Pursing a graduate degree: my process

 a celebration, an offeringMy Master of Arts degree?

The hardest question to answer about my Master’s Degree is, “So, what are you going to do with your degree?” It's as if I’m a nomad until I can answer this with precision. However, I have been utilizing my degree all along—for the past seven years as a part-time student—one semester and one class at a time. When I began in August 2008 I was already teaching yoga and I already owned my own business as a writer and digital marketer.

What turned into seven years of one class per semester in East-West Psychology turned into the best type of graduate experience I could have ever imagined. It was, in some ways, like self-led psychotherapy as I put my entire life into each one class, especially the final papers. Each semester I evaluated where I was at in life and it was always changing. I evolved at my own pace and could not imagine seven years ago being where I am now.

What I intend to do with my degree and with my professional life is to enhance it with the knowledge, credentials and confidence I've gained, which will bridge into my writing and yoga teaching. I'll go beyond private yoga lessons and posting my written version of passions on the internet as I've become accustomed.

I’d like to write for my clients on mind-body awareness and healing, psychology and yoga. I can imagine complementing western medicine practitioners who are open to alternative medicine and wellness, desperately needing my knowledge infiltrated into their own. I’ll be a Health & Wellness Coach. I’d like to publish my work in various mediums. What began as a crusade for self-improvement (i.e., M.A.) turned into a pursuit of honing in on my natural skills as a career path.

My natural skills tell me to be creative. As I prepare two of my papers for publication, I write in various creative realms to get in the mood for this effort. This seems ironic because academic writing is left brain analytical, whereas my life planning comes from the right brain.

Resistance to who I am

It's hard to imagine that I am all of a sudden more than I've ever been. I resist having to start over with a new hat, that although I believe is important, has evolved over seven years to such an extent that it’s not my current plan to drastically start something new. I can only be who I am—what I’ve been becoming—and this means that I've needed to acclimate slowly. I use my instincts.

I don’t want to be who I’m not, who others are. I don’t want to be pressured by projected goals and beelines for greatness. I am me. I have faith that these words alone will guide me.

I feel unique and personally powerful. But also, I feel misunderstood. I don’t know exactly how to phrase my new role in the professional world.

My perception of others' views—mockery or anger at what my revelations will do to them personally—holds me back. I know issues that people escape, preferring to portray a life of freedom and fun or complaints and hopeless snideness. Its core is anger. It's been my own anger. I sometimes feel a strong sense that a person I care for deeply is angry at me, after I eloquently questioned with a full open heart. But the universe reminds me of the true meaning of anger.

David Whyte articulates what I mean:

"Anger is the deepest form of care for another... and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment, anger points toward the purest form of compassion, always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect, and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for."

I am meant to have freedom to create

I am meant to help multiple people and companies as an independent contractor. I also know who I am—through living life, through graduate school, through my personal yoga practice—and it speaks its voice as loud as can be now. It tells me about my freedom to create in the moments that inspire me, as my own driver in my life and career. My life structure invites morning ritual and health followed by an unknown open space which lures me to create. In this space, working for myself out of my own home—visiting clients when it makes sense—is the best vision.

I want to share my formulated words and teachings in publications, both online and in print. This accumulated knowledge would benefit others. My Master of Arts academic studies ground my yoga knowledge (body, mind, spirit). It’s important to me to always remember who I am and what unique niche I can fill. I have gifts to share.

What stops me from making this happen all the time? In my own personal, unpaid writing, it's being judged by that imaginary person. Its judgment is what keeps me from sharing publicly more often. It's an enemy of my creativity to some extent because, despite my private creative outlets and wide opened heart—not to mention pseudo poet name—I sometimes get self-conscious that the wrong person (or right) will read what I've written in a given moment. In paranoia, I imagine that this person sees my writing as soon as I post it. This makes me feel vulnerable, sometimes a bit panicky. Sometimes I need to close my eyes and press the Submit button and just go to bed. It takes courage to put myself out there.

That brings me to the next enemy: nobody cares about what I have to say. I say this without recognizing that logically I haven't shared the aforementioned writing with friends or made any attempts at all, in fact. When I feel desperate for acceptance, I take solace in my international following on Facebook for my poetry business page.

Bridging many aspects of me into one profession

What is it to be whole? I try to not worry so much about how, and let my spirit do its work. This becomes my medicine, keeping me on my warrior path. I don’t allow fears to stop me; I move right through them. Often times, I feel the somatic energy in my body in its raw discomforting form. I try to sit with it. The better I am at just labeling “it” as some energetic toxin, and not attaching a story to it, the better off I am. I won't lose who I am this way.

Refining and building my resume and C.V. (curriculum vitae) inspired me as it highlighted my projects, inspiring mind, creativity and professional experience in a new light. It was a light that I needed to see now, uncovering introspections and vulnerable aspects of who I am—once shared, no longer buried in a file on my computer. It brought the seven years of livelihood back to my conscious self. Each semester built upon itself and my professional and personal life have made me who I am today, but I am proud to see it all listed out and documented in one place—a missing link for me to synthesize many facets of myself into one medium. 

I realize that I have a ton of transferable skills that simply need to be enlivened, and represented to the right clients who presumably will be watching me at the right time. I believe that the right career steps will come to me, allowing my credentials to speak for themselves.

I want to be in my body and write and live my story to share my knowledge. I don’t want time to define who I am and constrict me. What fixates on me in time is what follows me around. I follow it. It’s my path to being me, yet unnerving others who live in boxes of clocks with timers.

Learning by doing, evolving experiences   

I’m on a never-ending path of becoming a better me. From nerves and muscles, to organs and emotions, my spirit heals, and my inflammations are beacons to the next levels. There will always be more to learn, and this notion excites me. I will teach what I know, but also learn as a I go, continually building upon all that I am. I will learn from my own experiences, my ongoing studies and even my clients. For, teaching another is to learn too.

The fibers of who I am—my muscles, et al.—can become inflamed and, when they are, they're more alive. Their wakefulness holds treasures to creativity, unleashed only by touching the hot spots, only by cooling them later.

You are my process, my life. As I pursued my degree, I continued to live my life and allow each class to emulate it. I didn’t have time or energy to make my degree anything other that this, but it was also most authentic this way. It was also most meaningful for me to feel my lessons emulated in my life as I went along, each teaching seeping in slowly over time. It is as if this seven-year journey has already been partly marinated in itself, and the next level of growth already reaching out for more.

Taking it one step at a time has proven fruitful in that it allowed me to live through various stages and themes in my life, and apply the academics in that forum. My life is my forum.

I teach the missing gap between Eastern and Western medicine

I am a missing gap between western medicine and that which heals with spirit or somatic connections between the subtle body and physiology. The winning combination includes my body moving to find the answers, infiltrated with love and faith that I’m being guided as I’m meant to be.

One subject that I’m magnetized toward is trauma. People have traumas in their lives that go on to affect them physically, psychologically and spiritually, and these traumas arise somatically in one's yoga practice. As I work with my yoga clients one-on-one, I can see how the psyche protects certain vulnerabilities, which often comes out in verbal conversations about body postures or life situations; it also speaks through scheduling priorities, cancellations and excuses.

To that end, I’m in tune with the nervous system and how clients react to my touch, my explanations to their pains, as well as their own responses to their own fears. I like to hold the space for whatever people need in order to express themselves without judgment. I see beyond yoga postures that would potentially correct chronic bad habits, such as hunched back, frozen hips, unused abdominal muscles or skeletal/muscular imbalances in the body between right and left.

Of course, I have the physiological intelligence incorporated into my teaching, but my work is to dig deeper intuitively to discern how the energy body handles subtle and psychological messages. For example, the shoulders are part of the Heart Chakra so shoulders that are crunched inward and stuck in that position can be indicative of challenges with love and acceptance. Backbends bring up a lot of emotions (i.e., love and fear), especially when a person has a hard time going there and all of a sudden is doing that with me during our yoga sessions.

I have to be open for whatever comes up and hold that gentle space. Once I figure out what a person is going through, I often share my own journey as I’ve been through a lot myself! I want each person to know that it’s ok to feel emotion during or after yoga and not know why—to feel sad, angry, anxious over performance, or feel a stimulated nervous system. I encourage emotional release over repression. I also keep check on my own boundaries, so that I provide a healthy field for clients' growth.

 Image © Yoga Robin®

Merging of psychology and yoga

I merge psychology with yoga intuitively because blending the two has allowed me in my own practice to be introspective about what arises, yet with a trusting source of wisdom in the body that takes care of itself when broken open in all the wonderful ways yoga knows how. Yoga sessions can even include dreams from the night before, all while the body is opening to the day in the yoga practice; this is a great way to cocreate with the unconscious. These messages—spoken authentically from the client—become clues to tightness in the body.

Everything in our body is a reflection of what's going on within us. I want to teach people to integrate all of who they are. I want myself to do the same. As a Yoga Teacher, I'm also a Health and Wellness Coach, spreading knowledge that leads to a more healthy life—from recovering from injuries to nutrition to lifestyle to motivation toward goals.

I am a living example of health in this respect. Supplementing with sports medicine and deep tissue massage, lymphatic massage and life/spirit coaching, are all part of the big picture as are psychotherapy, daily writing and enjoying the natural outdoors especially the ocean.

To be a published author

I would like to publish articles in yoga and health magazines such as, Yoga Journal, Tricycle, Om Times, Common Ground, Mantra, et al. Each magazine has its own style, which I'll accomodate. I would also like to publish articles in psychological journals. My Healing Series is a good place to start, which will be ongoing.

I’ll hone in on getting my ten years worth of poetry writing published. It’s a matter of packaging it together and finding the right software because I have all of the poems. I’ll self-publish.

I'm in the process of writing and designing a Yoga Book; the potential titles are a secret... That too needs to be assembled as the poetry book, but photos and writing are needed as well. The writing will come from my healing series and poetry.

I have various ways to repackage the same material in different mediums.

Yoga teaching, writing, letting my path guide me

Yoga teaching leads to paradise, freedom and openness. I can be my true self and surrender. Writing and publishing my work leads to healing and bridging beyond my local community. My eccentric writing even touches international borders on the internet. Right now I know my pursuit is like climbing a wall, but like the ninjas on the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, it will be no problem to traverse the wall. I enjoy the challenges that await me, which emulate my own physically-demanding Ashtanga yoga practice.

What I have learned in seven years of studying at CIIS

In reviewing older papers I wrote at the beginning of my pursuit for my degree, I realize how far I’ve come. But, I also realize how much knowledge I had all along—as was evident from the very start—and how CIIS helped me to gain confidence over my natural talents. I’ve evolved in the art of consolidating my thoughts into a more concise style. I’ve learned about my own psychological projections that morph between a loved one and the universal intelligence, and how it is the true enactment of love. Now a more scholarly academic having traversed through seven years of classes and professors, I discern my own psychological and spiritual development. I learned how to present this topic in a manner which is acceptable to all audiences.

We have a lot to experience in life and it's sad to let life go by, especially precious moments. It is the grounded soul that I wish to be, bridging eastern science with western anatomy. The Ashtanga yoga I do now, in particular its nervous system cleansing, brings to light psychic energies that I, in turn, cleanse out each morning. It enacts the pathway to major shifts that I continue to encounter. I have found a way to be more intimate with my own fears and anxieties. This is, in fact, the source of all of my poetic writing from its inception. I'm feeling my heart in its essence, for my personal life and professional life. I embrace discomfort so that it dissolves, for my higher good. I surrender to the universe for receiving the bigger gift for me on the other side...