One of the words I use most frequently that confuses my students (until we break it down and define it together) is “logistics.” I love the word logistics. So much of life is logistics - schedules, how overarching plans break down into daily activities, how goals are broken down to become a reality. I know this word does not spark joy for many people - but the doing, the execution of a thing, has always been my happiest place, because it’s where you get to make an idea into a thing, make a thought into a felt experience.
I have a bachelor’s degree in logistics. Stage management is all logistics - schedules, daily calls, tiny minutiae of where props enter and costumes exit and people need to stand to be in their light. It’s a very technical job, and, while I’m good at the technicalities and generally enjoy them, that was never the reason I did the job. I loved running lines with actors so they felt confident and loved solving complicated logistical puzzles to make a magical moment feel possible. While I am a control freak as a general rule, the job was rarely about the control (only in certain instances related to safety) - it was always about using the weird detail-oriented superpower that I seem to have inherited genetically to make things possible and easier for other people. Logistical skills are also the reason I’ve been able to switch careers twice with relative ease - everywhere needs logistics, and they are not everyone’s interest or forte. They were not however, the first things I thought about in terms of practicing or teaching yoga.
My junior year of college, I moved to Minnesota for the winter (a tactic I don’t necessarily recommend). I was renting from a music director I’d met the previous summer, and she took me to her yoga studio during one of the weeks she was also staying at the house. I, for the life of me, cannot remember the name of this studio (Minneapolis people - it used to be directly across the street from the Wedge Co-Op, but doesn’t appear to be there anymore - if you know, I would love NOTHING more than to solve this mystery), but I remember that it was bright and airy, with a lounge area in the front and light wood floors. The class I went to with Katherine was the first of many “yoga-and-coop Mondays” off.
I learned a lot from this studio and its teachers (more on that in Lineage, Part 2, when I figure out how to make it shorter). One particular day, I was waiting for the previous class to finish when woman in mom jeans (before they were everyone’s jeans) and a more structured shirt than one would usually wear for yoga, even before the advent of athleisure, came to the desk and asked if she would need paper and pencil for her class. I had a bunch of feelings at once - shock that I knew more about yoga than someone else (I came to the original class so Katherine would think I was cool, and to see if I could practice my way into feeling more like a “yoga person”), fear that the person at the desk would be unkind to her, concern that she wouldn’t be getting what she had anticipated in signing up for a yoga class. The teacher simply said, “no, you won’t need anything to write with, you’ll be fine just as you are.” In giving this student the information she needed about class, without judgment, she communicated welcome and compassion and care. After a deep exhale, I realized in some kind of beyond-words way that this is part of what yoga was, was supposed to be: where you are, whatever you’re bringing with you, is fine, nothing extra necessary.
While true, this is a far too simple way of looking at yoga and logistics in capitalism. A major reason many people don’t go to yoga is that walking into a studio (not so much this one, but many of them) is intimidating because you might not have the right “stuff” - the clothes, the mats, the grippy socks, whatever. None of that actually matters to the essence of yoga, but the practice has been commodified like everything else. Which means that, as a teacher, it’s important to make sure that people understand the logistics so they can access the essence. No, you don’t need a pencil. Wear clothes you can move in, but there is no special “yoga attire.” A mat is helpful, but you can also use the carpet of your apartment, and blocks are great, but so are textbooks or sturdy water bottles. Yes, there will be Sanskrit, but all the directions about how you can move your body will be in English, and yes, it’s fine to ask questions, although a lot of people choose not to. Logistics even in a capitalistic landscape (perhaps especially in a capitalist landscape) are love.
Love, Even Here
This spring, I took three-day Zoom leadership training with a lot of buzzwords and things called “rattlesnake alerts” and many videos of perfectly polished school leaders in business suits high-fiving photogenic children. The training contains important work, to be sure - how visions lead to goals lead to actions, and how to make responsive, effective decisions as a campus leader. Its production value is incredibly high, and it felt Important and Serious. It is NOT the kind of training where one might want to publicly declare something like “logistics are love.”
And yet. After being asked to generate a personal mission statement for my life in the course of a five-minute breakout room, that’s the only thing that I had. Other people said things like, “Every child, every day,” and, “growth for every student, no excuses.” I thought about co-opting one of those, but I couldn’t edit others’ ideas fast enough, so, when the whirl-around came to me, I said the easiest and the scariest thing: the truth. “Logistics are love.” Mercifully, no one laughed at me, though someone did ask me what I meant, and I explained, in more detail than was probably necessary, something like the following:
“Logistics are love because we need to know what’s coming. It’s why we have bell work and check-ins and classroom procedures. Students and teachers alike need predictability, need a sense of logic and order so they can take risks. A thoughtful master schedule is love. Knowing how people communicate and meeting them on email or Teams or in-person conversation is love. Remembering to order the tacos for early-morning meetings is love. Making a very boring calendar to help you remember people’s birthdays is love. And when people feel loved and cared for, they can do their best work, and we can work toward the kind of academic growth we’re seeking.”
In such formal space, bringing in the squishiness of love seemed like quite the risk. Through grace alone, the facilitator knew how to take this softer version of a mission statement in stride, and even managed to loop it back later when I volunteered for some kind of role-playing exercise related to coaching (“I heard you say that logistics are love, so I’m wondering how you could…”). In writing about this moment a little bit tongue-in-cheek, I’m not downplaying its importance; I stand by logistics as love, and I stand by saying things that are true in spaces that may not be amenable to them. I also stand by the fact that it’s not always an easy or comfortable thing to do, and it’s something we have to consciously learn. The self-consciouness, the uncertainty of what’s appropriate to speak and not is something I seek to assuage for my students (yoga and middle school) through routines, explanations, modeling, classroom contracts, repetition, logistics.
Between Dreams and Reality
This training focused on the first part of a process that includes logistics, where you really don’t want to talk about logistics at all. It’s the visioning, the brainstorming, the dreaming stage, before you get to thinking about the “how you make it happen” part. That’s a critical part of the process, and one that’s harder for me than execution. Over time (and after feedback about how I’ve accidentally squashed creative thinking by asking about logistics too early), I’ve gotten better at thinking conceptually and dreaming before jumping into the how. This summer, I’ve had a lot of things that have yet to move to the logistics phase (a new position at work, new school-wide systems we are working to build, a giant project assessed by the state of Texas, this newsletter). They’re past the dreamy brainstorming phase but not yet fully to the execution phase. The logistics are still overwhelming, not yet comforting and tangible. This nebulous phase is my LEAST favorite of all phases, and there are so many of them at once.
And that’s where yoga comes in. Yoga asks you to be okay with what is, to take things moment by moment, phase by phase. It asks you to do what’s here in front of you, to feel into what the logistics of doing what you need, right here, right now, would look like, and then do that. It asks you to think about details (alignment, intention, sensation) but not to agonize over them, to simply BE with them. I’ve made more progress doing this on my mat than off, but trust that, eventually, the being will start to cross into the rest of my world, logistical and otherwise.
For those of you who are like, “okay, that’s a lot of words, I’m here for yoga classes,” never fear: here’s the (logistical) information you need!
The first class will be on Thursday, July 27th, at 6pm CDT. You can find the July/August calendar for online yoga classes here. I may include additional classes later in August, but with school starting, I don’t want to over-promise.
There is a registration link on the calendar; it will stay the same (I’ll just remove old classes and add new ones). Once you register, I will send you a Google Calendar invite with the Zoom Link and password. Cumbersome though this may be, it’s less jarring than a Zoombomber during savasana, I promise! I’ll do my best to send calendar requests within 24 hours, but thank you in advance for your grace as I figure out this system around the start of the school year. I’ll always check the form about 15 minutes before the class to add in anyone I might have missed. If you are missing a link or anything, you can email me at balanceyogawithlauren@gmail.com.
As we enter late July, the “Sunday evening” of the summer, I’m working on making sure I don’t have more Libby books checked out than I can reasonably read/listen to in my extra free time. I’m not a huge family drama reader, but can’t resist a third person omniscient perspective with multiple people and rotating chapters, especially when it’s an audiobook narrated by Julia Whelan. The book she wrote about audiobooks is one of my favorites from this year, my skepticism about romance novels notwithstanding. I’m also trying to re-imagine my relationship to work and time as I struggle to re-engage with my usual school schedule.
In terms of output, I am always and forever working on baby blankets. There are two in progress right now, one for a co-worker of my husband’s (which uses this pattern) and one for one of my colleagues, which pattern I’m keeping secret until I give it to her! The waffle weave pattern is a super-easy one that doesn’t require much counting once you get the hang of it and looks fancier than the effort you put into it, which is my favorite kind of pattern. The picture below is another such pattern that I made for one of my favorite people earlier this year.
Collective Musings
One of the things I learned from my yoga teacher a couple of years ago that rocked my world is that summer is not always the magical land of fireflies and dreams that popular culture portrays. There are lots of reasons the heat can get to us (especially, it seems, where I am, as we are on day 12 of 100+ with no end in sight, at least not on my weather app). What are your favorite ways of staying cool (physically, emotionally, whatever resonates)? If you are someone taking summer breaks and vacation, what logistics do you use to help ease the transition back into “real life”?
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Re-read this today. 1.) Best baby blanket ever. 2.) We are still having the "staying cool" conversation months later. 3.) Love and logic. Always.