Tamara in Namascar yoga pose

I had a great conversation with an old friend last weekend, catching him up on details these past few years since we hadn’t seen each other in quite some time.  Specifically he wanted to know where my motto, “Let the beauty you love be what you do…,” came from.  I feel those words are really relevant to the KatZen and wanted to share that with you all…

Aside from being a rock singer in KatZen, I also became a Bikram yoga instructor in the Fall of 2001 and the HATHA branch of yoga has been a part of my daily life ever since.

The beauty of the “pose” or the ASANA never became so apparent though, until after the birth of my baby girl, Siren, in June of 2006.  I became tremendously ill with severe Fibromyalgia and I wasn’t able to teach nor practice yoga in the same way since.

It was so hard to wrap my head around at the time!! (Pun intended!!) I was such a brilliant, flexible yogini and a fantastic teacher and now I was bedridden in pain and unable to speak in full sentences!!  What was I to do?

But I realized that it wasn’t about my head or my ego. I had to just let go and understand that everything happens for a reason and that God had other plans for me.  I reminded myself about my favorite quote by the Sufi poet, Rumi, “Let the beauty you love be what you do.” Whatever you see that’s beauty, whatever it is that’s all around you, absorb that and take that in and let it become you and your work.  Breathe it and create with the lovely beauty and then send it back out to others.

I found the beauty in simple, easy and deep asanas, such as those in Yin Yoga, to help me with pain relief and meditation. It was excruciating at first but I focused on “beautiful” things that I needed to return to such as my daughter and my music and the form of the asana itself.  Slowly but surely I got a little bit stronger physically and a little more organized mentally.

Continuing to “follow the beauty” I turned my life towards my music and gradually I began building Katzen’s record company (www.katzenmusic.com) and releasing several records.  One of which is a holiday album called FORTUNATE available on iTunes.

I still live with the chronic pain of Fibromyalgia but my passions have guided me back to living life again.

I was just about to walk my dog the other night when gun shots rang out into the night in Downtown L.A.   I yelled out to Drew (my producer) who was in the studio upstairs to say shots were fired outside.  I walked out onto the sidewalk and there were a couple of neighbors down a few houses and three cop cars.  A few streets over there had been gangs shooting at each other and the bullets came through our neighborhood and were now lodged in my neighbors’ front porch.

It was the route I take to walk my dog so that night we could have been in terrible danger had we gone out a few minutes earlier.

I asked the police officer what had happened and he said, “it was just a gang shooting at another gang,” and he gave a nonchalant laugh.  He said it as if it were no big deal, as if he were going to offer me a donut like, “just people shooting at each other…chocolate or jelly filled?”

The incident that night really struck me because downtown L.A. used to be the projects until the city bulldozed it to build townhouses.  I’m studying socioeconomics right now, why different classes do what they do, so the way people interact is fascinating to me.  There are unseen, hidden and unspoken rules that all of the classes operate by.  Poverty, middle and the wealthy class, each have their own rules.

There is a great book called “Crossing the Tracks for Love” that is about socioeconomics and it discusses how if one married outside their class they would have to traverse into another class and new learn “rules.”  It discusses the unspoken rules you learn or experience when you traverse through these classes.

Unless you are a member you don’t fully understand why someone of another class acts in a certain way until you’re a member.  Until you start understanding the rules they don’t make sense.

In Generational Poverty, one or more generations of a family are in poverty and they can’t get out of it.  For the poor they live day to day.  There is no planning in generational poverty.  They don’t think about money because money is unavailable anyway so they don’t factor money into their scheme.  The cycle is very disheartening and frustrating to me.  In poverty circles it’s very offensive to ask questions and get a degree – it shows separation from the pack.   Asking questions is encouraged in middle-class though, because it shows you are smart by their standards.

In this book, “Crossing the Tracks for Love” the author is middle class and husband is from poverty.  And their son goes to grade school and he has been having issues in school so the parents have been notified to come in to talk with teacher.  The father goes alone and there are six or seven teachers so he gets freaked out by them.   He thinks they are ganging up on him and his son so he gets defensive and the teachers end up upset.  When he gets home the wife is mad when he tells her that they were ganging up and ambushing him.  The wife says the teachers weren’t ganging up, the school was so invested in their son doing well that six teachers came to help but the poor husband assumes the worst and that they weren’t there to help him.

A person in middle class sees they are there to help them, the message taken away is different in the same situation based on the socioeconomic background and their unspoken rules that people understand without knowing our backgrounds.  If you, like me are interested in reading more about this topic check out the book, it’s a really interesting read.

I really think it’s important to be centered with yourself before you can be with anyone else.  When you’re OK with yourself only then are you really able to love someone else.  I sat down with my higher power and said “I’m happy with myself and I’m ready for a serious relationship.”   I was very specific with what I wanted and I think it’s important to be extremely detailed.  I wanted someone who could understand pain, support me and not compete with me on an artistic level, balance me and share my sense of humor and also was athletic.

If you’re too aggressive about making something you want happen and get too caught up in it, it won’t come to you.  You just have to put it out into the universe and let go.

I sent this desire out there and I detached myself from it to focus on me.  I decided to participate in a triathlon for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  At the time I had been teaching yoga for five years and I wanted to get back into swimming and biking.  I thought it would be a great opportunity for me.

I joined Team In Training, which is a sports training program which is established by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  It’s made up of people who all prepare for the triathlon together.  One day we were biking and there was a guy leading the entire pack.  Now, I am a very aggressive athlete and I don’t like to let people beat me, LOL!  So this guy is leading the pack up Griffith Park Hill and at the top of this hill I completely pass him and just toasted him over the hill.  I beat him so bad!  When we finished I finally introduced myself to him and we ended up training together for the rest of the time.  My song “Falling” came from this relationship and the man became my husband.  I put it out there and it came to me.   I do that a lot; I put my desires out there and ask for it….

Since developing Fibromyalgia after having a baby, I have tried to compete in triathlons.  That’s how I met my husband and it was always something I’ve enjoyed doing.  I despite my chronic pain, I wanted to join my husband for the triathlon he was training for that was  to take place in Las Vegas this month.

My family and friends were very supportive in sending money to me for the race.  Unfortunately, I had to cancel my participation in the triathlon due to complications with fibromyalgia.  I am so thankful to the people who donated money, which is safe in an account so that when I feel well enough I will start training again.

Although, I wasn’t competing, I joined my husband in Las Vegas for his triathlon, which he was doing as a celebration for his birthday.  While I was there I met an AMAZING woman named Carly Waugh.   Carly is an incredible lady who was also competing in the triathlon.  She use to work as a wildland firefighter for the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.  A few years ago while she working on a fire in the Oregon Mountains, she took a devastating fall that left her paralyzed from the waist down.  Despite this terrible accident Carly now competes in adaptive snow skiing, Triathlons, swimming, and handcycle racing.

When I met her she inspired me so much.  She has overcome huge obstacles that it made me want to push myself to go forward to train again.  After meeting such an incredible woman I definitely feel I can overcome my pain and weakened immune system to accomplish a triathlon.

Carly is a very talented athlete, has a great spirit and is such an inspiration.  I added a link to her website so you can check out all the cool things she’s been up to, www.carlywaugh.com