“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around, once in a while, you could miss it.”— Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
The theme of my class this week was “playing hooky.” But if you were too chicken to do so or, perhaps, too devoted to other things at 3pm on a Tuesday, then you can still watch the recording and I’d love to hear your feedback as always.
Click here to watch my free Ferris Bueller-themed yoga class.
Seriously, there is never any pressure to join my classes. I love you all and want you to be happy. I just happen to find that choosing not to work precisely when most people are ramping up their weeks helps with that, enormously ❤️🧘🏼♂️…
Matthew Broderick, who played Ferris Bueller, grew up in our neighborhood; New York’s West Village. He used to climb the fence and break into a local swimming pool, and still lives here, showing up in a Lamborghini with Jerry Seinfeld at Joe’s coffee shop for a recent Netflix episode. Logan and I see him often, along with his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, who sat next to us in our favorite restaurant around the corner when Logan’s parents came to visit last fall. We had to beg Logan’s dad not to turn around and yell “sex and the city!!!” at her, all evening.
In New York, most of us identify very closely with our jobs. Despite being called Sex And The City, in fact, I think Ms. Parker’s television show was mostly about the glories of being a newspaper columnist. Discuss.
We all need to pay rent, preventing Manhattan being reclaimed as a hippy colony, or the Native American hunting ground white people “bought” back in 1626 in exchange for 60 guilders’ worth of traded goods. Shudder.
Yoga teaches us we’re more than our professional identities. I drove myself so hard until my early thirties that things got ugly for a while as I realized I needed to spend more energy looking after myself. That’s why I’m so enthusiastic about playing hooky with you these days, as we nourish ourselves on and off the yoga mat.
Like going on a rampage in a 1965 Ferrari that belongs to a friend’s father (that’s yet another reference to the movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off…if you’ve not seen it, then it’s on Netflix, and you’re evidently from Mars) I believe any act of self-care is a revolutionary act. None of us ends our lives wishing we had worked harder. Au contraire, studies show, the top five regrets of the dying are as follows (from “The Top Five Regrets Of The Dying” an Australian piece of research that the Guardian wrote up in 2012):
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
- I wish that I had let myself be happier.
In comparison it seems to me that the courage to play hooky, once in a while, is a little more straightforward. Here’s to baby steps.
Once again, you can click here to watch my free Ferris Bueller-themed yoga class.
I’d love to hear what you think.
Namaste,
Matt
P.S. I associate Ferris Bueller, and playing hooky, with compassion. Towards yourself, and of course, towards others. Yogis talk about that coming from the heart chakra, which is associated with the color green, and comes from the heart beating in your chest. You can nourish it with yoga, and with meditation, and so on, but also, with food! This month we’ve been grating a fresh green apple into oats soaked overnight in oat milk, for breakfast. And we also made a delicious “green gazpacho” soup from Yotam Ottolenghi, for which the recipe is here. Here’s to more green, generally, and to more compassion showing up in your life.
P.P.S Speaking of green, here’s Frank Sinatra, singing Kermit T. Frog’s song, “It’s not that easy being green.” When he opens up for the pre-chorus, it’s really rather special. Just like you. And me. And all of us! 🐸
