Brittany Boles
live a magical life
Yoga Saved My Life
I yoga because it saves me, and daily. Once upon a time, I was suicidal. I was depressed, anxious, and self-medicating with gusto. I was one bad decision from throwing my life away.
When I found yoga, I had moved a thousand miles away from what I thought were my problems. I was a few months clean of an opioid addiction and wanted a fresh start on an island in the Caribbean.
The hard truth was that my problems followed me. They lived inside my head, not in Minnesota, and I had to face them or be consumed.
The first struggle was learning how to breathe. I had nearly lost my life to a complication of pneumonia, and honestly believed I’d never be able to draw deep breath again. Day after day, I struggled to take three breaths for every one the teacher instructed. But, eventually, it only took two. And then I stopped struggling.
My breath took me to the place where truth lives: the darkest recess of my mind that I tried to lock away. I started to see the pain that suffocated me, that was trying to kill me. The abuse I’d suffered as a child, the abandonment – neglect – degradation – anger. I couldn’t look away. It rose up in my belly, seized my limbs.
And my body knew what to do with the pain, somehow. From my heart, out through my fingertips and into the earth, my pain smoothed out. In its place, I found a new deepest Me: a me that was at peace.
Every time the darkness crept in, I returned to my mat. I found my breath. My body moved until light, instead of pain, poured out.
My mat is my way home, to myself. And it doesn’t matter where I go, because the light follows me. Peace lives inside my head – heart – breath – body. I can’t escape it, and I wouldn’t want to.
Tonight, I share this light with a group of true beginners. People who have felt too much (or not enough) for yoga. I don’t know what they are looking for, but I do know what they will find: themselves.
At our core, we are creatures filled with light, ever at peace. The darkness is an illusion, and the breath is the revelation. Our bodies know what to do … all they need is space.
Yoga is so much more than movement. It is a path of forgiveness, of self and others, and an opportunity for transformation. Yoga is a way home.
I know, because it saved me.
Truth & Vulnerability
Satya means truthfulness. It’s one of the NiYamas, or moral observances in yoga. It was also the focus of an at-home practice I streamed on Facebook Live this morning.
I chose satya because I thought, in a whimsical way, it would be fitting for a practice which would inevitably include interruptions from the toddler and the animals. The truth of home practice is that it offers us a different perspective: we move and breathe in space we have created to be safe and comforting … and that space is sometimes chaotic and messy in spite of ourselves!
Today’s video experiment was a deeper taste of truth than I anticipated. It brought me closer to vulnerability than I want to admit … I have had to be conscious and compassionate to myself as I walked the edge of shame.
Vulnerability IS the experience of utter truthfulness. I suppose I knew moving forward with videos would bring me into that space, especially because I intend to be authentic and real as I ride the learning curve of digital expression.
So, today, I made a video in my house. The sound quality was awful, which I didn’t realize until afterward! My form was all over the place as I modeled postures while worrying about what the toddler was doing. And – this is the hardest part to acknowledge – I saw my body in a very unflattering light.
Even though my son is two years old, and I teach (and practice) yoga and wellness, my stomach is still soft and separated. This makes me feel a lot of things. It’s a constant reminder that the birth I dreamed of having wasn’t possible (I had a c-section after 18+ hours of natural labor), and that I’ve been avoiding the necessary core work to strengthen the damage.
My unflattering choice of yoga clothes combined with less-than-optimal form and strange lighting really highlighted these flaws when I watched and critiqued the video.
But – breathe. It’s the way home.
So, I breathed through the shame and watched with compassion and humor. Jasper, the co-starring toddler, giggled and exclaimed as he watched with me. How fun! We’re on TV! I saw myself smiling and raw, sharing truth and guiding a class I couldn’t see but could only hope was following.
Truth showed up for me today. The truth is that I am raw and flawed, that I would love to clean up my video skills and belly, and that I have a community of yogis that see my light in all of it.
Choosing to see truth and vulnerability instead of sinking into shame was incredibly empowering. It IS empowering.
The more honest and real I get with myself, the more grounded and open I become. I am able to share my journey with all of you because I am less and less afraid of shame. I welcome vulnerability instead, and when it hurts I turn to what I know: my breath.
I can’t wait to make another video! Really! I’ve learned so much already. I wonder what I will come to accept about myself and my practice – and what I’ll learn about my community – with the next one.
Men Who Want to F Themselves
In a time of reckoning and revolution, I find myself at peace. Earlier, I made a video with the “unpopular social opinion” that I love men. All men.
Tuesday night’s Men’s Yoga (women welcome) class is growing. These guys come week after week with open hearts and minds, seeking safe space for their expansion and finding it. Their transformation happens internally and ripples out into their community and the world as a collectively evolving brotherhood. And, man, am I honored to be the one holding space for them in this way.
Out and about, I’ll meet men who are awake – or at least, waking up – to the concept of a heart-forward and fully-conscious life. They are interested in learning more about the divine masculine and feminine energies, about transforming their lives. But they are hesitant; they tell me “I’m always the only man in the room at ‘these things.’”
Do they say that because they are uncomfortable being the minority? Is this a reflection of the patriarchy at work – men experiencing what it’s like to be in the background? Perhaps some would say so. But I know differently, because these men come to me and I hear them. What they are saying is, “I don’t want to impede on space for women.” These men recognize that women are coming together in droves to empower each other and they don’t want to “give the wrong impression.”
What they do want is space to integrate their divinity, too. They want to speak openly, from their hearts, and to learn how to be whole, again.
The patriarchy doesn’t just hurt women (and POC, and children, and, and, and . . .) – It hurts men, too. The idea of “toxic masculinity” is toxic to men, too. And a lot of men – more than we are led to believe, in fact – are wide awake and fully aware of the toxicity. Unlike women, though, men aren’t really . . . being encouraged . . . to “find themselves.”
No. Usually, men are being told to . . . different F themselves.
But not here, men. Not in this place.
I’m an ally. To all. If you want to find yourself, I’m here to hold the space, and your hand, and even the door, for you – no matter where on the gender spectrum you are, or the color of your parts, or the things you’ve done in the past. This is a safe place for all.
Because I’ve moved past the anger. Smashing things, like the patriarchy, or whatever, just isn’t my jam today – and that’s okay. It might not be popular, but it’s okay.
Oh – and women? Same goes for you. Even if you are all about smashing right now. We have space for sisterhood, and embrace women’s empowerment (like every month at circle), and hold a candle for the divine feminine, too.
I believe that we rise together, or not at all. And, man, is that a peaceful kind of feeling.
Surrendering to God
What does it say that when I decide to teach Ishvara Pranhidana, surrender to God, that I rub up against a deeply angry feeling of abandonment . . . and a lusty longing for passion?
Songs run through my playlist without the worshipping lull of glory, but with electric guitars, heavy riffs, and wailing vocals. Fury, rage, loss, and love intermingle like a barbed wire relationship; what does this mean for my perspective on God?
And what is spirituality without God? Is not God the driving concept of spirit? Is not spirit one with God?
God is . . . everything. It’s too big to put into a religion, to define with a song. The experience of God is to surrender into the depth of emotion and feeling that lies beyond and within and outside of everything that makes us human.
God IS longing. God is rage. God is connection. Love. Loss.
God is the experience, and what ties it together, and what lies beyond. We are an embodiment of God, an iteration of feeling, living, breathing consciousness that by the very act of existing is expanding what it means.
So often, we hear that God is Love. This is true. At least . . . it’s true when we define God as such. My true experience of the divine has been ecstatic blissful connection. Lightness embodied, or out-of-body ethereality.
But this is not the “God” for which I thought I was searching for so many years. As a child, my life was lonely, violent, ugly – and I looked everywhere for love and light. I found churches, and devoted myself wholly to the Biblical God within that story.
He was a male god of vengeance, judgement, and conditional love. This is particularly true of pre-Jesus God. But, man, did He love those who chose Him. Then, Jesus came and said, “I have/Am a new way.” He said that to follow love, and to forgive, is the only path to salvation – to bliss – to connection with God.
And, man, did I fall in love with Jesus. Here was passionate divine connection! Wholeness. He was the embodiment of love – of light – of connection. Then the Church/Government (kind of always been the same entity, hasn’t it?) brutally killed Jesus, and then He came back, and then left, and then the Church/Government decided how to tell the story.
That story goes: “Jesus was tortured and killed for our sins. Because we are so impure and separate from God, such damnable screw-ups, God threw us a lifeline by sacrificing his only Son – the most perfect and loving One who will ever live – and, if and only if we accept this as truth, we may now have a connection to God.”
It broke my heart. Exquisite pain and longing for my Jesus ensued. I knew his Love, and devoted myself to sharing it with whoever I could find. People had to know about this divine love!
As I shared it, I came upon some hard edges in people, and in myself.
Jesus was great, we could mostly all agree, but all this other “God” stuff and most of the Bible were still pretty damning.
And then there were plenty of people who had Saviors of their own – who, I learned, were also damned.
Christianity became less of a relationship to light and love and more of a tool for further separation from the Source of love – from God. But I didn’t realize that until much later.
Instead, what I came to know and feel was that religion was a tool, like any other, that could be wielded for growth or damage. It brought me solace, comfort, and community when I most needed it. But as my heart and mind expanded, as I grew and thirsted for more, I found less within the binds of the Bible (or any other Book – I read many).
I closed myself off to the idea of God entirely. My prayers were hollow and my heart was broken (for a number of reasons, admittedly, which I won’t get into here). It seemed that, to experience God, I’d eventually need to find another religion or return to Jesus, and I suppose I held space for that inside my head for a while.
After a few years of very visceral living – like, 3D physical, emotional life – I began to heal. Healing, this time, came from within. I found my breath; I felt my body. Prayer was meditation. God was the sunshine, the pulse of the sea, and the light inside of my soul. I started to find my own inner divinity, and as I leaned into that I found a sense of peace and wholeness.
One day, I walked a labyrinth and poured out my angst. My spirit shouted into the ether all the angry, accusatory abandonment I felt around the idea of God.
“You were never there.”
And, by the time I got to the middle of the labyrinth, I was emptied of rage. I had left it on the path beneath my feet. Nothing but profound silence met me. I tilted my face toward the sun and was blinded by the light.
In that instant, I heard/felt/knew God. My chest and body broke open, and I was the sun – it was me – and I was everything and nothing. The message was clear:
“I am here.”
Not out there, but *here* in that bright light space, within and around me.
Surrendering, in that moment, was not a tearful admittance of self-loathing.
It was the opposite of recognizing unworthiness.
I did not feel like the dirt of sin was being scrubbed from my soul.
I broke open and released the grip I had on my Self. Long-clenched fists uncurled, and light spilled into and out of every crevice of my body/mind/spirit. Surrender was fullness.
The world shone, then, more brightly than before. I heard the breath of the trees, felt the spirit of the stones, and floated around my body as well as inside of it.
When I am connected to God, the perception and experience of the world is that of divine beauty, just like it was as I exited the labyrinth that day. I do not call it “God” anymore – not because it isn’t true, but because it isn’t enough. My lips, heart, eyes, and mind cannot form the concept enough to articulate the love and light that is bliss-source-love-god-everything.
Ishvara Pranidhana: surrendering to God. Surrendering to self, I think, is the first step here. Recognizing human-ness. Feeling separate, allowing the longing, experiencing the heartbreak. I do not know if I could have ever been filled so completely if I hadn’t been so desperately emptied.
Maybe that is the story of Jesus, after all. Maybe his yoke – the journey of love – is offered from a place of utter fullness and acceptance because he knew desolate separation. I know, from experience, that accepting that yoke can be a fulfilling experience. A tool of love.
May we all find our path to God, and may the light flood into and out of each of us. May the world shine with divine brilliance.
And may the experience become less dense, less arduous, as we allow our light to shine. The path needn’t stay shadowed. The time of necessary suffering has come to an end, as the great prophets, elders, and Books have known it would.
God is here.
Spiritual BS
“Spiritual Bypassing” – what is it, and what is it not?
It means something akin to pretentious self-righteousness to the point of willful ignorance and/or unhealthy selfishness. A psychologist coined the term in the 1980s referring to the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to sidestep uncomfortable feelings and avoid authentic, vulnerable connection. Harsh, right?
An example of SB (funny how it mirrors the acronym for bullshit, isn’t it?) from my own experience is as follows:
A person in a position of leadership, actually a spiritual teacher, was repeatedly acting in a dismissive, judgmental, and unsupportive way toward multiple members of the group. It became deeply distracting from the purpose of the group, negatively affecting the majority of people within it. At one point, I spoke for the silent majority and suggested we address our concerns. The leader responded with barely veiled anger followed by a complete dismissal of the issue, suggesting the group explore our feelings as our own issues and that this person had spent “too much time and energy on the negativity already.” It was devastating to the group dynamic and a few individuals. After the dismissal, this person acted as though nothing had happened.
The main elements of SB in that example are that the person attempted to hide genuine emotion, refused to confront or discuss the issue, and dismissed it as nonexistent or unworthy of attention – all while citing the “level of energy” as being “too negative.”
The person flatly refused to do the work.
True spirituality is about doing the work. We grow by diving deeply into – rather than away from – our experiences. We become mindful about what we feel and how we react, even if it is negative, hard, or painful. Being mindful means being present with these emotions, observing them, and digging more deeply into them.
This is where the light comes in! We can believe that “only love is real,” or “we are all made of light,” or “love wins” – only after we understand it to be true because we have found it within our own shadow.
And this isn’t something we do once to earn a gold star of spirituality which – like the Pardons of old – exempt us from future spiritual work. It is an evolution of spirit. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. We’ve come here to experience! To feel! To learn!
Truly spiritual people acknowledge the experiences of others and seek to further their understanding – by offering compassion and love – at all times.
When the profoundly spiritual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” he didn’t intend it to become the anthem of dismissive spiritual bypassing. He meant light and love as verbs – as intentional action. To drive out darkness is to actively fill space with love and light. Anything less is inaction.
(I wrote a lengthy piece called “7 Ways to (Actually) Send Light and Love” if you’re looking for ideas.)
Spiritual bypassing is dismissiveness. Spirituality is compassion. Spiritual bypassing is arguing or ignoring. Spirituality is listening and caring.
When we really do the work and dive into our experience – and seek to understand the experiences of others – we grow in our spirituality. We find the light and love beneath the shadowy pain. It’s there, in all of us, collectively and individually.
Once we start to see, feel, and engage with light and love from a space of authentic mindful exploration, we can turn it into a verb and shine it out into the world. At some point, we may even begin to see everything as Love. But we certainly will not be able to show others that profound truth unless we meet them with authenticity and compassion somewhere inside of their experience.
What did I do about that BS I mentioned above? The work. I dove into my anger and pain, found the qualities in myself that I was avoiding and rejecting, sat with the sadness and shame, and found my way back to my core. I am stronger and more sure of the loving power that I Am because I did the work.
BS Spirituality is an excuse for inaction. Spirituality is actively Be-ing.
Let’s end with some Mary Oliver, shall we?
“You, too, have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
(to shine: verb; to engage in contrast – with the intention of brightening)
Brittany Boles 