Delight, Guest Posts, Inspiration

Shedding. Guest Post by Actress & Writer Sabrina Lloyd.

November 15, 2011

I am so excited by this post. In the title, I wrote simply of Sabrina Lloyd that she is an actress and writer. Ha! This woman, Dear Manifesters, is truly one of the most interesting people I have come across in my life. I first met her in Italy last summer at my annual Italy Manifestation Yoga retreat. A dear friend, Alimi Ballard, who had co-starred on the tv show Numbers with her, sent her an article I had written. She liked what she read and signed up for my Italy yoga retreat on the spot. (I liked this about her.) The retreat was in Tuscany and she lived in Rome so it just a train ride away. Immediately I fell in love with her. Dear Manifesters, when I think of people I want to model my life after, I think of Sabrina Lloyd. She is present and passionate. She is fiercely devoted to her family. She is a yogi, through and through, returning to her mat again and again over a period of 20 years. She is talented in a way that transcends definition. Give her a camera or a pen or a stage and you will be in awe. So, low and behold, when she agreed to do a guest post, I was over the moon. I can’t be with her in Rome right now, but I can share a little piece of her with you. It is my greatest pleasure to introduce you to one of my favorite human beings: Sabrina Lloyd. Enjoy her.

Sabrina and I having our morning coffee on the roof at Ebbio during my yoga retreat

Shedding : A Manifestation in process

by Sabrina Llyod

Ten years ago, I lay down on my bed in my tiny NYC apartment and prayed for the world to open itself up to me.

My entire childhood I wanted to be an actress and have been very fortunate to find success in that field. But what I thought would bring me happiness, what I had been hoping would make me solid—define me—simply swirled around me like mist, holding me in, and I was still unknown to myself.

So I prayed daily for everything to expand.

My prayers were answered in the form of a beautiful boy who has taken me from all I’ve ever known and is giving me the entire world as my backyard as we roam this spinning sphere for his work with the United Nations. Each stop has been a shedding, a loosening of my ideas and concepts, formed from my culture, as to how I define myself, how to define myself, why I need to define myself.

I am currently studying literary theory with the University of London. At the beginning of the course you must choose five schools of criticism to go deep within. One path available is that of Feminist Critique. I made the assumption that I would not find that of interest and planned to focus more on language and deconstruction, Marx, Freud.

However, each student must at least have a general knowledge of every school so into the shallows of feminist theory I waded, and into the deep of it I now passionately swim.

One of the main ideas behind it is that of gendering. How we become, through our culture—how we become defined—by the norms, ideas of what it means to be ‘feminine’ (or ‘masculine’). How ‘female’ is our biological beginning, but how ‘woman’ is carved out, molded, forced upon us in literature, art, advertising, etc. In linking this idea with deconstruction you start to see how all our preconceptions of how we live, how we look at our world, our place in it are really just constructions in themselves.

Take love, for instance.

What did it look like before words gave it its ideal? Romance and passion, destiny, soul mates are all literary, cultural constructions. I am not saying love is not real, but the labels we put on what something should look like, how something is defined, perhaps should be looked through instead.

When I left NY to follow that boy (now a man and my husband), I didn’t know who I would be without the label of ‘actor’ attached to me. I’ve been trying on new labels: Ex-patriot, wife, mother, writer, but each still swirl without landing and the horizon remains hazy; I feel trapped and crouching under definitions.

So everyday I try and stand on my mat and let go of any need to label. To find an identity outside of words, concepts, that beautiful place of peace that yoga gives you when you just flow, and breathe, and are. When I leave the mat, instead of filling my head with constructed chatter that limits all I can be, I try and remain larger.

I can’t always do it.

History is a heavy burden to wear, but every now and then the boundaries that society and I have put upon me fall away and I expand, endlessly, in every direction, undefined and indefinable.

Sabrina and her daughter in Uganda

If you would like more of this lovely lady, please follow her blog Red Dirt Lattes. Also keep an eye out for her latest film, Hello Lonesone, which received rave reviews from the NY Times.

If you would like to join me in Italy in July for my Manifestation Yoga Retreat to Tuscany please click here and reach out. The retreat will be small and intimate and is filling up fast.
Keep Manifesting Your Life,
One Laugh at a Time,
ManifestYogaJen

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4 Comments

  • Reply barbarapotter November 15, 2011 at 8:50 pm

    Sabrina I love your words, eloquent as always. Thank you for writing this today. Jen is correct in how she describes you. Your acting, your eye with the camera and the words you write ( I follow your blog too) are all beautiful. I enjoyed meeting you so much in Tuscany last summer and hope to see you again in Rome this summer when Jen and I go to her retreat again. Might I add the universe brought you and your beautiful daughter together for the both of you to know what love truly is….It was a perfect match:)

  • Reply Liberating Juliet November 15, 2011 at 11:59 pm

    I love this Sabrina, and I love you! I feel yearning in me to wrap words around my self like this, alas, my talents lie in another realm, and I am o’kay with that. I am humbled and filled with admiration for your vision. Dreaming of wine in the Tuscan sunset with you ladies. Soon.

  • Reply Sabrina November 16, 2011 at 7:02 pm

    You seem like such a lovely and amazing person – honored to virtually meet you!

    Isn’t it fascinating the titles we identify with? As much as we may be all those things, yoga is such a great reminder that we’re so much more. Here’s to shedding the labels today and being the fullest expression of our selves.

    PS. Speaking of titles, love your name 😉

  • Reply J April 17, 2014 at 11:02 pm

    Interesting, how I stumbled here. Labels, they are those brands or constructs that individuals can create and put onto us. Not ever then knowing ourselves. This world is positively upside down. Poverty, wealth labels and lies. We create this world by ignoring it to serve false ideals at times, for such temporary gain. As it is now, social engineering of men and women of their indoctrination is extremely labeling and biased. Many places do not keep women grounded into the needs of society as much. Building, its what we do all of we create and build things to share. Sometimes people only walk through and take what is and was created. That is a shame. For then what culture really exists then. Funny how little capital one can have can allow one to be as free and a butterfly. How one can also clip ones wings a bit. Even a society that is a bit biased can devour itself. These labels are more of anchor and unneeded pressures. We are who we are, three is work to be done. Strange though conflict of not wanting to conform is also a label we judge others with. Ideas… do we force them or share them. Funny, how but simple poetic words typed across a screen can be sold for pennies but give one ease. Cities are the best marketable targets for selling products. Simply strange word, its disconnect why we live our youth in bliss and our old age sometimes in regret. As long as we are always doing something I suppose we may be going some direction. Even “English” has its nuances where now they take cursive writing away and those meanings of words and their slight degree of meaning; now they are changing the syntax of the very language. To bad, really. I find there is more clarity as like a machine but a loss of artistry and grittiness to writing. You guys have wonderful thoughts… hmm.

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