Buh Bye Saturn

Disruption.

The calm before the storm, or am I in the eye?

Settling in.

...words that come to me as I lay in bed awake, one of the more creative and poetic insomniac experiences I've had in a while. This summer and even this year has been an intense one. And I hate it when people say that. Intense? In what way? How? Don't you still have a roof over your head and food to eat? What could you really have to complain about?

I see forest fires rage up the west coast, hurricanes ravaging the east coast, our current political situation in shambles - and I'm sitting here in my beautiful flow space in San Diego, with little more than a heatwave to complain about.

But still, life has been so intense lately! Why?

Is it the solar eclipse? The full moon? Is mercury in retrograde? Can I blame it on the stars?

Well I kind of want to. I think maybe I am experiencing the END of my Saturn Return. So many people talk about the Saturn Return - the beginning of it. When your life gets disrupted in a way that you can only really blame on that crazy planet with all of those rings in the sky. You hear of people around the age of thirty changing careers, lifestyles, marriages, divorces, traveling the word, giving away all of their worldly possessions - that kind of thing. But what about when Saturn leaves the location it was when you were born, the same location it comes back to every 27 - 32 years. Buh bye. "There you are" says Saturn, "I just messed up everything you thought you knew about your life and here I go rotating through the universe for you to figure it out, buh bye."

And here I am, settling into the next phase of my life - waving Saturn goodbye.

It's definitely not been as disruptive as when Saturn showed up. THAT was crazy sauce. But this summer and even most of this year has been confusing. And I couldn't figure out exactly why until recently. 

It has a lot to do with pressure. Pressure to do adult things like save money and have a family, heaven forbid maybe even buy a house one day. I definitely want to have a family - and that doesn't feel pressured upon me. It feels natural. I have felt that way for as long as I can remember. And I am so in love with Bags, he is going to be an amazing dad one day. The other parts though - about saving money, having enough to provide for the family with performer careers - those are the societal pressures that go along with growing up.

Next ingredient for Valentina-slightly-melts-down-over-every-little-thing-summer-of-2017 is not having a tour or a large contract to work. Whoa. That felt weird. That was confusing. Yes we had work, we're doing pretty good...we're keeping busy and performing and teaching quite a lot. But nothing like doing 4-5 shows a day for umpteen amount of days in a row or touring around the country or the world. For 4 or 5 years now every summer I've done either one or the other - tour or contract. This summer, neither! Just sitting with that. Just sitting with anything, in any amount of stillness / stationary-ness is extremely challenging for me and probably exactly what I need. 

We've also said we're not going to travel as much so we can save some money (see wanting to have a family above) BUT we still traveled quite a bit this year: Hawaii, Australia, St Louis, Boston and we're about to do Portland, NY and Seattle. Not going to travel...psssshhhh...yeahhhhhh right! That's also been confusing. Because I love traveling and so does Bags.It feels so right and exactly what we should be doing. To not travel feels like going against the natural grain of our lives. But we don't have enough money to travel AND save money (noticing a pattern here?) And also what's confusing about all of this is that when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I don't say I'm not going to travel but then still travel...kind of. Weird. Not like me.

I also tried to step back a bit from producing as many large scale shows and to focus on the Twisted Orbit business. I think it's finally starting to pay off. A couple things have come up and are on the horizon that make it seem like we're going into the direction we'd like to be. Which has contributed to me feeling a bit better about this decision. 

I have felt such joy, such immense pleasure from producing the shows I have created in San Diego. The feedback from the audiences, the students, the performers and the venues we've worked with are nothing short of fantastic. THAT is what I should be doing - things that give me beautiful, uplifting, inspiring feedback. But, at the same time DAMN do those shows take a lot of energy, work, time, stress and sometimes aren't the most profitable - especially when you count the hours upon hours of time put into them. Trying to move towards working smarter not harder. And producing generally doesn't fit into that category. But it feels WEIRD to not do something I am so good at, something I was obviously meant to do and something that brings so many people around me so much joy. Shifting my focus, changing my day to day, changing my habits - after about 6 years of this formula - has been really challenging.

With this confusion, this shift, this self-directed change comes a little bit of reverb. These disruptions have been felt in other areas of my life that I didn't think would be affected. I found myself in constant conversations with people. Having to talk to people around me about tough or confrontational things A LOT. Like for months on end. I've had to engage in these types of communications with members of both my troupes and the members of my community living space. Some of the topics weren't directly affected by/with me but as the leader of these groups, I have chosen the mediator role. I have chosen the role of holding space for others. 

I'm tired. And I feel like I failed multiple times.

Throughout my life I have struggled with communicating in a kind / compassionate way. I am very direct and honest. Maybe even harsh sometimes. I have been working on this aspect of myself since starting the Hoop Unit (8 years ago) and learned early on how important different communication styles are. As I leader I have taken on all kinds of both good and bad things. Responsibilities and standards that are quite tough to uphold for myself. The benefits of leadership outweigh the hardships by far, but this summer it's felt like I have had to deal with the tough stuff a lot more than normal. I find myself struggling to communicate with compassion, crying over and over about these failures and beating myself up about them. I find myself picking up the book 'Non Violent Communication' for the third time in the last decade. How many times must I learn this lesson? It's interesting because I have focused on this aspect of myself a lot in the past, but it's hard to constantly, continually keep working hard on it forever. Sometimes it goes a bit by the wayside. Like you know in the back of your head you have an issue with a certain part of yourself, you don't keep it in the forefront ALL of the time. That would be exhausting. But then things come up that challenge that aspect of you, and maybe you haven't focused on it in a while so then you slip up again. Grrr. 

I have written in a journal consistently for the first time since I can remember. It's helped a lot. I can't always unload everything onto Bags all of the time. Sometimes the pages of my journal need to get the brunt of it. 

Some things Donna Farhi talks about in her book "Bringing Yoga to Life" that my dear friend and dance sister/YTT coach Lisa Yeme recommended to me has helped me think about these things. The idea of compassion for everyone, the connectedness, unity and in all actuality sameness that we all are. If someone is pissing me off, I really need to think about how we are actually the same person. To see the good in them. They are just doing their best, just like me. Farhi talks about 4 recommendations from Patanjali (the man associated with the 196 Yoga Sutras):

1) Friendliness toward the joyful 2) Compassion for those who are suffering 3) Celebrating the good in others 4) Remaining impartial to the faults and imperfections of others (Yoga-Sutra I.33)

Also, the idea of not agonizing over every mistake but having a sense of humor about them and to realize that I am trying my best. Farhi says:

"We might also develop a sense of humor so that we can laugh at ourselves when we fall down and take our shambling efforts, not as a sign of personal failure, but as proof of the authenticity of our endeavor."

I tend to see each slip up as a complete failure and get really down, really hard on myself. I am such a perfectionist. Can't I just be good at everything?! Can't I be talented, an amazing performer, a natural teacher, successful, abundant, a doting wife, an excellent leader, a careful communicator - all the things?! Oh wait. That is unrealistic and just plain silly. I am not perfect. I never will be. And how boring would life be if I were? 

So circling back to the beginning of this post, how things really aren't that bad compared to what is happening in the whole wide world. I really can't complain - true. But I do believe it is important for me to realize and recognize what's going on with me and talk about it. Write about it. Process it. Try not to complain, of course, and move from a place of complete gratitude as much as possible. I don't want to dismiss what I am experiencing but I also want to know that in the grand scheme of things, life is pretty sweet.