Welcome to a love letter, a monthly publication from artist, writer and yoga teacher Colby Mackenzie featuring stories of my loving practices and support for yours. This year (Oct 2021 - Sept 2022), we’re practicing with The Artist’s Way. Thanks for being here.
Hello loves!
How are you doing?
No, really. How are you doing?
To paraphrase the inimitably tender Ocean Vuong, “the ‘how are you’ has failed us. Let us step out onto the fire escape, where you can tell me the truth?”
What is your truth today? Share it with someone, even if it’s just a whisper to the trees, an animal, or yourself.
It is May, the last full month of spring. Mary Oliver teaches us that spring is for hope, for growth. And I notice that more than usual this year as I take a plunge (read on for the news!) into new soil and pray for the nourishment necessary to grow in the grass on the other side.
May is also Mental Health Awareness Month, and I’m paying attention to that more than usual as all the change challenges my sanity and stability. The no rest! keep on! do more! worry drumbeat has been waking me before dawn more than once this past month. I pray that I can be gentle with myself, and recognize it all as a process I largely do not control.
What does your mental (emotional/physical/etc) health need this month? May you find a way to give it to yourself. And remember, you are never alone:
The Artist’s Way
I am gobsmacked. jitterbugged. hoola-hooped. pants fired. hip hoppity. goobledy gooked. Major things are a foot. Lots of magic is in the air. It’s a powerful and fragile time. I am grateful for my practice and ultimately, and at the end of the day, the loved ones in my life. My mother and father who created and supported me and continue to be my biggest cheerleaders and No. 1 fans. My sister, who is so badass I have to try to keep up. My bubsy, for everything. And my circle of extended family - friends, teachers, colleagues, healers, strangers I overheard or talked to briefly - thank you. I wouldn’t be here without all of you.
I’M LEAVING MY DAY JOB. Thats right folks. I, Colby Mackenzie Sheffer, of sound mind and struggs but safe body, have submitted the paperwork to relinquish my job as public servant in our majesty’s federal government and all of the benefits therein, such as baseline premium health insurance and paid leave, to jump off a cliff into the unknown.
But a ha! All of this is not with a blind eye conjured and executed. This impulse has been clear to me for a long time, four years to be exact. This cycle has been silently percolating for even longer - the past 7 years (sup Cath! you know). And the baby steps to make this seed an earthling foundering in new soil have been painstakingly, disjointedly taken for the past 7 months. Quietly (but not to my dear friends - ask them) and slowly (but all of this is fast - tooo fasttt!) I have made my humble and hopeful way here to this ledge. Above a sea of green trees peppered with blue lakes I stand 30,000 feet in the air near where the airplanes fly, where they whiz past stowing lives and bags in their bellies, and I stand at the ledge and look down at the green trees and lakes and wonder what will happen when like Indiana Jones I take the leap of faith. And like Indiana, there is a secret ledge below me, camouflaged with the rest, that I will step onto suredly and, surprised, I will turn to see the opening in the mountain that has been waiting for me.
Because it is waiting. I know it. Call it a calling - or more likely, a compulsion - but there are ideas I must write and practices I must teach and colors I must play with and that is what I am going to do. My aligning principle is love as defined in one of our first newsletters - the will to nourish, the act of service that is nourishing life, my own and others. My guiding light has been and continues to be The Artist’s Way, which has invited me off any known path into the trail between marigold trees for the second time now.
The first time I gave notice to my dear boss to follow yoga and writing dreams was in March 2020. I said I planned to leave that May. Go figure, that same March week, some small change that began on the other side of the world shut it down and I paused as I would, my little safety-seeking self, to see what would happen. I kept my job working on an incredible team but kept learning things I couldn’t unknow: that teaching a yoga class fills me up with a loving energy no other activity does; that I write to stay sane and would still do it if no one ever paid me to (morning pages!); that my eyes grab color and seize it and stash it down their pants to hog and savor like the last loaf of bread in the apocalypse.
So I began where I was, encouraged by my teachers. I started teaching my first yoga classes, first to this community and then at my workplace, which became my signature offering and practice (pranayama). I began this love letter in August 2020. I joined a writing group that pushed me to self-publish my poetry, getting over the first of many writing blocks I have. I started the Poetry Pause Instagram series on November 3, 2020. I started The Artist’s Way for the second time in October 2021 in the pursuit of magic and motivation, with the hopes that sharing it with all of you would help you do the same (in your own time).
I must do what my teachers - and you all, my love letter friends - have given me the courage to do: to make my own work and be proud of it (Joan Didion); to pay attention to the imprints I’m making on my body (Cath); to take my mask off (Ssanyu); to plant myself like a wildflower in the sun (Samar); to follow my entrepreneurial spirit (Molly); to sit in deep solitude and listen for the voice of the one who knows (Dr. Estés); to get the fear over with and just rip off the bandaid already (Julia Cameron); to follow my feet (Knight’s Tale Dad); to listen closely to the “bell you can’t unring” (Alex); to recognize I don’t want “to suffer anymore” (bubsy).
And to all of my GSA comrades, my friends, colleagues, fellow teachers, and students who have inspired me to do better, have graciously supported my desire to teach, attended classes despite everything else begging for their precious attention, given valuable feedback and heart-penetrating kudos, and have taken my arm and gently led me to the door with genuine kindness and goodwill as I take a frightening step into the next chapter of unknowns, calling softly after me, “Door’s still open” - thank you.
Public service is a tough gig in this country - the message is that it’s never enough. And it may never be, but that doesn’t stop thousands of good people making less money than they should doing often unseen, likely uncelebrated work to keep the things the people of this country need available and the foundations of our society functioning. It has been a privilege. I do not take what you do for granted.
The truth is, I am one of the global few to be sitting pretty in the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The pinnacle of human evolution and potential. Self actualization. I get to make this choice. And because so few can, I must.
I love to write and teach. I love to design things with color. I am more practiced in some areas than others. I don’t know what will happen. Thank you for witnessing me - it is ultimately all I can ask.
Regarding exactly what I’m up to next, this workaholic is committing to a sort of sabbatical this summer (I’m calling it Savasana Summer, thanks Cath & Samar!) to tend to loved ones and travel.
[insider info: I have saved financially for this since 2018 using the Ellevest platform starting with as little as $50 a month. It adds up!]
Stay tuned! And in the meantime: practice :)
Practice: Pranayama
I love yoga, and think it needs a rebrand. Most people I come across are beginners, and many have the impression that all of yoga is the two major practices that have been adopted & commoditized (& marketed as rather inaccessible in my opinion) by the West: asana (postures) & dhyana (meditation).
I emphasize in class that these are only 2 of the 8 practices included in the system. Originally, asana (limb 3) was designed primarily to prepare and enable the body to sit for longer and longer periods in limbs 4-8. In the Yoga Sutras, 195 verses defining yoga theory and practice, asana is mentioned only once. Meditation is advanced; it is limb 7, the penultimate practice of the system which culminates in total enlightenment.
It hasn’t been fair to this ancient practice, and is certainly at an enormous individual and collective loss, to reduce the entire system to only that which is currently most advertised and lucrative, to try to fit each of our unique, snowflake needs into only what we see of those two buckets, which are in and of themselves deep and wide.
Pranayama is my current practice, and as I’ve learned from my yoga leaders Cath & Sam, we must teach what we practice, practice what we teach.
In Sanskrit, Prana translates as “life force” or “energy” and -yama means to “lengthen or extend” (aka control).
To practice manipulating pranayama, we access it via the breath.
So pranayama means, in our Western conception anyway, breath awareness & control.
It’s becoming my favorite, or perhaps most visited practice, specifically because of its accessibility. No props necessary. No change of clothes, yoga mat, pen/paper or physical abilities required. Do it anywhere, anytime. No one need know. We carry all we need with us in our bodies as long as we’re alive - and FOR FREE!
[I’ll repeat: this shit is FREEEEEEEEEEE. WEEEEEEEE! Grateful for freebies! Gas is almost $5 where I live!]
There are many different kinds of pranayama practices: ones to cool you down, heat you up, calm the mind, clear the blood; in my 200 hour yoga teacher training manual from Flow, there are 12 different practices listed.
The ones I’ve started practicing and teaching are the most basic, the most accessible (for me as a beginner anyway): Notice the breath, count the number of breaths, count the duration of breaths. Simple, accessible anchors that automatically support the parasympathetic (rest & digest) response of the nervous system.
Other major benefits of practice include: relax muscles, prepare mind for meditation, increase vitality and focus, support the immune system, enable recovery.
Enjoy!
P.S. Are you also working through The Artist’s Way? Holler if you want an updated iteration of our Practice Plan. This coming month, I begin Chapter 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength, where we “tackle another major creative block: time.”
Loving Lately: Moms
Happy mother’s day to my own mama and yours!
And a happy mother’s day to all who mother - genius Neri Oxman tells us it’s a verb after all. To nurture, to take good care of, to love. That is mothering. You can do it to plants, friends, animals, children that aren’t your own. The world needs all the mother vibes it can get.
If you’re a mom or are thinking of becoming one or simply love good content, I highly recommend the show Better Things (FX, Hulu). It follows single mom and working actor Sam Fox, played by Pamela Adlon. This quadruple threat also wrote, produced, and directed the show. She is someone I want in my life. A mom for us all. And the final episode of the season, which aired in late April, was the best thing that happened to my mental health. Start from the beginning if you haven’t seen it. I’m jealous.
Here’s the show playlist:
And speaking of playlists, no one makes a better one than my sister Madison, who turns the big 3-0 on May 7! Wish her a happy bday in the comments, check out her Dinna Lady Instagram for recipes, and play this the next time you’re cooking:
Phew! That one was a doozy. I’m tired now. Off to play & rest!
Be well dears. Let me know how you’re doing and what you need - I’m right on the other side of this email.
Love always,
Colby
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