The Economics of Human Capital

There is a new four-letter word, the "E" word. This word is "The Economy." Strangely, it's neither four letters long nor even one word. Regardless, hearing the phrase (brace yourself), "The Economy" probably conjures worry and a knot in the stomach. Whether directly or indirectly, we are all being effected by what's happening with (here it is again) "The Economy."

Unfortunately, hard financial times often makes us feel like we need to circle the wagons, draw in our resources, and look out for our own interests. The scarcity of financial means sometimes leads to scarcity of good will toward each other.

But despite what is happening on Wall Street, there is another form of abundance we can all cash in and rely upon. This resource is each other. Us. You and me. Instead of shielding ourselves from others, we can enrich ourselves and others during this tricky financial time by investing our sincere humanity (our love, compassion, trust, and laughter) into the reservoir of well-being and happiness of each other. We are each other's bail-out plan in the essential economics of human capital, a resource without a deficit and yes, one that is even more vital that dollars. We are each other's interest and will receive an immediate return on our investment each time we share a little of love and care from our endless account of humanity.

This is yoga's (read:union) true meaning. One-ness of all.

Tough financial times is an opportunity to draw together and build friendships and communities because sometimes that is all that is left. Community is what's essential. Community will get us through. Ask your grandparents who may have lived through the Great Depression. We can help each other out in myriad ways. Give each other rides. Share job opportunities. Even just making the effort to come to yoga and give your best effort is an investment into the energy and spirit of everyone else who came to class. We feed each other. Plus, tough times moves us toward fun creative solutions that we'd otherwise never have discovered.

I love my job. I love it because I am constantly feed by your generosity and your human capital. One of my treasures of what I do is connecting with you on a personal as well as group level. I am often allowed a sneak peak into many of your hearts and get to see first hand how yoga has effected your lives. Countless times, I have looked into your eyes as you've spoken volumes to me by the tender tears rolling down your cheeks and perhaps mixed in a few words to describe some of your unspeakable challenges. You've shared with me your immense peace and joy and your stunning moments of clarity. You've shared with me the ways in which yoga has been your lifesaver, an island, an oasis. I'm deeply honored to play a small part in your unfolding.

I love these emails. For one, I can practice being vunerable, something I'm still learning. You all know much more about me than I think I'd normally be comfortable with, but you know, it's only in that vulnerablility that connection can happen. This is part of my growth. Unfortunately, you don't see the tears in my eyes as I type this jazz. I also love these emails because I often get responses back from you in which you share your personal stories, insight, and appreciation for these principles and thoughts.Thank you.

I communicate with you. You communicate back to me. But I feel a little selfish. There is a missing link with this connection--your connection to each other.

In this community that we're building by practicing yoga together, I feel I would be remiss if I didn't encourage you to see who else might be feeling the same way you do or what other insights others might offer each other.

Therefore, I am launching a blog where you can both read this same message, review past emails, but perhaps more importantly, comment on the message and share your experiences (either anonymously or publicly).

I also invite you to check out my Facebook page as a way to see how big your yoga comunity really is. You may be pleased to see that you have several friends who are coming to other classes. You may make new connections and friends. One dear friend predicts 3 marriages from this idea. We'll see. Maybe you can find friends with whom you can carpool to yoga. If you know your friend is going to pick you up for 6 am yoga (Tues at Flow, Thurs Centered City) it's an added incentive to do 'Get-'Yer-Butt-Out-Of-Bed Asana.'

Please don't stop sending me your personal emails. But you may also want to consider posting a comment for others to read. To see this same message on my blog and to post a comment about this or another message, check out my blog (see the link below). At the bottom of the blog, you'll see "comment" where you can click and leave a comment and see what others have said.

Please know that all of the information you send me is private. You are in charge of what you post. I will not post anything you say unless I have your permission.

So check out my blog by clicking here.

Allow me to be your Facebook friend by clicking here.
Click on Add Friend. If you're not a member of Facebook, it'll ask you to join. Don't worry, there is no fee, no hype, and its fun.

Now, I know that this invites more technology mayhem into our lives but if managed with mindfulness, I feel this can be a great way to connect to each other during difficult times. And, it's free. Possibly priceless.

Scott

I asked one of my private students to write in her journal what she feels about yoga. She's a woman who I'm so proud of, a woman who has seen immense personal growth since she's started to practice yoga. She gave me permission to copy it here.

I Love Yoga!

Recently when I was planning out my week, looking to see which days I could attend a yoga class and which days I would need to practice at home, it suddenly came to me: I LOVE YOGA. The truth is, I love almost everything about it. I love thinking about it, talking about it, practicing asanas, meditating, learning from my teachers, going to the studio, being with my yoga friends, putting on my yoga clothes, reading yoga books, studying about it...You get the idea. For whatever reason, yoga just does it for me. I’m addicted to those yoga “moments” - when I’m in a pose and I feel completely weightless and at ease, when I’m meditating and I lose track of time and place or when I’m consciously breathing and I feel it in every inch on my being. I started practicing yoga about 2 ½ years ago and I was hooked from the beginning. I’m a fairly straight-forward, no nonsense person so I feel a bit silly writing this. But truthfully, I feel like a five year old who’s found the hidden candy jar. I love yoga and it has changed my life.

The Dream of Peace

On that sweltering hot day of August 28th,1963, Americans gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to hear the social revolutionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sing to the hearts of the world the song of his dream of racial equality. Even though racism isn't completely erased in America, who would have even dared to imagine that 45 years later we would be inaugurating our nation's first African American president?

Dr. King knew of the imperative for non-violence as did his predecessor of peace, Mahatma Ghandi. Our new president, Barack Obama, whom we will inaugurate this week, fittingly the day after we commemorate Dr. King, plans to use his influence to perpetuate non-violence even in the face of immense challenges. He plans to eventually establish peace on several battle fronts including Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as our influence toward establishing peace between Israel and Palestine. Our president simply represents the most politically influential part of all of us and therefore we can all help to support the plan for peace from the grass-roots levels by being active in our communities.

The principle of non-violent revolutions and non-violent living parallels the ancient yogic principle of non-violence, Ahimsa.The yoga scholar, Patanjali, lists Ahimsa as the principle step toward finding Samadhi, our highest self. Consider the idea of not only personal Samadhi but a Samadhi of community or collective.

If, as we learn from yoga, we originate from the same source, call it God, Universe, Creation, then to hate or harm someone else is the autoimmunity of humanity, the failure of one part of the organism to recognize itself and therefore to to fight against it.

But Ahimsa goes deeper than not throwing punches. The gate into the temple of peace is non-violence, however the true lesson of Ahimsa is to honestly and deeply love each other, even when your brother or sister holds radically different ideals, morals, or opinions than you. When the power of our conviction meets the peace of our compassion, we can sit together as brothers and sisters and build lasting solutions to differences and problems. These solutions last because they are built from the most durable and fundamental element of us all--love.

Dr. King said, "Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."

Tacit in this understanding of non-violence is understanding our responsibility to be gentle to ourselves. Harming another harms our own spirit because we are each other to some degree. Others aside, Ahimsa means not harming YOU. I'm amazed how easy it seems not to hurt another but to be emotionally, spiritually, or physically brutal to ourselves. Remember, you are a part of the universe and deserve to be here, to be happy, and to have abundance. I believe we cannot truly love someone else until you honestly love yourself. You deserve this pleasure of peace and to truly appreciate it you must also work for all our brothers and sisters to achieve it.

This communal peace within yourself and with all others is enlightenment of the whole organism of humanity, an ideal that begins with a dream. And just like Dr. King's dream, will grow into a reality.

Peace begins now and it begins in your own heart. It spreads to your family, to friends, to community. It spreads to politicians and policies. It spreads across borders to other nations. It spreads into a consciousness of this generation of all living.

Dr. King pointed to this peace in the form of freedom when at the rousing finale of his I Have A Dream speech he said:

" And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Whatever your political preferences, may I encourage you to practice Ahimsa by supporting our new president Barack Obama and doing everything you can in your own heart to love yourself, your family, friends, your enemies, your communities, other nations and those brothers and sisters, those parts of yourself, whom you haven't meet yet. Practice compassion for those who get under your skin and find the universal lesson there.

I invite you to consider ways you can spread peace to yourself and to your immediate environment, your work, family, etc. Commit to doing something toward peace this week, today.

Let's practice peace in yoga this week. One of my teachers quotes her teacher who said, "Yoga is one of the most compassionate things we can do for others because suddenly we are not such a pain in the a#! to be around anymore."

See you in class.

Scott

Knowing

I'm thinking of that big part of our yoga practice, our souls. What is that, anyway? This week, as I was practicing yoga, I felt it again for the millionth time. That big, big, part which is right there, which is everything but which is the part that I can't really put a name to. It's not Scott. It's bigger.

And I guess this is what people have been trying to point to since there have been people. We all have such a grand language for it. Such a crisis over it. We go to war over it. We put each other in hell for it. Something that isn't a question. Something that's right there. I can reach out and touch it. And sometimes, I feel that you can too-- yours, yes but mine, too. As I'm teaching and I can see you getting into your groove, I see you breathing, I see the focus. Then I see it when things click, lights go on behind your eyes and I see you think to yourself, "There it is!"

And if you're like me, you get it and before you know it, it slips between your fingers and suddenly you're looking all over for it again, under the couch, behind the dresser, because you thought you knew what it was and what it looked like but now you're not so sure any more.

Then it seems to find you because it was there all the time, or you were there and you and it are all the same thing.

Pretty soon, I guess we get so comfortable with it--it's like Peter Pan stitching his shadow onto the sole of his shoe--it doesn't go away anymore. Maybe Patanjali, the ancient guru/yoga scholar who wrote the yoga sutras about finding that big part of yourself called Samadhi, maybe his first given name was Peter Pan until he was reborn with the truth that his sole is always there, right at his feet, and it was then that he was bestowed the honorable name, Patanjali. He learned and teaches that it is by singular concentration that we simply open our eyes to it. We learn to see again.

This is what our practice is about. This is why it's a practice, yes, because it is slippery. And because it feels really, really, good everytime we make that discovery, and even the journey leading up to it.

One of my guru teachers is poet Mary Oliver. She's a teacher whom I've never met but who has tought me so much by her simple and astounding words, written after she has paid a small amount of attention to this amazing heaven, the world around us. She wrote (in much fewer words than I, mind you) something about this practice of searching for the soul. Enjoy.

Bone

1.
Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape--

and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something--
for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer's head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only

two inches long--
and I thought: the soul
might be like this--
so hard, so necessary--

3.

yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn't see anything
through its dark-knit glare;

yet don't we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts--
certainties--
and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through
the pale-pink morning light.


I hope to see you in class.

Scott

Bramacharia: That Which Drives You To Your Hightest Truth

In the yoga sutras, there are 10 inner and outer observances known as the Yamas and Niyamas that act as guides for us as we search for our True Nature. One of these guides is the principle of Bramacharia; Brama, meaning truth and Charia, meaning that which drives you, like the word chariot or car.

Often this term refers to an act of celibacy, a choice to contain vital energy to help one drive themselves toward their spiritual goals. This isn't the only meaning of Bramacharia. The yoga tradition holds a deep respect for the householder and family life. Whether you live monastically or not, the principle is the same: To find your True Self, spend your energy on those things that you know drive you toward what's most important.

First, I believe that this means understanding our passions and controlling our indulgence of our sensual delights (food, sex, shopping, you know what your sensual delights are) so we don't get bogged down along our journey toward Self by something as simple as clogged arteries or credit card debt. But more importantly, I believe that this points toward finding those things that are the most important to us and bravely organizing your life to move in that direction.

It takes courage, focus, and energy to do those things that you know are so important to you and drive you toward your best self. For me, its making time to practice yoga, to play my sax, to maintain a great relationship with Celeste (my wife), and to meditate.

These things may or may not be what we need to earn a living and provide for ourselves and family. This is where it gets tricky. I'm sure we've all fallen prey to that dilemma of sacrificing what makes us feel alive for that which simply keeps us living. That's part of our journey: to find the balance and keep enough energy moving on both sides of the isle to keep the car moving generally down the middle of the road.

I invite you to pause for a moment and think about what are the things that drive you toward your highest self. What are the things that get in the way of this journey? What can you do to organize your life in order to consistently maintain that momentum of forward movement?

I hope that part of this involves practicing yoga.

I'll see you in class.

Scott

A New Dawn

I used to hate New Years. It was that unique time of the year when I looked back and saw all the things that I didn't accomplish and made a grand list of other things I knew I wasn't going to get around to doing. I used to feel beaten by this realization.

That was before I began to think of the new year like another form of yoga: a PRACTICE. Even the word practice suggests that what your doing is for no one but you. Practice says that if you did something you like than, great, you're learning and so keep going in that direction. Practice says that if something didn't work out so well, then, you learned something and now know what not to do and that knowledge is valuable. Either way, the idea of practice takes the pressure off and makes it more fun.

Each time we practice yoga we could compare the first OM to January and the last OM to December. Everything in between, like seasons, like new arrivals and deaths, comes and goes and is just one more shot at making sense of this spin on earth.

It's not neutral, though. It's actually a big deal. And what makes it a big deal is the fact that we are taking another shot at this. "Okay, this time I'm going to try it this way."

The New Year is another opportunity to come back and look at some things that we've previously closeted, like our yoga practice. One of my mentors, a dear friend and successful entrepreneur, Gary, would practice something I have often found useful. One day when he was feeling particularly overwhelmed, he said "Follow me!" and led me to his office. He then pulled out a cardboard box and shoved everything on his desk inside the box then threw the box into a corner. "Now, I feel a lot better. And when I come back to sort out that box in a month, most of it will have absolutely no importance!" Genius. Whether we flagrantly throw our business into a box and ignore it or just take another stab at something that didn't work before, New Years can be that time we take another look at some of that stuff we've closeted.

I want you to join me in saying good-bye to 2008 and hello to 2009. I want to create a ritual with you that will do this important but fun task justice. I want to add music to movement to poetry and see how the ancient practice of yoga brings new light to the dawn that is just before us.

Join me on Thursday morning, for sure, (see below) but all week as we'll be exploring this idea.

See you soon!

Scott

Keeping Quiet

It's late. I'm sitting here in my big, fat, green chair: the one that people will fight over if I die, still wrapped up in my coat and scarf. I've just come in from the cold on the longest night of the year. "Solstice" meaning the "sun stands still." It does so and in some sort of grace to us allows us to feel the cold, to draw inside and hibernate for a while. It makes us think and feel.

I'm thinking: as I was driving home alone along the eastern bench of our Salt Lake valley, looking over the street lamps and house lights, the glittering stars of our universe twinkling below me, I picked up my phone, and by pressing three buttons was able to talk to one of my most dear friends, Jason, in Dubai. It was less than a minute. He didn't have time except to say that it touched him to hear my voice. I was satisfied just hearing his. Alone and together--him in the blazing sun of a hot desert, me alone staring out the frosty windows of my snow-covered car into the night.

The poem, the yoga of words, that was read to me earlier tonight from the book whose pages open up automatically to this poem, the cause of the many nights it has rested face-down on the night stand holding it's special place open to be read again tomorrow, and which is really about us all sitting here reading this, is what I want to repeat as my offering for this solstice.

Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.

by Pablo Neruda

This week may be our opportunity to think about the creation of the Divine. As we are still, hibernate, and draw in, you may want to practice savasana for 45-60 minutes each day. I'm not joking. Just for this week. It'll change your life.

I'm out of town. I've arranged some great subs. See you next week.

Scott

Tuition

Almost exactly 10 years ago, I worked in a different town for a little loan company , processing loans. The man who owned this company (we'll call him "Jeff," mostly because that was his name) taught me many valuable things, many about people, others about myself. He taught me that even more important than processing people's loans, my real business was connecting to people, sort of like last weeks letter, Zen and the Art of Automobile Maintenance. Among other things, he taught me how to focus under pressure and how to organize around priority. He taught me principles that I've used everyday for a decade. He showed me parts of myself waiting to come out.

Everybody has their Kryptonite. Despite Jeff's shining attributes, he wasn't a very good business person. I grew very concerned the day that my paycheck bounced. When I approached him with this dilemma, he asserted that even though the company was in a little slump, everything would soon be ironed out.

It never was.

When I finally left the company, he owed me about $1,000 in wages--a lot of money for a starving student, right before Christmas, who needed to pay tuition for next semester's classes. Come to think of it, that's a lot of money, period.

I became bitter. I wasn't going to easily let this go. I called the Utah Labor Commission and filed a complaint. They began to subpoena Jeff to arrive in court. The process was unfruitful and painfully slow. I soon realized that I could easily gain my $1,000 back if I were only paid five cents every time I heard the Labor Commission say the phrase, "your file is under review and we'll notify you once we know anything different." This empty search continued for over two . . . (I pause for effect) YEARS. Each new attempt to resurrect my file brought more pain and frustration.

Then I had a dream. I dreamed that I met Jeff. I saw him not as the evil person I'd made him out to be but as just a simple dude with a five-O'clock shadow (that's the way he was in my dream). In my dream, I forgave him of the whole thing. Completely. In my dream, he didn't seemed very thankful or changed, nor did he seem really to even care, but that didn't matter because I had changed. Instead of angry and dark, I was light and free. So, I woke up that next morning let it go. I let it all go.

It took me several years to understand that even though Jeff wasn't a good business person and I had suffered because of it, he still taught me some very valuable things. I began to think that my lost $1,000 was a tuition paid for some very valuable lessons. Unbeknownst to me, my lessons weren't over yet.

I hadn't thought of Jeff and that incident for several years until one day earlier this year when something on the radio jolted my memory of Jeff. I didn't remember so much his faults but all the positive things he taught me. I felt not only complete, but like I'd even grown from the experience. Proud, I said to myself, "If I ever meet Jeff again, I promise that I will vocally forgive him and thank him for what he has taught me."

Something else I've learned: when you call Destiny out for a bare-knuckle brawl, know that she'll come. She'll test you just like you asked her to. She'll give you what you wanted but expect a little more blood--your blood.

Almost exactly an hour later I was relaxing at The Beehive Tea Room, nursing a cup of The Behive Tea RoomRaspberry Mint tea when over my shoulder I heard a disturbingly familiar voice. I didn't have to turn my head to know that it was Jeff. It was 10 years later, a different town, in an entirely different context and I already promised Destiny that I'd forgive him.

I sat there in a cold sweat. Now that it came to it, I didn't know that I go through with it. I hadn't seen him in several years. I'd had even subpoenaed him in court. He started to get up to leave. If I was going to act, it had to be now.

I took a deep breath, stood up, and did it. I reintroduced myself and reminded him how he had hurt me and with a genuine smile, told him, " but you know what? I forgive you." I also explained all the things that I learned from him. He stood there stunned. He didn't know what to say. He made no apologies. He didn't try to explain. He simply told me that I made his day. I made mine, too.

And no, he didn't write me out a check for $1,000.

I learned that intentions are powerful. Our yoga practice is one way to act upon the privilege of dancing with Destiny. With clarity and self-awareness, we can see through the muddy waters toward the lotus.