Two things can be true

March was an absolute wash. April is only slightly catastrophic.. May will be better ! ?

Hello Substack community,

It’s late, I’m having a hot chocolate, and of course true to my own nature figured this would be the perfect time to just talk some shit.

By the cauldron - March was kind of a crap shoot, throw it on the wall, it slides off kind of vibe. I felt bad about not sharing any offerings or sentiments last month but then I remembered I’m human and allowed to pause.

March began with a planned but unexpected solo weekend trip to Chicago and ended with a bit of bed rotting, a death in the family, crying, Diddy, and the emergency pet hospital visit heard around the world. On the other hand I taught some bangers last month (Austin please come to class), announced a dream retreat (SOLD OUT - WAIT LIST ONLY - we love you, thank you), opened a savings account (it’s now empty again, thank you Steven), and in the end through the throes of it all found God. The showers do not work for me. April will be better. And if it isn’t please kill me. Stick a fork in me? Let’s start from the beginning.

On the evening before my trip I had to drop the kid off with my student turned dear friend and fellow boss witch, the infamous GIRLKNEWYORK. This particular release was super uncomfortable for me because unless you are new here, you know that I, like many, will refuse to ask for help until I am just bleeding out on the sidewalk. I also appreciate a good boundary and try to do my best within the student/teacher dynamic. I am learning that relationships grow, change, evolve, end, and occasionally take on new form. One day after a private 1:1 with Mira when discussing scheduling, I shared that I was particularly bummed about having to possibly cancel said trip due to the fact that my paternal root has ghosted and newly denied his grandparent duties. This is another story and not my journal after all ;) By the cauldron - Mira immediately suggested that she take my daughter since she has a few of her own (one human, one Steven sized.) I was hesitant because Stevie only likes me and I don’t trust anyone with her. When I left her with her new weekend family the sense of pure safety and confidence washed over me in a way that told me to trust.

Still life of me crying in elevator after drop-off

Since I had one night to chill I decided to ignore the responsibilities of packing for a 7am flight and went to a Breathwork Circle hosted by my boss/friend/inspiration and spiritual sibling, Ms. Krissy Jones. Krissy has really solidified herself as a strong and accepting facilitator which is not light work. I trust her with my life and the ~work~ has been very powerful for me. This holotropic shit is not a game!!! Over the summer in my dreamland of Portugal I hid for most of the trip after deep practice and the un-Earthing of a lot of closeted demons - if you are tired of hearing about this story I get it but also you’re going to hear it again. It was a dark breakthrough that I needed although I felt myself morphing into the ugliest versions of me. I went into hiding and fear in the way that a kid hides under their bed from monsters at night and didn’t get a grasp on the magnitude of the trip (and myself) until the very end. I was pretty sure that I had ruined our relationship because I kind of turned into a monster. Alas - we are still here! So! When KJ invited me to a session in a cozy midtown penthouse I couldn’t refuse. Being that I was in a new setting with new players, I laid in a little pocket with a few of my peers knowing that there was a possibility of imminent shifts that may not necessarily be welcome in a room of people that you are unfamiliar with.

Because I notoriously have to remove myself to just cry and feel for fear of being seen after these kinds of longer pranic engagements, my brilliant friend Charlotte laid beneath me and her warmth carried me in the way that I can only describe as a miracle. When my hands started to cramp and the electricity in my physical body started to send me signals of alarm, I heard our teacher, Ally Bogard’s voice, saying, ‘let it’. There was a very clear resurgence of past memories and stories that I have always assumed I would take to my grave, and the sacral wave of grief and terror offered me an orgasmic outlet that I have never encountered with anything or anyone. I decided to let it. I held my own hand. This is a love letter to me, for me, by me. To my angels, I still cannot really put what happened into words. Well I can but I’ll save it for my in-person people. Sorry!

After the duration of the session the power that washed over me compelled me to extend a hand to a friend that seemed to be having a tough time. She kind of dismissed me in the way that I had done and have done many times to my teachers and people wanting to offer support; not going to lie there was a running list of very personal feelings that arrived in my mind, personal in the way that our ego does that funny little dance between fact and Fugazi. I acknowledge the flick of ignorance on my part as I was unaware of how my newfound siddhi could be received. For the first time maybe ever I saw us in that moment fully as one. There was no race, and our roles in society were out the window. It was the mirror and confirmation that my duty in this lifetime is exactly this. Thank you.

Off to Chicago I went to visit my best friend of over twenty years, Kaylah. Before my flight I called my mom (it was her 60th birthday) who asked me if I was heading to Portugal again. She asks me this every time I call her. Instead of getting angry with her in the ways that I have increasingly been, I shifted my attention to the fact that this person never got to see the world or herself in the ways that I am right now. When I landed I ran into Iman Shumpert who told me he liked my style and so naturally, I knew things were going to pop off.

The moment I met Kaylah in the gifted and talented program as children (I got kicked out after one year, she went on to Georgetown) (lol) I knew she would be my best friend forever. I am pretty sure she plagiarized a story that I poured my heart into writing but again I save that story for my journal. The L rides and the accidents. The parties. Firsts of everything and anything. Family melodramas…. She knows my heart! Hopefully you still have this kind of person riding for you. Over the years I have always admired her work ethic, patience, and overall societal awareness and acceptance. In many ways we are still the same beach kids we have always been and in others we could not be more different. I grew up constantly comparing myself to my best friends - they were dancers and I wasn’t allowed to dance; they always seemed to move with ease and elegance in the world in ways that I never did. This trip showed me that paradise is in fact a walled in garden. We bumped heads as we always do - at the spa, at dinner, at the bar. Again, I was coming up on a real block. I could either kill my friend or ride the wave. And so, on my last night in the Chi which was Kaylah’s first night out for spring break (she is in her PhD era), I stayed in with my smut literature, her angel face son Zeus, me, myself, and I. The beat was really calling me but I was excited to go home, to my students, unfurnished apartment, my empty fridge, and the kid. Not being hungover for the flight and seeing the sunrise sealed the trek.

Lake Shore Drive. splendid

I wanted to take this trip for a few reasons. Going alone meant proving to myself that I could do it alone. I am almost 30 years old and have never been on a flight by myself! Unaccompanied minor vibes! I am also just continuing to prioritize the relationships that have fed and watered the versions of me that I would want to hug and know. In turn I get to see where I am overdoing or under doing. Overall I arrived right on time, 70 degrees in March, I felt like Isaiah Rashad. It was special and I would not have changed a thing. I was enamored by the kindness of the people and am still dreaming of the architecture - next time I’m going to hit up the opera.

Next topic is the death of my grandfather that landed mid month. I’m going to tread very lightly here; light for me as there are other lives that are in considerable mourning. My grandfather passed away of vascular dementia. He became very violent in the end which made socializing, eating, and just being impossible. I hadn’t seen him in probably over 15 years. I didn’t go to his funeral, and I have thought about this constantly almost everyday. The week that he died made me wickedly irritable and I laid on my roof and just sobbed. His obituary painted him beautifully and I will forever look to his life and experience with admiration. I come from a strong line of Carribbeans. The melanin is magic. My ancestors have done the impossible for me to be here. They witnessed things that I will never fully comprehend. There is too much to unpack (I’m still unpacking) but I am really enjoying this book which was suggested to me by one student and one friend exactly one week before his passing. They don’t know one another and live on opposite sides of the world so I went for it. Our roles within our families shape our lives. I see that I can have love and also not understand. I can be apart of and I can be alone. I am enjoying my sadness when it comes. It is a sign that I am alive and that my heart is beating.

I am so lucky to have reconnected with one of my true heart teachers, Dima Paone. I won’t tag her because she does not care. Really - Dima doesn’t teach in studios anymore (she is a literal scientist who works in lab animal research and has studied medicine and surgery, yes indeed, role model), so when she reached out to tell me she would be offering classes at her home studio for the season to a small selected group, I jumped at the chance to just be in her presence. She lives and breathes her yoga, I love that she knows that she isn’t for everyone, and teaches from pure love for humanity. Her voice just runs through you. It is the sonorous resonance that I talk about in my classes. Waking up early on Sunday morning and driving to the suburbs with an old friend for class has and continues to inspire me in so many ways.

Dima fucking Paone. Jai

Each week Dima has been covering the Eight Limbs of Yoga, Patanjali’s sequential prescription and path to a morally disciplined and purposeful life. Being a student is amazing. I need refreshers and I don’t know it all! During our second week when discussion moved to the Niyamas or ‘positive duties’, naturally the last niyama landed for me in a new way that I am currently sorting through. It is referred to as Ishvara Pranidhana, which is creative surrender. It is the deliberate practice of allowing. Being discerning with confronting our dragons head on is a major skill. I realize that my levels of productivity are basically coping tools that often distract me from the shadow work. It is tough when you love everything. I am innately desirous of knowledge and magic and well… everything! Because of this I burn out very easily. In Ally B’s new book she says that slowing down the part of yourself that incessantly “needs to know” and the even faster part that “knows for certain” creates a vital pause that allows you to come eye to eye with reality. We are not the absolute authority on the ways that things should unfold. To me this affirms that potential is not enough. But if you believe something and the desire is strong enough, it’s already yours. The opportunity to marvel is a constant choice, but without surrender it does not exist.

Lastly! I did some learning and finally stuck my head in the fascia pool. To me Bonnie needs zero introduction. DANCER FIRST. Bon is the macro to the micro, she is that friend that is not going to sugar coat or assume, she is the Nancy Drew, and she will tell you the truth, almost entirely and especially when it is real. To be honest I hope she likes what I say here because I know that she will let me know! She lets it. Bonnie has been talking to me about flossing for years and when I finally took her class last year and had to demo as her student I figured it would be a quick and gentle coax. Bonnie is very serious in the most unserious ways and as her friend I couldn’t take it seriously until it became the realest thing in the room. When she corrected my technique I kind of wanted to murder her. I left enraged (yes) as it sparked something in me (the fascia nerds will get it) that was reminiscent of my first Katonah Yoga class. I was angry, I was questioning, I felt empty, and I was also turned on. She invited me over to participate in her recent Fascia Level 1 training and well, I am now hooked. Shocked but hooked. I decided that I wasn’t going to participate in the way that I normally would, there was no attempt at trying to retain information or to capture each and every note, I wanted to do this training not for my students but for me. For one, This is not stretching! This is more than movement. It is permission, resilience, investigation and remembering. From this we surrender and know that we already have it all. Poetry in motion. Bon if you read this thanks for all of your advice always, it means the world to me.

My High Lady

My unorganized pelvis mid earthquake

For everyone that has reached out to ask about Steve, she is fully back on her plumbline as if she didn’t completely eat a box of incense matches (including staples.) I have stopped giving the situation life as it nearly killed her which ultimately would have 86’d me. Reliving this nightmare story is draining as the situation was the nail in the coffin so let’s dead it here. Thank you all for such generosity, love, and attention because without it what even is this. Please continue to support yourself, loved ones, do not assume that everything is gucci. People are literally at war. I love this page out of my influential and virtuous teacher’s new book. Thank you Alex for always being the lesson and light. We are not here to fix, we manipulate for the moment that shows up like a butterfly.

Practical Magic

When you’re up you’re up and when you’re down it’s a plummet into the great socket of the earth, sink or swim. Spring is go time. If we plant seeds, it is important to remember that they need constant attention in order to grow. Someone will always be better, they will always have more. Let it. On love and birth and death and the inhale and the exhale and that just being alive and feeling in a body is enough and a beautiful thing: not answering text messages is good. Being sad is very great. I’ve recently been apart of a self-care initiative led by the first black councilwoman president of my city. She was elected by the people and is determined to maximize quality of life for her community. Not your average politician. It is at a public school in a rough neighborhood - many of the teachers shared their various health struggles and personal qualms with me, they let me in and I was able to see life through their eyes. They sacrifice their lives to educate and uplift these children, many of them themselves experiencing different states of scarcity. It is done with an immense amount of joy and unfiltered purity.

Assumption doesn’t make you an idiot but it probably makes you an asshole. To the accountant that called me an idiot last week as I shriveled in his office, thank you. I didn’t blast you then but I’m going to take my power back with a fuck you here. This week was a new story, I became a vendor of my city, which means I’m going to get a street named after me and also a day. Just kidding but remember that imagination will take you everywhere. Please do support, share, post, like, help - yes, I’m asking because I need it all and deserve it all. So do you. The planet will work with you if you work it. In Katonah Yoga we say you have to go everywhere. There is no one size fits all prescription for this experience! There are seeds everywhere, and therefore the tears make way for the soil to nourish them so that they can grow. I love a good retrograde. Reverance for our teachers, life the greatest, a happening thing.

🌱 APRIL - AUGUST ELIZABETH STREET GARDEN EVERY SATURDAY 10:30a

CLASS IS 100% DONATION BASED. BRING A MAT AND A FRIEND.

NO SIGN UP, I NEED YOUR DOGS AND BABIES. ITS PURE

🌱 MAY 18 HOUSEKEEPING THIS IS MY SIGNATURE PRANAYAMA TRAINING THAT I TEACH EVERY YEAR. MY BABY. IF YOU’VE JOINED US BEFORE I AM HOPEFUL THAT THE LESSONS AND REVAMPING WILL LAND IN A VERY SPECIAL AND NEW WAY. OLD TRICKS THAT ARE NEW

🌱 JUNE HOUSEKEEPING AT TAOU… CHANGING THE DATES! STAY TUNED

🌱JUNE 19 PURE POTENTIAL WITH CHARLOTTE SCOTT ! ! !

🌱 SKY TING MENTORSHIP STARTS IN JUNE. 6 MONTHS LONG AND WILL BE INCREDIBLE… NEW STRUCTURE SAME TLC.

🌱 SICILY IN SEPTEMBER WITH CLO IS SOLD OUT BUT WE WELCOME YOU TO OUR WAITLIST. CONNECT WITH ME

🎪 PLEASE JOIN US AT OUR NEW HOUSE THAT IS 324 LAFAYETTE STREET.

🎪 ENDLESS THANKS

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