I recently discovered that Bend and Bloom Yoga in Park Slope, Brooklyn offers a monthly restorative yoga workshop. As you may remember, I’m training to become a restorative yoga teacher and am a huge fan of the practice. Here’s the workshop description:

When supported, the body can relax and open, releasing tension and stored up toxins that can otherwise cause illness. This monthly workshop will include gentle movement and stretching to warm the muscles and create space in the body to prepare it for relaxation. Through these well supported poses you can experience quiet for a few moments and savor the simple sweetness of life. Come and enjoy a deeply restorative, nurturing and energizing practice. This recurring workshop will be held on the second Sunday of every month at 5:15pm.

Register for the November workshop (November 14, 5:15-6:45pm).

Interested in learning more about a restorative yoga practice? Read this great article from the Kripalu website.

Today I’m happy to share a guest post from my friend and fellow NYC-based blogger Christa Avampato. Christa is a professional product developer, yoga teacher and writer. Her message for New Yorkers: it’s okay to be at the beginning.

New York is a town of experts. Think of any skill, job, or hobby, no matter how obscure, and someone within the confines of these five linked boroughs is a world-renowned authority on it. Mastery is a way of life here. We can’t help ourselves – we try to be happy with simply achieving our goals but that’s just not good enough for us. We need the recognition and prestige that comes along with the title “expert” appended to our chosen interests. It’s a tall, exhausting order.

There are a few things I do so well that I feel very comfortable calling myself an expert. I am an expert listener, student, city-dweller, and audience member. Lest you think that last one is kind of silly, I’ve actually gotten compliments on my ability to be supportive among a crowd. Seriously, if you’re an artist of any kind, a public speaker, or just giving a presentation to your boss, you definitely want me in the audience. I’ve been told I make people feel like a million bucks just by the way I sit there, nodding, smiling, and laughing at all of the appropriate times. And if I tell you I’m going to show up, I will, without fail, show up.

I’m trying to become an expert yoga teacher, dog owner, and writer – I’m making progress on those fronts, though the more I learn the more I realize how much I don’t know. My vintage-New York (aka neurotic) desire for achievement, compounded by my status as a recovering multi-tasker, makes beginner status an uncomfortable phase for me. However, to find some peace in this crazy city, that’s what I’m doing – I’m trying to become an expert beginner. (Just try and beat that one, New Yorkers.)

Becoming a master beginner takes some discipline. It’s easier, and some might argue more efficient, to follow our natural abilities, to luxuriate in our comfort zone and just get better at what we already do well. Venturing out on a new journey takes courage, coupled with just a touch of insanity.

I’ve been thinking about this new area of expertise for almost a year, and like all good discoveries it happened through zero planning on my part. I was in a yoga class at the very start of my teacher training at SonicYoga. My teacher, Jo, was teaching the pose of the month, Kormasana. It’s essentially a seated split and you lay your torso on the ground in front of you with your arms stretched under your legs. Having never attempted it before, I was terrible at it. I kept saying to myself, “You want to teach and you can’t do every yoga posture? You’re not an expert, and therefore not qualified to teach in New York, the city of experts.” [This is one more note I should make about all New Yorkers – in addition to being obsessed with our expert titles, we also have a small neurotic little voice in our minds that on occasion tries to take us down a few notches. I’m trying to find the mute button for mine.]

And then, as if reading my mind, Jo said to the class, “So what if you can’t get where you think this pose is taking you? You may have never done this before, so how could you possibly know how to do it? It’s okay to be at the beginning. Just enjoy where you are in the journey.” I let out a few silent tears that burned my cheeks. I wasn’t near a mirror but I’m positive my face was flush with color. I finally gave myself permission to be a beginner, and it was hard to realize that this is the journey I had to take but I knew it was the right thing to do if I wanted to grow.

When I go into my meditation practice now nearly a year after that painful class, my favorite mantra to use is, “It’s okay to be at the beginning.” I like it so much that I want to put it on bumper stickers and pins and post-its and hand them out at the subway station to every New Yorker who passes by. What if we, an entire city of experts, could take up the mantel of being a beginner? How would our city change, and in turn how would the world we mean so much to influence, change? Would we be happier, less neurotic, and dare I say it, even more proud of our achievements? What if we could become a city of expert beginners?

Read more of Christa’s writing on her blog, Christa in New York, and follow her on Twitter at @christanyc.

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See also: Improv and the Beginners Mind, something I wrote for a former blog soon after my 2009 move to New York. I was dealing with being new to the city and at the bottom of the local improv community’s totem pole.

Today’s post is by Katie Lavoie Cain, a public health professional and budding entrepreneur based in New Orleans. Katie reached out to me via Twitter about writing this post, which, while it’s not about life in NYC, it certainly fits here at ZENyc by illustrating an approach to finding a more harmonious path in life. If you’d like to write something for ZENyc, let me know by emailing amanda at zenyc dot info, or hit me up on Twitter (@amanda_hirsch).

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I’ve been a fan of Amanda’s blogs over the years, and if you have been following her too, you’ll know that she has a passion for improv comedy. She’s even suggested that key principles of improv can be applied to everyday life, which really piqued the interest of my inner self-help junkie.

After a little research on my own, I have learned about and successfully applied one of these concepts to my own life – namely, the principle of “Yes, And.” If you’re interested in more harmonious relations and the possibility of new and exciting experiences for your own life, read on about how you can do this for yourself.

Say goodbye to the “Knee-jerk No”

Have you ever caught yourself saying no to someone else’s idea or a new possibility for your own life right off the bat, without even considering that it might be worthy of exploration? Similarly, have you ever suggested an idea to someone who shot it down immediately, for seemingly no good reason? If so, I’m willing to bet that it didn’t make you feel so hot and didn’t do anything to help solve the problem you were working on, whether it was designing the next hot start-up or simply deciding what to have for dinner.

The good kind of “no” is the one that is in line with certain stated priorities; it is the “no” that is directly related to another “yes,” such as passing on a late-night movie so you can be at your best for your 8am meeting, or declining an invitation to your friend’s Hawaiian wedding so you can save money for a down payment on your first home. In contrast, the not-so-good kind of no is what I call the “knee-jerk no” – it’s the “no” that’s not thought through and is not in service of a higher purpose; it just comes out automatically, just because you “think” something might not work.

Sadly, this kind of no can block us from new ideas and opportunities that can take our lives to the next level. I believe that the “knee-jerk no” has got to go.

Say hello to “Yes, and…”

If we want to practice avoiding the “knee-jerk no,” what do we use in its place? We surely can’t just go around saying “yes” to everything. Certain ideas that others suggest and opportunities that may come up for us may not be worthy of a simple “yes.” They might need some details to be filled in. They might need to be expanded in order to be formed into a workable plan of action. This, my friend, is the beauty of “Yes, And.”

In improv, from what I understand, “Yes, And” means taking a fellow player’s cues during a scene and building upon them. When you’re creating a story live on stage, you’ve got to take others’ ideas and run with them in order to develop the story and maintain the flow of the scene. If you deny someone’s idea, the scene stops dead in its tracks. It has nowhere to go.

It’s exactly the same in interpersonal conversation. Saying no just because you don’t “like” the idea doesn’t do anything to advance the situation and closes you off to possibilities that might be amazing. Instead, when someone suggests an idea you’re not too sure about, you can say, “Yes, and please tell me more about how that might work…” or “Yes, and…,” expanding their idea with more details and ideas of your own.

And it’s the same when faced with opportunities in life. For example, there may be a conference you wish to attend or travel opportunity you feel would be incredibly helpful to advance your career. Instead of saying, “No, it’s too extravagant, I’ve never done something like that” (i.e., the knee-jerk no), you could say, “Yes, AND I could consider some ways to make extra money to pay for it, or see if I can find a sponsor or a scholarship.”

So the next time you catch yourself wanting to say no to something without giving it a second thought, try taking “yes, and” for a spin instead, and see what doors may open for you. Have fun, and let us know your thoughts and experiences by leaving a comment below.

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Katie Lavoie Cain is a public health professional and budding entrepreneur who moved from Washington, DC to New Orleans in 2009. She enjoys cooking, yoga, and exploring her adopted city with her sweet husband. Connect with her at katie [at] bistrokatie dot com, or on Twitter at @KatieLCain.