So this past fall, I moved to a small town and was their senior yoga teacher.  I ended up getting a furnished apartment somewhat near the studio and started to develop a life there.  Each morning I would begin a long slow walk in silence from my new basement apartment to the yoga studio and each morning like clockwork, my brain would spit out questions and ideas to ponder.  On the days I taught before 6am, I would be on my walk down this deserted street at 5:20am and my brains favourite “go to” topic of questions always focused in and around zombies.  What does this yoga teacher think about before he teaches you about meditating and letting go and surrender?  He thinks about zombies.  What makes this even funnier?  Well, for starters, I am afraid of gore and horror movies.  I have watched none.  Yup.  None at all!  First it was because I wasn’t allowed to because of my upbringing and then that evolved in a desire not to pollute my mind with the images of negativity, but really, I am afraid and that shit scares the crap outta me!

It doesn’t help that on one of my first days doing this walk and journey I pass this sign.  A few moments later, in the distance I swear I see a man limping down this tiny city town toward me.  So here I am - this urban yogi in the rural outskirts getting up at the crack of dawn to a quiet and almost desolate locale with a limping life-like looking zombie approaching me.  Can you say fear run wild?  Perhaps.

 You have to understand.  I am a city boy through and through.  I have always enjoyed the sound of traffic outside my window like it’s the sound of urban waves of water crashing on the concrete structured rocks.  There is a cab stand 300m from my front door and subways station entrance another 100m away.  So this below ground, rural community existence is quite foreign to me.

One evening, for some stupid insane reason, I decided to look up The Walking Dead. One of the only single gay men in their 30s I met in the area was talking about the show.  One of my friends in Toronto was also raving about it, so I thought I’d search Netflix randomly and see what the show was about.  I clicked partway in and it looked all innocent initially so I sat back for a moment to watch.  It was just a bunch of sweet people camping and talking about relationships – until some zombie head appears in the tent and bites the side of someone’s arm.  The next few minutes I was a deer in headlights.  I couldn’t turn away and my mouth was open and I was gagging on the horror.  And you have to understand - I never gag.  I would go into more detail but the mere mention of it just had me look outside the window to see if I was “being watched”. The experience was even more intense that night.  I went upstairs and checked the door lock twice.  I then unscrewed one of the table legs from my coffee table and kept it close to my bed when I went to sleep.  I kept a small night light on.  The light wasn’t too bright because I didn’t want to attract the attention of zombies that may walk by my window, but at the same time, it was bright enough that  could see if that shadow in the corner by my bathroom was moving or blinking it’s eyes at me as it moved closer for a meal.  And thus was my existence for the next few days.

This fear had me quite figuratively by the throat.  Literally it had me by the belly.  I get icky feelings in my tummy when things go amiss.  Call it my own Spidey sense.  I get scared and my belly goes haywire.  The anxiety in some moments seems so real.  Maybe fear and anxiety are too strong words too use.  A better way to describe it would be a general sense of uncertainty, or simply - nervousness.  I completely acknowledge that in hindsight some of these moments are ridiculous, but yet there they are.

In many ways, the fear allows me to escape.  To leave the place I am in; to travel to some movie/tv world and be detached from me and the moment.  Fear is a funny thing.  A healthy dose of it stops us from doing something completely ridiculous, but too much of it prevents us from doing anything at all. 

When one looks into the heart of fear, you can easily begin to see how it prevents life and decisions in life from happening.  It was fear that stopped me from coming out earlier.  Fear, that prevented me from being open about my HIV status earlier in life, or trying to conceal it for years after.  Fear that stopped me from asking out that really cute guy I passed on the street three times a couple years ago by Yonge and St. Clair.  Fear.

The funny thing is though, that when we see someone else have the same problems in life we look at them and say “There’s nothing to be afraid of.  You’ll be fine” And yet, when it comes to us, to our problems, it’s a big deal.  “You just don’t understand.”  “It’s complicated” But for others it seems so simple.  Just do it.  It takes courage; great strength and courage of heart to face one’s fears.  And yet we know that others can do it.  We believe in them.  So why can’t we do the same for ourselves?

There’s a Sanskrit word that is near and dear to me.  It’s Shraddha.  It means faith, or faith in living action.  It is the belief that things will be alright; that there is always a safety net in this system of life.  The reminder of this lesson is so important to me that I had it put someplace so that I can remember it on a daily basis.

A spiritual guide of mine tells this story:  You’re sitting in the stands at a circus watching the tightrope walker push a wheelbarrow across wire.  Faith  is believing that the person is going to go from one side to the other side safely.  Shraddha, is getting into that wheelbarrow. 

The practice and growth away from fear and living is to not simply stand up and talk about or embrace one’s fear, but to actively put yourself on the firing line of life.  Are you afraid of public speaking?  Speak publically.  How about scared of asking someone out?  Ask several people out.  Take the action.  Make the effort.  Move yourself and press against healthy fears.  I am not saying they will go away overnight.  But I have found through experience that each time I take a trip across that tightrope in the wheelbarrow, it gets a bit easier to face.

As one of my teachers Judith puts it: “’Jump off a cliff today.’  In other words, do some small thing that stretches your beliefs about yourself.  Usually that cliff is an inch high.”  I couldn’t agree more.

And those awful zombies?  Well they haven’t hung around or haunted my doorway or followed me down the streets for awhile.  I took action.  Somehow by engaging in life, the fearful distractions in life fell to the wayside.  And that’s always the way it happens.  Move life forward, and the fears of life fade on sides like blurry after images.  And maybe, that is what life is all about.  Jai!

I am sitting in my HIV doctor’s waiting room, playing Bejewelled on my muted iPhone and listening to a 24hr local news channel blaring on the television in our small space.

I can’t help but feel that the face of HIV/AIDS has changed through the years.  There is an African couple to my right.  Diagonally across the space a guy with one leg in a wheelchair sits waiting slightly impatiently with a friend.  Across from me is a deaf guy signing and laughing with his interpreter who is directly beside me.    Beside him is an older gay gentleman with a feather earring and near the reception desk a medical staff member who pricked themselves with a needle.  Between him and I is a middle-aged white woman smiling while she reads a magazine on fashion.

The deaf man is called in and he and interpreter leave the space while in the background a story about Toronto’s city mayor is playing.  It was about a popularity poll (this was prior to the mayor’s removal from office two weeks later) and the African man and I share a funny joke about him and our feelings about his operation of the city.

Yes the face of AIDS looks different.  If you didn’t know this was the infectious disease area and almost all sitting here are there for HIV care, you wouldn’t have been able to tell, certainly not from our demeanours. Even the busy medical staff member looks quite calm.

It’s finally my turn and I’m a bit miffed.  It’s the first time I’ve had to wait in quite a while.  I guess I’m just used to getting an earlier appointment or something.  First I speak with my HIV pharmacist.  I had transferred from one med to another at the beginning of the summer and he wanted to go over side effects.  For a month I had some insomnia and as quickly as it came, it left.  The results in my bloodwork seemed to have favoured a smart decision – I had initiated the switch (more in another article, soon).

Then I got to see two of my favourite people at my HIV doctor’s office – Myrle (left) and Maureen, my HIV nurses.  These women always seem so calm, composed and kind.  Not once have they ever had a frown or been angry to my knowledge.  I have been at this clinic for over 15yrs now and they have always been the nurses.  For some reason, this visit, I had a small room to just Myrle and I, so I thought I’d ask her some questions.

She’s been a part of the clinic full-time since 1991, but mentions Maureen’s been there a bit longer.  They both helped out way before that, though.

Back then, according to Myrle, only my current HIV specialist took patients.  Even the hospital closest to the gay village at the time (the Wellesley Hospital) turned them away.  My nurse was there.  “Back then,” she goes on to say, “there were about 250 patients and only one doctor.  Now there are over 1,500 patients here and five doctors.”  In the old days, the positive care clinic nurses used to go to funerals and see and talk to family members, make calls and even make hospital bed visits.  Sometimes these were to do check-ups on the patients, but mostly to smile and be a friend.  Now there isn’t time for that.

As she relives these old memories, Myrle turns and smiles and looks me in my eyes and says, “But not to worry about funerals, you just keep getting stronger young man,” to which she pats my hand, smiles lovingly at me and walks away. Moments later, Maureen comes by and offers me some orange juice because she heard me mention that I was hungry and needed to grab food soon.

I don't know what the face of AIDS looks like. But these nurses' faces sum it up best for me. One who had been a witness to it in the frontline, who has probably buried many young men just like me. But one who is hopeful that with each year that passes and we continue to live and grow there is hope.

I often think about the Spanish Flu. Influenza streaked across the globe and killed millions. But it went away. What do you think it was like in those years for those who still had it? For those who encountered loved ones who did. Are we in those times now with the HIV virus?

As my dear nurse gives me my flu shot I couldn't help but wonder if in the future some young bright-eyed young man will be sitting in a similar hospital room contemplating what life was like in our time now while waiting to get his HIV shot.  

Namaste.

I step back, try not to gag and start to relax and swallow it down by asking myself “Ok.  Is there any truth in this?” 

So lately in life I have had to make a few huge changes.  I am no longer an urban yogi anymore, but more of a country boy.  For the past few weeks I have been living out of Peterborough, Ontario on a more permanent basis teaching FT there at a yoga studio and still finding time to be in my place in the city (Toronto) for a few days.  The commuting back and forth is insane, crazy and a bit unrealistic but so far the meshing of the two worlds is a whole new experience that I am totally enjoying...for the most part. 

The hardest thing to saying “Yes” to all these amazing students and people in Peterborough was having to say “No” to all my students, friends, family and life here in Toronto.  As I write this I am doing laundry, making dinner and packing my backpack for my next trek back out to “the Patch”.  Letting my students know I would not be with them for a few months was quite hard.  I mean it’s just my job and I teach many classes a week but it occurred to me that I have become a regular fixture in people’s lives.  My job and my life have meaning and purpose and I hope it helps and uplifts the people I come into contact with.

Having said that, I am not going to be everyone’s cup of tea!  In saying no to a few of my classes in Toronto temporarily, I have had to find teachers to take them over for me and entrust the lives and practices of my students to others and hope they lead them in a similar path of deepening their yoga practice and their lives with hope. 

So you can understand then why when I came in to teach one of the few classes in the city I was devastated by the news that one of the substitute teachers told that the class one day that only a few of them were intermediate (ie good enough) to do a specific posture and the rest of them weren’t so they weren’t allowed to participate.  It’s a posture that I actually taught them every week and they did it with excellence.  This teacher, however, told them that the way they did it was wrong and they weren’t at the level of even trying to attempt it. 

Now this kind of thing happens often.   In yoga and in life, we are told we aren’t allowed to do this or can’t do that and given reasons to support those beliefs.  However when it comes to something physical, emotional, spiritual – something that touches people at the core, if you tell people “NO”, you rob them of the opportunity to grow.  There is such incredible power and strength that can be drawn from the word “Maybe”.  Maybe brings hope.  Maybe says that if you keep trying and working and sweating and practicing, then who knows.  Maybe has potential to be more than a No.  A No is a closed door.  Maybe is a door opened a slight crack.  Who knows what the winds of change will blow through that door? 

I think when I first hit the yoga mat years ago I don’t think my teachers looked at me and said “there’s the next senior teacher we are going to hire and have work here” but I also don’t think they ever said to me “he’s never going to be able to do this”.  It’s quite possible though that there are many postures I may never be able to do to perfection.  I may never have a front page Yoga Journal pose down to a T with a giant smile on my face saying “Look at me!  Look how amazing physically I am doing this unbelievable posture and doing it with a smile on my face!”  But if my teachers ever told me No, they would not have been my teachers for long. 

In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Yamas are the first of the eight limbs of Yoga.  It is made up of five observances.  The second one is called Satya.  Satya means truthfulness or right communication through speech, writings, gesture and actions.  I like to think of it as the absence of falsehood.  As in looking at life, words, feelings and removing everything that isn’t true for you.  Once you eliminate all the untrue, or things that feel untrue for you in that moment, then whatever you are left with should be embraced. 

Truth is a funny thing though.  People love to say they are honest people and then go about speaking their truth wherever and whenever they wish.  And this is part of it.  Being truthful is incredibly important and I am all for that.  However, and this is why I love the yoga sutras so much, it was only second.  There was one guiding principle that came before this.  That was Ahimsa.  Ahimsa means non-harming.  A beautiful description by TKV Desikachar is the “consideration for all living things, especially those who are innocent, in difficulty, or worse off than we are”.  That is powerful.  Essentially if I was speaking my truth and not considering how that may affect others, I’m hurting them.  

This is why this No to my students hit me so hard.  Maybe some people in life may never be that flexible, maybe some may never get into Birds of Paradise or maybe I will never get into Marichyasana D again even if it kills me to try, but to rob someone of the possibility is abusive.  Sure I may suck.  I may even f*ck up sometimes, but that does not mean I will always be like that.  We are who we are today - neither good, nor bad.  It just is.  The great and incredible potential is that if I attempt things and work and grow and try to move on a path of guiding principles in my life, that maybe, just maybe, I can be more than the sum of my parts.  I can be more than a disease.  More than a fat kid.  More than a half breed bastard child. The power of yoga is the ability to free people and give them the power of hope.  The power of Maybe. 

In life and in teaching I have made many of these similar mistakes.  I have been and continued to be flawed and human.  I can say for certainty though that I am doing less now than I was before.  As I try and practice this.  To restrain my advice to only being asked for – to not commenting fully on all things, I have found a kinder balance in life.  Even in receiving feedback that I may have asked for and stung a little to hear, I step back, try not to gag and start to relax and swallow it down by asking myself “Ok.  Is there any truth in this?”  It’s a tough call.  Hearing the truth hurts.  As a friend of mine recently told me, if we are fearful, we go on the defensive and if the truth makes us angry, we go on the offensive.  And it’s so true how the truth works like that.  It’s like Buckley’s at times, it taste awful, but does help heal over time. 

It is my great hope that if you are struggling right now, working at something and it feels like it’s an impossible task, perhaps it’s something that someone or somebody in the world is telling you No,  that you have come to this point and cannot and will not go further.  I say turn your gaze toward your goal and go for it! If you run fast enough towards it, their words from the sidelines only sound like buzzing bees.  And hey if you can’t run, crawl!  Maybe even lay, flip onto your belly and put one forearm in front of the other and keep moving towards your prize. It may take time. It may take consistency.  But it’s worth it. I want to tell you that you can do it.  That it is possible;  that there exists a place in this Universe for you exactly as you are.  I welcome you to be a part of that place even though the outside world you are currently in does not.

Jai!