The Beauty in Hidden Structures

We are so busy moving ourselves around in the world,  that, like buildings, we see mostly the facade in passing. One of the gifts of living in a transitional bustling neighborhood of a major city is that there is constant building and tearing down so that, along with facades, all the inner structures are revealed coming and going.

Walking to teach my morning vinyasa class, I was stopped in my tracks by this gorgeous metal support structure. Light pouring through parts of it, it's undulations, shapes, reflective nature and span was strikingly beautiful. Just half a block further on, there is another one of these -- so it isn't any one-of-a-kind marvel at all -- that is covered in all the next stages of building with no light in it, and few of its textures revealed. In a week's time, they will both be invisible above ceilings and below floors.

Class was all about this in a subtle way starting with slow rocking in the hip sockets to feel how the thigh bones seat and mindful rolling through the sitting bone supports, to reveal spinal support even as the weight shifts.  Eventually we moved into standing sequences, unfolding and refolding with the breath, and allowing the hidden structures to do their work deep in the interior of each asana (posture). Yet their presence could still be established, felt, and explored.

Walking to my next class I caught a glimpse of a building being demolished. It has stood for decades, though this demolition has been elongated over the last few years it is active once again. At the moment, the remaining structure is like a gem hiding in its case. I think of the breath, its textures, its stalwart nature, its foundational strength, its subtle delicacies.  How grateful I am to live in this moment in a human form that I can explore at so many levels, cultivating awareness of the details and technicalities and the grand scale of the overall plan!

Using what you have

Often I find myself making meals with leftovers or the ingredients that I find in my fridge. This can push me into typical patterns, or can spur all manner of creativity. There are people who see a recipe and go shop for the ingredients. Many will measure these with some care and expect results that resemble the description in the instructions. I see that I am not naturally inclined in that direction in my cooking or my yoga practice.

My explorations start with seeing what's obviously there, deepen into digging for complementary or supplementary ingredients and building the design from these. An overarching concept develops, balancing the intuitive growth of the design with my actual experience. The results are always unknowable, though not entirely unpredictable.

In my cooking this results in portobello-red cabbage-poblano tacos or millet-teff-rosemary-garlic-pepper sticks. There are plenty of examples of this in my eat2thrive blog. In yoga this can evolve into a practice focused on Virabhadrasana 3, evolving lunge into its dancing, flying forms, and ending up in supine one-legged poses and a sequence of Anuloma Krama (breathing in stages with retention of breath). Unlikely that I would take someone else's formula and follow or teach it. I see now that I had trouble as a child in my violin lessons for just this reason! I wanted to follow the sound and feeling as I experienced it. This seemed to flower in chamber music and chafe in the orchestra. I learn a lot from both contexts- especially that the path to discovery and joy goes in all directions. Makes sense to me now.

Admiration for effective methodology attracts me. This is where I learn from others. I can see or experience their ways and experiment while absorbing this into my own inquiry. Since taking yoga classes, I have been deeply moved by the unfolding of this kind of personally proven processing by teachers of various yogic stripes. The offering of what a teacher has experienced has a genuine ring to it -- like the sound of a crystal ringing. I am humbled to be among them now, masquerading as one of them while still stirring around in my own cabinet for this or that to shore up the hip here or the fearful mind there... Making sweetness in the posture while adding a bit of hot sauce in the mix.

Asana & Mind: Twisting as a State not an Action

Don't we imagine that the goal is to twist as far as we possibly can? Of course we all begin with striving and measuring how we think we do in relation to images in our mind or presented by the bodies next to us. The next stage is our effort to identify what is happening and how it happens  and in doing that we get attached to the specifics like pressing into the thumb and index finger in downward facing dog or focusing on drawing the left ribs towards the back body or towards the ceiling in a spinal twist. But these are not the goals nor are they really the pivotal mechanisms in that down dog or spinal twist, warrior or headstand. We can only find our way once we see where it is in our self that yearns and overworks, where our energy disconnects or pools, and how our judging mind blocks our path and builds our habitual patterns. Yes, there is a building of familiarity with how the body works, and our own body in particular, but the twist is more about opening the mind, than seeing the room behind you.

Beginning,  we open our attention to new places in the body and experience our own efforts with both wariness and awareness. Once we feel the outer edge of that foot in a standing pose and discover the internal shift it takes to feel the inner heel at the same time, we can stop focusing on that and begin to follow the line up the body, balancing the pelvis between the legs, then drawing the energy up the legs and in towards the pelvis and then moving our awareness from place to place, adjusting the fulcrum of our attention and effort. In  beginning we must activate an acuity of attention and forge a balance in our awareness and effort.

Then we let that go. We are not perfecting a particular pressure of foot or angle of hip. We are not drawing the ribs around the body to create torque in the spine and a sore ribcage. More effort is not the goal nor does it produce bliss. Even worse than our habitual patterns might be replacing them with over efforting and rigid assumptions. In this process we can learn about inquiry, about our actions, our urgencies, and our minds.

Effort is required of the mind to observe and attend to the body in any moment.  Effort is also required in the body to bring the mind into an alert and informed state. It is at this point that spaciousness and ease can enter the practice. The equation shifts when we allow the body to relax into a posture of supported effort and the mind to release judging and adjusting that effort and begin to explore being in a pose. It is this quality of being that opens the box of possibilities.

It is this moment that may be missed  if our practice requires constant  motion and use of effort to keep going. though we may burn through resistance of one kind we may be catering to habitual patterns of resistance too. We can build muscular and cardiovascular strength and cultivate intimacy when we let go of the constant physical negotiation for deeper, harder, or really just more.  In the silence of being in a pose, we find our breath, we can use the mind to soften the fierceness of the body. By opening ease in the midst of all the effort we begin a new adventure of adeptly holding a posture without continuing to "work" on it. Then the work is in the energy, breath, and awareness, supported by mindful conscious alignment of bone and muscle.

At a certain point in the twist it is important to let go of the act of twisting and experience the support and clarity of being twisted.

Experiments Fail, This Moment Never Does

Since January 2013 I've been vegan minus oils and wheat gluten. This has enlivened my creativity in the kitchen, since I love to eat and the possibilities with these ingredients seem endless. The hard part is trying to make something that I used to eat full of things I no longer eat. This seems to encapsulate so many of the problems we make for ourselves.

This may sound like a kitchen story but it is a yoga story. Everything I do is an experiment, if an experiment is an action within the context of the known and the unknown. In any given moment, all I have is what my mind tells me. Like walking in a maze, the more familiar  I can be with the false turns and the dead ends, the more quickly and smoothly I can adjust my path to keep the path opening up ahead. Otherwise I can spend half the day, or the whole day, stuck in a cul-de-sac of judgment and that feeling of unworthiness will color all else. Without willingness to see the truth, there will be no growth or improvement next time, no way to duplicate a success, or avoid the same cause of a disappointment.  The easiest way to do this is to know my own tendencies and understand the conditional nature of my own reactions.

This really came in to focus with my blueberry muffin project one morning, which led directly to a blueberry scone project to change things for the better, both of which failed to produce anything resembling a baked blueberry treat I would have made in the past. Not only did the project not satisfy that goal, but eating the results gave me a stomach ache. On top of that, it was the first time I put together a blog post for my eat2thrive blog and literally deleted it after posting it. The muffins, my breakfast, and the blog post were all failures. It was no surprise that this put a damper on my mood, yet that's just where the surprise came. I could see the mood happen and let it come, and then let it go, without taking it personally.

In a yoga practice there are times when what went fine yesterday does not go well today. Our mind sets us up with hopes and expectations, with fears and roadblocks. It helps when we see this and acknowledge it. It's not enough to say, "I don't know how it will come out." It is important to fully see that it is fine to try and not know, and that this not knowing might mean something delicious or something disappointing on the road to figuring out how to make something delicious. It is the steps and stages necessary in an experiment to see what results are produced by which actions. In this way the moment is always fulfilling its best potential. Engrossed in the choices, awaiting the outcome, tasting the results, and revising the plans, all of these are complete, each in their own moment. The cloud of disappointment may come and go as the first muffin is eaten. The choice to let the inner critic have a field day, that's another matter. To see how we twist that outcome into more than the sum of its parts, is to see how we subject ourselves to our own patterns of judgment and expectation.

That turned out to be the most rewarding result of the whole blueberry muffin project. This ability to observe the mind, the mood, the pattern, and the escape from the traps, gave me a lovely day even with a triple strike out to start.  I am already scheming on the next variations to try in the puzzle of an oil-less, egg-less, gluten-free blueberry muffin.

Teaching Yoga: Opening a Path for Everybody

There is a responsibility in teaching yoga that goes beyond my own practice. It all boils down to creating a space where seekers seek, athletes work out, the ill heal, the lost find company and a shape is given to that for all of them. People respond to different types of stimulation, are attracted to varying degrees of intensity, and definitely have vastly different amounts of time to give to a yoga practice. For some, it must fit into that one hour slot in a work day, or that open time on a weekend or evening, and for others everything shapes itself around practice. Some can commit to a weekly practice, others to daily and others barely commit, using yoga as an occasional activity. Some come looking for their physical limits, others bring their physically limited bodies in search of an ethereal self.

I've been to such a range of classes as a student that I cannot help but wonder about communicating the essentials, giving the raw ingredients that can be used in so many ways. Surely discipline and physical prowess were a part of the ancient practices when men of contortionist skill displayed their asana ability to spur a desire for the practice and a healthy dose of amazement at what that practice could make of a human body.  But there was reverence also for the aesthetes, who suffered in silent isolation in the mountains waiting for the divine insights, and the ecstatics who cried out for the beloved in all things. Through all these avenues, the ego was seen and the mind's grip loosened from the attachments that limit perception, allowing escape from the I-me-mine framework that ruins so much of life. Possibilities opened on all these paths, and the suffering of grasping and aversion could be understood and reduced.

It is no surprise that there are students who must be pushed to their physical limits in order to feel their deepest awareness of self judgment and attachment. I'm not sure that there is enough encouragement to cultivate that level of awareness in some of those classes where the body is used to create the endorphin high that takes one out on the trip of bliss in Savasana.  Certainly there are those who can use their bodies to build strength and skill, learn trust in the breath, and push their practice into the unknown through these challenging asana classes. There are also those whose seeking will not take their physical practice to that level, perhaps living in bodies that can improve in health and integration, but will not transform into that level of athleticism. The practice does not require an able body, nor even a brilliantly trained mind. The practice only demands willingness and at a certain point, commitment. Yoga is not a weight loss program nor a reversal of aging elixir. Yoga is not a cure-all, nor a religion. But my goodness yoga is definitely an opportunity to broaden perspectives and live a fuller life as the person you actually are, encouraging each person to more fully inhabit the body they have and develop the mind they brought with them.

So as a yoga teacher I feel it is my responsibility to offer from the heart of the principles as I have come to know them. My own practice being one of open inquiry, rather than a structured sequence of asana, within which the subtleties are explored, that is what I tend to teach. I started yoga in my late 40s, without an athlete's or dancer's training. My first experiences brought me to my knees (child's pose, actually) because of the insights that arose during those early practices, the profound support I felt for being myself that saturated the practice, and the absence of dictates that pushed me into corners from which I could not see or experience for myself. There was no authority other than my own intelligences: my mind, my heart, my sensations, the space between my inhale and my exhale.

In this way I think that the path remains open to everybody: those who must sweat it out with fast paced and demanding physical asana sequences, those for whom it is the ancient texts that beckon with pearls and stars of insight, those for whom the seeking of the quiet place on the cushion, the mat and in the mind are the glimmers of truth between the asana, and those for whom the sound of breath around them is the deepest comfort, having a place to go where someone will see them with compassionate care, and hold them equal to the task of being who they are.

The classes that I teach are not all things to all students. I've been subbing classes lately and I know that I am offering a practice, but that it is not the same tempo or temperament as those of the absent teacher. For the students, I believe this is a good thing. The experience of yoga comes in so many forms and running into a substitute teacher can offer a glimmer of that. It is also a beautiful mirror to use to see their own practice, get a sense of the expectations they may have brought with them, find a new view of their self judgment, and cultivate awareness in myriad parts of their life experience.  It is exactly the same opportunity for me, as the teacher. Seeing my offering in new ways, sensing my own constraints and expectations, observing the view of my teaching from a new perspective, and growing my own practice as their teacher.

The range of people I teach, from young athletes to centenarians, is my sharpest tool for keeping the path open for everybody. I see my task is just that, stretching my own mental structures, asana practices, and understandings in order to assist others to find the opening to their own path.

A Pledge to Live with Paradox

I am living in a layered world of paradox. Without goal, without limiting myself to definitive closed-end attitudes, how can I act with quiet certainty and follow a path in any direction at all? It is absolutely required of me that I let go of grasping onto my life as a product to be produced in a certain way, or as a specific thing, in order to experience the true possibilities I might have. The only thing that protects me from feeling myself to be continuously on the edge of the abyss of meaninglessness is to accept that meaninglessness is an idea, like any other goal or product of the mind.

So I come to weightlessness, a weird sensation where there is no gripping at all. It disappears in an instant of panic, or certainty. As soon as I allow myself to attach to a feeling -- any feeling -- I am on the ground again. Feeling every bone, missing those I've lost, wondering who I am. This state of illusion is not comfortable either, seems so heavy, never resolves, though sometimes settles into a groove that I feel as familiar. That's when the old tapes begin playing all my stories; the criticisms and praises, sorrows and joys line themselves up.  This is of no use to me at all.

The important part for me now is to also let go of this paralysis, a sensation easily confused with not knowing, or uncertainty.  No amount of thinking is going to create certainty, the more I close in and nail down the structure around an idea, the less likely it is that it will lead to my liberation. The clarity and depth of inquiry provide the path, not so much the bits that turn up as I dig.

A neighbor of mine in upstate New York handed me a long list of ignorant unfounded sound bites as a rationale for his political negligence, social belligerence and protectionist gun-toting perspectives. I felt myself circle the bait, mouth open, but I closed my lips and smiled instead. "Then shoot me first," I said, smiling. I didn't have the will to say, "you must be terribly afraid and disappointed in your life,  your community, the choices we have all made together," or even "then I must be the enemy since I do vote, feel responsible for others and I do believe in peace."  I felt that he did not want to talk about that, he just wanted to bluster his way through this moment and go home. It is a role that he often plays. Part of me couldn't wait for him to leave, but part of me wished I could hold on long enough to reflect his anguish and let him know that I am not dismissing him, blind to his painful condition. We all make misinformed or fear-based choices sometimes, ones that endanger ourselves or others. I am no better than he.

How do we live side by side, with ourselves and each other? Tolerating the paradoxes, accepting the gripping and the weightlessness, until we get used to it. This is what takes practice. Months and years  of daily, weekly practice, over time we learn to change our own shape and accommodate all the thinking in order to operate directly from our energy source.  I can see the abyss, I can see the snow flakes filling the space between the hill on which I sit and the ridge across from me.  Like a blind cat, I step and explore, seeking information from outside my body in order to live in my fullest form in my body as it changes constantly.

What kind of resolution can I make to encourage myself in the coming days and months? Perhaps it all comes down to allowing myself the space to practice. Can I do that? Can you? Yes we can.

Growing Solo: Skills in Class, Explored in Private

Yoga classes are where I learned to see myself through the actual experience of being myself. I felt my resistance to external direction; I recognized deep inner sorrows; I discovered flexibility and habitual patterns. Over time, every bit of this moved off the mat into my daily life, relationships, self definitions.  On a grand scale of patterning I was shifting and changing, but the minutia upon which the patterns all relied was discovered only in my personal practice. Allowing the experiences on the mat to go where they led themselves, taking on the challenges of body and mind that arose from my own body and mind.  Classes will give you the tools for this, but only the personal practice gives you the opportunity.

An example of this might be a reluctance to kick up into handstand with "the other leg." It is one of those moments in private when you face your drive, your judgment, your fear of failure and the pain of that. You can seek out the mechanisms by which the body can actually support the move, rather than throw the body into the panic again and again until it somehow "works." You can deconstruct and reinvent the pattern in the movement, and without a care about the handstand, discover the rising into it. Feeling pain in class in a joint or in a movement, you will quite simply try to avoid it the next time. In private practice you can explore the sources to support safe movement, or to genuinely protect the point in jeopardy.  You can evolve the practice from the foundation into the pose or movement, building the resilience and awareness that bring you fully into the pose rather than aiming for the shape of the asana. Strength and stamina can be built, and the self defined differently.

Meditation practice requires a most intimate connection to solitary practice. In a group of people, meditation puts you directly in touch with your own mind and habits of mind.  The group can support you with community, scheduling, breath around you, and a little pressure to keep your seat out of shame or anxiety.  A group can even offer you material to work with in the form of distraction and dharma themes upon which to focus your thinking.  It is in your own practice where you find the threads with which you have been spinning the stories, and where you can stop that spinning and can observe the threads, and the stories, without having to give over to watching them.

Finding What Supports You

When I say, "allow your feet to soften into the earth," it might sound like gobble-de-gook or hocus pocus until we begin playing with the way we actually use our feet. This shift in attention brings a level of understanding that can help with balance, with organizing your bones above the earth in ways that help transfer weight without stressing joints, and also lightens the load even in an emotional sense. First we try the communication system between the feet and the brain. Are the signals getting through in both directions? It's good to let yourself laugh when that little toe just doesn't hear you, or when the ball of the foot rises instead of the toes. As with any relationship, humor can help a lot as we gain an appreciation of the other's point of view.

In any posture, whether doing yoga or not, you can explore the grounding of your body. It isn't always your feet either, sometimes it's your sitting bones below you, or the angle of your pelvis that help settle you so that your spine can follow its natural rise. Investigate the way the bones rest on the earth -- exploring while laying down on your back for example, you can just notice the way your breath lifts and releases you and discover exactly which parts of you are touching the surface below you. Cherish this discovery of how your spine works, and allow your attention to follow the breath as it gradually releases tensions and more of your body can relax into the support below.

Standing you can do the same thing while gently leaning your weight into the inner edges of your feet and then the outer edges. What does that mean? Well, can you feel any weight in the inner side of your heel, or do you tend to feel yourself resting on the outer edge? Perhaps more of this than that in one or the other foot? Just find out. Try bending your knees slightly and feel the weight naturally seep into the heels, stretching the front thigh into the hip socket a little can do the same thing -- draw your attention to this and play with it. It may feel like you will fall over, but relax into it with a little shake, a little boogie woogie, and then settle back into it.

Once your communication lines are open, you can really draw energy up the legs from the earth; you can relax into your seat and feel an energetic lift in the deep core muscles; you can ease the shoulders down your back upper rib cage and feel your ribs freely floating over your hips.

If you find the support below you, you can rise lightly and feel freedom in the joints as well as the mind. Give it a try. Focus on it for a moment, whatever posture you're in! The deeper support will become evident once you allow the exploration to begin with the surfaces of things.

Sugar Candy: A Beautiful Practice

When someone compliments me, I know they are making judgments, but it is deeply sweet. Just like sugar candy, we so easily learn to crave that sweetness. Beauty is in the mind, a way of appreciating or noticing some thing or attribute, and that has this sweetness too. Like watching a dancer move through a choreography suited to their nature or the musical score, or when the light at 4pm strikes the tree tops just so, or when the breath carries me through Surya Namasakar (sun salutation) from the inside. It is grace made visible.

When I go to different studios, sometimes teachers come up and actually say to me, "You have a beautiful practice."

The first time it happened it was like the candy, a little shock at the sweetness, and that warm melting feeling that comes with pride and ego growing. Then, like steam dissipating, the little sweet droplets began separating on my tongue and I wondered what does this mean?

It happened again today. Not saying it happens all the time, but I am beginning to find that it is not unusual. And I am finding that I can see the candy as the confection it is, without having to eat it.

My practice is simply me, connecting to the energy that the breath brings me, and trying to hear what the teacher is offering me. I can feel clumsy, funny, and smooth. I can find all kinds of things interesting along the path that another teacher is offering me. Sometimes I rebel against a tone or a sequence or an attitude, but when that happens it becomes my practice too. The practice of watching myself judge myself as somehow mismatched to the moment. That is, of course, impossible, since there is nothing else but that moment and obviously I'm right in it! So it is me chafing at being... which more often than not makes me laugh when I see that it is happening.

Actually, now, today, when it happened again, I saw that it was simply the grace of the breath made visible.

So I looked around and wondered if the teacher also saw beauty in the man standing there fighting with himself about balancing, rather than taking an accommodation for his hamstring situation and letting his body rest in balance. Maybe seeing it in that woman folded in child's pose instead of taking a twisted Ardha Chandrasana balance (standing half moon, with opposite hand down). Or could it be seen in the practice of that dancer in the corner with the incredible lines from fingertips to toes, or that young man who was finding new space in his spine while he tried to relax his forehead. Every one of them was beautiful to me, as they searched their souls for freedom in that moment to let the body twist, rise, extend, stretch, deepen, breathe, and be in a most specific way! Willingly, and with concentration, each one of them was expressing grace as it was in that moment, for them, in that body, on that day.

So next time I see a piece of dark chocolate and crave that sweetness melting in my mouth, I will think of grace, and simply take a piece. There is no need to reject the compliment, nor to make any more of it than its intention of appreciation. I'm learning to leave ego out of it, and just be grateful for the flow of grace.

Deep or Shallow, It's All Good

Some days we go through the motions until that last moment, in Savasana (Corpse Pose, relaxation), when something specific and unnamed loosens. We curl onto one side in the quiet breathing of that precise moment, and nothing else matters. Sitting up, drunk on the softness of our own breath, we realize slowly that this is all we are, and it is everything, the paradox of emptiness. An open space has opened up inside us and is reflected for that moment holds everything we see, hear, feel, think, and wonder.

Some days from the very first moment the day begins there is something open, inviting a looser grip, a willingness to see from all sides and be content with what actually is so.

Must we make this into something else, call it by some Sanskrit name or attribute it to a god or goddess? Do we feel the beginning glimmer of understanding that the deepest part of ourselves is, in fact, as sacred, divine, spirited and open ended as any belief we might adopt?

What makes yoga so potent is how it quietly opens up the mysteries in moment after moment of inquiry. There is no right answer and no pre-requisite. Each of the principles leads to all the other principles. Each of the practices leads into all the other practices. Take meditation, for example. One person can practice for years or for 10 minutes a day and either way find a kaleidoscope of effects, insights, open moments. Is one deep and another shallow, or can we simply accept that there are endless possibilities if we are open to them?

Expectations will change your time on the mat, giving you something to resist, something to judge, an aim that will cloud your experience. It is a marvelous gift to allow the practice to take you to the depth that suits the moment without expectation or judgement -- perhaps floating on the surface, or sinking deeper than you have words to express into a non-dualistic world where the name of this and that no longer hold the key to being.

"People say that what we're seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."-Joseph Campbell

Props & Then Some

Give yourself what you need. Put the block under your hand. Give support to the elevated leg. Use the strap.

Yoga is not an exercise in "How do I get into this posture?" The practice is one of "How do I find myself here?"
Using and supporting principles of alignment, so that you gain the most benefit from your foundation in any pose, you can build the strength, encourage the flexibility, open the heart, release the joint, let the mind free of the constraints of judging yourself.

Sounds simple, right? "Find the support you need and use it." Perhaps it is spending ten minutes reading poetry before a stressful meeting to give you that sense of spaciousness in which to see with clarity and listen clearly. Why not take that plum with you as you walk to the train so you can focus on what you are doing and let go of the worries of whether you will find something you can eat later when you need a boost? Perhaps it is spending more of your practice time reconnecting with your feet instead of pushing through the complicated program you had set out for yourself.

It is wonderful in Trkonasana (triangle pose) to use a block under the hand on the floor. It doesn't matter if you "can do it" without the block. Give yourself the space to stretch the spine naturally, to let the neck be easy, to breathe into the sweet rotation of the ribcage. Perhaps you will find out that you have been reaching for the floor... perhaps when you take that block away you will find that the energy from that hand on the floor can now reach up through your opening heart.

Sit on the block in Virasana (Hero's Pose). Give your knees this new openness and see what happens. Perhaps your feet will relax in a way you have not imagined, or your breath might just reach further down to your root chakra because of the new relaxed length in your spine. Perhaps when you take the block away, you will feel that same deepening, lifting, ease, now that you know it is in you.

Wrap a strap gently around your lower ribs, crossing it in front of you and letting the straps rest gently in upturned hands. Then just breathe. Feel the way your whole body is supported by the soft wrapping strap, the way your hands gently move with the movement of the strap responding to your own breath. Close your eyes. Let the strap support your focus, enliven your sensitivity to being, find yourself existing in more than three dimensions... just breathe. Any time in your practice perhaps you can now bring that same level of awareness to your lower ribcage, noticing how the breath relates in that moment.

Navasana - Boat Pose- is so delicious with hands helping the thighs lift, or taking just one leg at a time, letting the other leg or foot hold steady. Let the lower back feel its length, allow the inner groin flexors to ease a bit. Try letting go and keep your focus on that feeling of steadiness rather than on the tension in the muscles. What do you need to help relieve the stress you feel? Find the source first, and then give it support.

Can you open up to the question of whether you need support? Can you allow yourself the openness to find the truth of this question in yourself? Exploring this on the mat, in the practice, off the mat, in your life, is not so hard to do as it might seem. Start with using the props, softness under your head in Savasana (Corpse Pose), or a simple block under your knees in Sukhasana (Easy Pose - cross legged seat) might just make room for your awareness to wake up, your attention to focus on something other than the muscular, and your breath to move you.

Once we learn how to find the support we need in the moment, our strength can develop. Each time you find yourself saying, "How can I support myself here?" you are also asking, "Where is this binding coming from, where is this blockage of my energy?" This is the deeper question ... and helps to explain why the support we find and give ourself is so enabling. If you seek out where the struggle is taking place in you, and make the shift to ease that, the freedom that comes is unpredictable and authentic.

Oh, by the way, you can always use the breath if you have nothing else handy.

Inquiry or Grasping?

Reaching for your toes, pulling on your hip, twisting your neck more to move that shoulder, bouncing on your feet to throw your legs towards the wall in an inversion.... Are these actions explorations of how the body works, about how the energy moves, about where the foundation really rests, or are they striving for that goal -- that shape -- that affirmation of self. How do we shift from the mind set of grasping into one where the goal is no longer the driver of experience? How do we allow the practice to move more freely from the dictates of the judging mind?

For me the grasping seems to come from a set of sources: Either I am challenging ideas of whether I am able or unable, which can also be seen in terms of judging whether I am good or bad; or I am responding to inhibitions based on fear. Every time I practice yoga I am faced with discomfort somewhere along the way. It might be in my hip joint on that first deep internal rotation. It might be in my mind in the form of disappointment as I release my attachment to Padmasana (Lotus) in Sirsasana (headstand). When discomfort arises, I watch my desire rise and take note where it is pushing me: to escape or to push through, to applaud my attempts or exaggerate my failures.

The pattern set by grasping is either holding on tight to something I don't want to release or of reaching beyond what actually is in an attempt to get somewhere else. What the practice teaches me every day is that I can see that pattern and not fall into it, nor do I have to react to it. I can nod at it and proceed to breathe up through my core into my upside-down self or make space around my racing excited heart. I might apply Ujjayi breath (ocean-sounding breath) to support me and search my body for clues as to where the resistance has really taken hold. Where there is desperation, I see it and acknowledge it. Where there is sadness, I see it and acknowledge it. Where there is determination, I see it and acknowledge it. These are aspects of myself and I do not reject them, but I begin to ask a new set of questions about them. How can I use that energy to open more fully, to see where the energy leads, without striving towards an end point?

The inquiry is a source of continuous growth no matter what the condition of the body. This is part of the magic of the yoga practice. My heart goes out to those students in yoga classes, desperately throwing themselves again and again in an effort to find an inverted posture. The support in the body is not available when jerked around by grasping. It is the release of the goal, the deepening breath, the softness in the foundation, the lift in the core, the open space between the collarbones, the clarity in the mind's focus of attention. It is the letting go into the twist, the inversion, the cross-legged position, the arm balance, the stressful meeting, the standing-on-the-platform-when-you-miss-the-train.

What I am doing there on the mat is the same thing I am doing off the mat. I am exploring. I am seeking a balance between discovery and failure, between being set in my ways and limitlessness. The practice of yoga offers the opportunity to explore what there is beyond the grasping, the striving and the judgments. It keeps me aware of my goal-setting tendencies, and helps me see the context in which I am driven to set those goals. It helps me see the goal as a marker of my own measuring, judging self, and that there is much more than that for me to experience, share, and enjoy. Nothing prevents the discomfort, but it is not so uncomfortable if I can see it for what it is.

This reminds me of breaking in new shoes. The practice goes little by little to stretch and shape around the truth of the foot, supporting and changing the foot a bit as it goes, until the exploration is free and natural. And when the shoe fits well, there is no end to where the foot can go.

Looking for Answers

finding what is in me,
gratitude for the discoveries,
space for the questions,
breath for the inquiry.

answers no longer exist -
the process is revealed.
it all comes down to more space
for the questions, the discoveries,
and the breath.

Bring Body & Mind to Class & Find Your Practice

detail Seurat painting, Chicago Art Institute

When a student comes to a class, they sit on the mat, arrange their body, prepare to take directions from the teacher and assume in all good faith that this will be a satisfying yoga practice. There is a sense of relief that someone else will be in charge. There is sometimes a little anxiety, could it even be performance anxiety, about what will be asked and how it will go. Usually there is craving too, desire to feel or be or experience something beyond the day-to-day of work, household, relationships etc. Sometimes it is just yearning for healing that brings the body to the mat.

But what brings the mind to the practice? Why separate out the mind, as though it was the evil twin? We do not need to silence the mind, nor perfect the body in order to deeply explore yoga. It seems to me that we learn though yoga to unify that which is the experience of this life in this body/mind with a greater sense of listening to a larger way of being, tapping into something universal about living.

What if attending class was all about exploring who you are in such a way that it enabled you to continue exploring who you are when you are not in class and feel okay about what you find? That means accepting the anxiety or relief, acknowledging the cravings and desires, allowing the sorrow and the joy to percolate and not judging them as "good" or "bad" nor giving up on what might seem "hard" or taking too much for granted in what comes "easy."

So many students now take yoga for exercise, for a "sense of wellbeing," some for healing, and some for community. Ideally the class is a springboard to making yoga your own practice. Bring your self into the communal setting to share breath, to learn about the exploration in a safe way, and what you take away will be an ongoing support for your own practice.

One thing is for sure: the mind can help the body understand and sustain challenges and openings by focusing attention in specific ways and the body can help the mind let go of judgments and be open to possibilities through alignment and the breath. Yoga is an adventure along a path that combines the body's movements, breathing, alignments, challenges, and attitudes, with the mind's posturing, undulations, shifts, information and inspiration. So where is the heart in all of this? That steadfast organ, pumping away, circulating fresh energy and removing obstacles and toxins? Well, that's not what we think of really, is it? We think of that open warmth and spaciousness, that deep longing and giving, the rising joys and sorrows, the tenderness and fierceness, in essence the compassion of acceptance and gratitude that is shared with other living beings. So applying heart energy becomes part of the yoga practice too, the turning of compassion towards oneself may be the revelation of a class, and turning compassion towards others may transform your life.

I've been taking classes lately that focus on many different variables of the yoga spectrum. It has been mighty interesting from my teacher-viewpoint and my own body/mind assembly. The strongest feeling so far for me has been that all of this experience I am gaining through my own body and mind feeds my yoga practice and my teaching practice. Not a picking and choosing of this and that, or judging this better than or less than, but assimilating the on-the-mat-waiting-for-class experience opens my heart wide to my students, and introduces new elements into my personal practice.

Take your classes out of the studio and into your heart and see what happens!

Be Curious, Not Critical

When my right shoulder does not rotate the way my left shoulder does, my reaction used to be "what's wrong with my shoulder?" Now I find it is curiosity that leads me to discover all manner of things, and not just physical aspects either. Acceptance is a fundamental concept for whatever I find in my practice. Acceptance is not complacent, nor is it settling for less. The only way to discover what is actually happening is to explore what is actually happening, rather than compare it or judge it or set some unrelated goal. Each moment of my practice is precious to me. Each moment offers the opportunity to be fully alive, to see myself unedited. This will definitely have to include asymmetries in my body and patterns in my mind. Without attaching to my reactions, I can free myself to explore and discover myself and insights into practical and spiritual matters.

I often tell my students that "pain is not part of a yoga practice," but sometimes pain is very much part of practice in a more obscure way. Avoidance of pain is a major operating principle that needs to be explored, and sometimes pushing into or "past" pain is a pattern that demands attention. Fear of pain is such a natural tendency, and whether it is the mind that is conditioned or the body that has had experiences it wishes to avoid, these emotions can be investigated compassionately. A common strategy is to take the posture in stages, gradually approaching the fullest expression, rather than aiming for a particular external shape. Using props is another way to soften the stresses of a posture. Taking care of the body, this thoughtful supportive way of exploring yoga can go a long way towards easing the anxieties and triggers that can grip a person who is afraid, or who pushes too hard.

It is not really that surprising to discover that yoga does not benefit from competing with oneself or with any one else. Criticizing yourself doesn't help you do something that is hurting you, or that you are not able to do at this time. Part of the joy of a yoga practice is being able to accommodate any and all conditions of the body and mind, by accepting that which is so and letting go of judgment about that. There is nothing to prove in yoga, and no one to prove it to. Experiencing the moment itself is the practice, and the practice is the path to being present in your own experiences. It is very rewarding to take on the challenges that the body and mind offer, rather than finding fault with what doesn't come easily. Teachers can play a wonderful supporting role in this inquiry, and bring their knowledge and offer suggestions that clarify and illuminate. The exploration, however, is our own though the questions may turn out to be universal.

Deepen at Any Point

When people ask me about the weekly community class I teach, I say that it is a beginning class, but that every body is welcome. It is okay to be a person who has no experience of yoga or a life long practitioner. The inquiry involved is that of being present no matter what level of experience one has. I've been teaching this "beginning" yoga for a year and a half in the same little neighborhood studio. Every class introduces fundamental aspects of yoga. There are patterns, or sequences, or ideas that come in the door with me, some of which become the core of the practice, some of which dissipate once the practice begins. It is becoming clearer to me as I go along that the deepening of practice may mean building the stamina to hold an asana longer and thereby gain new experience of the self, or it can mean picking up on the more subtle inner questions about movement in the breath that directs a flow or asana sequence. It can be the stillness of Savasana (corpse pose, or relaxtion), or the openness of Savasana, or the sheer sensation of shoulder blades on the mat below the heart in Savasana that allows a person to simply be or to discover their own observing witness self for the first time.

A neighbor and sometimes student of mine asked me this week how to cherish the experience of every step if her feet already hurt. My first response is to accept the experience of the steps as evidence of presence in the moment. If you can let go of the attachment to the emotions that come up with the soreness of the step, in other words, the feeling sorry for oneself, or the story about how tired one is, or the fear over what might be wrong with the big toe, or the judgment of having bought shoes that don't fit... well, if you can detach and actually experience the steps, it is more likely that you can find a way of stepping that is less painful. It can be more interesting to allow awareness to explore the walking with discomfort without all that baggage, and, in fact, it can refocus attention enough to actually be less painful. Deepening the practice might include breath awareness, or bringing alert attention to alignment of the knee with the hip and ankle, the exact placement of the feet. These layers can also help alleviate the sensations of stress and sometimes even lighten the step, perhaps allowing the experience to transform discomfort and aggravation into an exploration of the way one functions in the world.

Watching the self go through an experience is another layer of practice that is available at any moment, whether you have a yoga practice of one week or several years. I have a feeling that even the most revered practitioners alive today have moments when grasping and attachment must be revisited. We each find depth as we go along, and it is wonderful to accept the practice as it is in the moment and use this moment to deepen the practice.

Opening the Heart

Lately I've been a little closer to the yearning of young hearts, and it has seeped into my yoga teaching. How do we open our hearts? In asana practice there are ways to relax the shoulders, loosen the rib cage, stretch the core and gradually release the physical self so that the heart literally has more space and feels more vibrant. Pranayama, too, can bring energy into the heart center. But the mind can remain clenched around what we fear and what we wish for, leaving us yearning for a certainty we cannot have, and a completeness with another being that does not exist. Call it romantic or idealistic or any other word, it is the ache of the heart for safety and for love.

It seems clear to me that we must also release our expectations if we are to remove the blockage between us and our heart's desire. The mind requires the same kind of methodical loosening and stretching as the body, in order to release its grip and actually allow us to be present, to see what is, to feel what is true, and share ourselves without fear of pain. What we expect will block our ability to perceive what is happening. How we categorize and assign definitions, rules of order and requirements, all shape that which we can take in or give.

Just as in any session of yoga practice, we can identify our patterns, we can loosen the tendency to clench or to pre-set reactivity. A session on the mat will help open up pathways for energy and perception that have no vested interest in any particular outcome. One of the tenets of yoga philosophy is that of non-attachment to outcome, the fact that one is fully present in the action itself is enough. The outcome may be one thing or another depending upon how you perceive that set of conditions, and as with so many jokes and children's storybooks, it may look one way and turn out another.

One of the most intrinsically important pieces of yoga is that of the individual inquiry. No one else can take you on that journey, simply help you along the path. Once you are willing to let go of the judgment, the expectation, the goal, and simply experience what is actually happening, there is no predicting the possibilities. And so it is with the heart.

Losing Resistance: Loosen the Set Up

It has been hot here these past few days and I've enjoyed listening to people's opinions and positions about it. For some, the heat totally colors their reactions to everything, and for some the heat rises in themselves, too, causing waves of standing their ground, or melting down. This heat is right on time for me since in some real ways I've been investigating resistance in myself. I am coming to the conclusion that my excuses can be endless, and it is my choice whether I accept them or not, or use them as conditions to change my decisions or actions. It feels a little bit like I'm listening to a child explain why they didn't or won't, or couldn't or can't do something, and deciding, as "the grown up," whether to gently manipulate them out of that position, or simply say, "okay, I accept that, let's move on." With a child it is not so productive to say, "that's just an excuse," but with myself it helps to see them so clearly. So now I am seeing "excuse" is another word for using conditions for a particular purpose, usually in my case to resist!

My style of yoga is exploratory, a yoga of inquiry, endlessly discovering the openness of possibilities in the breath. I am in awe a bit when I read blogs of others who are dedicated to a particular practice, as with the Ashtanga yoga, or Bikram or Iyengar etc. I definitely appreciate the discipline and dedication, the depth of understanding that comes from working within a defined framework. The depth is in the details.
Often for me to imagine that yoga is a particular specific sequence of physical events is a set up for judgment. What I can or cannot do, what I am feeling in that moment might present an urge to move in a different direction. Learning to listen to this urge or inner guide has been a major part of my practice. That is one of the principles of Kripalu yoga, letting the breath, or prana, move me.

Even so, it is easy enough to resist the yoga mat! It's better to keep it very simple and not front load my expectations or requirements: be present, be alert, breathe and be ready to experience what actually happens. Perhaps watching my mind run circles around is half the fun of a practice, or perhaps allowing the dog to run off the leash will leave me in the stillness beyond the undulation of my breath. It has taken me a while to learn how to let go of the sequences, the "this-before-that" thinking and listen to the inner voice of prana = conscious breath + living energy.

Last night I was breathing quietly in my hot humid room, with a fan blowing and an idea that I was supposed to be going to sleep. Ahh, another set up. Obviously I was not going to sleep. I was resting there, aware of drifting in a sea of light sweat and wondering about the tension in my shoulders. Exactly who set the rules that I was supposed to lay in bed until I fell asleep? And who is going to enforce that rule? What if I just slip out of bed and unroll my yoga mat? Already warm and sweaty, breathing in the dark, I hovered over my mat in Adho Mukha Svanasana, finding the breath taking me through a sequence of Trkonasana (triangle) and Ardha Chandrasana (half moon) where the length of my breath spread into the night air as my body elongated, in effortless effort. I did my final hip twists in bed, Supta Padangusthasana, and let Savasana take me to the stars.

Two Strands - Two Sources

There are some things I can only understand if I get there myself. When I look back at my life I can see that in so many moments when I wish I had chosen differently, I chose the way I did because that is where I had to go to learn who I am. Usually pain was the result. I see that now as something that I also chose because I was still learning all about what being might involve. My personal yoga practice comes largely from this same source of choices and inner direction. That is what takes me into shoulder stand without my hands, a core body discovering herself no matter which way gravity is going. The results of this inner inquiry are much more joyful nowadays.

Then there are some things I would never discover at all unless I learn to see or feel what someone else is sharing with me. This could be the way the tree limbs move in the wind, the way a young man gently holds his girlfriend's hand as she removes a stone from her sandal, or the way a yoga teacher encourages me to breathe into a forward bend over a one-sided lotus foot as my ankle bone digs into my thigh muscle and my hip begins speaking to me in our own private language. My personal practice grows from this source of understandings too. In fact, each of these examples has saturated my practice lately and brought me joy.

It is not unusual for me to be surprised by what is actually happening in my yoga practice, and in the classes I teach, for that matter. There was a time in my life when I thought I was supposed to know everything before it happened or at least have a plan that would have fixed outcomes. Wow, has that ever changed! The surprise is part of the open space where the two strands meet: what I have discovered from within my own experience and that which I can absorb from outside my own little operating system. It is where my best teaching comes from, and my most expansive sessions on my own mat, or in the kitchen or anywhere else for that matter. I accept surprise with gratitude. I am learning that even when I don't "think" I am prepared for the outcomes that actually appear, really being present is enough. In fact that is all there is.

The larger operating system is so vast and inclusive that I can only pick up little bits at a time, except for those moments when I can no longer find a separate self and seem to be using that vast operating system as my own. An example of this might be losing the separation between bodies when sharing my breath with a student, or those moments in playing quartets when there is no need to think at all about the making of the music, our breathing and heartbeats seem to take care of it. It can happen even when hanging the laundry out on the line.

Yoga is helping me; allowing me to integrate these two strands, or ways of exploring the world of my own experience. Letting others bring their ideas into my explorations is a little like taking the shades out of the windows. The windows are there, but of little use to me until I clear away the blinds, the blockages (resistance, fear, craving, attachment, anger, story, fill-in-the-blank!). Sometimes I will pull those shades and cover a particular window, choosing to imagine the wall without it. Pain is usually the result of that kind of choice, and I suppose I will continue to make those choices until I learn enough to either open the shade myself, or make the space for some other energy to pull that shade. So my yoga practice develops both strands, and makes each of them more accessible to me. It sure has made it easier to look back at those painful choices and stop judging so.

I'm reading (slowly) a book called The Love Of Impermanent Things: A Threshold Ecology by Mary Rose O'Reilley, an author I savor. I recommend her earlier book, The Barn at the End of the World too. Early on in the first chapter she writes, "To grow in compassion for one's own life is the great task of the middle years, and it requires that, first, one must embrace with love and pity a whole reception line of relatives, then move on to the politicians. It helps to have a comic vision." Maybe that helps explain why it is so much easier for me to laugh these days.

Practice, Practice, Practice

At what point can I release attachment and simply accept without judgment? I try to begin with myself. Maybe that's the hardest place to start, maybe it's the only place to start. The rising sun doesn't have meaning in its relationships to everything it reaches. It tinges this building or illuminates that quadrant of the sky without adding significance. It is the mind that bestows the myriad stories of soul and heart, of life giving force or cruel burning heat to that rising sun. Infinite beauties and poetic forms inhabit the mind, right alongside the darkest most destructive forms. Attachment to conditions gives meaning, and can turn quickly into a death trap, literally or figuratively. I think conflict is as easily about being wrong as about being right. Either way, the attachment cuts me off from being alive.

Letting go is frightening, so I practice it. I need time to get used to it. I take it a little at a time. Maybe it begins with just letting my belly soften as I breathe. Let that gripping go. From there, I can remember, again, to release my shoulder blades down my back, allow my sitting bones to settle into the earth's gravity, and something softens just a little at the edge of my brain as I do this. There are lots of ways to practice yoga, and the asana sequences and conditions under which the practice takes place. Even there, I shy away from attachment to a particular way or act or sequence.

Of course structure is helpful when I let go. It helps assuage the fear of letting go to have a container that feels that it will hold me... the body perhaps, or the floor, or a larger concept of being that is outside these physical boundaries. Yoga practice offers this container. Meditation is all in my head, yet what happens is that I work my way into a space that is beyond my thinking. In the abstract that sounds cool, but sometimes the way there is really scary. That moment when you realize you have let go and there is nothing holding you, just like a physical letting go and free falling, has its exhilaration and terror all mixed together. It is at that moment that I remember I am breathing, breathing.

Many years ago, when I was not quite five years old, I died on an operating table and chose to turn back. As I mentioned in my last post, my dad's voice called me back. He used to come into the operating room with me, to be there as they put me under. And almost without fail, he would start to pass out as I went down. Now I can feel how he was being my container as I let go, though I think he didn't know it then, nor now that we will celebrate his 89th birthday together next week. So I practice letting go still, and discover again and again that love is that container beyond all physical boundaries, whether I am breathing or eventually choose to return to light.