The stress that saturates the brain is decreased through asana (yoga poses) and pranayama (breath), so the brain is rested, and there is a release from strain....Not only do they (asana and pranayama) prepare our bodies, spine, and breath for the challenge of inner serenity....they bestow the firmness to live with equanimity in the vicissitudes of the world's hurly-burly. from Light on Life, BKS Iyengar
That the body needs preparation for serenity is a new idea for me. For most of my life, in contrast, I have attempted to use my mind to sooth my anxieties, worries, fears. I have sought comfort, pleasure, and the avoidance of pain through thought, endless ruminations, doing rather than being, and failed attempts to figure things out.
Pema Chodron writes that, "Wanting to find a place where everything's okay is just what keeps us miserable." But this is what my mind has craved; ease, rest, serenity.
What I am finding new through asana and pranayama are just these things; ease, rest, serenity, but through the body not the mind. The mind is quieted as my lungs are irrigated with deep breath, the spine loosened from thick plack, the hips and throat oxygenated with fresh blood. The body in this way prepares the mind to rest, to let go of doing, to rest in the full heart. Dualities of pain/pleasure, ease/struggle, calm/confusion dissolve into just what is; an ache in the chest, a tightness in the jaw, the release of heat in the sore hamstring. In this way, the body prepares the mind to find respite in paradox, unknowing, humility, compassion.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
In Silence
This ability to still and gently silence the mind is essential not only for meditation and the inward journey but also so that the intuitive intelligence can function usefully and in a worthwhile manner in the external world.BKS Iyengar, Light on Life
In that silence, what does my intuitive intelligence tell me? That it is good to take time for myself, to be alone, quiet, and with nothing to do. That all feelings and experiences are worthwhile. That love and attention, to one another, to ourselves, not only envelops but penetrates, softens, and opens our hearts. To let go, let go, let go again of fear.
In that silence, what does my intuitive intelligence tell me? That it is good to take time for myself, to be alone, quiet, and with nothing to do. That all feelings and experiences are worthwhile. That love and attention, to one another, to ourselves, not only envelops but penetrates, softens, and opens our hearts. To let go, let go, let go again of fear.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
My Loneliness
Here is what Pema Chodron says about Loneliness: Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. It's restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we rest in the middle of it, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a cooling loneliness that turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.
Almost every day, I seek escape, consolation, protection from my loneliness. I feel it approaching even before it is in sight, like the hot tendrils of headache before the pain. Daily, I seek a savior to rescue me from this dark hole. To my savior I say, “This is your fault that I am lonely. If only you could provide me with “enough” then I would not hunger so.”
Tuesday I found myself in a hotel lobby after the conference with that familiar smell of loneliness in the air. My loneliness likes to visit me when I am alone in hotels. I had been inside a windowless space for hours so went for a walk in the warm sun by the river. A short ways down the trail there was a playground and a sandy place where children and their caregivers feed bread to geese, ducks and gulls. I sat in the bright warm sun so unusual for mid October and remembered feeding ducks with my father, my grandmother. How fascinated I was by their squawking, their fast gobbling of the bread, their displeasure from greedy companions. All of a sudden, my beloved yoga teacher walked by! What a surprise. She lives near that path. I would see her in a few hours for class. She smiled at me, “This is one of my most favorite places to walk.” A gift sent by the universe, I thought, so that I might know I am not alone.
After, I was tired and hungry, for real, I realized this now. So ate a banana, drank sweet tea, sat in a large leather chair and let the loneliness engulf me. Despite the ducks and children, the warm sun, my teacher the loneliness was still in front of me. I entered the loneliness as fully as possible, felt with my hands the wet stone walls of this cave, the dripping mosses, the slippery planks. I sensed a spaciousness there and surprising room to breath. For a time the physical sensations and emotional sensations were so strong that I could not feel anything else. Only a part of me was still in the hotel so much of my gaze captivated by the inner otherworldly darkness, the rough stone walls, the damp air. I kept having to let go of wanting to be rescued by my saviors; desire, ruminations, thinking, doing. The pull of longing was so very strong until it wasn’t.
This journey ended well although this was not inevitable. I had yoga, afterall, and knew that the yoga would show me a way back to a warmer place, the inner path of connection. I don’t think I would have dared to go so fully into loneliness without this stop gap.
Almost every day, I seek escape, consolation, protection from my loneliness. I feel it approaching even before it is in sight, like the hot tendrils of headache before the pain. Daily, I seek a savior to rescue me from this dark hole. To my savior I say, “This is your fault that I am lonely. If only you could provide me with “enough” then I would not hunger so.”
Tuesday I found myself in a hotel lobby after the conference with that familiar smell of loneliness in the air. My loneliness likes to visit me when I am alone in hotels. I had been inside a windowless space for hours so went for a walk in the warm sun by the river. A short ways down the trail there was a playground and a sandy place where children and their caregivers feed bread to geese, ducks and gulls. I sat in the bright warm sun so unusual for mid October and remembered feeding ducks with my father, my grandmother. How fascinated I was by their squawking, their fast gobbling of the bread, their displeasure from greedy companions. All of a sudden, my beloved yoga teacher walked by! What a surprise. She lives near that path. I would see her in a few hours for class. She smiled at me, “This is one of my most favorite places to walk.” A gift sent by the universe, I thought, so that I might know I am not alone.
After, I was tired and hungry, for real, I realized this now. So ate a banana, drank sweet tea, sat in a large leather chair and let the loneliness engulf me. Despite the ducks and children, the warm sun, my teacher the loneliness was still in front of me. I entered the loneliness as fully as possible, felt with my hands the wet stone walls of this cave, the dripping mosses, the slippery planks. I sensed a spaciousness there and surprising room to breath. For a time the physical sensations and emotional sensations were so strong that I could not feel anything else. Only a part of me was still in the hotel so much of my gaze captivated by the inner otherworldly darkness, the rough stone walls, the damp air. I kept having to let go of wanting to be rescued by my saviors; desire, ruminations, thinking, doing. The pull of longing was so very strong until it wasn’t.
This journey ended well although this was not inevitable. I had yoga, afterall, and knew that the yoga would show me a way back to a warmer place, the inner path of connection. I don’t think I would have dared to go so fully into loneliness without this stop gap.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
On Desire
The capacity to stay awake when gripped by desire is one of the great gifts that yoga can offer us. Sally Klempton
My mind flings me wildly and consistently from one desire to the next towards all the things I think I need to be okay. Whether that is a new pair of shoes, a nicer car, a better job, or a sweeter dessert, my needs can feel endless, infinite, never-ending. What I am discovering through yoga, however, is the existence of a desire underneath the desire for things, one that longs for love, the unconditional kind, that is unwavering, always available, not stingy, enough.
Moving towards this inner love is a creative process. In creativity, there is a merging of oneself to the unknown, the unexpected, the mystery. It is a beautiful dance between the deepest self and the universe. Everything seen, touched, and tasted becomes a colorful oil for your palette.
Still, I can forget all of this when I am lonely, tired, feeling forgotten. Coming into contact with my superficial desires, I can be propelled into fast action; to taste NOW the crispy donut skin, allow NOW the chocolate to melt in my mouth, to bow NOW on the stage before the applauding fans. My mind seeks refuge in a full bank account, a refrigerator stocked with food, a full gas tank, a healthy mother.
The practice of yoga helps me to cultivate the alternative; an unflinching mind that can watch desires come and go without reacting. I feel my spine in a pose, see the unbalance in the lungs, feel a heaviness in one thigh bone but not another. In redirecting the mind to the body, my mind pauses just enough to see the wave like flow of desire as it grows to a tremulous peak before falling apart. In yoga, I learn to surrender to the breaking waters rather than struggling to make them go away. In surrender, there is grief in the loss of what I had hoped would be as I turn to a recognition of what is.
Grief like a tap root the source of growth, creativity, union with the Soul.
My mind flings me wildly and consistently from one desire to the next towards all the things I think I need to be okay. Whether that is a new pair of shoes, a nicer car, a better job, or a sweeter dessert, my needs can feel endless, infinite, never-ending. What I am discovering through yoga, however, is the existence of a desire underneath the desire for things, one that longs for love, the unconditional kind, that is unwavering, always available, not stingy, enough.
Moving towards this inner love is a creative process. In creativity, there is a merging of oneself to the unknown, the unexpected, the mystery. It is a beautiful dance between the deepest self and the universe. Everything seen, touched, and tasted becomes a colorful oil for your palette.
Still, I can forget all of this when I am lonely, tired, feeling forgotten. Coming into contact with my superficial desires, I can be propelled into fast action; to taste NOW the crispy donut skin, allow NOW the chocolate to melt in my mouth, to bow NOW on the stage before the applauding fans. My mind seeks refuge in a full bank account, a refrigerator stocked with food, a full gas tank, a healthy mother.
The practice of yoga helps me to cultivate the alternative; an unflinching mind that can watch desires come and go without reacting. I feel my spine in a pose, see the unbalance in the lungs, feel a heaviness in one thigh bone but not another. In redirecting the mind to the body, my mind pauses just enough to see the wave like flow of desire as it grows to a tremulous peak before falling apart. In yoga, I learn to surrender to the breaking waters rather than struggling to make them go away. In surrender, there is grief in the loss of what I had hoped would be as I turn to a recognition of what is.
Grief like a tap root the source of growth, creativity, union with the Soul.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Hamstrung
You learn so much from an injuryEileen Muir, Yoga teacher
For the last year, I have been struggling with a hamstring injury. A pulled tendon, right where the hamstring attaches to the sitz's bones, has prevented me from moving with ease in my left hip and leg. At times the pain has spread down the leg, through the buttocks, in the deep crevices of the hip joint. The uninjured hip seems to have suffered as well from my lack of ability to bend forward completely.
I have, in turns, been angry, sad, humiliated, prideful, impatient, and loving with my pulled tendon. I have felt better and then pushed too hard only to reopen the injury. I have backed off, backed into, backed around the pain. I have wrapped the leg in bandages and straps, massaged the muscles with arnica oil, pressed hot then cold into the leg. At many points throughout this year I was sure I would never heal. I worried the pain might forebode of some greater danger like arthritis or a hip replacement.
Through it all, I wanted to get better, for the pain to go away, to bend deeply forward again.
Then, seemingly "all of a sudden" something shifted. There was less pain when I walked, when I bent forward, when I twisted my hips.
"You learn so much from an injury," Eileen whispered to me in class last night. And she is right. I learned how hard it is to have compassion for my "injured" parts, how impatient I can be with my slowness and pain. I learned how much I yearn for wholeness, for a body that works well, for health. I learned how to move more in the belly of the muscles and not pull at the tendons to get into poses, to feel the embodied energy and heat in pain, to use the groins. I learned the humility and grace of imperfection and how pain can help us to love ourselves and each other better.
For the last year, I have been struggling with a hamstring injury. A pulled tendon, right where the hamstring attaches to the sitz's bones, has prevented me from moving with ease in my left hip and leg. At times the pain has spread down the leg, through the buttocks, in the deep crevices of the hip joint. The uninjured hip seems to have suffered as well from my lack of ability to bend forward completely.
I have, in turns, been angry, sad, humiliated, prideful, impatient, and loving with my pulled tendon. I have felt better and then pushed too hard only to reopen the injury. I have backed off, backed into, backed around the pain. I have wrapped the leg in bandages and straps, massaged the muscles with arnica oil, pressed hot then cold into the leg. At many points throughout this year I was sure I would never heal. I worried the pain might forebode of some greater danger like arthritis or a hip replacement.
Through it all, I wanted to get better, for the pain to go away, to bend deeply forward again.
Then, seemingly "all of a sudden" something shifted. There was less pain when I walked, when I bent forward, when I twisted my hips.
"You learn so much from an injury," Eileen whispered to me in class last night. And she is right. I learned how hard it is to have compassion for my "injured" parts, how impatient I can be with my slowness and pain. I learned how much I yearn for wholeness, for a body that works well, for health. I learned how to move more in the belly of the muscles and not pull at the tendons to get into poses, to feel the embodied energy and heat in pain, to use the groins. I learned the humility and grace of imperfection and how pain can help us to love ourselves and each other better.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Truth in Others
No one person has the whole truth David Hartman, Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Philosopher
No one person has the whole truth. That is why we need each other.
From my yoga teacher, I learn the truth of discipline, practice, surrender of the busy mind.
From my daughter, I learn the truth of love, change, vulnerability, the fierceness of growth.
From my parents, I learned the truth of my heritage, tradition, family bonds, sacrifice.
From the woman who walks now with a cane, I learn the truth of humility, courage, life as it is and not how we would like it to be.
From the stranger I learn the truth of jealously, of compassion, of misunderstanding, of grace.
From the girl who serves my coffee I learn the truth of dreams, unmet and hoped for, of youth, of possibility.
In seeing the truth of others, I find my capacity to learn.
With each encounter, I am a beginner once again.
No one person has the whole truth. That is why we need each other.
From my yoga teacher, I learn the truth of discipline, practice, surrender of the busy mind.
From my daughter, I learn the truth of love, change, vulnerability, the fierceness of growth.
From my parents, I learned the truth of my heritage, tradition, family bonds, sacrifice.
From the woman who walks now with a cane, I learn the truth of humility, courage, life as it is and not how we would like it to be.
From the stranger I learn the truth of jealously, of compassion, of misunderstanding, of grace.
From the girl who serves my coffee I learn the truth of dreams, unmet and hoped for, of youth, of possibility.
In seeing the truth of others, I find my capacity to learn.
With each encounter, I am a beginner once again.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Sin
Oh sinners let's go down, let's go down, gonna go down. Oh sinners let's go down, down to the river to pray.
Drapped in the white robes, I go to the river to pray, to be scrubbed clean, absolved, resurrected. Others come, through the woods, down the sloping hill to the river which is cold and deep this time of year. Late summer rains have made the river swell her banks.
The teachers are there to guide us, hold our hands, cradle our heads as we bend back into the waters. I am ashamed. I have sinned again, and again, against my family, my neighbors, most brutally myself. I have thrown myself away time and again to impatience, to wanting control, to stinginess, to sloth. To the untamed anger, to not having enough.
Still, I am welcomed here among the sinners. Bringing our imperfections with us on wobbly shopping carts, bulging canvas sacks, wicker baskets, cradles, and carts, we come together to the river to shed these heavy burdens we have clung to for so long. In this way, our sins make us humble, alive, creative, and most amazingly, holy again.
Drapped in the white robes, I go to the river to pray, to be scrubbed clean, absolved, resurrected. Others come, through the woods, down the sloping hill to the river which is cold and deep this time of year. Late summer rains have made the river swell her banks.
The teachers are there to guide us, hold our hands, cradle our heads as we bend back into the waters. I am ashamed. I have sinned again, and again, against my family, my neighbors, most brutally myself. I have thrown myself away time and again to impatience, to wanting control, to stinginess, to sloth. To the untamed anger, to not having enough.
Still, I am welcomed here among the sinners. Bringing our imperfections with us on wobbly shopping carts, bulging canvas sacks, wicker baskets, cradles, and carts, we come together to the river to shed these heavy burdens we have clung to for so long. In this way, our sins make us humble, alive, creative, and most amazingly, holy again.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Goodbye Girl
There were many little children in the cafe this morning eating toast on mother's or father's lap, spilling milk, talking, pointing with sticky fingers at the pink topped chocolate cup cakes. One little boy about three years old sat happily in daddy's lap moving his hips in song, poking at the pads of butter on daddy's toast, laughing uproariously at the puppy outside. Moments later he was in tears, utterly inconsolable, frustrated, over blown by life (who among us don't have these moments still!)
I remembered having "one of those" little ones whom I could comfort with just the sound of my voice, my hand on her belly, her head on my chest. Effortlessly, it seemed, and completely, I could comfort the deepest hurts with just my body months before she uttered her first word.
A parent's bond with her child is most profound; one that I feel even today as mine takes the public bus home from school, can be left alone(!) in the house, can make her own dinner. She walks away from me now, decisively, angrily, in hurt, joy, or frustration. My body is no longer a solace for her pain.
I am penetrated by her moods. I still want to hold and see her every day, need to hear her voice to know she is okay. And so it is also for my own mother even as I approach 50 and she an even older age. So it was for my grandfather who at 94 could still think of my mother as a child, the one he needed to care for and would stand by even as his own hands could not longer hold a spoon steady.
I imagine him thinking, "I have lived almost thirty years more than you, held you in my arms before you could walk, slapped you when you smoked cigarettes, walked you down the aisle, held you while you held your own baby daughter. How can I ever say goodbye to you?"
"How do I say goodbye?" I asked a friend when my own father was dying, "I don't know how to do this."
"Tell him you love him, that you will be okay, that he can rest now."
And I did. These words and others came effortless and unbidden. I imagined my father knowing what I was saying even if I couldn't tell for sure by looking into his wandering eyes. I thanked him for bringing me into this world, caring for me in his own strange and quirky way, helping me to grow strong when such lessons were not ready made for girls. My words, I imagine, comforted him with the knowing that he had done his job the best he could, that I would be okay, that he would always be my dad, that he could rest now and find a way to say goodbye.
I remembered having "one of those" little ones whom I could comfort with just the sound of my voice, my hand on her belly, her head on my chest. Effortlessly, it seemed, and completely, I could comfort the deepest hurts with just my body months before she uttered her first word.
A parent's bond with her child is most profound; one that I feel even today as mine takes the public bus home from school, can be left alone(!) in the house, can make her own dinner. She walks away from me now, decisively, angrily, in hurt, joy, or frustration. My body is no longer a solace for her pain.
I am penetrated by her moods. I still want to hold and see her every day, need to hear her voice to know she is okay. And so it is also for my own mother even as I approach 50 and she an even older age. So it was for my grandfather who at 94 could still think of my mother as a child, the one he needed to care for and would stand by even as his own hands could not longer hold a spoon steady.
I imagine him thinking, "I have lived almost thirty years more than you, held you in my arms before you could walk, slapped you when you smoked cigarettes, walked you down the aisle, held you while you held your own baby daughter. How can I ever say goodbye to you?"
"How do I say goodbye?" I asked a friend when my own father was dying, "I don't know how to do this."
"Tell him you love him, that you will be okay, that he can rest now."
And I did. These words and others came effortless and unbidden. I imagined my father knowing what I was saying even if I couldn't tell for sure by looking into his wandering eyes. I thanked him for bringing me into this world, caring for me in his own strange and quirky way, helping me to grow strong when such lessons were not ready made for girls. My words, I imagine, comforted him with the knowing that he had done his job the best he could, that I would be okay, that he would always be my dad, that he could rest now and find a way to say goodbye.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
September Practice
Sally Klempton write, "This month is a good time to look at how the intense energies around us are affecting your own inner state, and to ask yourself how your practice can help you work with these energies. Times of upheaval ask us to practice. On one level, we practice so that we can stay centered in the midst of intensity and change. But on an even deeper level, our practice is what allows us to work with the forces at play in the world, and channel them towards our own awakening, and the awakening of the others in our lives. Practicing intensely, and practicing with intensity, we can actually use the energies of this time for radical inner growth."
I feel a new energy rising, in and around me, as the Earth begins her slow turn away from our beloved sun. Into the darkness, I anticipate the cold. Something about this season makes it easier for me to settle down into things. Perhaps it is because I want to savor what is for me a time a profound potential and possibilities. I am comfortable; there is not too much heat, cold, light, or darkness. The air is fresh and cooler. The lake, still invites me, with open and soft arms but not for long. My child is busy again learning, focused, surrounded by friends and new teachers. I can let go of my worries, if just a bit, as she is occupied in good ways with her own life.
What would I do with this newly found transformative energy? If god asks me, I would tell her of the friends and acquaintances, known and unknown, I long to talk with, solitary walks up high mountains, dips into to my favorite waterfalls. I yearn for September swims, pranayama, yoga, and meditation to help draw into the core of my being. I want to feel the sap rising, thickening, consolidating inside in preparation for the resting time.
This year, I promise to savor the fragrance and tastes of this season, to remember past autumns when those I loved were still alive. I shall seek my stories again.
With my practices, I become lighter. The Autumn energies urge me to let go, even just a little bit, of my grip of things that no longer serve me. Worries like my favorite waterfalls, flow more easily over the rocks. Be stingy now, the slanted sun whispers to me, with the energies flowing through you. They wlll make you strong and capable until you return again to me.
I feel a new energy rising, in and around me, as the Earth begins her slow turn away from our beloved sun. Into the darkness, I anticipate the cold. Something about this season makes it easier for me to settle down into things. Perhaps it is because I want to savor what is for me a time a profound potential and possibilities. I am comfortable; there is not too much heat, cold, light, or darkness. The air is fresh and cooler. The lake, still invites me, with open and soft arms but not for long. My child is busy again learning, focused, surrounded by friends and new teachers. I can let go of my worries, if just a bit, as she is occupied in good ways with her own life.
What would I do with this newly found transformative energy? If god asks me, I would tell her of the friends and acquaintances, known and unknown, I long to talk with, solitary walks up high mountains, dips into to my favorite waterfalls. I yearn for September swims, pranayama, yoga, and meditation to help draw into the core of my being. I want to feel the sap rising, thickening, consolidating inside in preparation for the resting time.
This year, I promise to savor the fragrance and tastes of this season, to remember past autumns when those I loved were still alive. I shall seek my stories again.
With my practices, I become lighter. The Autumn energies urge me to let go, even just a little bit, of my grip of things that no longer serve me. Worries like my favorite waterfalls, flow more easily over the rocks. Be stingy now, the slanted sun whispers to me, with the energies flowing through you. They wlll make you strong and capable until you return again to me.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Love Poem to A Seventh Grader
I tremble sometimes for your happiness,\that ventures abroad on so many ships.\i wish somtimes that you were back inside me,\in this darkness that grew you. (Rilke)
I dropped E off at 7th grade today, my heart skipping just a beat as she took her place among the oldest children in the school. She held my hand (still) as we approached the familiar old brick. I got (and gave) a peck on the cheek.
I wandered by the kindergarten classroom when I left. So little! Eighteen pairs of little toes and fingers, squirming in the circle where they will start each of their next 180 school days.
"I used to have one of those" I told a passing parent. She wore dresses then and patent leather shoes. She clung to J and I for months each morning teary when we left. We passed her from our lap to a teachers and told her, "We will be back!" She was so hungry to read then and learned quickly and with a single mindedness we have known since she was born. She is a sturdy, curious, ambitious learner, still hungry to know, pursue, and create.
I am so grateful for this chance to watch her grow into the person she longs to be!
As Rilke writes, however, I long for her and tremble when she departs from me. The translucent thread that goes from my heart to hers tugs and pulls when she is away from me. I fear it might break. i practice letting go so the threads won't break so she can find her way to me (and me to her) when needed.
For Rilke, God was like the child who grows and leaves us. An everlasting longing for the beloved remains along with the brilliant joy of the bird in flight.
I dropped E off at 7th grade today, my heart skipping just a beat as she took her place among the oldest children in the school. She held my hand (still) as we approached the familiar old brick. I got (and gave) a peck on the cheek.
I wandered by the kindergarten classroom when I left. So little! Eighteen pairs of little toes and fingers, squirming in the circle where they will start each of their next 180 school days.
"I used to have one of those" I told a passing parent. She wore dresses then and patent leather shoes. She clung to J and I for months each morning teary when we left. We passed her from our lap to a teachers and told her, "We will be back!" She was so hungry to read then and learned quickly and with a single mindedness we have known since she was born. She is a sturdy, curious, ambitious learner, still hungry to know, pursue, and create.
I am so grateful for this chance to watch her grow into the person she longs to be!
As Rilke writes, however, I long for her and tremble when she departs from me. The translucent thread that goes from my heart to hers tugs and pulls when she is away from me. I fear it might break. i practice letting go so the threads won't break so she can find her way to me (and me to her) when needed.
For Rilke, God was like the child who grows and leaves us. An everlasting longing for the beloved remains along with the brilliant joy of the bird in flight.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Breaking Waves
I like to think of myself as strong, sturdy, enduring, and secure. Like a large building made of steel and concrete, double thick glass windows that reflect strong light, a foundation without cracks. Like a skyscraper, I can withstand the strongest winds, the fiercest rain, shifts in tectonic plates. My inhabitants remain cool in heat, warm in cold, and dry in hurricanes.
To be honest however, I do not resemble a building in the least but am more like a wave that rises full and glorious before crashing into nothingness onto the shore. To see myself as the wave that I am - something I get glimpses of more and more as I age - is terrifying. How could I endure loosing myself time and time again, of everything I hold dear, everything that makes me what I am. Terrified of crashing into nothingness, I scramble to make steel and concrete from my watery self, an alchemy as foolish as trying to turning coal into gold. I exhaust myself in this process of keeping up appearances as a building, propping myself into a sturdy rigidity, looking like and acting like all the other buildings that surround me.
What I forget to remember, and must be taught over and over and over again, is that my wave is a part of something much greater than itself, something it cannot never know fully but that endures even after the wave itself has died.
While buildings can tilt, crumble, burn, and collapse, waves come and come again, rising up from an ocean that is infinite, life giving, welcoming; it is never separate from this source.
To be honest however, I do not resemble a building in the least but am more like a wave that rises full and glorious before crashing into nothingness onto the shore. To see myself as the wave that I am - something I get glimpses of more and more as I age - is terrifying. How could I endure loosing myself time and time again, of everything I hold dear, everything that makes me what I am. Terrified of crashing into nothingness, I scramble to make steel and concrete from my watery self, an alchemy as foolish as trying to turning coal into gold. I exhaust myself in this process of keeping up appearances as a building, propping myself into a sturdy rigidity, looking like and acting like all the other buildings that surround me.
What I forget to remember, and must be taught over and over and over again, is that my wave is a part of something much greater than itself, something it cannot never know fully but that endures even after the wave itself has died.
While buildings can tilt, crumble, burn, and collapse, waves come and come again, rising up from an ocean that is infinite, life giving, welcoming; it is never separate from this source.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Finding
As I become more embodied, paying attention to the breath in the belly, the space between the vertebrae, the tilt of the pelvis, on and off the yoga mat, I find myself, more clearly as I am, and not how I wish myself to be.
My practice is to return to my body when the chatter in my mind would take me away. After a week long yoga retreat with no distractions from work, a house that needs cleaning, family, the dog, I had the chance to watch this mind and all the ways it tries to provoke me into leaving myself. "Go away into that small known space. The unknown is too painful, dark, tightly knotted. Don't open that door, those windows, that cabinet. Stay asleep, angry, grumpy, judgmental for this will protect you from all who care nothing for you." This chatter keeps my heart stiff, my jaw rigid, my legs numb.
In my everyday life, these messages have potency. Surely the driver riding my bumper, the co-worker's agitation, the child's demands are reason enough to make me wary, tired, and wrung out, in need of protection. But at our blessed retreat, nestled in the hills of Vermont, with nothing but myself to contend with, I could see more clearly this chatter for what it was which is a calling out from my small scared self for love and attention. Surrounded by a strong and steady teacher, the soft green hills, good food, and a band of women to lean on, I found ways to let go of the chatter (like a cool stream trickling down the mountain), to return to my body, the knots, grips, aches, and dust, to be curious about the darkness inside and the places I have avoided for eons.
What treasures are to be found in these neglected places!
In a short week, I found many different ways into myself, around stone walls, through mossy glens, over boulders left by ancient glaciers. Paradoxically, the more attention I gave to this journey inward, with all its obstacles, unexpected turns, trap doors and surprises, the more connected I felt to all others. For don't we all struggle, strive, forget, and give up trying to live in these bodies which at times fail us?
I am not only myself, then, but the woman with swollen feet pressing palms into the walker (such courage!), the mother cradling an injured child (open hearted), the man smoking outside on the hot concrete steps (breath).
My practice is to return to my body when the chatter in my mind would take me away. After a week long yoga retreat with no distractions from work, a house that needs cleaning, family, the dog, I had the chance to watch this mind and all the ways it tries to provoke me into leaving myself. "Go away into that small known space. The unknown is too painful, dark, tightly knotted. Don't open that door, those windows, that cabinet. Stay asleep, angry, grumpy, judgmental for this will protect you from all who care nothing for you." This chatter keeps my heart stiff, my jaw rigid, my legs numb.
In my everyday life, these messages have potency. Surely the driver riding my bumper, the co-worker's agitation, the child's demands are reason enough to make me wary, tired, and wrung out, in need of protection. But at our blessed retreat, nestled in the hills of Vermont, with nothing but myself to contend with, I could see more clearly this chatter for what it was which is a calling out from my small scared self for love and attention. Surrounded by a strong and steady teacher, the soft green hills, good food, and a band of women to lean on, I found ways to let go of the chatter (like a cool stream trickling down the mountain), to return to my body, the knots, grips, aches, and dust, to be curious about the darkness inside and the places I have avoided for eons.
What treasures are to be found in these neglected places!
In a short week, I found many different ways into myself, around stone walls, through mossy glens, over boulders left by ancient glaciers. Paradoxically, the more attention I gave to this journey inward, with all its obstacles, unexpected turns, trap doors and surprises, the more connected I felt to all others. For don't we all struggle, strive, forget, and give up trying to live in these bodies which at times fail us?
I am not only myself, then, but the woman with swollen feet pressing palms into the walker (such courage!), the mother cradling an injured child (open hearted), the man smoking outside on the hot concrete steps (breath).
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Pain, Addiction, Relief
We think we have free will, she continued, but we are foiled at every turn. First our biology conspires against us with brains that are hard-wired to increase pleasure and decrease pain. Meanwhile, we are so gregarious that social systems — whether you call them peer pressure or politics — reliably dwarf us as individuals. “There is no way you can escape." From NYT interview of Dr. Volkow, Director National Institute for Drug Addiction
The brain craves dopamine. This pleasure hormone gives us an overall feeling of well-being, connection, self-efficacy, ease. Addictive behaviors are influenced by how well our brains absorb dopamine. If you have too few dopamine receptors, additive substances and behavior won't have much purchase but too many can make the addictive substance or behavior unpleasant.
Addiction, however, also has a social component. Volkow writes, "Meanwhile, we are so gregarious that social systems — whether you call them peer pressure or politics — reliably dwarf us as individuals. There is no way you can escape.” Which is to say that we are profoundly influenced by the people we spend our time with.
We can choose to spend more time with people who push us to go inside, connect with our deep selves or those which, for whatever reason, push us to negative self-judgements, shame, fear, disconnection. To experience deep connection and love for your inner self is a natural balm for pain. Heroin, alcohol abuse, overwork, and overuse of pain medications are also balms for pain, but in contrast to the soul are not of the life-supporting kind.
Pain whether emotional or physical is part of life. How we comfort ourselves in pain, with equanimity, curiosity, and compassion versus fear, aversion, or shame, is an individual, economic, cultural, and political choice.
As a culture, the US is not doing so well dealing with pain. According to the NYT, "The toll from soaring rates of prescription drug abuse, including both psychiatric medications and drugs for pain, has begun to dwarf that of the usual illegal culprits. Hospitalizations related to prescription drugs are up fivefold in the last decade, and overdose deaths up fourfold. More high school seniors report recreational use of tranquilizers or prescription narcotics, like OxyContin and Vicodin, than heroin and cocaine combined."
The brain craves dopamine. This pleasure hormone gives us an overall feeling of well-being, connection, self-efficacy, ease. Addictive behaviors are influenced by how well our brains absorb dopamine. If you have too few dopamine receptors, additive substances and behavior won't have much purchase but too many can make the addictive substance or behavior unpleasant.
Addiction, however, also has a social component. Volkow writes, "Meanwhile, we are so gregarious that social systems — whether you call them peer pressure or politics — reliably dwarf us as individuals. There is no way you can escape.” Which is to say that we are profoundly influenced by the people we spend our time with.
We can choose to spend more time with people who push us to go inside, connect with our deep selves or those which, for whatever reason, push us to negative self-judgements, shame, fear, disconnection. To experience deep connection and love for your inner self is a natural balm for pain. Heroin, alcohol abuse, overwork, and overuse of pain medications are also balms for pain, but in contrast to the soul are not of the life-supporting kind.
Pain whether emotional or physical is part of life. How we comfort ourselves in pain, with equanimity, curiosity, and compassion versus fear, aversion, or shame, is an individual, economic, cultural, and political choice.
As a culture, the US is not doing so well dealing with pain. According to the NYT, "The toll from soaring rates of prescription drug abuse, including both psychiatric medications and drugs for pain, has begun to dwarf that of the usual illegal culprits. Hospitalizations related to prescription drugs are up fivefold in the last decade, and overdose deaths up fourfold. More high school seniors report recreational use of tranquilizers or prescription narcotics, like OxyContin and Vicodin, than heroin and cocaine combined."
Monday, June 13, 2011
The Power in Loss
"..The way we deal with those losses, large and small, can really help or get in the way of the way we deal with the rest of our lives, with what we have. Right? Not just what we've lost." (Krista Tippet interviewing Dr. Naomi Remen, medical director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program.)
How, then, do you deal with loss? Loss of a dream, an expectation, a piece of skin, a child? What do you do when the ground falls beneath your feet, you have no answers only questions, you find pain where once you found comfort and pleasure?
Over the years, I have "dealt" with loss in many different ways including denial, over striving, drugs, food, rage, continual motion, dreams, thinking, self-loathing, and escape. In each of these ways, I have treated loss as some kind of abnormality in my life, some great misdeed, or mistake I have made or an injustice by an enemy against me. Each of these strategies can offer temporary numbness and balm but in the end just serves to intensify my fear of loss which is really a fear of living fully with openness to what is. In these ways of coping with loss, I cling with vice grips on weak limbs, unable to open my palms to feel the next gust of wind, the rain, the penetrating sun, a friends hand.
There is a new way, I am learning, in which the inevitable losses can be experienced, acknowledged, and honored for the powerful healing, humility, and connection that they offer. Our experience of loss, afterall, is what makes us human, is what enables me to see the woman who serves me coffee as myself, the tears of a mother half way around the world my own. More so than our pleasure, the pain of loss brings us into the truth of our vulnerability and dependence on each other. And that knowledge alone can melt a thousand years of hatred if it is allowed to breath.
This new way, the sages tell us, requires us to enter the pain of loss, hold the wound with the same tenderness that you hold an infant, to trust that there is a ground beneath the emptiness, light to penetrate the darkness.
There are more questions than answers in this place of loss. But, as Naomi Remen has written, "I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions, and those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find."
How, then, do you deal with loss? Loss of a dream, an expectation, a piece of skin, a child? What do you do when the ground falls beneath your feet, you have no answers only questions, you find pain where once you found comfort and pleasure?
Over the years, I have "dealt" with loss in many different ways including denial, over striving, drugs, food, rage, continual motion, dreams, thinking, self-loathing, and escape. In each of these ways, I have treated loss as some kind of abnormality in my life, some great misdeed, or mistake I have made or an injustice by an enemy against me. Each of these strategies can offer temporary numbness and balm but in the end just serves to intensify my fear of loss which is really a fear of living fully with openness to what is. In these ways of coping with loss, I cling with vice grips on weak limbs, unable to open my palms to feel the next gust of wind, the rain, the penetrating sun, a friends hand.
There is a new way, I am learning, in which the inevitable losses can be experienced, acknowledged, and honored for the powerful healing, humility, and connection that they offer. Our experience of loss, afterall, is what makes us human, is what enables me to see the woman who serves me coffee as myself, the tears of a mother half way around the world my own. More so than our pleasure, the pain of loss brings us into the truth of our vulnerability and dependence on each other. And that knowledge alone can melt a thousand years of hatred if it is allowed to breath.
This new way, the sages tell us, requires us to enter the pain of loss, hold the wound with the same tenderness that you hold an infant, to trust that there is a ground beneath the emptiness, light to penetrate the darkness.
There are more questions than answers in this place of loss. But, as Naomi Remen has written, "I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions, and those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find."
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Falling in Love
Quite unexpectedly and at the ripe old age of middle age, I find myself falling in love. This is no ordinary lover, however, not a lover at all. Alas, I have come to love my yoga teacher and like a school girl in spring feel giddy, hopeful, and beautiful when I am near her.
The Buddhists say that when the student is ready the teacher appears and that has been the case with me. On a lark, last summer I signed up for a three day retreat and have been hooked ever since. In three short days, my teacher brought me deeper into myself than I had ever been. Yes, I was ready for this journey having practiced for over 15 years with more or less devotion depending on my whims, time, energy. I knew where my tailbone was, could spread my toes wide on the ground, had access to my thoracic spine. I could hold a five minute head stand, a one minute hand stand, and press up into back bend after back bend.
Still, I knew very little about the yoga sutras, has a disdain for pranayama and meditation, practiced with so much striving for perfection as to cause myself harm - physical, emotional, spiritual.
My teacher helped me to loosen up, lighten up, be very curious about my own body and how it moves (and how it doesn't). She helped me to make friends with the pain, plunge into dark and wounded parts, touch ever so lightly the unknown.
I have more resolve in my own practice now, am able to get down onto my mat daily even when I don't want to because it is her voice that I long to hear in my head.
"Come with me," she says with resolve and tenderness, "You can do this. Stay present, curious, find yourself." And she is there week after week after week showing us the way.
The Buddhists say that when the student is ready the teacher appears and that has been the case with me. On a lark, last summer I signed up for a three day retreat and have been hooked ever since. In three short days, my teacher brought me deeper into myself than I had ever been. Yes, I was ready for this journey having practiced for over 15 years with more or less devotion depending on my whims, time, energy. I knew where my tailbone was, could spread my toes wide on the ground, had access to my thoracic spine. I could hold a five minute head stand, a one minute hand stand, and press up into back bend after back bend.
Still, I knew very little about the yoga sutras, has a disdain for pranayama and meditation, practiced with so much striving for perfection as to cause myself harm - physical, emotional, spiritual.
My teacher helped me to loosen up, lighten up, be very curious about my own body and how it moves (and how it doesn't). She helped me to make friends with the pain, plunge into dark and wounded parts, touch ever so lightly the unknown.
I have more resolve in my own practice now, am able to get down onto my mat daily even when I don't want to because it is her voice that I long to hear in my head.
"Come with me," she says with resolve and tenderness, "You can do this. Stay present, curious, find yourself." And she is there week after week after week showing us the way.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Blessed Feast
We are a part of an intricate web of physical relations, which are at the same time moral relations. How we eat and drink, how we sow our land, how we get food to our plates, how we use other bodies, other human bodies, in getting food and drink to sustain us. These are moral issues which cannot be separated from very basic physical questions.Ellen Davis, Yale School of Theology
If we can eat with mindfulness, consideration for our bodies, and those whose work brought the food to our table, eating becomes prayer. In eating slowly, allowing flavors and textures to dazzle the tongue, spark the imagination, fuel the body, we affirm our aliveness and place in this world. As Ellen Davis writes, the very act of eating connects us morally with the earth and all its inhabitants. When we harm ourselves, by eating food that was cultivated or manufactured with toxic chemicals, we also harm the earth and those who work brought them in contact with the toxins. In eating well, we are telling God, "Thank you for my life, for my neighbors, friends, and enemies, my spirit."
Of course, eating is never as easy or straight forward as this. Eating well, with slowness and nutrition takes time and money which has been squeezed out of modern and not so modern lives. It also takes self-compassion and love which can be hard to muster many days.
My father's mother stopped eating when she was only thirty and died from her thinness. I have often wondered why she chose to stop feeding herself, to move the food around her plate but not to her mouth even as she cooked all day for her family. How did she resist the richly thick tomato sauce she simmered on the stove, the fresh bread Louie brought home from the bakery, the sweet tangerines in summer? What became more compelling than garlic, olive oil, and salty cheese?
It is a question for many of us why we stop eating well, just enough, and with attention. What prevents us from connecting with ourselves, the Earth, our neighbors, and God three times a day in the blessed act of feast?
If we can eat with mindfulness, consideration for our bodies, and those whose work brought the food to our table, eating becomes prayer. In eating slowly, allowing flavors and textures to dazzle the tongue, spark the imagination, fuel the body, we affirm our aliveness and place in this world. As Ellen Davis writes, the very act of eating connects us morally with the earth and all its inhabitants. When we harm ourselves, by eating food that was cultivated or manufactured with toxic chemicals, we also harm the earth and those who work brought them in contact with the toxins. In eating well, we are telling God, "Thank you for my life, for my neighbors, friends, and enemies, my spirit."
Of course, eating is never as easy or straight forward as this. Eating well, with slowness and nutrition takes time and money which has been squeezed out of modern and not so modern lives. It also takes self-compassion and love which can be hard to muster many days.
My father's mother stopped eating when she was only thirty and died from her thinness. I have often wondered why she chose to stop feeding herself, to move the food around her plate but not to her mouth even as she cooked all day for her family. How did she resist the richly thick tomato sauce she simmered on the stove, the fresh bread Louie brought home from the bakery, the sweet tangerines in summer? What became more compelling than garlic, olive oil, and salty cheese?
It is a question for many of us why we stop eating well, just enough, and with attention. What prevents us from connecting with ourselves, the Earth, our neighbors, and God three times a day in the blessed act of feast?
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Queen Asana
I try to visit the Queen, sarvangasana (shoulder stand) every day. The queen of the asanas, sarvangasana is an elixr for many things that ails us including depression, anxiety, fatigue, restlessness, fear, dullness. Raising the legs above the chest offers the heart a chance for profound rest.
I imagine my queen to be very very wise. She has long white hair that flows down below her waist and wears silky ivory gown. She receives me on the grassy knoll where she stands with infinite patience. Her wisdom and comfort pass to me not in words but in the soft gaze of her light blue eyes, her outstretched palms, her unwavering faith in the rightness of the moment. I sit in the cool shade of the maple tree, by her strong bare feet and am ennobled by her presence.
Unlike the King (head stand) who offers the storing of resources, one pointed concentration, the sharpening of blades, the Queen teaches us to let go of everything, to stop trying so hard, effortless effort. In surrender with devotion and irreverence, we learn how to unfold, open, and receive ourselves.
I imagine my queen to be very very wise. She has long white hair that flows down below her waist and wears silky ivory gown. She receives me on the grassy knoll where she stands with infinite patience. Her wisdom and comfort pass to me not in words but in the soft gaze of her light blue eyes, her outstretched palms, her unwavering faith in the rightness of the moment. I sit in the cool shade of the maple tree, by her strong bare feet and am ennobled by her presence.
Unlike the King (head stand) who offers the storing of resources, one pointed concentration, the sharpening of blades, the Queen teaches us to let go of everything, to stop trying so hard, effortless effort. In surrender with devotion and irreverence, we learn how to unfold, open, and receive ourselves.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Will and Surrender
Anne Cushman asks us to consider, "Where does striving reside in the body?"
My striving takes up residence in the hinge of my jaw, a tightness in the bite of my back molars, a thickness in the tongue. Striving lodges itself into the neck where the head rests on the spine and causes my throat to jut out in search of a better future. In my striving, the rest of the body may fall away leaving my thighs straining up the steep hill of my desires with too little breath.
Striving fools me into thinking that I have more control over things than I really do. While setting goals, having a plan, and a strong will, helps me to break through torpor, listlessness, and challenges, will, in and of itself, is not enough for wholeness. Cushman writes, "What I really value most in life cannot be achieved through willpower alone. I can't make someone love me. I cannot will creativity, healing, compassion, joy, insight."
Surrender, the counterpart to striving, brings softness, flexibility, ease, stamina, to the "doing". Letting go of what we cannot control, manage, negotiate into submission melts the striving from the body, allows the doing to be done without so much angst and exhaustion.
I imagine surrender and will as two banks of the river of my life. When there is too much surrender, the river weakened and undirected may lack the force to press through hard rock. When not enough meandering is allowed, the river can destroy what is beautiful, necessary even, for the wildflowers to grow and marsh wrens to sing.
My striving takes up residence in the hinge of my jaw, a tightness in the bite of my back molars, a thickness in the tongue. Striving lodges itself into the neck where the head rests on the spine and causes my throat to jut out in search of a better future. In my striving, the rest of the body may fall away leaving my thighs straining up the steep hill of my desires with too little breath.
Striving fools me into thinking that I have more control over things than I really do. While setting goals, having a plan, and a strong will, helps me to break through torpor, listlessness, and challenges, will, in and of itself, is not enough for wholeness. Cushman writes, "What I really value most in life cannot be achieved through willpower alone. I can't make someone love me. I cannot will creativity, healing, compassion, joy, insight."
Surrender, the counterpart to striving, brings softness, flexibility, ease, stamina, to the "doing". Letting go of what we cannot control, manage, negotiate into submission melts the striving from the body, allows the doing to be done without so much angst and exhaustion.
I imagine surrender and will as two banks of the river of my life. When there is too much surrender, the river weakened and undirected may lack the force to press through hard rock. When not enough meandering is allowed, the river can destroy what is beautiful, necessary even, for the wildflowers to grow and marsh wrens to sing.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Allegory of the Palms
According to yoga philosophy, one of the obstacles to peace is aversion to pain. In our attempts to keep sorrow, grief, anger, physical and psychic discomfort at a distance, to seek pleasure in all that we do, we paradoxically stay held in suffering. In running from the pain that arises in all human life we run from ourselves, the wounded parts that need the most love and connection. We forget our wholeness and the gifts of allowing life to unfold as it is.
To my mind, the story of Jesus' return to Jerusalem to throngs of palm waving worshipers and the captors who would crucify tells the same story as this yoga sutra. Rather than taking the easy way out, perhaps going into hiding or absconding to Syria, Jesus returns to Jerusalem to worshipers hungry for his love and teachings and also to captors who would torture and crucify him.
In my reading of this story, the worshipers are like the Soul calling out to us from deep within to return and return again to the eternal source of love and affection and wisdom. But the path to the soul is not always clear, easy, painfree. There are demons, those voices that detest us, judge, shame, crucify again and again. We must enter in relationship, deeply, profoundly, and with great attention to both our angels and devils. Only through crucifixion, death of all that is unreal, do we find eternal and everlasting life.
To my mind, the story of Jesus' return to Jerusalem to throngs of palm waving worshipers and the captors who would crucify tells the same story as this yoga sutra. Rather than taking the easy way out, perhaps going into hiding or absconding to Syria, Jesus returns to Jerusalem to worshipers hungry for his love and teachings and also to captors who would torture and crucify him.
In my reading of this story, the worshipers are like the Soul calling out to us from deep within to return and return again to the eternal source of love and affection and wisdom. But the path to the soul is not always clear, easy, painfree. There are demons, those voices that detest us, judge, shame, crucify again and again. We must enter in relationship, deeply, profoundly, and with great attention to both our angels and devils. Only through crucifixion, death of all that is unreal, do we find eternal and everlasting life.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Loose Threads
In yoga we are taught that where the eyes gaze the mind wanders. Better to keep the eyes still during class than roaming the room, peering at this person's backbend and that person's headstand.
When the eyes and mind wander away from ourselves, we can be drawn into an infinite loop of comparisons; am I better or worse, tighter or looser, kinder or meaner, richer or poorer, loveable or detested compared to this one or that one. This mind game is not merely a distraction from the task at hand whether that be listening to the teacher (or outside of class focusing on a piece of writing, cutting carrots, changing a diaper, listening to a friend). Most importantly, in this distraction we loose contact with the deepest parts of ourselves, our knowing, our path, our soul.
In thinking about such things, I am reminded of the women weavers I met in Guatemala who through hours of nimble and focused finger work create beautiful and intricate cloth from thin strands of string. They kneel for many hours each day on the dirt floor of their homes, spools of thread wrapped around each finger, the waft and shuttle moving in a steady rhythm. If they were to forget their task, become distracted by their neighbor whose cloth looks so enticing, they might loose hold on the threads, their fragile cloth unraveling into air.
When we loose our inner gaze, our grip on the threads of our lives loosens, the fabric of our soul unravels, we no longer know where we are, where to go next. The only thing that each of us can do is weave the next row of our fabric whatever that maybe. If for me that means touching the shins rather than the floor like you can (and so effortlessly!) then I should touch the shins. Wanting what you have (I want to touch the floor!!) only means that I have lost the threads of my inner self, the precious and unique patters of my cloth, the web of my soul.
When the eyes and mind wander away from ourselves, we can be drawn into an infinite loop of comparisons; am I better or worse, tighter or looser, kinder or meaner, richer or poorer, loveable or detested compared to this one or that one. This mind game is not merely a distraction from the task at hand whether that be listening to the teacher (or outside of class focusing on a piece of writing, cutting carrots, changing a diaper, listening to a friend). Most importantly, in this distraction we loose contact with the deepest parts of ourselves, our knowing, our path, our soul.
In thinking about such things, I am reminded of the women weavers I met in Guatemala who through hours of nimble and focused finger work create beautiful and intricate cloth from thin strands of string. They kneel for many hours each day on the dirt floor of their homes, spools of thread wrapped around each finger, the waft and shuttle moving in a steady rhythm. If they were to forget their task, become distracted by their neighbor whose cloth looks so enticing, they might loose hold on the threads, their fragile cloth unraveling into air.
When we loose our inner gaze, our grip on the threads of our lives loosens, the fabric of our soul unravels, we no longer know where we are, where to go next. The only thing that each of us can do is weave the next row of our fabric whatever that maybe. If for me that means touching the shins rather than the floor like you can (and so effortlessly!) then I should touch the shins. Wanting what you have (I want to touch the floor!!) only means that I have lost the threads of my inner self, the precious and unique patters of my cloth, the web of my soul.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Philosphers of Death
When I visited Philly in the nursing home, I liked to sit next to her. She in her wheel chair, me in a hard backed wooden one. I told her I loved her. I liked to touch her, stroke her hands with cream, brush her hair, feel her cheeks still smooth even though she was so old. After a year or two there, she didn’t speak much anymore. We communicated through the osmosis of touch which she received like a flower opening to a forgotten Spring sun and sometime returned with a squeeze of my hand. She closed her eyes and smile when I combed her purposeful white hair, told her how beautiful her hands were. Her legs no longer ached from the diabetes which was under control. She had a peace about her that was very comforting like a warm stone on my back.
It was hard for the mind to wander far when in such place. The strong smells, surprising bursts of speech, the gaze which looked through walls. One woman who used to be a neighbor but now was deep into the throes and disorientation of Alzheimer disease was strapped to her chair. She might raise a hand to touch some invisible flower in front of her face. But there were no longer smiles.
The flock of Jamaican women who tended to patients bodily needs with calm and humor amazed. How could we even begin to thank them for what they did? (Surely, we can find ways to pay them more - we being society here who pays billions of dollars to men who make widgets but can afford no more than minimum wage to people who tend to the dying.) Afterall, these caregivers are shepherds of death, comforters in eye of that storm, artists and philosophers of the intimate realities of the body in decay.
What is the point of being here if not to care for each other? What other possible reason is there?
It was hard for the mind to wander far when in such place. The strong smells, surprising bursts of speech, the gaze which looked through walls. One woman who used to be a neighbor but now was deep into the throes and disorientation of Alzheimer disease was strapped to her chair. She might raise a hand to touch some invisible flower in front of her face. But there were no longer smiles.
The flock of Jamaican women who tended to patients bodily needs with calm and humor amazed. How could we even begin to thank them for what they did? (Surely, we can find ways to pay them more - we being society here who pays billions of dollars to men who make widgets but can afford no more than minimum wage to people who tend to the dying.) Afterall, these caregivers are shepherds of death, comforters in eye of that storm, artists and philosophers of the intimate realities of the body in decay.
What is the point of being here if not to care for each other? What other possible reason is there?
Friday, March 11, 2011
Long Slow Drink of My Daughter
I received an unexpected gift yesterday from an unexpected source.
The woman who cleans at the gym where I work out some mornings is remarkably cheerful and kind. She smiles at passersby and always has time to ask how we are doing, if we are very tired of winter, that she is glad to see us. I am grateful for all that she does to make our gym clean. Her kindness puts me at ease, makes me feel welcome and part of a community.
Yesterday, as I was slathering oil on my body and she was mopping, we got to chatting about our children - we both have 12 year olds. "My son keeps me busy. He is going to G this summer to stay with my relatives there. I will miss him but enjoy more time for myself." she said.
"E is almost 12. Such an interesting age!" I responded.
We continued with our ablutions in silence then she spoke again, "I had a daughter too," she told me softly, "She died when she was 16."
The locker room became very still after she told me this. I saw only her, her sparkling eyes, wide smile, heard the swish of the mop. She looked down. "I am very sorry," I told her. "Yes, it was ten years ago now."
The space between us shrank as the impact of her words settled right behind my breast bone. In that moment, I was M, she was me, with no distance between us. Two small vulnerable mothers.
I thought of E's soft cheeks and wide eyes and how unimaginable it would be to not be able to touch her or look into her eyes again. To loose my dreams of her future.
I felt all the little worries, doubts, small angry thinking drain out my brain and body. I looked at E that morning, really looked, at the rosy flush in her cheeks, those impossibly long eyelashes, the pug nose I like to squeeze. I drank her down like a cold glass of water after a long hot hike. I thanked M for giving me the gift of presence, gratitude, and humility; the long slow drink of my daughter on that early spring day.
The woman who cleans at the gym where I work out some mornings is remarkably cheerful and kind. She smiles at passersby and always has time to ask how we are doing, if we are very tired of winter, that she is glad to see us. I am grateful for all that she does to make our gym clean. Her kindness puts me at ease, makes me feel welcome and part of a community.
Yesterday, as I was slathering oil on my body and she was mopping, we got to chatting about our children - we both have 12 year olds. "My son keeps me busy. He is going to G this summer to stay with my relatives there. I will miss him but enjoy more time for myself." she said.
"E is almost 12. Such an interesting age!" I responded.
We continued with our ablutions in silence then she spoke again, "I had a daughter too," she told me softly, "She died when she was 16."
The locker room became very still after she told me this. I saw only her, her sparkling eyes, wide smile, heard the swish of the mop. She looked down. "I am very sorry," I told her. "Yes, it was ten years ago now."
The space between us shrank as the impact of her words settled right behind my breast bone. In that moment, I was M, she was me, with no distance between us. Two small vulnerable mothers.
I thought of E's soft cheeks and wide eyes and how unimaginable it would be to not be able to touch her or look into her eyes again. To loose my dreams of her future.
I felt all the little worries, doubts, small angry thinking drain out my brain and body. I looked at E that morning, really looked, at the rosy flush in her cheeks, those impossibly long eyelashes, the pug nose I like to squeeze. I drank her down like a cold glass of water after a long hot hike. I thanked M for giving me the gift of presence, gratitude, and humility; the long slow drink of my daughter on that early spring day.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
"Red Thread of Desire"
Adyashanti speaks of the "Red Thread of Desire" to help us understand the source of our longings.
We all long for many things; health, money, friends, candy, a lover's touch. The mind attaches itself to these longings telling us, "Once we get this, that, the other thing, then we shall truly be happy." We spend months, years, lifetimes grasping for things that once obtained do not stop the longings. When we get what we want, we inevitably want something else.
The problem is one of (mis)orientation. The source of the longings, the tugs at our hearts, comes not from the outside, where we seek first and foremost, but from the inside. These longings come from our Soul that is reaching for us like a happy grandmother calling us to her soft lap. "Come to me and here you can rest, find ease, the never ending river of love."
Turn inward, then, towards the source of the Red Thread that tugs at your heart strings to find yourself again, and again.
We all long for many things; health, money, friends, candy, a lover's touch. The mind attaches itself to these longings telling us, "Once we get this, that, the other thing, then we shall truly be happy." We spend months, years, lifetimes grasping for things that once obtained do not stop the longings. When we get what we want, we inevitably want something else.
The problem is one of (mis)orientation. The source of the longings, the tugs at our hearts, comes not from the outside, where we seek first and foremost, but from the inside. These longings come from our Soul that is reaching for us like a happy grandmother calling us to her soft lap. "Come to me and here you can rest, find ease, the never ending river of love."
Turn inward, then, towards the source of the Red Thread that tugs at your heart strings to find yourself again, and again.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Paradoxes of Spring
Warm snow
Quiet river cracking
A search for solitude and
A lover's touch
Spring,
Father's strokes,
Daughter's birth,
Grandmother's mistep
All color except one
(a flash of Robin red)
bled from the landscape
Quiet river cracking
A search for solitude and
A lover's touch
Spring,
Father's strokes,
Daughter's birth,
Grandmother's mistep
All color except one
(a flash of Robin red)
bled from the landscape
Friday, February 11, 2011
My Ego Myself
Our ego is an identifier. We need to identify with a certain particularity in order to maintain biological and mental integrity. All this is to the good, so how is it that the words ego and egoistic carry such negative connotations? It is because the surface of our ego is covered with super glue. Memories, possessions, desires, experiences, attachments, achievements, opinions, and prejudices stick to the ego like barnacles to the hull of a ship. "This is the totality of me," the ego thinks, "I am my success, my wife, my car, my job, my woes, my wants, my, my, my." And the pure single identity succumbs to the disease of elephantiasis, in which our self becomes grossly enlarged, coarsened, and thickened. From Light on Life by BKS Iyengar
What thins the ego, the sages tell us, keeps it supple, flexible, properly sized, is the Soul. The senses entice the ego with promises of colorful candy, baskets full of fresh bread, forever love. "Look at this, smell that, feel me," our senses turned out towards the world are excited. It wouldn't be so bad but, as any Mad Man would tell you, the ego is easily manipulated, tempted, endless. The ego is easily convinced that it is you, you are it and all the things you possess.
The constant fear and anxiety that we can feel comes from the ego who so identifies with things that perish that death is always near.
Tether your ego to Soul, the sages tell us, for in the Soul there is no wanting, no impermanence, no death. My soul, your soul, which resides right underneath the breastbone, is linked to the universal Soul which I imagine is like a forever flowing river, without ending, without beginning. I draw energy, breath, life itself from this fast flowing pristine source from which I am never disconnected.
I am not without wants in this place. I still want food for my hunger, rest for my fatigue, outlets for my creativity, balm for my pain. But, in turning to my Soul for guidance, am better able meet my needs, wants, and desires, with wisdom, equanimity, and enough.
What thins the ego, the sages tell us, keeps it supple, flexible, properly sized, is the Soul. The senses entice the ego with promises of colorful candy, baskets full of fresh bread, forever love. "Look at this, smell that, feel me," our senses turned out towards the world are excited. It wouldn't be so bad but, as any Mad Man would tell you, the ego is easily manipulated, tempted, endless. The ego is easily convinced that it is you, you are it and all the things you possess.
The constant fear and anxiety that we can feel comes from the ego who so identifies with things that perish that death is always near.
Tether your ego to Soul, the sages tell us, for in the Soul there is no wanting, no impermanence, no death. My soul, your soul, which resides right underneath the breastbone, is linked to the universal Soul which I imagine is like a forever flowing river, without ending, without beginning. I draw energy, breath, life itself from this fast flowing pristine source from which I am never disconnected.
I am not without wants in this place. I still want food for my hunger, rest for my fatigue, outlets for my creativity, balm for my pain. But, in turning to my Soul for guidance, am better able meet my needs, wants, and desires, with wisdom, equanimity, and enough.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Thick or Thin
I've come to think that happiness isn't really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. happiness is determined by how much information and affection flow through us covertly every day and year." in Social Animal, by David Brooks, New Yorker, January 17, 2011.
I have had my suspicions about the achievement, money, acquisitions, theory of happiness for sometime now. Perhaps, since those long years working on the dissertation where one has to break down happiness into much smaller chunks if one is to survive such a long, sustained, and mostly uneventful, unrecognized, financially depleting endeavor. Imagining myself walking on the stage accepting that cape and diploma did fuel some work, as well as fantasies about a well-paying and stimulating tenure-track job, but putting off happiness for months then years as these fantasies required, wouldn't take me long past breakfast before I was utterly exhausted by the enormity of the task at hand.
Happiness, well-being, I found, in my morning walk, bike ride into the office, that really strong coffee they served in the student lounge. There were the children I played with at summer camps during breaks from school, Saturdays and Sundays (when I finally stopped working on the weekend), watching Love Boat after the late late news. There were the friends from so many different countries who filled my mind with new stories, fiction, and yoga which I started 20 years ago and haven't stopped since.
The walk across the stage never happened nor did that perfect tenure-track job materialize. The happiness that came from all that hard work was just that; happiness pried free in the moment exploring a new thought, feeling the spring breeze, sharing my worries with friends. I cried after the defense because it was over, because it was so anti-climactic, because I had learned of the sheer beauty of effort, in an of itself.
I have had my suspicions about the achievement, money, acquisitions, theory of happiness for sometime now. Perhaps, since those long years working on the dissertation where one has to break down happiness into much smaller chunks if one is to survive such a long, sustained, and mostly uneventful, unrecognized, financially depleting endeavor. Imagining myself walking on the stage accepting that cape and diploma did fuel some work, as well as fantasies about a well-paying and stimulating tenure-track job, but putting off happiness for months then years as these fantasies required, wouldn't take me long past breakfast before I was utterly exhausted by the enormity of the task at hand.
Happiness, well-being, I found, in my morning walk, bike ride into the office, that really strong coffee they served in the student lounge. There were the children I played with at summer camps during breaks from school, Saturdays and Sundays (when I finally stopped working on the weekend), watching Love Boat after the late late news. There were the friends from so many different countries who filled my mind with new stories, fiction, and yoga which I started 20 years ago and haven't stopped since.
The walk across the stage never happened nor did that perfect tenure-track job materialize. The happiness that came from all that hard work was just that; happiness pried free in the moment exploring a new thought, feeling the spring breeze, sharing my worries with friends. I cried after the defense because it was over, because it was so anti-climactic, because I had learned of the sheer beauty of effort, in an of itself.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Compose Yourself
A composition of me, musically speaking, would include strings, brass, woodwinds, and timpani. Pluck me, blow with vibrato, touch the skin of my drum tenderly. I need an entire symphony for this composition of me which is only sometimes contained by notes. There are (will be) long silent pauses and times when only a single note is sustained by a lonely cellist. The audience (of course there would be an audience!) claps, riotously, my witnesses, inner angels and demons who stir, snore and do not turn off ringing cell phones.
Who, I wonder, conducts, writes the script, makes sure the musicians are well-fed? Is this symphony that is me burdened by fund raising, philanthropic events, high-minded charitable giving? At times, perhaps, this was the case.
But more often than not, and these days especially, there is no symphony space, no instruments or chairs for the musicians, no conductor. Where before they sat in black, my musicians now run wild on the cliffs that fall off sharply towards the sea. In this composting that is me, the music, for there is still music, is composed in wind, crashing waves, thunder storms, and laughing.
Who, I wonder, conducts, writes the script, makes sure the musicians are well-fed? Is this symphony that is me burdened by fund raising, philanthropic events, high-minded charitable giving? At times, perhaps, this was the case.
But more often than not, and these days especially, there is no symphony space, no instruments or chairs for the musicians, no conductor. Where before they sat in black, my musicians now run wild on the cliffs that fall off sharply towards the sea. In this composting that is me, the music, for there is still music, is composed in wind, crashing waves, thunder storms, and laughing.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Grandmother Scrubs the Back Steps
My grandmother washed the back steps on her knees with a scrub brush, hard soap, and a plastic dishpan of dirty water. She would start at the bottom of those curving back steps and work her way up to the kitchen. As I played in the downstairs kitchen, I could hear the scrub of the brush on the old linoleum that looked the same to me before and after she had cleaned.
She wore a light cotton house dress when she cleaned, no girdle underneath, and house slippers with inch high heels. If she wore knee high nylon stockings, which was her habit, I would not see the blue veins in her calves and around her knees. Her knees ached, I could tell, because it took effort and groans to push up from bent knees that rested two steps below the step that was getting scrubbed.
I could dance around her up to the kitchen even when she was scrubbing the steps but everyone else had to, “Stay off the steps while I’m cleaning!” Her dedication to clean steps, steps that surely would be dirtied an hour after they were cleaned, amazed me. Such attention to those lowly back steps surely indicated how much we were loved.
After, grandmother would rest just like God did on the seventh day, with a coffee and a cigarette at the kitchen table. In her resting, I learned myself how to rest, to take a break from work, to pause before moving onto the next blessed task.
She wore a light cotton house dress when she cleaned, no girdle underneath, and house slippers with inch high heels. If she wore knee high nylon stockings, which was her habit, I would not see the blue veins in her calves and around her knees. Her knees ached, I could tell, because it took effort and groans to push up from bent knees that rested two steps below the step that was getting scrubbed.
I could dance around her up to the kitchen even when she was scrubbing the steps but everyone else had to, “Stay off the steps while I’m cleaning!” Her dedication to clean steps, steps that surely would be dirtied an hour after they were cleaned, amazed me. Such attention to those lowly back steps surely indicated how much we were loved.
After, grandmother would rest just like God did on the seventh day, with a coffee and a cigarette at the kitchen table. In her resting, I learned myself how to rest, to take a break from work, to pause before moving onto the next blessed task.
Can't ride your back unless it is bent
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. Martin Luther King, Jr, spoken April 3, 1968 the night before his assassination.
Is your spine straight or bent today? Do you walk upright, chest rising to the sky, head held high upon a strong neck, thoracic vertebrae snug in between the shoulder blades? Or is there a monkey on your bent back, making you scratch and itch, pulling you down towards the ground, enveloping you in fear, worry, and rigidity?
Think of those men and women in Albany, Georgia, 1962, standing up straight, walking forward into the water hoses, the dogs, the paddy wagons, claiming their rightful free place in this world even as they were surrounded by hatred. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached love and was murdered. How/where did he find compassion, fearlessness, unselfish determination? In a straight spine, perhaps, that no man could ride.
Is your spine straight or bent today? Do you walk upright, chest rising to the sky, head held high upon a strong neck, thoracic vertebrae snug in between the shoulder blades? Or is there a monkey on your bent back, making you scratch and itch, pulling you down towards the ground, enveloping you in fear, worry, and rigidity?
Think of those men and women in Albany, Georgia, 1962, standing up straight, walking forward into the water hoses, the dogs, the paddy wagons, claiming their rightful free place in this world even as they were surrounded by hatred. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached love and was murdered. How/where did he find compassion, fearlessness, unselfish determination? In a straight spine, perhaps, that no man could ride.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
One Step Further
If there is an end, then there is no God. Creation by God never ends, so creation of your movements never ceases. The moment you say, "I have got it," you have lost everything you had. As soon as something comes, you have to go one step further. BKS Iyengar
R said goodbye to her father yesterday in a church in S that stank of incense. I was feeling nauseous and the incense just made things worse. The priest was so old; are there any young priests anymore? Death, we were told, is not to be mourned but celebrated because the dead while gone from us rest now with God.
But death and funerals do make me sad, mourn, and grieve. I thought of my father, gone now almost two years, and missed him terribly especially his hands and his face which I will never see again. Driving successfully to S through the mangle of streets that is Cambridge and Boston, I was reminded of how my father taught me to drive, offensively, on those mean streets, to get around when the getting around isn't easy, to take things into my own hands, to go in the direction I have set my mind towards even though I have never been there before. Not enough fathers teach such things to daughters, the right to an assertiveness that isn't always pretty but gets things done.
I thought I had "gotten it" this thing of grief, of loss, of letting go. But in that smoke filled church was reminded that this is not so. There is no end to letting go, no getting the hang of it, of knowing how to make it easier and less painful. Perhaps the dead rest with God, but for the living, I think, that old priest missed something of beauty when he told us not to mourn. For the living, God exists precisely in the sorrow, the darkness, the places that are not known, not fully explored, that remain, waiting for us, one step further beyond the light.
R said goodbye to her father yesterday in a church in S that stank of incense. I was feeling nauseous and the incense just made things worse. The priest was so old; are there any young priests anymore? Death, we were told, is not to be mourned but celebrated because the dead while gone from us rest now with God.
But death and funerals do make me sad, mourn, and grieve. I thought of my father, gone now almost two years, and missed him terribly especially his hands and his face which I will never see again. Driving successfully to S through the mangle of streets that is Cambridge and Boston, I was reminded of how my father taught me to drive, offensively, on those mean streets, to get around when the getting around isn't easy, to take things into my own hands, to go in the direction I have set my mind towards even though I have never been there before. Not enough fathers teach such things to daughters, the right to an assertiveness that isn't always pretty but gets things done.
I thought I had "gotten it" this thing of grief, of loss, of letting go. But in that smoke filled church was reminded that this is not so. There is no end to letting go, no getting the hang of it, of knowing how to make it easier and less painful. Perhaps the dead rest with God, but for the living, I think, that old priest missed something of beauty when he told us not to mourn. For the living, God exists precisely in the sorrow, the darkness, the places that are not known, not fully explored, that remain, waiting for us, one step further beyond the light.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Perfection
"The instinct that draw us toward the dream of perfection is really a desire for God." BKS Iyengar, Light on Life
Yoga practice asks us to care for that stiff back, the ache in the hip, the broken heart, with all the love and compassion we effortless give to a suffering child. 'Do not bother about failures in this endeavor," we are admonished by the sages. Try for just a little progress to perfection (to God, Enlightenment, non-judgment, compassion, humility) each day. That is all that we need do.
Ten minutes of Asana practice each day is better than one hour done in one day at the end of a week. For ten minutes a day, the mind is given a chance to stop giving directions, worrying about the future, fretting about what was lacking for breakfast. Most profoundly, the mind is given a chance to be a student of the body rather than the other way around. A devoted and attentive stretch to the hamstring, letting the brain be 'in' that hamstring, acts like a cooling balm for an overheated mind. The mind is given a chance to pause, absorb wisdom from the body, the heart, and the breath.
The desire for perfection can stop us in our tracks towards the mat with excuses like, "It is not worth it to get out of this cold bed, I don't do the poses right anyway," or "This will be too painful," or "I'll start tomorrow when I feel more energy." Should I give you a list of how many things I haven't done because I thought I was not good enough to do them, wasn't getting anywhere fast? That list would be long and boring. Better to know that I now get up early every morning for Asana practice over the roaring of the crowd that laughs and chides me for getting out a warm bed, for entering a tight hamstring, for longing for God and perfection amidst my imperfections.
Yoga practice asks us to care for that stiff back, the ache in the hip, the broken heart, with all the love and compassion we effortless give to a suffering child. 'Do not bother about failures in this endeavor," we are admonished by the sages. Try for just a little progress to perfection (to God, Enlightenment, non-judgment, compassion, humility) each day. That is all that we need do.
Ten minutes of Asana practice each day is better than one hour done in one day at the end of a week. For ten minutes a day, the mind is given a chance to stop giving directions, worrying about the future, fretting about what was lacking for breakfast. Most profoundly, the mind is given a chance to be a student of the body rather than the other way around. A devoted and attentive stretch to the hamstring, letting the brain be 'in' that hamstring, acts like a cooling balm for an overheated mind. The mind is given a chance to pause, absorb wisdom from the body, the heart, and the breath.
The desire for perfection can stop us in our tracks towards the mat with excuses like, "It is not worth it to get out of this cold bed, I don't do the poses right anyway," or "This will be too painful," or "I'll start tomorrow when I feel more energy." Should I give you a list of how many things I haven't done because I thought I was not good enough to do them, wasn't getting anywhere fast? That list would be long and boring. Better to know that I now get up early every morning for Asana practice over the roaring of the crowd that laughs and chides me for getting out a warm bed, for entering a tight hamstring, for longing for God and perfection amidst my imperfections.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Freedom Through Pain
In yoga, as in life, I am learning that pain cannot be avoided. Nor should it be.
In yoga, as in life, the way to grow is through pain. Where there is dullness, numbness, long held friction, movement will inevitably cause pain. This, afterall, is how new life, birth, is experienced. Sometimes sharp, others times throbbing, this discomfort that I initially retract from calls to me from parts of myself I did not know existed, "I am here!! Look how infinitly spacious, how deep, how penetrating."
Still, this is a treacherous journey from death through pain to life and, ultimately, freedom (if a spine that bends backwards is not the essence of freedom than I do not know what is.) I lack the courage for this journey. That is why I cherish my teachers who show me the way with patience, simplicity, and just enough sternness to bring me further. I depend on my sanga, the community of yoga students, whose striving is so beautiful, energizing, and supporting to me.
I am learning how to comfort my small self who wants no part in pain, who sees pain as defeat, incompetence, illness, incompleteness with my wiser self who sees how pain changes in the pauses, can be warm or cold, has soft contours that melt and release, who realizes that there is growth, fertility, and mystery in the pain.
As the stiffness in my hips and shoulders release, my muscles grow strong, my devotion to practice steadied, I gain release, devotion, steadiness in the rest of my life, off of the mat. Obstacles, pain, calamity, things not turning out how I planned, I see, are blessings like the aches in the neck and buttocks, showing me where there is dullness, fear, death waiting for a resurrecting breath.
In yoga, as in life, the way to grow is through pain. Where there is dullness, numbness, long held friction, movement will inevitably cause pain. This, afterall, is how new life, birth, is experienced. Sometimes sharp, others times throbbing, this discomfort that I initially retract from calls to me from parts of myself I did not know existed, "I am here!! Look how infinitly spacious, how deep, how penetrating."
Still, this is a treacherous journey from death through pain to life and, ultimately, freedom (if a spine that bends backwards is not the essence of freedom than I do not know what is.) I lack the courage for this journey. That is why I cherish my teachers who show me the way with patience, simplicity, and just enough sternness to bring me further. I depend on my sanga, the community of yoga students, whose striving is so beautiful, energizing, and supporting to me.
I am learning how to comfort my small self who wants no part in pain, who sees pain as defeat, incompetence, illness, incompleteness with my wiser self who sees how pain changes in the pauses, can be warm or cold, has soft contours that melt and release, who realizes that there is growth, fertility, and mystery in the pain.
As the stiffness in my hips and shoulders release, my muscles grow strong, my devotion to practice steadied, I gain release, devotion, steadiness in the rest of my life, off of the mat. Obstacles, pain, calamity, things not turning out how I planned, I see, are blessings like the aches in the neck and buttocks, showing me where there is dullness, fear, death waiting for a resurrecting breath.
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