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.

In Death Shyamdas Reinforces the Purpose of Life

On January 20, 2013, a beloved person in the world of bhakti yoga, kirtan and scholarship in the ancient texts of yogic life, vanished in a motorcycle accident. There were events on his calendar stretching well into the future, and memories in the minds of uncountable thousands from his presence in the past.

His was a practice of devotion. In this he was precise -- translating seminal texts from ancient languages in order to deeply understand them and as a byproduct share them with the rest of the English speaking world. In this he was spiritual -- chanting the 108 names of his beloved with no boundaries between his sense of self and the beloved.  In this he was an ordinary traveler -- juggling his busy life, his devotional practices and his own practical requirements like the rest of us.

Each moment of life is life itself. When the vacant body is all that remains and the spirit has departed, it is shocking to the rest of us. How vivid the lesson that it is only in this moment, THIS MOMENT, that our life unfolds. Chanting, studying, smiling at each other, tasting the food, seeing the mist, feeling the sorrow, opening the heart.

Shyamdas continues his voyage, and his teachings. A friend was hoping that he had the name of the beloved on his lips as he departed. We can't know about that until it happens to us, but I carry this strange sense that he spilled open beyond all borders in that moment, when defining a name or a beloved ceases to have meaning.

Let's live, shall we? Deeply, fully, and right now. Dig in! Open up! When our moment comes - young, old, well, sick, anticipated or unforeseen - let it be a joyous celebration for those who remain in the body, present.

For books of his translations: http://shyamdas.com/books/

the mind of not all or nothing: just see what emerges.

Walking in the light powdery snow, I was bewitched by the transformations, leaves became cups and simultaneously appear as knife-like edges in the snow. Distances in the valley are aflutter with white flecks turning air and space into volumes. Definitions disappear. Here the submerged log emerged with its tinge of velvet green moss. What is the truth about the light snow, the maple branch below or the leaf litter? Can the surface be surface, while the depth is a huge mass of fallen tree, and the snow be falling too?

All bound up in thinking, I bind myself up with projections, goals, memories, ideas. Reaching for the shapes that I think, I practically block any sense of the real. I cannot pretend to give up thinking, nor do I want to do that. I am beginning to see that it doesn't take huge complicated tools though to loosen the tightness of the bind of my thinking. It is like the way I learn not to reach too hard to catch my own hand to bind an asana only to give up on my spinal alignment.  It begins with noticing that my thinking is confining me.

More and more I see how selective my letting go has been. I seem to release this grip, but not that grip. I believe this, but not that. I tolerate this, but not that.  Once I see this personal structure, this selective way of grasping at one aspect while avoiding another, I have the opportunity to be more fully. Truth and freedom, equanimity and clarity glimmer in all the levels of letting go. It is not an all or nothing proposition, like light appearing in the dark. It is always light.

In my snowy walk, the most striking thing happened as I turned to return to the house. I felt thrilled and surprised to the core to see the subtle impression of my own tracks:  a slight disturbance in the powdery snow with delicate crushing of the leaf edges into the powder. This evidence of my own steps seems most marvelous of all -- holding for just a moment all the wonder of impermanence and presence.

Fear of the Compassionate Heart

my brother, as sketched by my father 1992

I woke up this morning flooded with softness, like the soft rainy day itself, holding thoughts of my cousin and her daughter in my heart. Before I even opened my eyes, my heart had melted. It felt as though waves of love could be sent to surround their eyes, their arms and hands, their words,  the spaces in which they moved their bodies. There was no reason why these two women should be in my mind at all, and in fact I haven't seen my cousin  in more than a year and a half, and have never met her 20+ year old daughter. They have been locked in a struggle for many years with debilitating psychological and emotional issues that have trapped them, literally, in the house, isolating them from social and emotional lives. Though my cousin goes to work, she can do nothing else; her daughter so fearful at all times that she forbids her mother from even allowing anyone to come to the house.  For more than 10 years this situation has been kept close to the vest, and I had no inkling of it. I saw my cousin so rarely, and she seemed to be connected to her work and always warm and kind towards me. My older sister maintained contact with this cousin since childhood as they were closer in age. A few months ago, my sister described this situation to me, detailing her observations and all the suggestions she had made, positing therapeutic strategies, all with a sense of hopelessness and sorrow.

Suffering.  There it is in a neighbor, a friend, a relative, in ourself. The urge rises to help, do something, fix something, give advice. A feeling of helplessness and sorrow washes in, an ocean of uselessness. Anger and frustration take hold, driven by a desire that conditions be changed, people behave differently, understandings shift, problems be solved.  Judgments and assessments abound. So imperfect, the situation or the self; so unsatisfactory, the conditions or the choices.

We all know how it is to stand in one place, take in the view and begin defining everything by what we see there. So it is with suffering.  We take a look at it, perhaps even a long look, and that view begins to settle into all the shapes of our feelings and reactions, our ideas and our behavior.  In any relationship, we can see the patterns of response and the collaborative nature of our view and our actions and feelings.

What if there is no action to take? How do we open ourselves to simply acknowledge without judging and hold the depth of the hurt, sorrow, anger, frustration or pain of the situation? What would happen if we could actually just allow the entirety of it (that pattern or story or set of conditions) to open up in our awareness, to be truly seen - the sheer pain of it might be unbearable, debilitate us or drive us over the cliff! It might show us how powerless we are, or ignorant or just hurt too much.  It can be very frightening to let the truth in, precisely because there might not be anything we can do about it.

This is fear of our own compassionate heart. As in a sitting meditation when for a split second there are no boundaries to the self, it can be so liberating that we react by grasping for our defined self to reassure ourself that "we exist" as we have always thought. What if it is truly so that our existence is a series of structures that we have built with conditions and reactions and once seen as separate from our basic being we are free? It can take a while to see that grasping at our definitions is something we can let go, and allow the feeling of grasping to be seen but not be in charge of defining us. This is a practice of learning to abide, to hold that vast open sense of being.

Holding my cousin and her daughter in my heart with compassion, I go through the same sequence -- feeling myself grasping at what action to take, how to convey my thoughts or advice, even simply figuring out how to show my cousin that I care about her -- and allow myself to let all that go. It takes practice to open the compassionate heart without attachment to outcomes, or assigning responsibilities. For me, perhaps especially as one who has been responsible for taking care of other people, there are knee-jerk reactions in that direction and fears of what taking on those responsibilities could be for me. I watch myself worry over what might happen if I showed my open heart -- how much more pain might flood in! It is at that point when the boundaries vanish, and all my thoughts, reactions, judgments and fears can be seen for the conditioned patterns that they are, not rooted in this moment and not attached to compassion itself.  It cannot hurt me to open my heart, the source of the pain is not my compassion.

Perhaps I truly do wish that the situation was different for my cousin and her daughter. I surely wish they could escape from the trap that cages them away from what looks like happiness and a full life. My discomfort with the pain of others' suffering stems from my own ideas about suffering and my definitions of who I am and what I ought to do to alleviate that suffering. It is by overcoming the fear of my own compassionate heart that I can offer a truthful place for my own feelings, and a healing space for the suffering of others.

Seeing the Inside Space

Today as the sun rose something dawned in me too. I heard an echo of myself saying that I was disappointed in someone and suddenly knew what that really was. It felt as if literally the walls had blown out and the truth was left standing in an open space. This disappointment, standing in that space, was a state of my own mind, an attachment of mine, built out of patterns in me, and had nothing to do with that other person. In fact, as I looked back on times in my own life, I could blow the walls out there too, seeing my individual self doing exactly what I needed to do in that moment, as I experienced it, based on conditions and patterns. Do I really need to hold on so tightly to the judgments and conditions of those moments? Can I truly let go of that and simply see the shifting sands for what they are?

Why do we situate ourselves this way? Putting the emphasis on hardening into the judgment as to what someone else (or our self) should-would-could be or do, rather than allowing the present conditions to be visible, and the choices clear as choices?

We can build inner support for this -- with enough practice! It is not that difficult once there is understanding. I don't mean the kind of intellectual understanding of "oh, yes, I see how this works..." but the deeply embedded understanding that no longer requires building all the walls to hold up the ceiling of attachment, judgment and isolation in the moment.

In it together, without separating self and other from compassionate acceptance, it is much more natural to see how we, as human beings, live and act within the boundaries of our reactive nature. We don't judge a bird for landing on a particular branch rather than another. Can we tolerate the notion that the whole process of our living on earth is a miracle of unforeseen consequences and that we can remain open in each moment to the possibilities without attaching to one particular outcome?

As the people of the Middle East experience the earthquake of their own making, I hope that they can individually and collectively let go of the idea that only one set of conditions is acceptable. With so many competing interests, there are bound to be many possible strands in the weaving of the new rope with which to make the basket they want to carry their hopes. It is by turning this compassionate acceptance towards ourselves that we can learn to let go more deeply. Finding that we do not need to turn off connections, we practice breathing around and through the harder moments and the confusion of reactions, allowing the straightforward view of the structures we build to hold our feelings of disappointment, approval, etc. more clearly.

Then we can look openly into each others' eyes and see. The emergence of a beautiful new human being gives rise to the vastness of possibilities, constrained only by our vision of choices and attachments to reactions. It is no coincidence that the form of that beautiful new human was once the inside shape of another beautiful human being.

Just a note in the moment: Farewell to dear Beati who transitioned onward (age 90), and welcome to new darling Rylen, just getting the hang of the breathing air thing.

Traumatic Events: Hard lines, Soft Soft

This morning I feel bereft as I contemplate the shootings in Arizona that have killed several people and critically knocked a vital public servant off her feet for the inevitably long term, with unknowable recovery of her abilities to function after very serious brain injury. I look at the history of lost public leadership in my lifetime and understand that this kind of event can be quite provocative. Our nation has already allowed policies of national distrust to draw forth vitriol and hatred among us simply because we might see things differently, look different, think in a different mother tongue, have been born in a slightly different longitude.

I am the granddaughter of immigrants who fled to this country to save their lives and to enable them to achieve some semblance of their personal value rather than spend lives limited by oppressive regimes and prejudices. I can certainly see how it is that I both clamor to defend and glorify the country I live in, yet distrust any authority. Postures of power and control run on the dualities of promise or greed and fear or blame.

Most of my life I have been deeply drawn to participate wholeheartedly while at the same time harboring an equally deep distrust of that which draws me. I fell in love again and again, at least from the age of 4 when I first remember the texture of the cheeks of my new love in my half-day kindergarten class. My resistance to the war in Vietnam was all encompassing, whether feeding Veterans on Washington Mall, smothering myself and a friend to protect against teargas, building bathroom walls for the local county office of the "Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam Now," or reading everything published at that time to support my fierce arguments. It was equally important to me to try to change the way my high school taught important subjects as disassociated from living and doing, working strenuously to institute an experiment in hands-on learning within the wider community. My writing and working life has been mostly in this same all-or-nothing mode of operating. No one could be more impassioned about giving grants for public programs, or fairness in schooling, or even the benefits of a yoga practice.

Somehow my human nature continues to underline the duality of this reactive and attached behavior. In order to be persuasive, productive, needed, I have always carried the gene for tunnel vision right next the gene for distrust of structure and authority. Okay, perhaps even my own intellectual, sexual and personal structures have betrayed me in the past, drawing me deeply towards that which also hurts me, but certainly political activism will do that. I think that any deep drive to change towards a particular goal or need has that in it too. But the distrust is also a warning and leads to sabotage of purpose. The balance will remain elusive with this deeply divided way of understanding and being.

I apologize for all the moments when my actions have emanated from that dualistic posture, knowing it almost always caused harm. I am sorry that I, too, have at times zealously obscured truth or evolved selective deafness to the voices around me. I am grateful to be here, living long enough to just begin to understand this, hard as it is. My practice helps me find the truth, and allow it, breathing and connecting to a much larger awareness.

May we transition into a new way of being, find our way unimpeded by regret, bitterness, hatred, greed and delusion. Rest, heal, go in peace. May the suffering cease.

Seeking the Source & Nodding to it

Reactions come so fast that it is easy to mistake them for reality. Feelings definitely are real in their effects - coloring everything around them and can even change the idea of who we are while they're at it. Responsiveness is something we all share to varying degrees. Without that our lives would not be of much interest, too monotonous and dull. But feelings can sideswipe us too, taking our breath away and leaving us gasping for air; and at times pump us so full of excitement, anger or other strong emotion that we are practically blind to what is going on around us or even in us.

It can be hard to let go of a mood of melancholy that taints everything with regret; or to hold on to a feeling of happiness that saturated a time shared. Sometimes we feel the whole world turns in one moment, happy and going along until WHAM something changes in the way things are said, or done, or the events take a turn in unexpected directions and then everything feels different.

Some describe emotional twists like changes in the weather, sunny and pleasant, and warm enough until the wind kicks up and as though standing in a shadow or out in a wide field, the chill cuts deep and nothing can be done to protect us. But in fact, this is not quite the way it feels. It is not an outside influence like the wind, but an internal one that changes the way feelings take hold. Then everything changes because of the way we respond to those feelings.

Recently I was traveling and visiting family and friends. The sequence of activities and moving from this place to that was remarkably easy. Though there were twinges of sadness upon parting one, there were thrills of happiness at the next stop. Getting out of the routine was remarkable, and the landscape around me was quite different and entirely provocative. I didn't have much of an agenda beyond the going and doing together with people, trying to make fun out of daily stuff like meals and such, catering to various interests among us, and offering opportunities for visiting. But after going along for a few days, a comment was made to me and it was if something shifted and what had been a happy time turned tumultuous, brooding and rife with hidden hazards.

I had been reading "Radical Acceptance" by Tara Brach, Ph.D., and was able to use her powerful tool of taking a pause, literally, and relaxing my body, to seek within myself where the pain or sorrow or tension was held. Going deeper, beyond the tightness in the stomach or the clenching of the throat, the racing heartbeat, I was able to find a more embedded source for the reactions that I was feeling. The deepest level of feeling was that of being a failure, that of being unlovable or unworthy, the response way down under what seemed like frustration or uncertainty. It can be set off by any type of rejection or criticism, and start a cascade of justifications or defenses. I have seen this pattern before in myself and in others. It is not uncommon to have these deep feelings, and to be ruled by them. But it is not required that we react and react from that same wounded place from long ago.

Obviously no one is perfect, and holding oneself to that kind of standard in all things -- especially emotional and connective aspects of relationships -- is really a waste of energy. But it is important to see where the feeling of "less than" or "unworthy" come from. Perhaps that urge to be loved and accepted went unanswered long ago, or we judged ourselves like objects rather than living beings and put a shameful stamp across our foreheads for all time because of a behavior or reactive moment in the past. When we do this, any little thing can refer straight back to those feelings.

Seeking out that source of the deeper feeling makes it possible to nod at the whole self in which the emotional response rose. Then we might be able to deal with the situation at hand in the moment just as it is, rather than attaching it to everything that has ever felt bad or gone wrong before. (Oh that sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach will take us right back there to that awfulness...whatever it was.) Each of these reactions is just that -- a reaction. Events change continuously offering the possibility that with a fresh and open mind I might be able to feel the current feeling and go on, being authentically myself without all that 1) baggage, 2) self-abnegation and 3) fear of disaster!

What a relief it is to see each response as a response. Not that there is erasure of responsibility for the actions I take, or the effects of those actions. I can recoil and in that instant see myself begin to entrench in a defensive reaction. It is at that moment that I nod at the deep sorrow that underlies the response, and can put down the defense in favor of being present in that moment rather than holding on tight to relive an imagined moment of the past.