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.

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.

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.