Escape from Wall Street
Madelana and Alan on the set
You may be reading this newsletter from your phone or your tablet. Maybe you choose to read from your mobile device because it’s easier, it’s quicker, or because you are too busy to sit at a desk and open a laptop.
You may be one of the growing group of Baby Boomers who live on the edge, busy chewing the big bite of life that you took all those years ago. Maybe, you are not a Baby Boomer at all. Maybe you are a Gen-X’er (a Baby Buster) and you were among the group that got swept along by the massive current of the Boom. Technology is a more natural part of your life because it existed, for the most part, during your life. And you use it more comfortably than do your Boomer predecessors, however you too are chewing on those big bites that you took way back … when you were told that more is better. And way more is way better!
This is the reason that I am now offering the mobile version of my e-letter. It is also the reason that I am offering my NEW APP to make connecting easier for us. If you haven’t yet downloaded my app, please click that link and get the free Mad Mat Yoga App from Google Play or the App Store. Then you can participate in my Loyalty Program and get your card stamped for each private session or each class that you take.
Get 11 stamps and get 20% off your next private session or class with me!
You see, I too, am one of those Baby Boomers, born just on the edge of this nearly 2 decade period from 1946-1964. I grew up believing that I could have it all. Why choose one thing when the “everything” choice was the most logical option? For the longest time, the gift of stamina and strength that I possessed seemed enough to carry me from one day’s big bite through the next.
Recently I had the fun privilege and opportunity to do an impromptu MadMat Salon with a new friend who is an icon in the world of YouTube talk shows. My friend, Alan Steinfeld, is the host of his New Realities Program and a master interviewer. We had a fun time together interviewing each other and getting to know each other. The experience of the interview as well as the edit process gave me lots of time to reflect on some of those years about which Alan and I chatted. Remembering my history gave me a great perspective on the big bites I took, the feelings of having too big a bite and not being able to enjoy and savor the tastes the desire for simplicity that came later. Less truly is more.
My old life as a C.P.A. working on Wall Street was one of the topics that Alan asked me about. I have reflected on how I was impacted by the energy of New York City in those early years of my young adulthood from time to time and I wonder if the idea that I could have it all or anything that I wanted if I just worked harderreally hurt me by causing me to take too many big bites and not leave enough time to chew slowly and swallow carefully allowing my tastebuds to enjoy the process of ingesting life. This is a fundamental concept of Ayurveda. The Ayurvedic approach to a healthy life incorporates the concept that ingesting is not only done by our mouth and our tastebuds when we eat food.
We ingest life through every sense that we possess. We ingest through our eyes with what we choose to watch. We ingest through our ears with what we are exposed to hearing. We ingest through our minds with what we think and what we learn and what we believe. What we believe also impacts our hearts. We are ingesting constantly and this is why it is so critical to give ourselves moments of abstinence from the stimulation of ingesting.
We stay in balance by offering ourselves the quiet of silence, the space of witnessing in meditation, the shifting of energy through our pranayama practices and through our physical body practices of movement and asana, receiving healing work and energy work and massage, retreating to quiet, beautiful, healing places in nature, through seasonal cleanses and more…
In Alan’s interview, I mentioned the movie The Wolf of Wall Street and I related to how absolutely horrible that life was. Recently I watched the movie The Big Short, yet another rendition of how the greed of the financial markets and Wall Street created pain and suffering and destruction in the lives of many. As one who escaped, I watched these movies in horror because I know the truth of these stories.
I consider myself lucky, having had a force so big that pushed me out of that world with an urgency that I could not resist with my intellect or my will. I believe with all my heart that there are going to be more movies telling more stories like these because there is so much greed and so much fear and so much ignorance on the planet that there are many more lessons for humans to learn and much resistance to the learning.
I also believe that there are other ways to live happy, fulfilling, successful lives that are outside of the well-tread paths of the current paradigm. I devote myself to studying this truth. I receive the great teachers who come along on my path and who believe the same thing and who help me to tweak my knowledge and my perspective and to refine my vision. This is what helps me to grow in wisdom.
In the end, the only real work is the work of self-discovery. The most important work that I can do is the work I do on myself. The highest way that I can help you or anyone is by learning about me, by coming to the realization of me. When I do the work on me, all that are connected to me gain the benefit.
We are a matrix. We are a network of interconnected energies. Healing the threads of connection within and without the self is the greatest healing that anyone can accomplish.
I offer my stories to you knowing that my sharing heals me and that helps to heal you. My stories rectify the frays in my matrix and when my threads of light are coherent, then my being is coherent. When the threads of light connecting my mass/ my being/ my energy to the next mass/ the next being/ the next energy become smooth and shine bright, coherence is created in that matrix.
I have access to myself and thereby to all with which I am connected. You have access to yourself and all of your connections and by healing your fraying threads, you offer yourself whole and coherent to the world.
One thread made coherent is immensely powerful. When all the threads are made coherent, our light shines cleanly and purely and radiantly.
If I do nothing else in my life, but repair the tears and smooth the frays of my own network, I will have lived a valuable and worthwhile story. Maybe that is a big enough bite for anyone.
About the Author:
Madelana Ferrara is a teacher of Yoga and a student and practitioner of its related disciplines of Meditation and Ayurveda.