sad for 4 seconds and then I lit a fire under my ass to become the fiercest beauty hunter this world ever did see. I don't expect to like everything. I don't expect you will either. But my God, don't look to be pissed. Don't let that pissed-offness over something that isn't worth it sit with you so long that it makes you miss the beauty. Truth? There isn't that much asana at my retreats but there definitely is some. And what happens there and at my workshops is more yoga than I could ever describe to you. Yoga means union. That is what I do. I wish for us all to see more union in this world and more beauty. Good night. I love you. May we always see the beauty. Even when it seems there isn't much. (There usually is.) xo jen pastiloff beautyhunting.com.

Sugar Blues Workshop is coming up soon. August 16th will be here before you know it. Sign up now space is limited. This is going to be a great night.

The World Is Full of Pain But Also So Much Beauty.

More on instagram at @jenpastiloff. The other day I received two angry emails from people who’d submitted to my site The Manifest-Station (www.TheManifestStatio...n.net.) I’d apparently let someone down because they sent me a Facebook invite for a birthday party that I didn’t make it to. My friend told me she’d been angry with me about something for four months. I’d had no idea. Later that night, my own writing was rejected. I wanted to get back in bed and zipper my mouth shut. I wanted to stop writing. I felt swallowed by life. I reread an email from a friend who is a writer. Jen, I allow myself 15 minutes to feel like sh*t. Then I say f*ck it and move on. It's taken me years to get this good at it. Years of tears and self-loathing. Have a donut and a cookie and move on. So I made a pot of coffee. And then I remembered what I know to be true but sometimes forget: you cannot be everything to everyone. You cannot make everyone happy. You cannot be everyone's friend, mentor, companion, lifeline, confidante, airport picker-upper, publisher, soulmate, meal ticket, patter-on-the-backer, lover, mother, feedback giver, wine pourer, yoga buddy, movie date, editor, nail polisher, fiasco fixer. Not everyone will like you. You won't like everyone. Let me reiterate: You ABSOLUTELY cannot make everyone happy. (So stop trying.) It's a no-win situation. It'll drain you and leave you like a pile of coffee grinds. People will be disappointed for various (often weird) reasons. Sometimes those reasons will make sense, sometimes not. Sometimes those reasons will be fair and sometimes fair is just another word for a place where they have funnel cakes and roller coasters. So stop worrying so much. There is most definitely someone out there who doesn't like you or feels you've failed them. On the bright side, the "I-need-my-glasses-this-shit-is-so-bright-side," there are many people who love you, who think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread, who could've never made it through X, Y and Z without you, who trust you, who care for you, who would lay down in front of a Mini Cooper for you, who think you are as hot as Gisele Bündchen, regardless of what you look like on the outside. Just look at you, you greatest thing since sliced bread, Gisele-ish person, you. So let's do our best to keep moving forward with less second guessing and worrying, less "I-wish-everyone-loved-everything-I-said/did/wrote/wore." Less, "I am a bad/mean/awful person because I had to say NO." Let's try not to intentionally hurt others but for the love of sliced bread (with gluten), let's give up worrying so much, people pleasing, and all the other time-sucking, love-wasting, energy-vampirish things we do. Here's to being human. My coffee mug to yours. ** TAG SOMEONE YOU LOVE! TAG SOMEONE insanely human. xo jen pastiloff <3 All my workshops listed here, including London Feb 14, Vancouver Jan 17, NYC in March, Atlanta in March and my annual Tuscany retreat www.themanifeststation.net/events/ You can also email [email protected]. You do not have to know any yoga at all. Just be a human being with a body. And a heart. Please tag someone you love or someone you want to come to one of my workshops and share if inspired.

Weekend Update with Jennifer Pastiloff. Eff Guilt. With my dirty hair, bad lighting, no makeup, and a big ass glass of wine, I send you a video I did on one tak...e. Because that's how I'm rolling right now. Free. Or, as my friend Kathleen Emmets would say, "F*ck it." Here is the blurb I wrote on guilt: Sitting here with my broken foot has allowed me a lot of time to think. I've been thinking about guilt and how so much of my life has been swaddled in guilt. The last words I said to my dad when I was 8, and he was 38 were: I hate you. Then he died. Just like that. I mean, there were a few hours in between where I jumped on a bed and my aunt babysat while paramedics tried to revive the life back into him but basically the time between those words and his death was minimal. I felt guilty. All my life, my "go to" emotion is guilt. I take off work, I feel guilty the whole night. I feel guilty for this or that. It's work for me to let go of guilt. It's an old old deeply imbedded seed. So, I'm laying around, pretty much immobilized because of my foot. And I'm bummed. I won't lie to you. Why would I? I'm a truth teller. I'm bummed, but get this- I feel oddly calm and present. You know why? For the first time, in a long time, I don't feel like I SHOULD be doing something else, I SHOULD be somewhere else, that I have to go, go, go. Because I can't. I truly cannot move right now so I have to be still. Normally, if I lay around with pajamas on, I feel guilty. I do it but I feel guilty about it. But right now I am freed of any guilt and I feel good about that. I have space to write and create, even though I am a little sad. What I realize, even though I already knew this obviously, is that guilt is a trap. It immobilized me way more than any broken foot could. I am so tired of it. It keeps you from being here. It keeps us locked in a land of SHOULDS, and I SUCK. When my foot heals, I will remember this moment of absolute freedom- this moment of knowing that the only possible place I can be is right here. Yes, I am forced (literally forced) to learn this knowledge the hard way but you reading this? You don't have to break your foot to release yourself from the prison of guilt. If you f*cking like something, like it. And be done with it. The prisons we build for ourselves are far stronger than any casts on our feet. So, I don't feel guilty that I should be out enjoying this gorgeous sunny day. I don't feel guilty that I am not out exercising. I don't feel guilty that my hair is ten days unwashed. I don't feel guilty that I feel frustrated. I don't feel guilty that I am sitting all day. I don't fel guilty that I took a week off of work. I hope you understand the freedom I am talking about here. It took a broken foot for me. For you? Just do what you're gonna do. And let that, be that. share if you wanna. jenniferpastiloff.com xo jen

Everyone's afraid. Do it anyway.

What are your plans for the weekend? Post below! <3

They seem like nice people. Not sure yet. ;) Ha. More on my instagram at @jenpastiloff. Thanks Rae Dubow Talking Out Loud for this. But seriously, let your phone die, yo. xo Jennifer Pastiloff

The 5 Most Beautiful Things Project. I sometimes forget to write them but I almost always am on the hunt for them. Here’s the latest: ~Poetry. Even the found po...ems, especially the found ones. As if they were left specifically for us. (Maybe they were?) Like the journal I found in my drawer tonight that someone had left at the restaurant I worked at for years. I’ve kept it all this time. I found it left under a table one night while I was cleaning up after my shift. Some day I will live in the southe of France, wear espadrilles and a long silk scarf flowing behind me as I ride my bicycle to the beach. So much time has passed since I found this old journal that I question now if I indeed wrote the words, but the handwriting isn’t mine and there’s these little drawings, which are most definitely not mine (at best I can draw stick figures.) But this gift, this poem(s) as it were, because it is a poem- who can question the image of a long silk scarf flowing behind a girl (who, according to the drawing wears a mask) and how that image will live somewhere inside me so that if I ever visit the south of France, which I have every intention of doing, I will conjure this mask wearing bicycle riding scarf trailing bicycle girl. The next page: I love you but I’m shy. More bicycles. One of the riders is only a head. No body. This gift of poetry, which is everywhere if you look. Saturday night I went to a reading of Naomi Shihab Nye’s. (She’s actually the number one beautiful thing on this list.) Naomi has become a friend and what I most love about her, and there are many things to love, is her ability to be present and how she looks at the world with a poet’s eye, or rather, with a childlike sense of wonder. She talked about going to the library as a child and how you’d just let yourself wander until you found a book. You’d explore, as you weren’t going there for anything in particular. As adults, she said, we’re so directive. We make a beeline for exactly when what we want. There is a mission and a purpose and very little letting yourself get lost amidst a sea of books. She has that sense of wander and wonder. My first love was poetry. I started writing stories as a child but when I got serious about it at NYU, it was for the love of poetry. C.K. Williams was the first poet I heard read. I loved C.K. for how his poetry ran on and on. How it felt like he was talking to only me (isn’t that what all good writing does?) singling me out in a room full of shoelace-faced studentswhispering into my freezing ears. Out of all the ears he could whisper to on a packed C train and he chose mine! This is what poetry can look like, he said. This is what words can do. And he conversed with me through his poems and taught me what was possible. If it weren’t for him (and a few other poets who crawled into my slowly-going-deaf-ears, right at that particular moment in time, I might still be riding the C train without the knowledge that words could change the world.) They could pummel and destroy and create and fascinate. I didn’t quite realize the capacity they had until those poets (Donna Masini, C.K. Williams, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz) quietly, without so much as a word of warning, showed up during my 19th year on the planet. They marched in and planted their word-flags and even when they left, their flags remained waving for me so that no matter where I went, I had a place that felt like home. Naomi Shihab Nye makes me want to scour the world for poems. I went digging and found the journal in my drawer which is undoubtedly filled with other poem worthy artifacts. I remember when I found the journal at work that Saturday night in 2001, or whenever it was, how I thought I’d hit the jackpot. I peaked in the book and realized it was nothing confessional (I murdered someone or I’m having an affair.) It probably sucked to lose it but I doubt it was earth shattering (Geez, I hope it wasn’t)- most of it was blank, save a few drawings and dreams and clothing sketches. I stuck it in the safe at the restaurant. No one claimed it for a whole year so I finally went back and got my loot. Then I stuck it in a drawer for a good ten years. Until today. So that’s one (or more) of my beautiful things. The way art finds us. The way poetry is everywhere. Just like beauty. And bicycles with body-less riders and lists of places to go, well, can’t the mind just go wild on that shit nodding madly yes yes yes. Opening my OWN notebook and seeing this list. 2014: Italy London. Meet Jimmy again. Go To Hong Kong. (I remember now that these were my husband’s wishes and I’d just written them down for him.) We were in San Francisco. We’d just had some pizza. It was December and we were in San Francisco at some over-priced restaurant targeted for tourists. I had a glass of chardonnay and the wine gave me that rush of what was possible so I said to him, What should we do, you know? This year, with my pen poised and my little notebook out. Where do you want to go? So I am looking at this next to this old notebook I found at The Newsroom on my waitressing shift and I’m thinking how the same we are. So many of us. How we dream and dream and want and want and how we write things down in little notebooks and maybe we leave them behind or maybe we take them. Maybe we never go to any of the places we dream of going, but maybe we do. There’s so many of us with so many wishes and places and notebooks that surely there is a varied lot- some who make it to the other side of their dreams, some who make it as far as the ink on the paper and some who never have the courage to write it down. I’m thinking there’s all sorts. Anyway, funny that I have these two books open and both are lists of places to go. Oh, the places you’ll go! I wonder if the girl who lost the notebook at The Newsroom ever went to the places she doodled. Her name is in the front cover. Back then we didn’t have Facebook to look her up but now I suppose I could. But I won’t. It would be awkward. If she reads me (wouldn’t that be a funny thing?) maybe she’ll recognize her drawings and her words. And maybe she will shoot me an email saying, Yes, I made it. I am here in the south of France on my bicycle with a long scarf flowing behind me. The joy of quiet. Something Naomi said last Saturday. She loved my essay I wrote about my hearing loss on The Nervous Breakdown, and it struck me hearing her talk of the joy of quiet, that she, along with myself, must think of bursts of silence as holy things. The moderator, Lisa Napoli, asked Naomi how she finds quiet in the madness of the world. Oh, it’s to be found, she said in so many words. And I thought how the quiet is in itself a found art. I am so unwilling to let myself get quiet most days and combined with the constant ringing in my ears, it seems as if my head is a carnival of sound. Nonstop chatter. I decided I must excavate quiet, I must unearth it and actively look for it as I do with the 5 Most Beautiful Things Project. Beauty Hunter. Hunter of Quiet. I’ve begun making it a project, seeking quiet wherever I can, because surely we all deserve the joy of quiet. I have been walking to the beach. I have been meditating. I have been listening. It’s nice. ** Today, a couple kids were yelping loudly so I said, What’s the excitement? He’s my cousin! one shrieks, pointing to another, obviously very proud of this relation. She is too! Pointing to another, younger girl, thrilled to be able to point this out to me. That such excitement about family exists. We are related! Can you imagine being somewhere and jumping up and down to tell someone This is my mom! This is my brother! This is my Uncle! She’s my sister! It was sweet. And I wondered how long they’d stay close. I am not particularly close to any of my cousins. And just then, one of the kids face planted and havoc ensued. ** #5 then, my friend Angela M. Giles Patel, Writer who is a gifted writer and who sent me this book the other day when I was feeling like shit. I had been struggling with depression and anxiety and she sent this wee book in the mail, so small I thought the package was empty. It’s called The Do-It-Yourself Guide To Fighting The Big Motherfuckin’ Sad by Adam Gnade. The timing was impeccable. And this little book, surely there are parts where I feel as if I wrote it (again how similar we are! So many of us walking around trying to fight the big motherfuckin’ sad in our lives.) I mean, have you read my friend Maggie May Ethridge’s piece on my site called Sad Fish? It’s one of my favorites and I have taken to reading it aloud to people like some preacher on a street corner. Hey you! You! Over there! In the red jacket! Listen up. I think that maybe finding the beauty and the quiet is the poetry. And the things we notice when we are the denizens of such particular states of grace will allow us to harness our joy in such way that every so often we’ll feel as if we are on a bicycle somewhere in the south of France, some scarf trailing behind us and nothing existing but that which is waiting to be found by us and has perhaps been waiting forever. ****** xo share if inspired. please add your #5mostbeautifulthings. join me at a workshop soon Dallas, London, Seattle, South Dakota, L.A., Atlanta and more http://themanifeststation.net/workshops/.