It was a printed interview that I never would have guessed had actually taken place,
because I thought all interviews in Dutch magazines, were basically bought from international magazines, and then translated…
But this was the real deal!

In 1993, a Dutch interviewer* went to Worcester, Massachusetts, to have an interview with Bon Jovi.
It was printed in the most prestigious Dutch music magazine, and I received a copy recently.

I ve transformed a corner in my living room where I am going to shoot my #dailybonjoviyoga videos, to look like my 80s room, and bought posters from Jon Bon Jovi.
The majority are pages from this magazine, which I copied before I drilled my pins into them so don’t worry!
No original prints were harmed.

But the final print I bought was still in the magazine so I got to read the entire interview.

“Just listen to the first sentence of the first song,” Jon says referring to Keep The Faith.
All I Know Is What I ve Been Sold
About the desillusion of being a touring rock band and the day-to-day frustrations, that ultimately broke the band and its members.
In 1993 these details were still kept indoors, but it was known the band had broken the seven year pattern of album-tour album-tour, from 1984 to early 1990.

That much was known.

With each of the band members going their own way after the final concert and Jon doing his solo project Blaze of Glory, the highly acclaimed soundtrack of Young Guns 2.
His songwriting got to a whole new level, and I would not be surprised if “Keep The Faith”, the first album that came after the band’s sabbatical, is the album with the highest number of songs regularly played at concerts.

But Jon’s disappointment, of the profession and status he fought so hard for not being what he thought it was?
Yeah….
That was still there, even though the nitty gritty of it was not shared at the time.

Yesterday night, just before I pressed play on a little over an hour yoga session to the cd Keep the Faith, I jotted down a few words in a box that said: “Today’s focus”.
Find myself.

It almost made me laugh! That was quite a tall order in my opinion.
And yet the session did not disappoint.
Unlike the massive disappointment I still feel when I look back on my career in yoga.
And it’s so unwelcome! It’s so “not done”!
When you are or have been a yoga teacher, you feel this invisible pressure to never investigate or ask questions about the nature of your work and your integrity doing it.
And this is a code of silence that will go to your grave.

Just like Jon Bon Jovi had his fans, his reasons not to tell the uncomfortable truth about how bad it got, I feel like I cannot tell how bad it got.
And maybe, to a degree, still is.

Every time I try to express myself, and analyze what happened, I feel the unease by the people I tell it to.
They took my classes, they believed in me, they paid me, they were inspired by me, and now I betray them.

Yet  even Jon Bon Jovi, as many secrets as he kept, did already say in that interview in 1993, he had felt like a whore.
Without resorting to graphic terms; Something was very wrong for me.
And it needed to be sorted before anything else could be born.

But one of the things I loved about yoga WAS, and STILL IS the connection with other people.
It was something way more subtle that didn’t work for me.

So I knew that by reinventing something that could be called Bon Jovi yoga, I am basically trying to bypass whatever THAT was.
The thing that didn’t work…

You know what the funny thing is?
Everything I went through what I thought I had against yoga? 
That did not have anything to do with yoga.
Nor even with teaching yoga as a professional.
It was way broader than that;
I did not have my own vision for my professional life.

The yoga teacher/ student paradigm didn’t work for me.
The service provider paradigm also didn’t work for me.
I had a powerful yet also incomplete vision that did not cover areas and practicalities I should have had an answer to.

As spot on and never out of alignment I have been in other areas of my life,
the part where you determine how you want your professional life to look, was not sufficient.

And I have an academic degree and I ve done my education at the biggest yoga institute of the Netherlands;
So I HAVE peers.
And they work, they’re successful, and yet I always felt with every job I ever had including being a yoga teacher, that at a deeper level, something was disturbingly out of integrity for me.

It was never about the yoga.
Yoga and me have always been okay, just that for a while I thought it was yoga when it was about not having that inborn-by-many vision for my professional life.
I was living on borrowed concepts that did not suit me.

Now that, was the good news…

Because my new yoga channels absolutely do not come with a guarantee of me knowing exactly how much I ve figured out!  

The only thing I CAN assure you, is that this will probably make my yoga channels way more exciting than all the other stuff out there.
Like an adventure!

Think more rock star and less yoga teacher!
Think mood swings!
Showing up late!
Being a total mess and yet putting on a show you will NOT forget! 

Yes;
I will rock yoga.
But be prepared to be rocked as well!

And although I still have no idea of the specifics, and I m absolutely just putting one foot in front of the other, in the dark and possibly wearing sunglasses, and I have no idea where I am going;

An hour after I had written “Find myself” in that box that said Today’s Focus?
I did know one thing!

I know way more than what I have been sold.

.
~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
Paypalme

* It’s likely the photos were taken on another occasion, because of the winter weather described in the article

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