Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars

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“My heart’s like an open book
For the whole world to read”
~Nikki Sixx

I was going to share everything.
After all, I am just like Nikki Sixx, an open book.
And as far as I have secrets, I review them regularly, if they still require to stay hidden.
Usually they don’t.
They re just my ego telling me I won’t be loved and successful if I share that side of myself.
When really?
Does the world need another great pretender?
Rip the band-aid.
Bare your naked soul to the world, as my favorite online coach Katrina Ruth calls it.

In the context of taking honesty to a whole new level, I was going to share this weekend’s stunning photos of Jon Bon Jovi in a crispy white shirt, which were taken on Saturday.
It was at an annual fundraising for the Apollo theater, and the photos bore the mark of Getty images and the photographer.
However.
Because the mark was always on the right of the photo, and Jon Bon Jovi was always standing, watermark-free, on the left side, I was already doing a decent job cropping him out, to make a collage with the older one;
A photo of Jon in a crispy white shirt last Saturday and a 90s (I think) photo taken by an anonymous photographer. Also of Jon in a white shirt, sitting by the pool.

Until I realized this is how I could get into trouble. By using photos from a press agent.
It took until I clicked on a version that had actual price tags onto them, before I snapped out of my Paint job and was like:
“You know what? I ll blog with the anonymous, retro shot of Jon Bon Jovi at the poolside to make my point.”

In case you need a visual of the pictures that blew my mind this Monday morning, just read on we’ll get to that.
I didn’t see current-day Jon in white shirt on the official press release of Getty Images, nor on the website of Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
I saw them on a Facebook page for Jon Bon Jovi fans.

Now, this in itself is a small miracle because I don’t spend much time on Facebook. The only social medium I like is Twitter, because it allows much better conversation, and is based on your personal interests. There is also less censorship on Twitter, it’s an adult thing, and you don’t have to use your real name.
You click with other people on mutual interests, it’s as simple as that.

Facebook gets about half a post to seduce me to spend time there, before I click to my notifications and start handling my messages and my pages.
Half a post, that’s all.
Today the JBJ fan page hit me with this one.
(For the fans check post 2, which has the other photos taken this weekend)

The specific current-day Jon Bon Jovi in white shirt photo that blew my mind was this one.

It really was so profound that I found myself kind of needing to process that, and it slowed down starting my day. It was impossible to think about anything else until I knew WHY I liked looking at Jon Bon Jovi so much.

This weekend I already had a long conversation with my mother, to ask her if she could please share her take on male beauty with me.
Because I never see it coming, until it’s too late.
That men are swiped off their feet by beautiful women?
A given.
But how many women are aware that they are swept off their feet by beautiful men?
Or are they not?
Am I an exception?

And what is it then, this mysterious thing we call male beauty?

The last question was a good one to ask my mother, because she’s always much quicker in determining it. I even have a case of my mother saying someone was beautiful, and me simply laughing about it.
And then becoming completely smitten later on.
She knows stuff.
I don’t, not before he has already done his enchanting work.

Together with my mother we came up with a few characteristics.
Teeth, hair, and overall attitude.
I was the one adding “teeth”.
How he holds himself was definitely numero uno, when it came to being an attractive man.
Great teeth, great hair and a strong on-screen and off-screen presence, are as much part of current day Jon Bon Jovi, as they were his traits on the undated photo near the pool.
So nothing new there.

And then it hit me!
This is a cookie jar thing!
Beginners mistake!
But let me explain.

If you re on a diet and you refuse something that is offered to you, for example a cookie from the cookie jar, this costs energy, causing your willpower to plummet.
If after that somebody offers it again, you will not only take the cookie. You ll probably take two, three or a two fists full of cookies.

And in that light, it suddenly made total sense that my Monday morning had a startup delay from one current-day Jon Bon Jovi photo in a white shirt.

Because a week ago, someone sent the first retro shot of Jon by the pool, to me and I tried to resist.
I tried to pretend that barefoot Jon by the pool with his shirt open, was something I could also not swoon over.

Please note that this whole “acting like a grown-up” pose, was taking place during my Rock Star Yoga fallout.
[*note: in 2019 the blog was called Rock Star Yoga]

I was not practicing yoga.
I was not writing for this blog.
But I was super busy wondering where the inspiration went.
(where do you think? could it be sitting by the pool perhaps?)

Pondering over why was I no longer caring for doing yoga to Bon Jovi music and then write about it.
(Uh, maybe because you’re ignoring that cute photo?)

Hard lesson huh?

Inspiration did come to me during that fallout from doing yoga or writing for this blog.
Yet in hindsight?
Oh, it came more than once.

I said in the previous blog (Fever) that I had strong feelings for Nikki Sixx and I wrote an erotic story under my pen name.
Or perhaps I left that out, because I/my ego wanted to keep that from you, but that’s what it was.
Full-on erotica.
I had inspiration in spades!

But I thought it was inspiration that wasn’t fancy enough to share here. I didn’t want to be the weirdo yoga teacher who only practices if she feels inspired by male rock stars.

So I said “No” to the cookie of letting Nikki Sixx inspire my yoga and Rock Star Yoga blog; I said “No” to Jon by the pool inspire me;
And I tried to take the edges off, by taking that inspiration over “to the other side” of my blog under my penname.
The non-fancy side.

Yet, this morning, the cookie jar came again!

I had no more willpower left to resist and let it have me.
Thought about it for as long as I needed to think about it, which was one Monday morning.
And then I wrote this long blog post about the stunning appeal of Jon Bon Jovi wearing crispy white shirts.

Moral to this story?
Take the damn cookie.
And take it the first time.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars is a Bon Jovi song from Crush (2000)
And was played on almost concerts on their most recent tour.

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Fever

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“Fever” is at played at 47:10

With my last yoga practice, over a week ago, I made two mistakes.
One was to even have a yoga practice, even though it was already 11 PM and I knew I would want to write about it as well.
[*note: in 2019 the blog was called Rock Star Yoga]

This resulted in going to bed at 4 AM.
Yes, I had done my yoga, and nourished the soul by writing about it.
But I had also completely wrecked my biorhythm.

The second mistake was that I was doing yoga listening to a Bon Jovi concert on YouTube, on my phone and  accidentally looked at the screen mid-practice.
I was immediately hooked and couldn’t put it down anymore.
In my defense: It was sleeveless-Jon.
Someone who rarely gets a No from anybody regarding anything, and this was no exception.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him and finished my practice placing the phone on strategic places watching the show, as I went through the moves.
You can read about this first time doing yoga while watching a concert here.

I learned from the first mistake, in the sense that I now didn’t practice yoga at midnight anymore. In fact, I didn’t practice it at all.
But ultimately, after I got over the initial crankiness that I had lost my yoga practice yet again, I realized it was time well spent.
Because I was still holding back.
It was still not right.

I had invented Rock Star Yoga;
A method where you design a self-practice based on who you really are and what you really like to do. But in no way was I hurrying to my mat, the way I hurry to my computer to write out a story that I have in my head.
I wasn’t spending every waking minute on my yoga mat, the way I watch Nikki Sixx interviews on YouTube while doing the dishes.

Soon after my 4 AM yoga bender, yoga dropped off the list of Things I Really Wanna Do, where Nikki Sixx now dominated place 1, 2 and 3.
Even Jon was, for a day or four, nowhere to be found, although I still listened to Bon Jovi music.
But my personal obsession with him was definitely less prone, and I knew this also kept me from going back to my yoga mat because my entire rock star yoga practice (so far) had been based on listening to Bon Jovi during yoga, and because I was in love with Jon this worked really well.

Now that I was in love with Nikki Sixx, things had come to a halt.
Things?
Yoga!

My own homemade Rock Star Yoga, which I was sure would inspire me for the next 20 years, just like Madonna had gotten me through the first two decades,
vanished the moment Nikki Sixx entered my heart.

It’s a long story how he got there but he was there now, and I spent the week largely writing about Nikki Sixx, and all the sexual feelings he stirred up.
I did this for my other account, my pen name, and this is what did get me up every morning, hungry to start writing.
And that’s how I learned my lesson.

Because unlike other yoga teachers, I do not believe that doing yoga should be a discipline. Something that you may feel like doing one day, and maybe not the next, but that it doesn’t matter because you have discipline, and you do it anyway.
Or they do it anyway.

Because to me, there is a difference between yoga and penicillin.
Yoga is like writing.
Yoga is like sex.
And therefor the only correct way to do yoga is if you just can’t NOT do it.

If you don’t care how many appointments you have to cancel, how many hours of sleep you have to miss. If the thought of not doing it is simply unbearable because you just want it so badly.
Until you feel that?
You re trying to make things happen, and it’s not Rock Star Yoga.

And it wasn’t just the yoga that I had screwed up, because I wanted to be a polished disciplined version of myself that I am not.
The writing too, for this site, was not the right from the heart, unfiltered, non-tampered, style that I had been using for my penname account.

So it became clear to me, that the key was in how much liberty I gave myself in writing under the other name, versus restrictive I was when it came to this account and to doing yoga.
As long as I would hold back even a little bit, it was never going to work.

For example:
I initially didn’t even give myself permission to switch my affection from Jon Bon Jovi to Nikki Sixx, because it “messed up this site”.

Same with yoga.
There really is only ONE way to do yoga!
The way I want it, when I want it, and how I want it.
And this may change every day, just like my writing under my pen name changes every day.

I cannot afford to hold judgement over whether or not it’s a bad thing that I watch the screen when I practice or not.

Tonight’s practice, with a 80 minute video A Night With Bon Jovi (1992, MTV) started out not looking at the screen.
But then there was a behind the scenes intermezzo, and I just couldn’t contain myself and had to watch.
And poof!
Gone I was! Again.
Hooked to watching.

But this time I was no longer ashamed. I was grateful. So grateful to live in this age of technology, and free concerts to watch. Grateful that I could watch this band in their prime, and let their zest for life infuse my practice.

Over the years I ve studied at least four yoga lineages, who help women to stay young and their sexual organs healthy.
One of them is even officially called:
Hormone yoga.
(!!!)
These yoga methods for women’s health are legit, perhaps even evidence based. If you teach them or practice them you belong with the Pros. The people who take yoga seriously.

Rock Star Yoga is about letting all of that go.

If you want to start living a life that sets you on fire, you have to stop distinguishing between what’s so called good, and what’s so called the bad way to do it.
You have to embrace what YOU love.

Not the soulless, lifeless version what everybody else says you should be doing to stay young and fit and healthy.
Look for the overwhelming desire to do it, or as Charles Bukowski said on writing:
“If it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.”
and
“if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.”

Don’t do yoga unless it roars and comes bursting out of you.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

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Work for the working man

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video: memorable performance and video of “Work for the Working Man” at the o2 in London 2010, night 10 (not night 11, as uploaded by hAnD90)

If it hadn’t been for this blog*
I would not have done my yoga.
[*note: in 2019 the blog was called Rock Star Yoga]

Yesterday and the day before that were both slow, extremely hot days, and I practiced at nighttime with my balcony door open.
And tonight I was out for the night, so when I came home I wasn’t exactly brimming with excitement at the idea of going to my mat.
However.
This is Rock Star Yoga.
And the rules of Rock Star Yoga are: Do something that works for you. Inspire yourself. Put on some music. 
Make it FUN.
So I did.

For inspiration I turned to hAnD90; a Bon Jovi channel on YouTube that uploads remastered material.
They had just uploaded a concert and it looked promising:
A Bon Jovi show from 2010, shot at the O2 Arena in London.

I put it on while I was trying to come down from my night out, and doing the dishes.
The sound quality was good, and the video quality too, although both suffered from being shot from the stands/ far away.

The video was a wide shot of the entire stage, and you could hear voices of people standing close to the recording device.
But I liked it.

After the dishes I dedicated the second half of the concert, to my yoga practice.
And for the first time I decided to do yoga with headphones.
It was already past 11 PM, the balcony doors were open, and I didn’t want to make too much noise.
I tucked my phone into my pants, playing the video, and as long as I didn’t do inversions or laid on my back, my yoga practice would be okay.

The past two days I only did very gentle yoga, but I had enough of keeping it so calm, and did standing poses and sun salutation inspired poses.
But then, transferring into lying poses, I made a mistake.
I intended to take the phone out of my pants, and place it on the floor next to me, and do my inversion practice with shoulderstand, bridge and plow pose variations.
But I looked at the screen and-
OMG!
It was sleeveless Jon!

Sleeveless Jon only comes out when things are getting heated, and this year he has barely come out at all.
This House is Not for Sale tour 2019 was already in week 6 or 7 when he finally made his debut appearance.
And I turned out to have a VERY STRONG reaction to sleeveless Jon!
It was probably a good thing we didn’t get to see him at Goffertpark, Nijmegen, because I m unsure if I would have been able to concentrate.
Maybe I would have relapsed into my 80s fainting thing, and be dragged to First Aid for some water.
But here he was.

And not only was Jon sleeveless, in the new upload from hAnD90 he was wearing his Let it Rock t-shirt!
A t-shirt I knew from two live recordings from my favorite Bon Jovi songs;
Let it rock (live) and Dry Country (live)

So while doing yoga I accidentally watched the screen and saw I now had a whole show with Jon wearing his sleeveless lavender colored top.

The beauty of this light color is that you can see him working up a sweat.
In hindsight I find it remarkable that I can drool over Jon Bon Jovi working up a sweat, and at the same time being a lazy-ass lizard myself, when temperatures in my living are above what I find ideal to actually do something on my yoga mat.

I was only halfway into my practice and I was now confronted with Jon Bon Jovi in the lavender T, something I had watched dozens of times because Dry County and Let it Rock had been my favorite live videos.

Yet I just couldn’t put my phone down again.
I was magnetized.

Bon Jovi played the O2 in London twelve times in 19 days.
Let it Rock and Dry County were not played in the show which was uploaded by hAnD90. But I just checked and “my” Let it Rock video and Dry County live were indeed filmed at O2 too.
Just on other nights.

So during the second half I watched the screen while doing yoga. Whether it was a lying twist, a wide-angle seated pose or a forward bend;
I managed to put the phone somewhere I could watch the pretty boring wide shot of the stage, with a 2 centimetre high Jon in a lavender shirt.
Yet I was glued to the screen.

I could not see the sweat here, because it was such a wide shot. But I could see his grinding hips, the powerful dance moves, the wide spread arms.
At one point he practically makes love to his microphone stand, or he’s making an elegant way down to study the set lists taped to the floor.
Or both.

For my long relaxation, I did stop looking at the screen.
The entire three song encore ( When we were beautiful, Wanted dead or alive, Livin’ on a Prayer) I just lay on my back with my eyes closed and listened.
Jon appeared, even with closed eyes.
He was wearing the lavender shirt and he was sitting next to me.
It was the Keep the Faith Jon, from the early nineties.
I liked his hair (pretty similar to 2010, slightly longer) and especially his golden earrings. They were so bold.
Jon stayed next to my mat, and we talked.

I don’t know which lesson was more important:
To not look at my phone halfway into my practice.
Or to realize that what distracts you only does so, because it’s already inside.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

video: Bon Jovi | Live at O2 Arena | Night 11 | London 2010
Work for the Working Man is number 19
(the set list in description box video)

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Welcome to wherever you are

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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

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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

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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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Bon Jovi concert reviews 1995-1996 Suzanne Beenackers YouTube