LS Harteveld

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

This email is going to be even shorter than last, because I only have 45 minutes at most. 
My late hour for this email (I usually write you over the weekend, and it’s Monday evening here now) is symbolic of the absence of writer energy as a whole, in my new life. Now that I am actively an entrepreneur.

I have put writing, in particular writing under this alter-ego LS Harteveld, at the top of my priorities half of the time; 
And in the slipstream of that, to live a life worthy of writing LS Harteveld stories about. A life with sex and fun and adventure.

And the other half of the time I have put my body, picking up my yoga practice, recreating my yoga teacher body or even teen or 20s body, at the top of my list.

But I can put at the top of my list all I want;
The past half year all that I have really done is setting up my business.

And it is now that the daily rhythm of marketing, selling and working in my business is finally taking shape, and the smoke of the startup is clearing, that the reality of the rest of my life, and those top two priorities only deeper buried in dust than they ever were, covered with more guilt than I had 6 months ago:
It is now, that I both feel intense sadness for all the lost years, and the understanding that I never stood a chance to begin with.

That my social life, my friends, my love life, all hung by just a thread that losing my business in 2020 cut like a knife through butter.
That my entire sense of normalcy, was wrapped up in that simple local identity of I am a yoga teacher.

My business was still in transition when Covid hit;
To this day I am convinced I could have rebuilt a profitable business back. There was a lot at stake, but I also knew a lot, including how to built a healthy business.
Spoiler; It is never, to just blindly take on the business model your industry has come up with.
Maybe there was relief when late 2020 I ended the lease of the yoga space and gave up.
I have been carrying the grief of not being able to build a profitable yoga studio, for a while now.

But now I am at the phase where I realize that my not-profitable-enough studio, was precious. The people, were precious. And now that I have felt loneliness for years on end, so intensely, so dramatically, and can see more than ever, that maybe even if it had cost me money;
Maybe I should have kept it on.

Teaching yoga as a social club for others, and as the foundation for my own social life, was an idea I never took on.
I didn’t allow myself to.
Also because I felt frustrated for it not bringing in what it should, to call it a career or a healthy business.

But now that I have my new business, that is designed in a way that it generates money in a much more straight forward, sustainable way than being a local yoga teacher could ever be, I find myself thinking;
“Damn. I wish I still had those Tuesday night groups.”
Tuesday was the night I rented a big venue, so it cost me extra, hundreds of euros per month.

I quit that venue in 2018, a month before I started working with you, and had lost almost everybody from that night, because few transitioned to my inner-city studio.
But now that I don’t have that inner-city studio anymore, I fantasize about how wonderful it would be to have such a rich social life, of those big groups.
Meeting people at the supermarket who take your class.
That sort of thing.

I realize that as a social activity, it was precious to me. But that I did not allow myself the luxury of indulging in teaching yoga as a hobby.
I needed more.

And I get that.
Even today, I will not start anything like that until I make a solid amount (I know which one) per week.
That just like in 2018, I am frustrated but unwilling to put pleasure and leisure before building a business.
And a big one.

Just that five years later, I see what I have sacrificed.
What I have already lost, in pursuit of owning a business that makes enough money so that I, a single woman, will be able to buy an apartment and sustain myself into old age.

I want a business that keeps feeding me, my retirement fund, my savings account and my investment portfolio for decades to come.
Put the big bricks first, and that is mine.

So there is that, the sadness of seeing I have not been able to hold on to those groups, to the yoga studio, and that in a way I have destroyed that social structure that was also a lifeline to my normalcy.
To feeling I belonged.

And then the title of this blogpost, the missing piece;
I feel I have lost my lover.

I have seen him, and we are still precious to each other. I know that. Nothing has changed between us. But I imagine his circumstances have changed, he has moved away from me energetically and we are no longer sleeping with each other.
I suspect at some point he will tell me we will no longer be having sex, as if I cannot see that myself.

Like the yoga groups I feel I lost him, because I could not focus on two fields at the same time. I could not invest in our beautiful affair, our amazing sex life, the sex life of LS Harteveld, and also build a business.

And I could not invest in my yoga practice and in my body; The body that I had  when year after year, we had those exciting, intimate encounters, that nourished us both so much.
That were valuable, like my yoga groups were valuable just not from a capitalist, financially independent woman perspective.

My body, my yoga practice, my life of fun and adventure and my writing;
My social life, my life teaching yoga, my identity as a yoga teacher;
I put it all on the backburner, for the dream of having the business that will be able to sustain me, when I grow old.

Because I don’t want to be dependent on a man, nor on a community to sustain me, when I am older.
I want to be financially free, and feel it is my responsibility to lay that foundation not just for me, but also for the people who socially or sexually have a relationship with me.

I don’t want to be anybody’s pity case.
Not now, not ever.

But the price, is high. 

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I know that every time I announce it’s going to be a short email, it ends up being a not-so-short email.
But this time, it’s really going to be a short email.

Because everything is just so sweet, gratifying, and above all expectations.
It is of a perfection, that I had no idea was possible. Even though I sacrificed, let’s be honest, five years of my life if not more.
And a fortune in missed income and opportunities, because I knew I needed to get all the way to the bottom of why my life and career had ended up in shambles.
Why, I had been so intensely unhappy being a yoga teacher, even though I loved being a yoga teacher.

Yet still;
What an unexpected and sweet reward to then see what you created, working. Rolling. This show, my new company, is on the road.
A coaching company for business owners, artists and the biggest rock stars of the world.

And I could not have done any of it, if it had not been for all those so called wasted, unhappy years.

I used every bit of knowledge I acquired, every experience that enriched me, every tear I shed and every love I cherished; I took it all and built a three-layered company, that will satisfy me financially, spiritually, intellectually, socially.
And that now that it’s done, actually requires me to actively focus on my body, health, and sexuality; The areas I have neglected and have established so very little . Although as recent as first half 2022 I had the best sex life ever!! But it seems so long ago.
And I do know that in those areas, I have been trying to make headway for years, since I stopped being a fulltime yoga teacher. 
Nothing takes care of your body like teaching 10 classes a week.
And I didn’t have the discipline nor the inspiration, to replace it sufficiently.

Considering the firm body-care foundation of teaching yoga dropped out, and being middle-aged, I got off lightly.
I’m not sick, I’m hardly overweight, my condition is good, and I still move around by bicycle and take long walks frequently.
But it’s not consistent, and it’s not enough.

In my last letter to you, I announced to drop the idea of doing yoga privately and to start teaching yoga on YouTube.
That is still the plan.
Maybe I will add a private yoga practice, but only for a limited time, like 100 days or so, and then switch to teaching privates or one-off workshops.
So to monetize the practice, instead of trying to timeblock for yoga in solitude, which I know is not my future.

The past five years, I’ve had more solitude that I ever hoped to have in my whole life.

So the future is social: And I know my company has got that one covered.

But the future is also physical;
An area which I feel I need to reinvent first!

In my new professional life, my company, I use all the knowledge and experience;
My business degree, 15+ years as an independent yoga teacher;
Studying marketing and sales intensely;
My love for writing, pop-art, and personal development. 
And all the things I thought, the things I did, and everything I found out being a woman who had to get her sex life and sexual identity on track and on point, after being knocked off-track so hard in the 80s, by the aids crisis;
And it all led me to this point where I can see nothing was wasted, because it all led me to being able to build the business I built this year.

The show is on the road, and I can see this running for the rest of my life. This show, this company, is what will take me around the world, bring me places.
It is how people will know me, and will work with me.

But now, the time has come for that final area, body.
Or two areas; Body and sexuality.
The next level of sex.

It is time for the star of the show, to step into her power.
And become the Rock Star she came here to be.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

Initially I thought I had forgotten all about our last conversation.
That I had made a fuss about having to recover from my personal early- and late Dark Ages, respectively January 2018-February 2020, and March 2020 to March 2023;
Only to then forget all about it.

The very last of the C. measures were lifted last week, on Friday 10 March. The official ending, both of the pandemic as well as of my personal Dark Ages.
Two eras that seemed never ending, until just like that, they did.

I still praise myself lucky I am a middle-aged woman, when these darkest years hit me. That I have decades and decades of normal, healthy life to look back on and to get back to.
I have an understanding of what went wrong these years.

What went wrong, partially due to personal circumstances, but predominantly through global ones. And that what went wrong was in all probability inevitable, because life could not have unfolded in a different way.

Just like when I was 30 and became a yoga teacher; A profession that at the time was not taught to young people.
You had to be in your late twenties to start the education.
Had I known I wanted to be a yoga teacher earlier, it would have been hard to start training and none of it was government funded.
So spending my early twenties at university was a great choice both socially as well as professionally, because it gave me the foundation for my life as an independent because I studied business.

But in terms of career, I had to start all over again, in my late twenties. Professionally, my early twenties had not computed to anything lasting.

I try to go about my Dark Ages in the same way;
They were not wasted, just that they did not lead into a clearly defined career  or skills, anymore than my university degree did.
And they lacked the renaissance spirit of college years, and were indeed more like Dark Ages, where life went around in circles.

Yet ultimately those 5 years were inevitable or necessary, none the less.

So the past weeks I got a new perspective on them, which was already helpful.
But I also did something that came so naturally, I almost forgot it was something that was in sync with the intention to mark The End Of The Era, to heal, integrate, and most of all;
To get the f on with my life.

I dated and organized all my cds, dvds and all my 20th century books. They are now visually dedicated to my Lauren 1998 project;
To living 25 years ago. 
At a glance, I can see all materials I, Lauren, would have had access to at the start of 1998, and I have marked anything being issued in the year 1998 itself, with the date it was released and Lauren 1998 would have been able hear it, read it, or see it in cinemas.

And furthermore, I have split these collections into two separate time capsules;
One for my Sweet Sixteen self, to bring back the remarkable productivity, the stunning health, and the tremendous calm of the 80s. 
And one for my 20s self, for Lauren 1998, who is still struggling to juggle her ambitions as a diarist with her freelance work.

There are still hurdles to take, because just like Lauren 1998 I  struggle keeping even more balls up in the air, starting my new online business (I’m back to fully online, and will write off the money I spent on three months at the local business center. It was driving me nuts to even think about real life networking) and setting up a sustainable marketing for ALL my creative outlets.

I can’t post a few inspiring memes, and start selling my online coaching. I am NOT that kind of business owner.
I will always be a creative because I coach creatives and am creating a whole Rock Star Universe for decades to come.
You don’t Content Calendar yourself out of that, I need to keep creating!
I need to keep writing.

And not just for my real name, but for this name, Lauren, LS Harteveld as well.

But one ball didn’t make it.
It slipped and I know I cannot pick it back up;
My yoga practice has completely flatlined.

It is just undoable to be a writer under two names, run a company, do my marketing, make yoga videos and other videos, get daylight, exercise, and do interesting things to live a life worth writing about-
And to also have a home yoga practice.

I need to give it up, and move to “All yoga is for video”.
I need to be an online yoga practitioner, not an online teacher.
Which feels more vulnerable, yet in a strange way, also more exciting.
But it was not how I had envisioned it. I thought this year I would become a strong, offline, yoga practitioner again.

Now I know that all yoga will be teaching it.
Period.

The coaching company which I started in February, has been an incredible blessing, I feel that is what is the biggest difference between the Dark Ages and now.
That I now have a monetizable purpose.

But because I also want to build my yoga channels, and do all my writer and storyteller work, under two names, it has also revealed something has got to give.
And I know this is the offline, private, non-monetizable yoga practice.

I know not having a yoga practice is risky.
That after a 5 year midlife crisis of strain, stress, tremendous losses, frustration and major changes in every and all areas of my life (bar my love life, which has been surprisingly stable considering its “loose” setup! 😂) something that can serve as a physical form of therapy, would be the wise thing to do.

March’s changes of having a company and building yoga channels, two things I would have loved to have had over the past 5 years, will come with a sacrifice of my personal yoga practice.
There is no other way, since I prioritize writing under two names, marketing, publishing books and giving Lauren an offline, 20th century life worth writing about.

So from my previous letter to you, a realization that I need to implement something to undo the damage of five years of Dark Ages, I am moving to an understanding that my way of getting over my 21st century Dark Ages, is not by moving forward. Nor by moving inward.
But by moving outward, into the world.
And back, into creating an offline 20th century life.

Which makes sense, because despite all the drama, what I experienced more than anything in those five years, was being forced to stand still.
To stand still and to see what I called a life, crumble away, die, move out, or otherwise slip between my fingers.

It was the hell of seeing my whole life disappear into a five year void. Leaving behind only loneliness, and old age.
The year I turned 50 was the worst year of my life.

Therefor my path out of the darkness can never be contemplation.
Not the solitude of a daily yoga practice.

I need to run this new, 21st century online business; Yes.
But all my free time will go to giving Lauren 1998 a richer, fuller life!

A 20th century offline life;
FILLED with professional, personal and sexual adventures.

Adventures, worth writing about. 

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

The good news is I haven’t changed my plans, or what I want for weeks now. Just details, but nothing big. I feel secure in the commercial or official company I will be starting tomorrow, and in the understanding that I will bring teaching yoga and writing under the umbrella of the company, in future years.

It is doable, it is clear, and I like not having everything in there at this phase. I can really focus, on monetizing and selling just a selection of services, and it is breaking the cycle of loneliness.
It is a first step to recovering from what I will call my personal dark ages.

Like the real dark ages there is an early dark ages and a late dark ages. I think you don’t really see what the early dark ages are, until you are sinking even deeper.

I didn’t recognize any part of the dark ages, for the longest time, because the early period was set off by my little cat Maxie dying in January 2018.
I lost all my joy or interest in my work of teaching yoga and quit teaching that summer.
I picked it up early 2019, after my renovation was done, and I started teaching yoga to friends.

Late 2019 I had started developing Rock Star Yoga, and I am convinced that would have been how I would come back to teaching, if it had not been for the obvious 2020 reasons.
I ended the lease of my yoga space late 2020.

All in all I thought my misery was circumstantial.
That it was the result of not having cats for the first time in 15 years, and of a renovation in my building late 2018 and early 2019.
Workers coming into my house, the heating being turned off numerous times, and two weeks where I had to leave the house because it was unlivable and then the alternative housing was hardly better because they had started renovating there too, and everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

By the time it was all over I adopted two cats and 2019 was the year I started designing my new life!
There were some major changes but I knew it was me getting back on my feet.

So when in 2020 I started feeling miserable I didn’t think much of it either because everyone was miserable.
And because I was healthy, lived alone carefree and didn’t have children that needed homeschooling, I did not have the heaviest burden.
But I found the pandemic magnified the inter-human expectations that it was my task to make sure somebody feels safe with me.
A fear at the heart, of my social phobia.

I feel I still don’t trust people the way I used to, because in the past at least I thought it was me.
That I was exaggerating, and too sensitive or even seeing expectations that were not there.
But now I believe it is even worse than I imagined.

During the pandemic I saw a wide array of blaming, of not taking responsibility that we live in a free country and this entails several rights and risks. Our government demonized people who did not behave the way they thought was appropriate, and judging by the lack of protest that was apparently okay.
When now, the people who are vulnerable are still vulnerable, and everybody moved on and no one talks about what the vulnerable people are supposed to do.

So they all felt really good about themselves, being the good guys and blaming the bad guys, only to just leave all those who actually do have reason to worry unprotected after.
The silence is deafening.

The loss of my last cat, became a switch in careers,  became a year long void where I waited for the renovation to be over.
And when the upwards going curve of teaching yoga and new cats, was finally taking off, and I knew where I was heading;
It was 2020.

With my new company, and knowing exactly what I am going to do, I feel the grief of all those lost years, requires attention.
That I have been carrying this around since January 2018, when my cat died in my arms.

So much has happened since.
And nothing has been processed.

It’s all still raw and painful.

And I couldn’t help but wonder;
How do you recover, from the dark ages?

 .
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

In our last correspondence I announced that I had once and for all quit being a yoga teacher.
And Boy, I meant it!
Still do.
And yet, quitting teaching yoga is not turning out as actually quitting teaching yoga. And for reasons I absolutely did not see coming, but that have persuaded me immediately.

Not to start teaching again, I would not call it that.
But the reasons persuaded me to go in and save my work, because it has all my heart and soul in it. And that work is not teaching yoga;
It’s the books that came from it.

A few years ago I have reissued the White Tigress Yoga Workbook, originally from Lauren Harteveld, under my real name.
The name where I also used to be a yoga teacher.
I also have a public online, collection of 52 (!) yoga schedules there, a ton of schedules still on my computer, about 15 early 21st century dvd’s I’d like to watch and make schedules for, and 5 vintage yoga books I’d like to study.

Yet perhaps I could have turned my back on all of it, if it had not been for the fact that I wrote those 52 schedules in my cute baby-handwriting, which I attribute to notes my dolls write, or the cats. Or as written by my cartoon character Love Duckie, which is what I did with these ones.

The 52 schedules are actually a yoga book written by Love Duckie.
And there is no way, and I mean none, I can turn my back on Love Duckie…

To be fair, it did start with the White Tigress.
It did start with realizing that if I no longer taught yoga, I would never be able to bring these 7 schedules that are the result of 20 years in yoga, to the public.
That was the first, that made me want to save yoga.
I thought about starting a website, just for the White Tigress yoga and lifestyle as described by Hsi Li in three books, and start making yoga videos again, just for that.
So that came first, and it still felt very partial. Very doable, non-threatening, to pick just that one booklet, and say: “This is all the yoga I will be teaching for the rest of my life.”
But then I shrieked, like the parents in Home Alone, not: “We forgot Kevin.” but “I forgot Love Duckie!”

Love Duckie could not be left behind.
And even though I was not abandoning the cartoon itself, I loved Love Duckie so much (who wouldn’t?) that abandoning the 52 schedules in his baby handwriting was unthinkable.

I don’t make a habit of connecting my real life work to this site, but since this blog relies so heavily on that work, I will happily share it, in case you want to check it out:
Book page under my real name, including the reissue of the White Tigress book. 
Love Duckie’s yoga book
And I once made an English translation of a Love Duckie cartoon.

So I am picking up making yoga videos on YouTube: The “Love Duckie yoga” on my Dutch channel, and the White Tigress yoga on my English channel.
And the third yoga-from-the-heart concept was Rock Star Yoga:
This too will return, on my English channel.

The above is just one version of the story. Another version is that I realized that I need yoga, just not as the tool of self-expression I thought it was.
The yoga itself is normal, not unique. And me making yoga videos is nothing special either. I even no longer consider giving public classes with rock music, mixing theatre with yoga, nothing of the sort.
So no, I don’t need yoga as a tool of self-expression. I was right about that, in my last post to you.

But I have used yoga in the past to express myself though: Through writing. Through making schedules.
The expression was there, just that the heart of it was not in the actual teaching.

And I have tried to express myself in the teaching too. Through using class themes, themed series, cards, blog posts, long relaxations, and video talks on YouTube, I have tried to weave storytelling into the yoga.
But I did it backwards because I tried to put the storytelling into the yoga, for as far as yoga allowed it. 
And that is what will be totally different now:
The storytelling will go first.

So instead of a yoga teacher, instead of a TED-talk like speaker, instead of a blogger, instead of a writer and instead of a mentor and business owner, I am just that;
A storyteller.

The stories come out, as they come out. Perhaps there is yoga, perhaps not.
I’m even thinking of ways to take the word yoga out of the videos to simply a story, and than the second half of the story is on your mat.

But whether I explain the past three weeks with finding back my White Tigress  work and Love Duckie, and not being able to leave them behind;
Or with my love for storytelling finally taking the main stage (optional link to my Birth of a storyteller post, a very longread under my real name);
Of course I’m scared.

Scared because the profession of being a yoga teacher brought me harm and took me out for 20 years plus.
I always thought I had one chance left. One chance, to get it right this time.
But with yoga on board it feels I decimated the chances of success.
Like I’m sailing with a bomb on board.

So in our call, I would like to talk about how to change that story and how to stop being scared.
How to dismantle the bomb, so that it becomes something I love. Just like I love yoga books, yoga videos, Love Duckie, and the White Tigress work.

There is a rule in film that if you show a gun at the beginning of the movie, you have to fire it before the end.
So I can’t depart with a live bomb on board, because I know it will blow. I know how the story goes, and to be honest, I would set it off myself if I had too.

I can’t depart with me failing being the most spectacular story..

Detective Nick Curran;
“I love it. She’s got a hundred million bucks, she fucks fighters and rock n’ roll stars and she’s got a degree in screwing people’s heads”

Luitenant Walker:
“You forgot about her degree in literature. She’s a writer. She published a novel last year under a pen name. “

Dear Sara,