I have practiced (and taught) photography and Yoga roughly the same amount of time. You could say they both came to me at a critical point in my life: I had just graduated with my Masters Degree in Engineering and, having moved from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati (a city I knew nothing about and where I knew no one), I was closing a chapter of my life and facing a totally new identification. No longer a student, I was now an employee.
I, of course, was not alone in this experience. Our lives are to some degree or another constructed this way. We shift our emphasis, our attention and our identity more often than we think. We leave home to become a college student. Then graduate, get our first job, and become employees. We marry and become spouses. We have kids and become parents. We grow older, hopefully wiser, and watch our bodies and our minds change with the years, with pleasant and unpleasant surprises in equal measure.
Anything that meets us at these major crossroads tends to stay with us, partly because the shifts themselves are momentous, but also partly because when we come to these critical points we are in a different, more open, fluid, and vulnerable state of mind.
Photography and Yoga found me in a moment where I wasn't sure who I was, let alone who I wanted to be in these new circumstances, and they helped shape how I would approach my dilemma of identity.
Since then, and with the benefit of hindsight, I've come to see that one of the most important ways they helped me is in increasing my focus. Photography, in a very literal sense, is about capturing images. The selection of what to include and what to exclude and then what to actually focus on is not insignificant. There are choices all along the way. Photos infact reveal more about their photographers than they do about their subjects.
The photo I've included with this entry is one of my earliest. It was shot with my Nikon N65, my first camera. I had just moved to San Diego and was continuing development of what was to become my first photo series: Portraits of Pride. I was starting to take myself seriously as a photographer and found myself getting bolder in my interactions with people and more passionate about wanting to capture what I saw in the world as meaningful or beautiful. I chased down these two young men at the Palm Springs Pride parade. I'd seen them from a distance, how intently they held hands. The color of the shorts and the Pride flag and that straw hat. It was a moment I couldn't let go of. When I caught up to them they were a bit shocked but obliged. As I squatted to get exactly the right perspective one of them asked "Are you just taking a picture of our butts?" Photographers, I came to learn, are nothing if not misunderstood. But that should not detract from our focus.
Yoga, too, is about focus. It is primarily about focus, actually. Internal focus specifically. You draw your attention inward, removing distractions, until you come to a place where you see clearly, both what is outside of you and what is in your body and mind.
With these two tools (and my writing, which has been an indispensable tool for reflection and expression in my life for 30 years), it was easier (though by no means easy) to find my way through life at a different pace in a cadence that worked with my own passions, instincts and intuition, rather than against them. They have seen me through two new jobs, a voluntary severance, a layoff, through two relationships and a crazy destination wedding, through two debilitating injuries and the best shape of my life, through an unsuccessful venture into adoption and the resolve to accept my life as it is. Over the years I have seen the fruits of these disciplines applied not just in myself but also in the many students I have taught in photography classes at the university, résumé writing workshops in corporate environments, in Yoga studios, or in 1-to-1 Yoga therapy sessions.
Photography, Yoga, and writing have been tools for effective observation and self-evaluation, and, by virtue of that, decision-making, as well as a means to stay solid and focused amid the myriad of distractions and challenges in life. In essence, they offer a way to remain focused each time I come to a new crossroads, be it personal or professional. They helped me see the issues, the options and the right path for at that moment.
And so the idea for this site's name was born. When I first considered how to merge these disciplines in one site, it wasn't obvious. There are many photographers who are not Yoga practitioners, and many Yoga practitioners who are not photographers. There are even more individuals involved in job searches and career changes who are neither. But the way these tools can help develop our focus, our attention, and the subsequent effect this can have on our state of mind, behavior and intuition when we encounter life's challenges is very similar. They help us see ourselves (our strengths and weaknesses) more clearly, and allow us to identify opportunities sometimes before they present themselves. They keep us in the moment and, by doing so, bring joy, beauty, grace, and wisdom into the fabric of daily life.
My aim is to offer to students these tools which have kept me focused in the crossroads of my life, in hopes they can do the same for them.
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