Posts Tagged ‘awareness’

yoga of driving

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

polluting the atmosphere isn’t really very yogic, is it.. well that’s not what im aiming to talk about here. im thinking more about how driving, at least in big cities like toronto, is really stressful.

vrooom!

i am on a campaign to reduce my own stress driving. i work at a yoga studio and i see so many people come in, and they are so tense, possibly from rushing through traffic to get there. i live in a neighbourhood that is rife with giant SUVs weaving at 20 km over the speed limit. if i drive 5 or 10 km over, i am deemed to be going too slow, and so i often stare at the grilles of other massive luxury vehicles in my rearview. i often get cut off. i often observe such idiocy and danger on the road and i feel my low blood pressure rising

so i have a few practices that i keep. The practices fall in the realm of actions while driving, and then mindset while driving. i’ll talk about the actions first:

1. breathe

oh how obvious this is… but yes. if you feel pissed off, just breathe. take a breath.

2. drive the speed limit

and so this means, don’t rush anywhere. oh boy. i try to leave an extra 15 min to get wherever i’m going. and if i am late, i dont sweat it. literally, i am better off getting there late, than getting there later because of a speeding ticket, or not at all because of an accident.

3. get tailgaters off your rear

oh, but how?? aha. this is where my driver training came in. duno if you all got the same training… basically, do not hit the brake. slow down, just a little. if you do this, you will likely ‘wake them up’ — most aren’t doing it to be aggressive, they are doing it because they are not paying attention. slowing down a bit, but not so drastically that they rear-end you, nudges them back to consciousness. they usually pass. if they pass angrily, don’t get upset, just smile. wow, they must be in a rush. good thing you aren’t.

4. leave lots of space.

keep the space in front of you big. avoid hitting your brakes, almost at all costs, especially in stop and go traffic. this will prevent you from wasting gas, or hitting someone in front of you, and you will literally get there at the same time as anyone else rushing up to the car in front and slamming their brakes.

i couldn’t find the video i wanted, but this is a good demo of what i’m talking about: u-n-l-o-c-k gridlock

vrrrooohhhhhmmmm.

let go.

is it your road? do you own it? share. let a person in if they want to get in. let go of getting there first.

lose the ego

you aren’t more important than anyone else on the road. but they think they are more important than you are. does that make you angry?
let them be more important. interestingly, they are the ones who are stressed out, not you.

consciousness.

be conscious of your own emotions on the road. if someone instigates road rage toward you because you aren’t “playing the game” of stress on the road, can you be aware of what that feels like, without reacting to it?

ahimsa

don’t retaliate. be gracious, let it go. sing in the car, smile at another driver. wave someone on. protect yourself, and otherwise, to quote the lovely Kate Bornstein, don’t be mean.

finally, i will take the opportunity to insert a little rant: DO NOT INTIMIDATE PEDESTRIANS, OK?? I see so many people try to turn right or left at an intersection, and a pedestrian is walking in the cross walk, and the car is edging… slowly… forward… as if to make the pedestrian walk faster? and then they turn, not two feet from the person’s legs! i really have to exhale when i see that happen.

drive safe, be kind, share the road, leave lots of time and lots of space. listen to nice music, and sing along. save gas, use the brake as little as possible. don’t be afraid of other drivers, but don’t try to intimidate them either. and please, let someone in with a grin!

namaste

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witness consciousness & non-judgmental awareness

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

this world of ours.. modern industrial society, the euro-western protestant ethic, the culture of merit, hard work, goal setting, progress, even the philosophy called law of attraction — whatever name you want to give it, has many underlying assumptions, but the one i want to concern myself with here is the following notion:

the way things are is NOT the way things should be. change through hard work, shifting the attitude toward positive thinking and scientific progress will help individuals, organizations, societies move forward, become better, and ultimately find mastery over the world, more adept at controlling its resources, purer, more ‘civilized’, and smarter.

the central focus is a judgment. negativity is unacceptable. forward thinking is the only way to move forward. moving forward is the prime directive.

the idea of manifestation is problematic when it comes from an outlook that repeats, however quietly, that right now isn’t okay. i need to manifest something different. i have a destiny or a dream or a need but i’m not *there* yet.

before you crap all over my concept of the law of attraction, i admit that i have not studied it in depth. however i approach that *theory* (not law, though some would assert it is like gravity - a reality absolute) from the perspective that it is a decontextualized borrowing from deep, rich tradition(s) that is made palatable to western audiences. it short circuits a whole host of concepts and practices into a self-help quick-fix and simplistic set of rules. so i’m less attracted to it than the centuries old texts that modern day ‘guru’ types have borrowed from to attract followers.

a story

my kripalu days brought me face-to-face with the internal talk that placed me in opposition to whatever i was at the moment. i wanted to have less tight hamstrings. i wanted to eat differently (which i got to do with ease at kripalu because i didn’t have to cook for my lazy self). i wanted to be less neurotic, have more toned abs, be less attention-seeking, be more at ease with people, make eye contact, be more brave, be more independent.. the list is a mile long.

this thing they were telling us about — non-judgmental awareness — was something i had met when i had surgery last may. laproscopic abdominal surgery left me very sore and weaker in my core. after a few days on narcotics and almost bed-ridden, i was missing yoga and bored and restless. so, the YMCA near my house had “Soft Yoga” on Wednesday mornings. I’d been before. It was mostly older folks, and the Donna taught us with many modifications for those less mobile. I usually took my practice where I felt like in that class, enjoying the community, the doting grandma types and the humour and levity Donna brought to teaching. Enter me in May, painfully easing myself into yoga, barely able to lay out my mat…

thank goodness for chair yoga!

i observed the very important safety tip that some folks don’t know (or can’t realistically heed): do NOT do yoga on pain killers, muscle relaxants and the like. Seriously, you cannot feel your body well enough to practice staying in sensation, not over stretching or torquing joints if your nerves are being subdued by medications.

taking no pain killers by the time i hit yoga 10 days post-surgery, i set about doing only what i could in that class, using pain signals as a guide to where i could go and where i could not. i had stitches, compromised abs, residual chest pain from my gall bladder attack and the air they pumped into my body during surgery.

all of this had a huge impact on me - as someone practicing yoga for almost a decade i was used to a much larger range of movement, an ease within poses, not needing props and the resilience to bounce back when i overstretched due to striving. not then.

i remember wanting to cry. i remember feeling .. not frustrated, but just deflated. then i realized what a gift i had been given in this challenge.

encountering sudden physical limitations disrupted how i took my body for granted. it confronted me with how much pride i took in where i could go with yoga. practicing during my healing process humbled me, too, as i experienced the amazing effects yoga had on my healing. just breathing, just sitting there, bringing awareness to where i was at and accepting it was transformative.

okay - witness consciousness.

many people think that meditation and yoga and enlightenment involve letting go of (read: getting rid of) negative emotions and thoughts. it means having an empty mind. many if not most people cannot get there. they haven’t arrived, and are thus dissatisfied. their ego defenses may belittle the practice because it’s too hard. they may say it’s not possible, or that the goal isn’t worthwhile, or just that it doesn’t make sense because no one has explained it to them properly (rather than, perhaps, they haven’t been open — or simply haven’t been ready — to receiving what the real message is. they’re stuck in thinking they have to be someplace else, they have to ‘get’ something else in order to arrive at that place of peaceful emptiness with no thoughts and no negative emotions.

witness consciousness means being aware. awareness of what is allows acknowledgement of what is, it allows the opportunity to understand and process your own beingness. step 1? no, not really.

awareness, practiced with non-judgment. what is, is. it just is. it may not be what it seems at first glance. it has many layers. what is cannot be fully seen.

You are right where you need to be.read the previous sentence again. you are right where you need to be. what does this mean? absolutely not! you might think this since you have many habits and faults and thoughts that you want to get rid of, that aren’t helping you be happy. you need to be more happy. your anguish, your suffering, your dis-ease is not serving you.

really? are you sure?

self-reflection

what would happen if i let go of judgment? of striving? of avoiding what is? what if i accepted suffering? what if i accepted ignorance and not knowing? what if i remained open to the things that i don’t like, noticing that i don’t like them but remaining loving to my dislike without judging myself further about that? what if i stopped scolding myself?

an emotion lasts 90 seconds. it’s a wave. it lasts longer for one of two reasons: 1-one actually *wants* to keep feeling angry. it is worn like a badge, or an identity, it is a way to feel powerful, perhaps a way to have control. 2-to me just as insidious and the one i struggle with: the more one tries to push *away* the feeling, “i’m NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ANGRY” the longer it lasts. perhaps i can bury it and dissapate it, but it will only surface again, or reside under the surface as passive aggression.

what if i ride the wave? the emotion will become intense. i will have many thoughts but if i can witness all that and let it rise, without attaching to it then it WILL ebb again. it just will. it’s like the place in between radio stations, there are noises, thoughts, music all intertwined, and it’s a question of tuning in. where am i residing? what can i find in the places in between? there is value to where i’ve been. whether i’m glad to not be where i was or regretful about where i was, or glad about where i was because it has made me stronger — all of these are judgments and i can focus on one of these only, or all of them, or none of them. any of these stances is OKAY. seriously. what if it’s all ok? what if it’s all good, even? what if it all just IS? i am right where i need to be.

there’s a hint of paradox in it, but i think that the more i become consciously aware of my mind and emotions, and witness it without judging it, my feelings become finely tuned instruments. they point merely to something i could pay attention to. more could and less should.

if i wrestle with everything going on inside my own head, and strive for something else, dissatisfied, harboring discontent, then i am not witnessing, and thus cannot see, or hear, or do as someone fully in the world - connected, and possibly in peace. for the moment.

namaste

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escaping sensation

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

in yoga, it’s best to avoid pain, and i advise students to find the edge where they can be comfortable but with just enough effort.

The posture should be comfortable and easy.
~ Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

yoga is not static. even when “holding” postures, there is movement in the body. energy flows from the ground up, from the crown down to the feet, and through outstretched arms. as the body finds alignment, sensations change. as the posture is held muscles feel different, strength waxes and wanes, the breath may become shallow, and then on reminder, become deep again.

it’s fun to explore postures. in a high lunge, wiggling the hips from side to side opens up the joints, and provides stretches in different places. find the sensation, and stay in it, holding, breathing into it. create space with your breath.

are you escaping?

yet it is also possible to “wiggle” enough to escape sensation. possible to arrange the posture “just so”, in a way perhaps that looks nice, or gets deeper, but doesn’t stretch the muscles evenly, or doesn’t stretch them at all. sometimes it is about relaxation. sometimes the skeleton finds itself compressed in a joint, and a person’s unique skeleton requires a shift, perhaps not in ideal alignment to ‘get by the bone’. people’s shoulders can be this way. some people can’t lift their arms up over their head from the front - they get to shoulder height and have to come out to the side. it can be like this in different places in the body.

becoming more aware of the difference between healthy sensation and pain, and sensation and escape from sensation, are useful inquiries.

try this at home

come into a forward bend: exhale, hinge at the hips, and instead of rounding the back to get as close to your knees as possible, keep the back straight. one way to try this is to place hands on hips as you come down. exhale on the way down, draw your belly in, and your hips will have more room to fold over. breathe. feel the stretch in your hamstrings, all the way up your legs. move your hips slightly. draw your tailbone down towards ground. don’t not drop your hands just yet.. keep your back straight.

if you can’t reach the floor, you may want props. it might be blocks, or if you don’t have those, try anything else that’s stable enough. thick books, a bench/low stool, or even a chair. bend one knee and straighten the other knee. alternate back and forth, releasing the tension in one leg and increasing sensation in the other. hold on one side. even out the hips. extend out of your waist. keep a straight back. hold on the other side. come back into a full forward bend with both knees straight.

then come into the forward bend you may be used to doing, the one that gets you closer to your knees. do you notice a difference in sensation? do you feel your lower back more now? do you feel less of a stretch in your hamstrings? is the sensation lower or higher up your legs? both may give you a stretching sensation, but notice the difference. try the first one again. is it more intense?

ego? comfort? go inside and look

think about whether you are striving to get your head to your knees when you are at your regular yoga class. notice if you feel reluctant to back off and go for the bigger stretch because it doesn’t look as impressive, or make you feel as flexible (if you feel strongly that your striving is for your own personal challenge only).

both forward bends are okay, though if you have problems with your lower back you want to try and keep a straight back. if you have osteopenia or osteoporosis, be careful with forward bends, especially coming back up to standing.

explore sensation, find the edge, and honour your body — where it is at today, right now. you’ll get “further” in the long run, i promise.

namaste

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kindness

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

i’ve been thinking a lot about kindness. there is kindness to others and there is kindness to self. these two things aren’t really distinct though.

i haven’t wrapped my head or heart around the notion that judgment is a necessity. i mean, i understand that i do need to judge and discriminate in situations. to judge whether that bridge will give way as i cross it. to judge whether i can believe what someone is telling me. to make sure i stay safe. there is “making a judgment call”. this is a good thing.

but what about when it comes to people? judging whether they are lying, as i mentioned above, is one useful case. what about, whether i think this person would be a good friend? or if a friend is making a choice that i judge will lead to suffering?

i always perceived judgment as something harsh, that one person levels against another. as the opposite of kindness. how can i be kind and judge at the same time?maybe i am confused. but maybe i am onto something.

imagine a judge in a courtroom. they make a decision because people are asking the judge to make one. the judge holds authority, and the judge is separate.

think about the word kindness for a moment. hm. kindness. could it perhaps mean that i exist in kind? isn’t this the opposite of being separate from who or what we i am kind toward?

so, to be kind toward others means to treat them - to take the root of the word further down - as kin. to treat my self with kindness means that i do not separate from myself, i stay connected with the truth of who i am. being kind to myself means that even as i harm myself, i can be kind to the part of me that disregards and causes violence — the part that separates me from me. if i judge myself, i create fragments, i create larger chasms within my psyche. to love the parts of myself that are unlovable, to treat them with kindness, means shining a light into those dark spaces. it means witnessing that which is. once it ceases to be separate from me, i will not seek to destroy myself.

to treat others in kind? it would seem that a large obstacle to kindness with others is not practicing self-kindness. it is very easy to stand apart from the world and judge it harshly, when i stand apart from myself.

It’s just love. There is nothing else. There is just love. ~Swami Kripalu

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counting chickens?

Friday, February 27th, 2009

im not superstitious, but sometimes these things seem to reflect some principle to me that leads me away from suffering.

one example is that prematurely declaring success can foil that success — even in ways that seem unconnected. ficticious case: i become a finalist for some writing award, and the night of the awards, because everyone is telling me i’m going to win, i phone my friend and say ‘i’m so going to win this thing, it’s practically in the bag’ … then i don’t. or i’m sure i got that job, but because i told someone about it, i didn’t get it. or i tell someone how my car has never needed more than an oil change for years, and it suddenly needs fixing.

being ‘too quick’ to assert what isn’t quite true yet is one way in which i can become disappointed and withdraw from what i’m doing when it doesn’t happen.

it can be called ‘realistic pessimism‘, which i would venture to say is more protective than unrealistic optimism, but i think both are illusory, more so anyway than some sort of “poptimism“. hah. nice word, eh?

it relates to my previous post about impermanence. if i live in the present, keeping in mind (even if at the back) that the present is not forever, i can begin to work on seeing something that hasn’t happened yet as .. well, not having happened yet. and because it hasn’t happened yet, i can’t declare that it has.

.

the more i connect with myself in the present moment, the more i can speak from the present — who i am, and not who i desire to be, not who i was. and this — this is what will allow other people to meet me where i am at right now, it will enable both of us to see the ‘now me’ more clearly.

if i stay in the present moment, i can keep open to possibility. keep connected with myself, and i can feel what or who i am connected to around me. authenticity. the present moment.

namaste

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always becoming

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

lately i have struggled with making some changes. i keep falling back into a bad habit, or not quite forming a new one. i have become more aware of less-than-helpful thought patterns, and grow frustrated because i wish they’d be gone already. they aren’t helping!

then i despair in thinking i haven’t changed.

then i remember that i have changed a great deal. i really have! in many ways, i am not the same person i was a year ago. or two years ago. yet my mind really does think, sometimes, that i am still inhabiting the same self.

as i begin to realize that i am changing, i am becoming more comfortable with the idea that when i’m efforting to do anything - a challenging asana, improving my eating, getting to the gym, managing difficult emotions and thoughts - i will sometimes feel successful and will sometimes feel unsuccessful, but both these are impermanent and rather meaningless, anyway.

can i touch my toes today? perhaps not. it seems crazy that i would think, because i cannot touch my toes today, that there is no way i will ever be able to touch my toes. indeed, it is crazy! so why would i think that because today i ‘fell off the wagon’ or otherwise did not reach some goal, i cannot do this thing tomorrow, or ever?

turn it around: what i am pleased with, the things that are working, these things are impermanent too. it is crazy to think that i will be able to touch my toes forever. if i think i can, this will cause suffering when i cannot. with habits and behaviours, too, it doesn’t matter whether i have been doing something for two days or two years or two decades, i am acting from this moment, and so each day is an opportunity to start new, reinforce, or offer myself kindness.

for cruelty to myself will not help me live as peace.

namaste

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when i speak from my experience

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

the language of i

many of us have heard of i statements.

for instance, instead of “you are annoying,” it’s less harmful to say “i am feeling very annoyed with you right now.”

this is advice often given to parents, i suppose to try and avoid equating child with behaviour and casting certain individuals to lifelong identities of crime and misdemeanor.

in other words, “i statement” means no name calling.

the practice of ahimsa means to cultivate non-violence. violence can be with words, not just actions, like bopping someone over the head with a gopher because they’re being annoying. name calling is a kind of violence.

but there’s more..

there’s another (lack of) use of ‘i’ statements that i really want to talk about here. it’s pervasive, and i don’t know how far back this useage goes.

i’ll lay a (fictional-but-based-on-real-life) scene out for you. it’s between an unnamed but very successful talk show host, and her interviewee.

Host: “so tell me, ivan, what were you feeling leading up to the moment you killed your wife?”

ivan: “well, you know. hmm. you know you feel like you’ve been managing for a lot of years, and you even convince yourself you’re happy sometimes, you know? and then, like, one day, you don’t know if there’s any point in trying anymore, you don’t believe it’s going to change. and then you, like, you just start having thoughts, and at first you can dismiss them but they just build and build until you can’t put them out of your mind, and it seems the only way to get rid of them is for you to do something…”

wait. what? i’m ivan, and i’m a killer? is famous host a killer? who is the “you” he is referring to?

a couple things about this:

  • ivan didn’t answer the question, at least linguistically. he didn’t say “*i* was feeling this, that and the other, and then *i* felt this way.”
  • he wasn’t in the past tense, he was in the present tense. grammatically then, he was decoupling the situation from its moment in time.
  • by using ‘you’ instead of ‘i’, ivan was disavowing his experience. meaning, when he said “you feel this” he disidentified with his words. he placed them on his listener. perhaps this was a way of subconsciously trying to gain identification from his listeners, so that he himself didn’t feel like a monster. i mean, anyone can kill their wife, right? what he described is common enough experience so “you could be feeling this too”… right?

this is an extreme example of “you” language. it should be acknowledged, though i’m not grammatician, that the use of ‘proverbial you’ i believe is useful and needed at times. but i think it’s overused to the point of being a sign — a symptom if you will, of how alienated people are from themselves.

ok, but i’m not a psychopathic killer

compare these two passages, an example of a mundane situation that is more relatable (perhaps):

when you approach the speaker at the drive thru, sometimes they answer right away but sometimes you can wait forever for someone to come. you can’t always hear them well, and they usually mess up your order. then, they don’t always tell you what window to pull up to, so you take a slow.. pass by the first window and if there’s no one there, you assume it’s the second window. when they hand you the change, it’s always coins on top of bills which you can’t understand, because change in the hand first is a lot more secure.

i find that when i go to a drive thru, there are times when i have to wait a while before someone serves me. i have a hard time hearing the person through the intercom. i find they often get my order incorrect, but that may be because i always take cheese and lettuce off my order, so it’s a special case. i’m often also not really sure where to pay, and i find the transfer of money is awkward because a lot of cashiers like to put the change on top of the bills and receipts, which seems very unstable to me.

i think it’s palpable, the difference between these two passages, which are essentially saying the same thing.

the second is grounded in one person’s — the speaker’s — experience.

it communicates the specificity of their account, but doesn’t exclude the possibility of someone identifying with some or all of it.

they aren’t imposing the experience on the listener, they are owning their own perspective and voice.

a meditation on this concept

i bring this to my awareness. i notice how others are speaking about their experiences. i notice if i am using “you” language when i speak. i notice how it feels to use “i” language.

namaste

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witness consciousness

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

some core benefits of yoga and meditation are the very things that are most difficult for practitioners, especially when they are starting out. in the beginning, meditation, relaxation and breathing exercises where the mind is “supposed” to focus on the breath, or ideally be “empty of all thoughts” are especially difficult. the goal of an empty mind seems like a distant and ridiculous goal for so many people.

but we want peace, right? so we need to try and empty the mind, try and not have all those thoughts, try and focus and find the pure state of nothingness that is the buddha. right?

i wonder how many people give up. i wonder how many people hear “let your mind rest, become peaceful, put the world and your worries away,” and never come back to a class because they can’t do it? how many people sit in class and hold in their urge to squirm and shift, and berate themselves for not being able to clear their mind and become one with their mat? that’s far from relaxing, isn’t it?

oh, the noise!

a partial journey out of this struggle involves learning about monkey mind, and picking apart the myth of silent mind.


monkey mind is the constant chatter the mind does. thinking about the past, the future, problems, plans, desires, feelings, resentments, questions, fears. all amount of effort to silence this seems to make it worse!

i’ve done it myself - i’ve sat in meditation, and become more and more upset because i just couldn’t find a stillness. my body wants to move, my mind is chattering away, and as soon as i’ve brought it back to watch the breath, i’m back thinking about what i’ll need to get at the hardware store later.

while long-term practitioners of meditation and yoga may find moments of “silent mind”, most likely don’t experience pristine silence throughout practice. when they do find peaceful quiet from monkey mind, they didn’t get there by forcing their full weight on the monkey to silence him. pushing the monkey and telling him to “shaddup” is only going to make him yell louder. so how in the world can you tame monkey mind?

becoming “one”

some people will suggest that it’s a matter of “becoming one with”. the idea of moving like water. instead of resisting, go with it. ahhh. well this does feel easier. just let it happen, man! just sit in meditation and think about your shopping list! it’s just fine, really. the mind does what it wants to do. become one with your mind, become one with your body, the planet, the universe!

geeks letting go

yeah, that’s the idea… but perhaps it’s missing a step to suggest this first. i’ve talked to students who are incredibly confused by this, or simply unable to do it. so am i. how do i become one with my anger when everything i’ve ever learned is telling me that it’s wrong?? now should i be telling myself it’s the opposite of wrong? should i be telling myself that it’s wrong to have the aversions i have to anger? if my anger is telling me to go smash something, are you telling me that is not wrong? no that has to be wrong! ok i’m confused about what is right and wrong. what am i supposed to tell myself?

witness consciousness

kripalu yoga in stage II involves cultivating witness consciousness. this is a sort of non-judgmental awareness which begins (and ends) with noticing. witness consciousness is applicable to yoga practice and meditation and then can become an awareness that filters into every aspect of life.

non-judgemental awareness is a very different way of engaging with the spiral that happens in the mind. the spiral goes something like this:

  1. i have a thought
  2. i am aware of that thought and i don’t like it (because i’m supposed to be meditating?)
  3. try to put it out of my mind
  4. berate myself for having the thought
  5. i am not able to get rid of the thought
  6. i berate myself for not being able to get rid of the thought
  7. i berate myself for berating myself
  8. etc.

the spiral can get quickly out of control. it’s as if, i think that by yelling at myself, i can whip myself into submission. oh, no it doesn’t work that way. self-immolation is a chinese finger trap. chinese finger trap the harder i try to resist and force my way out of the unpleasantness of my mind, the harder my mind squeezes me.

the practice of witness consciousness can effectively short circuit the spiral that happens with the mind. where do i get attached? in becoming “one” with my thoughts and emotions am i not attaching to them, seeing them as part of me, and thus unable to let them come and go?

begin with yoga. i do a forward bend. oh, my hamstrings are tight today. ok i can notice that. then i notice that i am beginning to have feelings about that. perhaps feelings of inadequacy, or frustration about it. i wasn’t this tight yesterday! perhaps i notice myself striving to go further, and ignoring the threshold where i am pushing too far. just noticing. hm. interesting how my mind is behaving. let’s watch this some more.

practicing witness consciousness has helped me see where i move from being aware of a particular thought or feeling or state, into making *meaning* out of it. i become aware of how i’m taking thoughts and running with them (or allowing them to run me).

mandala

letting go?

witnessing means that i am, in a way, a bystander to my mind. i am not my mind, i am watching my mind. therefore, even as i experience myself as a constant in the universe, i can realize that my mind is not constant. it becomes possible to let a thought come, and let it go.

the last sentence offers an interesting “out” to the problem of monkey mind: “let it come”. we focus so much on letting go. but in order to let it go we have to let it come.

so if you feel a cry coming on in a yoga class, what do you do with it? stuff it inside? what if you let it come?

if you are laying in bed and can’t stop thinking about what you have to do tomorrow, why stop? perhaps the lack of sleep will give you something you need. can you be open to that?

if you are sick, and your body needs rest, are you stuffing more cold medicine into you and ignoring the pain, or can you listen and let yourself rest and the cold work itself out?

let it come. notice it. then you can see if you are able it go.

jai bhagwan

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openings

Friday, February 6th, 2009

i want to put aside the law of attraction and any motivational shtuff for a moment. okay.

the ideas coming out of western adoption of “yogic hinduism”, buddhism, i ching, well, they’re very interesting and creative, current, timely and perhaps more palatable versions of the deep wellspring that is ancient wisdom.

i’m new at this, but i’ve been doing it for thousands of years. i’m a ‘budding buddhist’; i am only beginning to realize the extent of my suffering; i am only beginning to tease out the illusions and attachments i have suffered under

so, i’m riding the wave of life as a fledgling. i’m stumbling, withdrawing, protesting, posturing, and striving my way to some sort of greater awareness. yoga has helped me. judaism has helped me. buddhism has helped me. so have yoga teacher training, psychotherapy, anthropology graduate school, my lovers, my failures, and everything in between.

i graduated as a certified kripalu yoga teacher in august 2008. it was an incredible experience, and it showed me pieces of myself i had thought disappeared. my lover, who had ended things a short time before my training, saw me in this new state and in a way realized that i was deeper and stronger than i’d seemed. he opened, as i began to open.

pain

like many souls - if not all souls - on the journey, my heart has known great pain. i think it’s because of this pain that i’ve grown a compassionate heart. my challenges are mental and physical. sometimes i feel as though i am the finest seismograph to the emotional landscape.

i spent a lot of years closed off — or trying to close off — the intensity of emotion that i experience. looking into people’s eyes sometimes hurts. physical proximity stirs up a lot, and i draw back. the presence of my own self has been too much to bear, at times. “i” needed to disappear. depression and anxiety have been almost lifelong.

opening

the world has been opening, as i have been opening. it seems, actually, that these two things are not different, because i-being is not separate from world-being. there is no “out there” that isn’t a reflection of what is “in here”.

that is what i am learning from my current journey. as i open my heart, physically through yoga, emotionally through yoga, and even more through teaching yoga, i am becoming more connected with my suffering. i learned about witness consciousness, which is a way to observe the self, non-judgmentally. bring kind to myself has meant that i am doing less of that closing off. being kind to myself has made it possible for me to learn how to ask and receive kindness from others.

witnessing the ways i am being in the world has opened up realms of possibility. i see things i have to offer people, and i have opened enough to share some of them.

teaching yoga is one of those things. i was so afraid, i had no idea why anyone would want *me* to teach them yoga! however i have received such blessings from teaching. i continue to find a world open to me, as i open to myself.

attraction

what about attraction, then? i am sensing that i am not attracting things too me, as if they were being manifested by me — they were always already there.

so opening is a process of discovery. a treasure hunt!

in JOY,
namaste

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