May I Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Yoga, and Changing My Mind
Cyndi Lee
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 0142180424
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
For all her wisdom as a teacher, Cyndi Lee understood intuitively that she still had a lot to learn. In spite of her success in physically demanding professions - dancer, choreographer, and yoga teacher - Lee was caught in a lifelong cycle of repetitive self-judgment about her body. Instead of the radical contentment expected in international yoga teachers, she realised that hating her body was a form of suffering, which was infecting her closest relationships - including her relationship to herself. Inspired by the honesty and vulnerability of her students, Lee embarked on a journey of self-discovery that led her outward - from the sacred sites of the parched Indian countryside to the center of the 2011 earthquake in Japan - and inward, to seek the counsel of wise women, friends and strangers both. Applying the ancient Buddhist practice of loving-kindness meditation to herself, Lee learned that compassion is the only antidote to hatred, thereby healing her heart and changing her mind. With prose as agile as the yoga sequences she creates, May I Be Happy gives voice to Lee's belief that every life arises, abides, and ultimately dissolves. By becoming her own best student, Lee internalizes the strength, stability, and clarity she imparts in her Buddhist-inspired yoga classes.
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had tried to feel better by changing my body, looking everywhere for answers except for inside my head. Does any of this feel familiar? I know I’m not the only one who has been living with a hardhearted attitude toward herself. I know this because I hear it every day from my female yoga students. When they are not on the yoga mat, these smart women happen to be busy working as corporate executives and college professors and magazine editors and clothing designers and retail shop owners and app
end up with clumps of unprocessed emotion. Sadness won’t temper the anger, kindness won’t quiet the boss of the brain, the fragrance of delight won’t seduce the fear. What do you get in the end? Nothing. Nothing solid, that is. Just a gut knowing that everything is really a ’tween, anyway. This knowing, which helps you stay the course no matter what, is the knowing that arises from abiding. My mom takes her time pushing her rollator onto the industrial-sized elevator in her assisted-living home
in these super-tight tank tops, but even those girls, if they’re wearing a bra, they have a little back fat because their clothes are too tight.” I know exactly what she’s talking about, so I jump in. “It seems to me that some women don’t care. They don’t care if their back fat shows or their muffin tops show. I guess they either think that’s sexy or that it’s just normal or they say sure there’s a little ‘pineapple’ there because that’s your bra, like it’s no big deal. But I always had this
boxes of tissues on hand. Maitri uses the concentration that has been developed from basic mindfulness meditation to focus on positivity toward others. The scripture instructs the practitioner to cultivate specific thoughts of goodwill, compassion, and unconditional friendliness toward all living beings everywhere, without exception. You learn to hold your attention on these thoughts with a soft heart, which the scripture calls a practice of mindfulness and sublime abiding. The instruction I had
difficult, and neutral people many times. I definitely have a sense that practicing Maitri has created loving imprints within me. But it was not the same as coming right out and doing the practice for myself. How had I never thought of that before? A bodhisattva must work for her own liberation, too. We talked about other things, her need to do more exercise now that she was over sixty, and how wonderful it would be if I could visit her nunnery in India. Maybe I could give the nuns a yoga