After a few too many late nights out, many people in the gay community begin to feel that they are ready for a new routine. Within the course of a year, I went from being lost in a college daze to feeding orphanages one pair of yoga pants at a time. This story is about how I woke up and moved on.
FAST COMPANY MAGAZINE's Suzy Evans reports on the big business of yoga.
September is National Yoga Month, when twisting, toe-touching yogis will roll out their mats at more than 1,500 free classes and events across America. Here's a look at the vital stats of this 5,000-year-old practice from the East turned booming business in the West.
Americans spend more than $5.7 BILLION A YEAR on yoga classes and products annually, up 87% since 2004.
The average cost of a YOGA CLASS is $12.
Lululemon Athletica, the world's biggest yoga-inspired retailer, posted $452.9 million in net revenue for fiscal 2009, up 28% from 2008. Its stores generate an average of $1,800 in sales per square foot, about three times as much as apparel retailer J.Crew.
ON JUNE 22, New York's Central Park hosted the largest-ever group yoga session, with more than 10,000 people gathered on the GREAT LAWN.
For his 1967 film "Easy Come, Easy Go," ELVIS Presley recorded the song "Yoga Is as Yoga Does." Other artists who have recorded songs with "Yoga" in the title: Lupe Fiasco ("Yoga Flame"), CSS ("Jager Yoga"), and the Mountain Goats ("Yoga").
BIKRAM CHOUDHURY, father of a fast-growing style of yoga done in rooms heated to105°F, copyrighted his script of 26 poses in 2002. In response, a team of 100 historians & scientists in India has documented nearly 1,500 poses recorded in ancient texts in an effort to stop people from patenting them.
71% of American yoga practitioners are college educated, compared with just 30% of the overall population. 44% have household incomes of $75,000 OR MORE, compared with 32% of the overall population.
108 is a sacred number in yoga and in Hinduism. For instance, the body is said to have 108marma points (sacred spots in the body that can be stimulated during yoga).
Forms of yoga have been practiced in India for at least 5,000 YEARS. More than 5,500 yoga-related injuries were treated in the U.S. in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available.
Nearly 16 MILLION adults in the U.S. practice yoga. 72% of them are Women.
THREE-QUARTERS of practitioners in the U.S. have been doing yoga for 5 years or less.
Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/148/om.html
{We have ads and subscriptions totaling $1,200 of the $4,600 needed to print the next issue of MyOutSpirit-Austin Magazine, which is supposed to go to press next week. That is just to cover production costs - not profit. Please subscribe or advertise if you can.}
This year has been so challenging for me - personally and for my work on MyOutSpirit.com and the first MyOutSpirit Magazine - that I've started to wonder if the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community is really interested in spirituality.
Things don't seem to be any better now than when 130 gay male spiritual leaders convened the Gay Spirit Culture Summit in 2004 to consider how to involve more gay people in their body/mind/spirit work. We wanted our businesses and organizations to thrive and provide tools and guidance that shifted gay culture toward deeper connection, compassion and inner transformation.
That summit was more than six years ago, now, and not much has changed.
My understanding is that most of those leaders, teachers, authors, ministers and activists are still struggling - as I am - to make ends meet.
Gay culture as a whole has not become any less hedonistic, materialistic or segregated.
We are failing.
The question is "Why?"
Certainly a large part of the problem lies with those of us working in the field of LGBT-affirming body/mind/spirit. Just because we work in spiritual fields doesn't make us any less ego-driven, in general, and, in my experience, that manifests in two ways.
First, those of us working in the field tend to have tunnel-vision - that is, we are so passionate and deeply involved in our own work that we don't pay attention to what other people are doing, even when they're trying to help us.
For example, after the summit, I created MyOutSpirit.com, now the #1 social networking website for spiritual LGBTQ people with a free resource directory. The current version of the site launched in late 2007, and I still can't get most people in the field to return emails or phone calls. Even most of the leaders from the summit that inspired me to create the site haven't listed their resources in the Directory of LGBT-Affirming Body, Mind, Spirit Resources. They are deeply engaged in their own work and their own small communities of students, and many of them have not been able to spare the time, attention and money to join MyOutSpirit or support the Magazine I created to help them grow their work.
Ego is limiting our gay spirituality movement in another way, and that is less innocent. We do not support the work of others because it is not ours.
"Not ours" in the sense that because we didn't have a hand in its creation, that project is unworthy of our support or attention. "Not ours" often means "not my belief system," too - for example, causes specifically for gay Christians get far more support than interfaith causes like MyOutSpirit. People are more inclined to support causes that spread a shared doctrine (whereas MyOutSpirit offers a connection channel for all belief systems, not any particular one). Just being an LGBT-affirming church doesn't necessarily mean you want to be listed on the same site as yoga teachers and intuitives.
I have approached other non-profit LGBT spiritual resource directory projects to offer help, technical support, website hosting and partnership and been turned down flat because they see MyOutSpirit as competition - "not ours."
One minister called to ask for MyOutSpirit to sponsor an event and revealed he'd been watching the site for over a year, without ever joining or registering his LGBT-affirming church in the Directory or even linking to it from his own website.
Nobody seems to want to help anybody.
There are other issues holding us back as well, of course. For instance, many LGBT-affirming spiritual leaders are focused solely on winning equal rights, respect and recognition for queer people, and view any other goal - even helping LBGT people live their best gay lives - as less-important. We have wonderful organizations leading that work, but most of them don't even respond to emails, appeals, or link to MyOutSpirit.com (or any resources outside their faith tradition or social justice work).
Many of us in the field also have issues with money. Many of us struggle financially, but what's really problematic is the pervasive idea that we SHOULD struggle financially because we do spiritual work. "Attachment to money is the root of all evil" may be true, but money itself is an important means of getting things done, and we need more of it spent on our goals if we want to shift gay culture.
Lots of people in the field look down on MyOutSpirit because I didn't set it up as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. It's a for-profit company. Granted, there's no profit - I've spent years and more than $50,000 of my own and borrowed money on the project, lost my house to foreclosure, and don't know how I'm paying rent next month. Even though I've lost my shirt on the project, other people won't support it because there might BE a profit someday? I envision a strong, profitable company that can do important, culture-shifting work in the LGBTQ community because it has the financial means to create media and events that no one else could afford.
But the problem is also in the LGBT community itself.
Many of the LGBTQ people I know are actively spiritual, and many others are spiritually curious, and every one wants to achieve happiness and reduce their suffering. In the USA alone, LGBT people spend something like $1.5 Billion a year on body/mind/spirit and green living products and services. But it seems we often hesitate to spend money on those things when they are made specifically for us.
It's the opposite of how marketing usually works. Why don't the spiritual books and workshops and classes created just for LGBT people SELL OUT? There is no community in the country more in need, and capable, of buying and attending such things. Studies show that an overwhelming percentage of gay and lesbian consumers prefer to buy from companies that support the community, but strangely, not in this field. They'll spend thousands for a gay or lesbian cruise, but won't spend $25 on a subscription to MyOutSpirit or White Crane Journal.
Is it a manifestation of internalized homophobia? We know how deeply ingrained the idea is that LGBT aren't spiritual. Maybe on some level, LGBT people don't think that the LGBT leaders providing such resources have the same deep understanding of an Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson or Pema Chodron? (We also have to accept the possibility that our offerings are not of the same quality, but so much of that is because of a lack of money that it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg situation.)
But maybe there is also ambivalence about our work because we are trying to shift individual lives and gay culture in general in a different direction. Gay people are comfortable with the way things are; they know how to behave within the context of current culture.
Yesterday, I was emailing with the founder of a new hook-up website for men-who-have-sex-with-men. They only launched the site a week ago and already have thousands more members than MyOutSpirit.com, all from a few ads on Facebook and word of mouth. In a week.
Gay men know about sex. They're comfortable with hooking-up. And they'll join any site that promises to facilitate that?
I asked the founder of that website if he had any advice for me regarding MyOutSpirit.com, and he wrote, "The only advice I would give is to offer something that people need AND want... Other than that, have someone show some wee-wee on the site."
He sparks a fundamental question, and it has come up in discussions with leaders in the field of LGBT spirituality over and over again:
What if gay folks really just aren't that interested? A dear friend of mine has been a leader in this field for 30 years and, while he remains my biggest champion and supporter (other than my mom), he has hope but no faith in the success of our movement to help gay people and shift gay culture. His experience is that the community doesn't show up to support this kind of work no matter how important the work or who's doing it.
In creating MyOutSpirit.com and publishing MyOutSpirit-Austin Magazine (and planning to publish it in 100 cities around the USA), my assumption was that those of us working in the field WERE offering products and services that LGBTs want. I assumed that the problem was that there was no marketing channel to introduce LGBT people to such work - so I made one.
Maybe I was wrong.
Of my own 1,200 Facebook friends, all of them either LGBT or ally, so far only 8 have pre-ordered the next issue of MyOutSpirit Magazine to help defray the cost of publishing, despite multiple requests. Many of my friends lead LGBT-affirming spiritual organizations and communities, but few of them have sent out my appeal for help. There are only three paid ads in this issue of the magazine so far, even though we've contacted thousands of businesses, organizations and practitioners that would be served by advertising.
I'm forced to consider the possibility that I have dedicated my life to doing work that isn't wanted.
I love doing it, and if the project was properly supported, it would make an amazing difference in millions of lives. But it's been YEARS now, and nothing's changing. Even the people I created all this for - LGBT-affirming body/mind/spirit professionals - are still not on board. Even people who know and love me and believe in what I do aren't representing. Frankly, I'm wondering if it's time to give up.
But I also remember how moved people were by the Magazine's launch party featuring a "MyOutSpirit Address" by Bishop Gene Robinson in the Texas State Capitol Rotunda.
.
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I remember the young man who phoned me, crying with gratitude because he had quit meth when he found MyOutSpirit's "Remember Who You Want to Be" photo campaign.
.
.
.
I remember how lonely it is to think there's no one else out there like you, and how excited LGBT people are when they discover and join MyOutSpirit.com. They always email me with such joy and gratitude. They are happy to find a gay social networking site that speaks to their Highest Self.
I don't know what the future holds. You know, when I wrote the handbook for 21st Century LGBT activism, Shirt of Flame ("How to Win Gay Rights"), I took the name "Ko Imani," which means "revolutionary faith."
I still have faith in the "THEN." IF the community of leaders in the field and spiritual LGBT people support MyOutSpirit, THEN the project will be able to do great things to help the world.
It's the "IF" I'm not sure about.
A couple of years ago, I was driving Reggie Ray
from one retreat center to another in the New York/Boston area. Reggie
is a meditation teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition with whom I
have been studying closely for the past 7 years. When I heard he needed
a driver, I thought it would be a good chance to spend some one-on-one
time with him, in a closed situation—a vehicle—and to pummel him with
questions.
As we were leaving the Garrison Institute to drive to a E-Vam, a small retreat center devoted to the work of Traleg Rinpoche, I asked a live receptionist at Garrison for directions. Much to my relief, they were incredibly simple and straightforward. (The truth is that even though I volunteered to be Reggie’s driver, I actually have very little confidence behind the wheel; you might say driving is one of my “inferior functions”.) As we got into the car, I exclaimed to Reggie that this drive was going to be easy: just one turn and we would be on the expressway to our destination.
When I said this, Reggie looked at me and said, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“Whatever,” I thought, “Reggie is just being negative.” Well, you guessed it—after driving for only 2 miles, we started hearing a strange thump, thump, thump. We had somehow developed a flat tire. I remembered his comment about “not being so sure” and asked him if he had had a premonition or something. He said, “No, you just sounded awfully confident.” Well, now I was panic-stricken and anxious. (Here I have the meditation master in a rental car with a flat tire and we are stuck on the side of the road!) But Reggie just looked at me, smiled, and said, “Don’t worry, I live for this kind of thing.”
Well, he might have enjoyed the unanticipated newness of the experience, but for me it was uncomfortable and stressful. And this is the same way I felt after I wrote my first (and only) “manifesto” a few weeks ago, on the topic of “manifestation” (see “Manifestation Manifesto”). After I confidently posted that entry, which extolls the virtues of listening to one’s inner voice and claims that following its directives is the key to creating, I was immediately plunged into a period in which I couldn’t hear any inner guidance at all. Nothing. Static. It was like a sudden flat tire inside.
Now, there were outer causes. In January and February, Sounds True had very disappointing top line sales due to the overall contraction in the retail marketplace, and we were having some issues with our line of credit (which, fortunately, have since been resolved). What I noticed was that my inner system was “jammed up” in a flight or fight response, and in that state, the last thing I could do was tune in and hear my inner voice clearly. And yet, I had just written a “Manifesto” that made it sound like listening to one’s inner voice and following its call is as simple as driving a few miles and making one turn onto an expressway.
During this period of hearing static inside, I asked myself two critical questions:
Here is what I discovered:
[click here to keep reading Tami Simon's "Confession"]
[Many of us who actually work in the field of LGBTspirituality and personal development have issues around asking for money.
Sasha Dichter wrote a wonderful manifesto about it, inspired by Seth Godin's new book, TRIBES. I was really moved by this and want to share it with you.
Doesn't it make you wanna speak up a little louder, a little clearer, for your vision?
I know it makes me really excited to get more people involved in the vision we're manifesting over at MyOutSpirit.com! Anyway, here it is. Let me know what you think. Love, Clayton]
IN DEFENSE OF RAISING MONEY: A MANIFESTO FOR NONPROFIT CEOS
I’m sick of apologizing for being in charge of raising money.
I work at a great nonprofit organization (1) that is doing great things in the world, one that’s attacking daunting problems in a powerful new way. I believe in what we do, and think that we may be catalyzing a shift in how the world fights poverty.
So why did one of my mentors – someone with a lot of experience in the non-profit and public sector – tell me not to take this job? “Be careful,” he said, “You’ll get pigeon-holed. Once a fundraiser, always a fundraiser.”
He misunderstood what job I was taking.
Look around you at great leaders who you know or respect. What do they spend their time doing? They are infused with drive, passion, vision, commitment, and energy. They walk through the world dissatisfied with the status quo. They talk to anyone who will listen about the change they want to see the world. And they build a team and an organization that is empowered to make that change.
How good is your idea? How important is your cause? Important enough that you’ve given up another life to lead this life. You’ve given up another job, another steady paycheck, another bigger paycheck to do this all day long, every day, for years if not for decades, to make a change in the world and to right a wrong.
How much is your time worth? Start at the low end: if, instead, you had worked at a big company or started your own company or worked at an investment bank or a consulting firm, how much money would the world pay you for your skills? A few hundred thousand dollars? A few million dollars?
Collaboration doesn't work, says an intriguing new article, "What's Next: The Idiocy of Crowds" in Inc. magazine.
Things only get worse when a team is charged with actually making a decision. One of the biggest problems is that it's easy for a few members of a group who think the same way--but who may be flat-out wrong--to sway the opinions of others. Consensus steadily grows until a majority is reached, at which point even people who have confidence in their dissenting, higher-quality opinion are likely to bow to the group.
On September 25, Mike Syers, a partner at Ernst & Young, posted "Making It Real," an Advocate.com exclusive. The piece explains that there has been an unprecedented tenfold increase in major U.S. companies receiving 100% on the 2006 Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index. Syers says that 138 major companies qualify for that distinction.
This article in EDGE Boston profiles Cholene Espinoza, whose spiritual service is an excellent example for any LGBT person who really wants to create change in the minds and hearts of straight America.
After Hurricane Katrina hit, Espinoza and her partner, Ellen Ratner, traveled to the Gulf Coast to help the victims. Moved by her experience to do even more to help, Espinoza wrote Through the Eye of the Storm (Chelsea Green, 2006), a memoir of their trip that laments not only the devastation of the hurricane itself, but also the difficult path to recovery.
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