Welcome to wherever you are

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
And if wherever you are is between Richie Sambora and Jon Bon Jovi, you re lucky

“Rock bottom became the foundation that I build my NEW life on.”
Nikki Sixx,  Facebook 2 July 2019

I ve heard the Mötley Crüe Netflix biopic The Dirt is good.
The film is based on the authorized band biography The Dirt (2001, audio book released this year) but my fascination with Nikki Sixx came through the Bon Jovi fan community.
And I listened to Nikki Sixx’ own audio book The Heroin Diaries.

Listening to Nikki Sixx’ voice proved to be as addictive as his heroin had once been.
He s a born storyteller and his decisiveness to want to understand himself and his analytical abilities, are off the charts.

And that’s just 1987 Nikki, strung out on dope.

Present day Nikki, who has his own chapters just like many of the people who were interviewed for The Heroin Diaries, is able to provide even more perspective.

His book is used to this day for education on drugs.
It’s supplied in rehab facilities and many addicts, whether fan from Mötley Crüe or not, find their own way to the book, and see their lives changed forever.
On The Heroin Diaries book signing tour, some would come see Nikki, while still shaking from withdrawal symptoms.
But they were so proud they could tell him they were off the drugs for a couple of days, and never wanted to get back on.

Now it’s not a fairy tale: Nikki has relapsed many times, before he was able to quit permanently.
But publishing his diaries in 2007, was the point when he knew he would never go back because he felt such a responsibility, to everyone who saw him as an inspiration.
And I too, fell for him.
Hard.

He’s intelligent, outspoken, audacious, and it’s not even possible for me to not love someone who dares to show his realness, his vulnerability, in a totally unapologetic way.
I don’t have a drug habit to quit, and so far I had one drink in July.
And yet even to me, that part spoke to me. The struggle.

I think because we all know that even when we’re not addicts, we have an area or areas, in our life where we ve been denying the truth. And got away with it.
Nikki Sixx was allowed to do his drugs because he was the driving force behind the band.
He was the leader of Mötley Crüe.
I think most of us didn’t realize that because usually the singer and the guitarist are the driving force behind the band.
And I heard that the movie The Dirt does not put Nikki in a leader role.

But I m absolutely convinced that it was Mötley Crüe’s bass player, song writer and lyricist Nikki Sixx, who was the one with the vision and had the biggest input on all the songs.
In one edition of his show The Sixx Sense, which you can find archived on YouTube, he said that he became the spokes person for the band, when during their first radio interview, none of the other band members said anything.

But although he spoke about it as if it was coincidental, it was so logical.

He may not have been their lead singer, but Nikki Sixx was clearly the brains of the band.
And he was also the demon who could do whatever he pleased.
No one was going to stop Nikki Sixx from doing drugs.
Only Nikki Sixx could do that.

I think that’s why The Heroin Diaries speaks to so many people, on so many different levels:
We all have areas in our lives where we hold a position that doesn’t allow other people to help us or to reach us.
Which I think, is a good thing.

But there comes a moment, when everybody has stopped pushing and pulling and caring, when you re ready to see where you are.
Even if that really is rock bottom.
And you pick yourself up by your black leather rock n roll bootstraps, and you build your life from there.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

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99 In the Shade

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

update, September 20, 2020

You’re about to read the second post I wrote for this blog,
which was then still called Rock Star Yoga.
Not Rock Star Writer.

And this blog post is interesting, because you can really see the coat of this being a yoga blog, didn’t fit, right from the start.

That ultimately I m not a yoga teacher, nor a writer.

I am a Bon Jovi fan.

~Suzanne 

99 In the Shade

original post, July 25, 2019

JBJ in bath in the 80s: this was my original pic

I was Googling a photo to go with this post, which I intended to call “99 in the Shade” after the Bon Jovi song.
The title seemed fitting because today was the highest temperature ever measured, in the Netherlands.
Technically it was not 99 degrees, but 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
Blistering heat.

I wanted a photo of Jon taking a swim or something but ended up finding disturbingly few pictures of Jon swimming in the sea or even visiting the beach, from before 2015
I think having a vacation is a new thing for him, I really do.
Anyway, because I wanted to know if this grainy 80s pic in the Jacuzzi was the best I could do
(I’m saving 80s Jon in super tiny short for emergency pick-me-ups)

I gave it one more go, Googling Jon Bon Jovi + ice
At the word ice, I was already thinking of ice cubes, nipples, wriggling tongue around melting ice sticks.
My Google doesn’t have a filter, and neither does my imagination.
However, what I found was a lot more serious.
Jon had participated in the ALS ice bucket challenge.
I watched Jon Bon Jovi’s ice bucket challenge, and was highly surprised he nominated Tico Torres, his drummer; David Brian, his keyboard player; and Richie Sambora his guitarist.
Ex-guitarist.

Jon’s hair was already the grey and that was a post-Richie Sambora thing.
Richie left in 2013, but didn’t officially resign until 2014.
I checked the video, and it dated from August 2014.
Post-split and perhaps pre-resignation?
I don’t know.

Anyway, in an attempt to find out if Richie had answered the ice bucket challenge, I found an article that proved I wasn’t the only one surprised by Jon’s invitation to his ex-guitarist.
Article: Bon Jovi reunion fueled by ice challenge?

And there I was.
Again.

I finally had my things together with Rock Star Yoga:
A website/ this blog, a Facebook page.
I made my first public Rock Star Yoga playlist, did my practice today, and was going to write a PROPER post about it!
With yoga exercises in it, and which ones I did during each song.
It was going to be super professional, and tight!

I was no longer going to let myself be lured into the mystery that was called Bon Jovi, and in particular the story around the 2013 mid-tour departure of its guitarist.

I had already spent days and days studying it.
Writing about it.
Dreaming about it.

By now I was so deep into it, that I feared someone would one day make me pick sides or put my vision up in my Twitter bio.
Because I had written two long pieces, under my pen name, which had increased my following and had brought me new friends.

Within one week, I had gone from someone who was building her yoga business, into someone who got lost through the looking glass AND down the rabbit hole.
So the moment I officially “founded” Rock Star Yoga, this site, which up until then had “only” been a series on my YouTube;
It was more than just a business decision.
It was a life’s choice.

It was me saying:
“Fan girling days are over! Chop, chop! Take your place as a leader and go conquer the world with Rock Star Yoga!”

Yet immediately after my first successful Rock Star Yoga session, which was supposed to lead into a professional yoga blog post (this one!), with only a mild Bon Jovi reference in the title (referring to the heatwave) what do I end up doing?

Wondering about Jon’s 2014 ice bucket challenge.

Did he really hope for Richie and him to start talking again?
And if so, what happened after Richie posted his challenge?
Had Jon gotten shy, or was Richie supposed to take the initiative after Jon had made the first move?
Questions, questions.

All we know is that Richie Sambora officially resigned from Bon Jovi in 2014.
And that Suzanne Beenackers did 70 minutes of very relaxed lying around on the floor Rock Star Yoga, on Thursday July 25th, 2019.

And that I find the first a hell of a lot more fascinating.

And I probably always will.

~Suzanne

yoga log Thursday July 25: 70 minutes of yin yoga/ lying around on the floor
70 minute playlist Born Again Tomorrow
99 in the Shade is the first song.

~Suzanne

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Rock Star Yoga | the very first “About” page

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

update, September 19, 2020

You’re about to read the very first post I wrote for this blog, which was then still called Rock Star Yoga, and it was about yoga and Bon Jovi.
And now it’s called Rock Star Writer and it’s only about Bon Jovi and sometimes other rock music.
No longer about yoga.

Sometimes I still wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the night;
“I should change it back, right?!”             
But ultimately?               
No.        

Although I do intend to one day include new yoga stories and videos to this site, I am definitely more a writer than a yoga teacher.    

But do you know what I think? 
That ultimately I’m not even a writer either.     
In the end, it was all decided when I was still very young, and Bon Jovi stole my heart.

In the end I’m not a yoga teacher, nor a yoga practitioner, nor a writer.

In the end I am what I always was.

A Bon Jovi fan.

~Suzanne 

Rock Star Yoga | the very first “About” page

original post, July 22, 2019

As a yoga teacher my name is Suzanne Beenackers, but I also work under a pen name.

I ve been teaching yoga in Nijmegen since 2003, and since April 2019 I ve specialized in private classes.

After a Bon Jovi concert – or maybe I should say “after energetically preparing for this concert for months and reconnecting with being a fan of Bon Jovi having abandoned them because Jon reminded me too much of the boyfriend who broke my heart” – 
I saw the light.
But that’s pretty long, so let’s stick with:
Bon Jovi concert. 
Light.

It wasn’t that Rock Star Yoga was a new thing.
I had been toying with the concept or word Rock Star Yoga, since 2015. Perhaps even earlier, if I include calling it Rebel Yoga.
And in my final year of teaching groups, I taught Rock Star Yoga in January and February.
It was part of my standard curriculum.

But that was not THE Rock Star Yoga, that I m teaching through this site, and on my YouTube. 
Back then it was just a cool word, which I had borrowed from a teacher whose alignment principles I was teaching in those two months of the year.
It didn’t have anything to do with the download I received in the days after the concert.
An insight that had nothing to do with how you do your yoga. Not with taking yoga classes. It didn’t even have that much to do with yoga.

What I saw, and what I now preach and teach as Rock Star Yoga, was that my first years of practicing yoga – which was still back in the late nineties – had been the strongest.

That these years when I practiced yoga from books, and by memorizing what I had learned in my weekly class with my local yoga teacher – had already been what yoga was all about.
Before I let the outside world in, telling me how to do it.
Before I became a yoga teacher, getting paid for “pretending” that I knew how to do it. 

When in reality, looking back at it, I think:
“Nobody knows anything about how to do anything!”

Even the best yoga teacher, the most enlightened guru and the most expensive teacher training can only learn you, what you have already decided you want to receive.
They can be a tool, an instrument projecting your higher self, and in that they can teach you.

But it isn’t in their words, or in their books;
Not in their methods nor their yoga series.
It’s in you.

Which means it’s only a small step, to take the teacher out of the equation, and project it fully on the thing you feel inspired by.
Which in my case, is Bon Jovi.

So my yoga is: I put on Bon Jovi music and I do yoga.
And that’s what I ll be sharing in this blog.

IF you too, already have a vibe, an energy, an image surrounding yoga or completely unrelated like my Bon Jovi music;
Something that inspires you, and what makes you tapped in, switched on? 
Do not change a thing.
Work it from there.

I once heard from a girl who was frowned upon because she was just a beginner at fitness and already invested in expensive clothes.
Whereas now I think:
“That’s exactly right!”
Of course she could have done fitness in sweatpants and a t-shirt, but the new clothes represented what she wanted her future to be. They represented the idea, of fitness. 

The same way, my first twenty years of yoga were inspired by an image of Madonna, 1998, when she started promoting Ray of Light and said she owed her athletic body to Ashtanga yoga.
This late twentieth century vision of Madonna and yoga, was enough to lead me through two decades of yoga.
And maybe if I had built on that, it would have lasted to this day.

But now I have my Bon Jovi inspired Rock Star Yoga, and that is great. And it’s good to have a fresh start once in a while! 

This time around, I know how valuable it is to have your own vision.
So I m not going to put my Bon Jovi inspired yoga on the back burner the way I did then.
I m not going to put layers of proper yoga knowledge over it.
Not going to burden it with a career teaching it and a business model earning money from it:
Rock Star Yoga will first and foremost be a self-practice.
Just for me.
Everything else, even talking about it on YouTube or in this blog, comes later.

And that must be where Rock Star Yoga is different from all other forms of yoga: 
Rock Star Yoga is the yoga program and the version of yoga, you create yourself.

I’m not saying it’s not dangerous. 
Or that it’s not safer to learn it from a teacher.
(although it’s not, I think it’s extremely dangerous to rely on someone else)

But instead of proof on safe or not safe, I m going to take a Christian shortcut here: 
It’s way easier if you accept that the only safety, is connection to your higher self, your purpose and Source, or God.

I remember once being on a plane, and I was going to see someone I really wanted to see. If that flight had crashed I knew it was okay, because I knew I had to be, wanted to be, on that plane. 
Maybe that’s what Rock Star Yoga is about:
Making sure you’re on the right plane.
And stop flying to places because other people said they really liked it there.

Life is your own sold-out, sweaty, invigorating, rock n roll show. 
Now go fucking run it.

~Suzanne

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