Day 66: Sanieh

December 5, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“…it’s most important for me to continue to be inspired by diving in — even if it’s only just 10 minutes a day – into something that I absolutely love, something that absolutely gives me an abundance of joy.  Because it’s from those moments — as short as they may be and as short as they have to be on some days — where that inspiration sort of stirs within, but that will continue to build.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much for agreeing to join us today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Sanieh: Sure.  My name is Sanieh, and I am a yoga teacher based out of Austin, Texas, here in the U.S.,  of course.

Toni: Well Sanieh, thank you so very much.  I want you to think about that word inspiration and — whether it’s in your professional life or in your personal life — who do you inspire and how do you go about that?

Sanieh: Who do I inspire?  Well, my intention is to inspire anybody whose path I am so blessed to be able to cross myself.  These days I do that through the blessing that is teaching yoga which is, for me, much deeper than the craziness that we can potentially come into as far as the physical form in a body.  I also like to think that I am able to inspire through music as well, being a musician, a singer and songwriter, and guitar player, as well.

Toni: Oh, that’s fantastic!  Do you get the opportunity to play for others, perform for others?

Sanieh: I do.  Well, I do so in class a lot of times at the end of class, and I also play a few Eastern instruments as well.  I don’t so much look at it as performing during those times, but more so as a vehicle to be able to express the depth of my experience, the depth of my spiritual practice through the evolution of my living yoga practice.  So yeah, I do that often in classes actually, so it’s good.

Toni: How would the yoga, teaching yoga, come into play?  How does that, from your perspective, inspire others?

Sanieh: Well, it’s a really great question.  I think it’s a process for us all.  Initially, I came to yoga for the strength, for the flexibility, of course for the esthetic.  There’s so much more behind the word yoga to me and especially when it comes to living yoga.  I think there is this idea in our society that as far as practice, and when it comes to yoga, that it’s showing up to the mat and it is a practice of breath work, often of the physical form, of meditative flow if you will.

But I think really the practice comes to play long after we roll up the mat.  Can we take these teachings of patience, of compassion, of forgiveness, of acceptance, of showing up – the discipline to show up and to continue to develop in the process — long after we roll up the mat, bringing it into our homes, into our lives with our families, into our workplace?  So it’s ongoing.

Toni: I wasn’t aware of what the difference of living yoga was, and you’ve described that beautifully.  When you are teaching yoga, living yoga, how do you think that people — when you are inspiring them during this process — how do you think it helps them to explore their own potential?

Sanieh: Gosh, you have such great questions!  You know, there is a probably a different answer for everybody and, again, I think it’s an ongoing process.  I think there’s enough room for us to be able to explore; it’s like the law of biofeedback.  We have to move.  We have to do something to get a response, and sometimes that response isn’t favorable, it’s not desirable; but it’s better than standing still and being paralyzed and getting nothing in return.

So sometimes we have to move in the direction to realize it’s the wrong direction, in fact, so that we can turn around and go in a different way.  And that’s no different in our body, it’s no different in our life, it’s no different in our goals and our dharmic path, our purpose here on this planet in this body.  So I think it’s a matter of trial and error, and I think that’s really where the growth is.

When I think about the people that inspire me, it’s not usually the person that had it easy and just made it with the first guess every time.  People that had to go through controversy, that had to sort of fall and pick themselves back up to march on forward.

Toni: That leads me into the next question, which is how do you stay inspired?  What do you need for inspiration?

Sanieh: I think it’s really important to continue; and actually I have to give credit to my own teacher, Shiva Rea, who is my primary yoga teacher.  She sat down with me not too long ago in Carola India.  I asked her this question or something very similar, and she looked at me and she said “You know, Sanieh, you need to do something every day.  Move into that space of whatever it is in your life that brings you complete contentment, that space where you lose track of all time, you merge into the object of your doing and become it.”

And for me, that’s nature.  I love nature.  That’s just universal love right there.  I love to sit down and write music and play my guitar and sing and chant over my shruti box.  I now have a dog, so I love to play with my dog.  I believe through experience that it’s most important for me to continue to be inspired by diving in — even if it’s only just 10 minutes a day – into something that I absolutely love, something that absolutely gives me an abundance of joy.  Because it’s from those moments — as short as they may be and as short as they have to be on some days — where that inspiration sort of stirs within, but that will continue to build.

Toni: How do you … when you’re in this space, as you said, and you move into that space and you’re sitting with nature and so forth, are there certain tools or methodologies that you also use to stay inspired and to be inspired?

Sanieh: There are a few things that I do.  I’m really big about writing down … I started this list years ago called Sanieh’s Top 100 — and I didn’t have 100 things on that list — but it was things that I wanted to do in my life.  And I have continued that list, and now I’m also a big goal setter; and I check in with my goals every couple weeks.

I think there’s power to putting things on paper.  No matter how silly they may seem, how crazy they may seem, put them down; and I do that often and I revisit them often.  And so I just like to bring myself into the space of moving into the sensation of how it would feel to already exist in those experiences, if it’s a travel experience or if it’s a new home experience, or a new way of life.  I know so many people that are stuck in an office in a cube and not very happy and dreaming of these things that they want to do, and I think it’s important to really move into that space as best as you can and remember that this experience in this lifetime in this body, there’s so much potential there.

So I think I heard Zig Zigler say once, “Whatever it is that you go to bed at night thinking about and dreaming about and whatever it is that you wake up in the morning is in fact what you were meant to do with your life.”  So I really just cosign on the idea that if it’s there and your heart is really in it, the little things that we do every day to keep us inspired towards that really is the best thing that we can do.

Toni: How does that then translate for you into exploring your own potential?

Sanieh: Yes, I knew that was coming … you know, it’s funny because it’s often easier to give honest heartfelt advice to somebody else than it is to actually drink that juice ourselves.  So you know, I’m no different than anybody else.  The difference between me and maybe the next person is in the work that I get to do in my life.  I get to say this stuff out loud over and over and over and over again.

And really, you teach what you need to know, so I get to all day long reinforce these sort of suggestions, if you will, so it’s constantly on my mind.  It’s constantly something that I’m talking about and constantly something that I’m thinking about and constantly something that I get to do if for no other reason if I want to be good at my life’s work.  But fortunately, my life’s work is a little bit deeper, and it’s definitely on the spiritual path, so I get to listen to that and answer that call over and over again constantly.

Toni: Sanieh, can you help me and others who are listening and reading this interview, can you just take a moment and explain to me what you mean by “you teach what you need to know”?  What does that mean to you?

Sanieh: Yeah, I heard that somewhere a long time ago in reference to yoga, and I have no idea who said it or where it came from — you teach what you need to know.  What I mean by that is, well for me – I have to just say that I’m simply speaking for myself.

I’ll teach a class and have a message behind the class and of course it was great, juicy, physical experience maybe, and somebody will come up and say “You know, I really was able to connect to what you were saying.  I love the message.  I love the inspiration behind it.”  And my response to that when asked is that, you know, I don’t pull this stuff from the sky.  I don’t wake up in the morning and say “Hmmm, I’m going to teach forgiveness or talk about disillusion.”  No, that is a reflection of something that is going on in my life or something that I need to merge with.

I think really when we move into that space of pure honesty and being able to live a life doing what it is that we love to do, what it is that we’re supposed to do, the only place to move from and the only place to teach from is a place of honesty and a place from real life experience and existence, and I think that makes us more touchable and more reachable.

So, when I say that — that we teach what we need to know — it’s maybe in the sense that whatever it is that we are seeking answers to, that’s what we’re spending our energy and our heart space exploring, and so that naturally — if we’re aligned with that, if we’re aligned with our dharmic path, our life purpose — I think naturally that’s the energy and the space that we move from to the space that we share from.

Toni: And how do you think that, as well, translates into the work that you do as far as inspiring others and helping them to explore that potential by you experiencing what you’re doing through inspiration and exploration – how does that translate into what you do for others?

Sanieh: Well, first I have to say that because it’s an honest expression, I think it translates as being touchable and being something that is possible and attainable.  We’re all doing the best that we know how to do in every moment, and sometimes we fail miserably; I know that I do.  We all have moments when we’re face down, tail up, and there’s nowhere else to fall.  For me, I hope that it translates in a way that it is possible to be a Westerner in this culture.

You know, we’re not sitting in a cave somewhere in India or your place of choice.  We are Americans and we are living in this society.  We do have responsibilities.  We do have chores and lives to tend to, but that that can be balanced in such a way where we live mindfully, we live in a place of moving towards expansion, moving towards personal growth at whatever cost.  We’re willing to move in that direction, and we realize also that sometimes it hurts, sometimes it’s ugly.  Sometimes looking in the mirror and seeing truth is quite ugly and painful, but we have to do that.  We have to see the darkness to be able to recognize the light.  We have to fall to be able to get up.

The moon, the sun balance one another.  And I think it’s important for us to be able to know that it’s all and permanent so those moments of pain or those moments of difficulty, those moments of challenge, it’s just a passing moment.  But likewise, the moments of pure joy, of bliss, of love, everything that we love, everything that we do, it’s all changing.  Everything is changing.  So I think it just comes back to being present and realizing that there is balance, but we have to be able to accept that which might not taste so good if you will to be able to recognize the other.

And it’s taken me a long time to really, really digest that; and I still, when I’m in those moments, I have to remind myself, and I have to do so often.  But I think out of 10 — if we were unaware of that completely — nine out of 10 times it’s through practice, and it is through practice, it is through the experiential plane, it’s through that we’re able to understand and soften into this practice, say even to seven out of 10 times.  Seven out of 10, you know, that’s a big difference, so we can’t expect to go from one direction to perfection.  It really is about a path of progress.

Toni: Well, absolutely, and I am so grateful to you for coming into this space with us and agreeing to give of your time today.  And the message that I’m hearing through your entire interview — as far as how you approach inspiration but also what you need — is that you have to move forward or you won’t know if it’s a good direction or a bad direction, but you must keep moving forward on so many levels.  And the fact that you shared your journey and this snapshot of time on how you approach this has been incredible, and I thank you so much for that.

Sanieh: Thank you; thank you so much.  I think it’s important to say, too, that sometimes in that moving, sometimes it’s not forward, sometimes it’s actually going backwards and even falling.  But at least you moved and were able to say, “Hey, this maybe isn’t the best direction or this isn’t the right direction or this isn’t the direction that I wanted to go”, but the fact that we actually picked up and moved, we get that feedback so that we can make better choices and continue on our path.  So, the idea is that we move forward but sometimes moving forward means actually falling backwards for a second, too, so that’s part of it.

Toni: Absolutely, absolutely, and thank you so very much.  It’s been a pleasure talking to you, and I hope that we get a chance to talk again soon.  Thank you so much for everything you’ve given us today.

Sanieh: Thank you.  Thanks for having me.

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For more information about Sanieh:  www.saniehyoga.com

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