Hello Steem! I'm new (got my account today) to this exciting platform, so I don't yet know what I'm doing, but I thought I would start by introducing myself with an article I wrote to my column on a magazine in Estonia. It's probably too long for most people, but I'm not into the "attention span less than an Instagram story" type of thing. (That is 15 seconds, if you are not on Instagram).

I'm a yoga teacher, a student of yoga, but I don't take yoga too seriously. You can read more about it below in my article. I'm into yoga, personal development, spirituality (but my approach to it might be a little unconventional), and health and training in general. I'm here because this platform seems to be just the thing I was looking for. I want to share thoughts and ideas, through my articles and videos, and to connect with like minded people all around the world. Not just yoga people of course, but people with open minds. Like I said, I'm totally new to this place, so please feel free to connect with me and share tips or just say hi.

So here is my article... Hopefully I won't get into trouble right away by saying fuck it, but if I got this printed in a magazine in Estonia, I guess it should be ok, right? :)

UNLOCK YOURSELF - Learning to say FUCK IT

This article is going to end an era of my life and start a new one. I’m using my story to share something that I feel is very important for us all. My story is not the point of this article, what I’m demonstrating with it, is. Enjoy!

Fuck it! The two words that can have an amazingly positive effect in your life. Again, maybe it’s not what you are used to hear from a yoga teacher, but hey, I’m the Ashtanga Monkey, so… fuck it. Our life is filled with countless conscious and subconscious fears that limit the way we live. Making us stay stuck in a life that is far from what we dreamt about, often a life that we despise. I sometimes talk about this in my yoga workshops. About the flower that is about to open up and bloom as the spring sun shines on it. How often do you see the flower thinking (I know you can’t see thoughts and I guess flowers don’t think, but you get the point, so… fuck it):

“I’m only going to be just a little pretty. I could bloom, grow and expand to my maximum, but because of my subconscious fears and the feeling of not being enough, I will just be less.”

No, this doesn’t happen. Ever. In nature, everything is growing, expanding and expressing itself fully. The plants and other beings have no self limiting story that makes them smaller than they truly are. Except from us humans of course. We are the masters of not being who we truly are. We are the masters of “blooming” only partially. We live our lives with our hearts full of dreams and desires, with the yearning for freedom and expansion, but our reality often being just an expression of our fears.

My friend and colleague Peep Vain shared two good descriptions of fear, in the self development seminars he used to teach in Estonia and the Baltics. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real. This is what almost all our fears are. The other: FEAR = Fuck Everything And Run. This is a real fear and it is useful because it will keep us alive when the truck is about to hit us, or when the lion is looking at us in that special way. There is a place for that real fear in regards to our survival, but when our subconscious is full of that illusionary fear, every day becomes just about surviving, not about living, growing and expanding.

Fuck it. Experience the fear but still step forward. That is the definition of courage and that is how you get rid of that illusionary fear. You see through it. You step forward when you want to step back. You do it and you survive. That is when your life goes from “just surviving” to “I’m free and flying”. Think of a bird walking on the ground. Dreaming about flying but being afraid of heights. What would you say to the bird? I’d say: “fuck it, spread your wings and fly… you were born to fly”. Just like you were. We were all born to fly, to be free like the birds in the sky. Only thing keeping us from doing it, is ourselves. (and maybe gravity)

What is the first step to get airborne? You can’t say fuck it, if you are still half asleep and ignorant of your fears. Many people reading this article (not you of course, but probably the one next to you) don’t have a clue about their fears. The fears are so hidden in their subconscious and masked into something else, that these people have “rational” explanations why not to spread their wings and fly. They live a mediocre life, not because they want to but because their subconscious fears forces them to. First step is to realise your fears and then to say fuck it. I will do it anyway. I will risk it. It’s time to fly, even if there is a risk that I will fall down and die. I will never ever settle for a life smaller than my dreams and desires. I will never be less than I can. I choose to fly, no matter what!

Living our lives fully certainly has some risks. If we open up to life and experience it fully, there is a risk that we will loose it all… and you know what, we will. We all know we are going to die. Knowing this, I will at least make sure I’m ALIVE before I die. I say fuck it and take the chance. When it’s time to go, I go, but for now I will live.

First half of the article has been about fear and about how to face it. It’s important to understand that not all fear are so obvious. It’s not like being afraid of spiders. A very common and unfortunate fear is the one where we subconsciously worry about what other people think of us. It can be our parents, friends, spouse or colleagues. Almost everyone does this and because of this we focus too much on appearances. I think it was Tom Campbell who put it nicely when he said that we are living in a society where appearances are more important than truth. This is very true, isn’t it? We have our Facebooks and Instagrams were we only show the beautiful moments but never really share the parts that are “ugly”. I say fuck it. I believe authenticity is the key to making us grow. Yes, we have many beautiful moments to share, but that is just one side of the coin. So let’s be real. Head over to my Facebook page (link here) to see me being real. I hope you join me in being real.

Now I would like to take this article to a more personal level. What I haven’t publicly shared is how I became this “Ashtanga Monkey” and this is what I’ll do now. I need to share some facts about the past ten years so that you get an understanding of what it really means. I’m about to say “fuck it” and I’m a little afraid of it. It is that illusionary fear of what some people will think of me.

I moved to Tallinn from Helsinki in the fall of 2006. Me and my girlfriend (now wife) Terje had started practicing yoga which started some kind of a transformation in our lives. I quit my job and we found a new opportunity here in Tallinn. Soon we opened our body & mind studio, which gradually turned into a traditional Ashtanga Yoga school. We were the first to teach regular Ashtanga Yoga classes in Estonia. We were dedicated and worked hard to establish the community which, considering how small Estonia is, is now quite large. Most of the places teaching Ashtanga Yoga nowadays were started by teachers who used to be students in our school, some time during the past decade. After three years, our school was included to the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute led by Lino Miele, a close student of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the Guruji. This was a big change to our school. We were suddenly recognised as a “serious” yoga school among the bigger Ashtanga community around the world.

Since then, that is what I have been doing daily. Teaching Ashtanga Yoga, trying to convince myself that this is who I am. Trying to maintain the appearance of this “serious” yoga teacher, a role that was given to me by other people and by myself, of course. Yes, this is the time to say those powerful words. Fuck it. With this article I’m publicly “divorcing” from the tradition, from the role I’ve created for myself. It’s time to spread the wings and fly. If you have followed me in social media or you have practiced with me in our school, or our students schools, you have heard me talk about the importance of this community. You have also heard me talk about the importance of the tradition. Now I’m choosing to leave that behind and in this article I will explain you why. I will talk about my inner growth, a process which has taken the past five years, a process of me leaving childhood behind.

First, let’s go back to 2011. That was the year when I created a fitness yoga concept called YOGAFUNC. It is a dynamic yoga practice with music, a class designed for health and fitness studios, for people who wouldn’t normally come to a yoga school. I’m a very creative person and after I had been working solely with Ashtanga Yoga for many years, I realised that I need to start a creative process like this new concept, just to be able to connect with my creativity. This is what makes me happy. Just as a side question: do you know what makes you happy?

Being a traditional Ashtanga Yoga teacher and creating something like YOGAFUNC doesn’t go well together, at least not in the eyes of those who are following the tradition. One year ago we were, not surprisingly, removed from the Research Institute. We were kicked out from the tradition because of listening to our hearts and creating something new, something different. I have no hard feelings toward my teacher because of his decision, I even agree with him partially, and I’m actually grateful for where this situation has led me. To the understanding that I have now.

For the past six I have been having many thoughts about the nature of this reality and about the meaning of life. I have done a lot of contemplating about some deep existential questions that no system of thought could answer me. I came to realise that all the “truths” like the ones the yoga traditions were teaching, were actually just beliefs. Like stories we tell our children to make them feel better when they are faced with the scary unknown. This is where I’m at today and where I have to say “fuck it”. I’m not a child anymore, meaning that I don’t need beliefs to make me feel better about anything. I don’t need any belief system to rely on, especially since I’ve seen it for myself that it doesn’t work. If you are inside the yoga tradition, and you are not a sleep yourself, it is easy to see how the “children” are arguing in the sandbox about their toys. This is something many people are not willing to see and especially not willing to talk about, and that is why I need to do it. I can see this in any rigid belief system but I can only comment about the one that I was involved in and leave the other systems to the other monkeys. I wonder who is going to be the first “Kundalini Monkey”? :) In the Ashtanga tradition I have observed how highly respected teachers act in a childish way, competing with each others, talking behind other people’s back and behaving in a way that express the lack of ability for critical and open minded thinking. It is not a surprise of course, because this, in most parts, is the state of humanity at the moment. Masses of “children” who don’t have many original thoughts. They are people who are convinced that the programming they are under the influence of, is The Truth and that you should believe it. This is very unfortunate and I feel I have a role in this life to maybe help change some of that.

Yoga teachers teach people to become better at yoga, when we should really stop and think about how to become “better” people. Believing in something, doesn’t do that. Guruji said “practice, practice, practice… and all is coming” and “99% practice and 1% theory”. These are very powerful statements, but when the system becomes the end goal and we don’t understand that it is just a tool, we are lost. No yoga system is the truth, no teaching is the truth and we should always understand that the point is, what we can do with the tool, not the tool itself. I have seen so many ego’s in the tradition, so much childish behaviour, that with this article I say “fuck it”, I’m out. I do not follow any tradition anymore. I respect Guruji of the work he did, I’m thankful for what the practice has done to me, but now I’m stepping forward. I go beyond the tradition. This is what the Ashtanga Monkey Yoga is for me. It is Ashtanga Yoga beyond the tradition. It is not rigid and controlled by rules, it is a tool that we can use to move us toward freedom, towards becoming better, more authentic people.

I’m the Ashtanga Monkey. It means that in some eyes I’m a fool, maybe even a rebel, and I guess I have to agree. Those are two archetypes that help me move forward to become a better version of myself. I’m extremely thankful that my inner monkey has woken up to give me the strength and courage to say fuck it, so that I can finally spread my wings and fly. (Yes, I know monkeys don’t fly, but you get the point so … fuck it.)

With love,
Your flying Monkey

ps. I’m on YouTube and I have a new, short morning practice for you there. Search for ‘Ashtanga Monkey’ to find my channel. I’m also doing very honest sharing in my Facebook page, demonstrating what I mentioned in this article, so follow if interested. http://www.facebook.com/jsalokorpi. Start with the video titled “Jocke being real”.

So that was the article, hope that generated some thoughts or feelings inside of you. Would love to hear them. I mentioned my YouTube channel above, but I'm really interested to see how dtube works, so I might start vlogging there as well. I don't know if my Steemit account is all I need or do I have to create a new dtube account, but I will figure it out. Anyway, that's it. Have a great last day of this year and an amazing next year!