Love + Contentment = Gratitude

When asked, "How do I love myself?," Thich Nhat Hanh began with these words: "You breathe in. This is an act of love." Can you allow yourself to believe this? Can you begin turning towards yourself with love simply by breathing in? There is a depth of acceptance and compassion here that melts my heart. 

When we practice yoga,  we include the idea of not harming our self.  Can we accept the radical practice of contentment - being fine with what is so -- not falling into the wanting/needing/regreting/envying? Can we see that this inhale is the resource that sustain us, and through which we are free to release ourselves from the patterns of thought and action that harm us and others? This simple breath in -- this inhale -- can be enough to bring us a feeling that in this moment we have what we need. (Try this when confronting the issues of overeating over the holidays!) 

Thanksgiving is a pleasant moment to stop a few minutes and acknowledge the wonder of the body in which we experience life. It is the ground for all our opportunities for adventure and inquiry that being a human being allows us, no matter what we own or what we look like, who we are with or what we eat! The essential quality of breathing in is such a gift to the self - the living body! And with each inhale there is the release into the exhale, the letting go of the gripping, the fear, the worry over whatever it might be that limits your sense of being fully happy with who you are right in this moment. 

May your next few weeks of shorter days and longer nights, be exhilarating! Enjoy the cold winds and the contrasting warmth of an interior life. Allow each inhale to bring you happiness and each exhale to express gratitude for that. Take a few minutes now -- and later -- to breathe in love towards yourself - giving yourself what you need; and breathe out all that you no longer need - allowing yourself to accept what is so and feel content.

I feel grateful for this breath, for the breath we share. As I recenty told one student struggling with the uncertain outcome of another round of chemotherapy, "Even when I am sleeping, I am sharing the breath with you." That comforts us both.

Explore your ability to turn towards yourself with love in this very next inhale -- and allow your exhale to feel sweet. Enable your sense of contentment! These two principles are part of the underlying core of yoga practice. Not to harm, Ahimsa, is one of the Yamas (social disciplines), and to accept contentment, Santosha, is one of the Niyamas (inner disciplines). The Yamas and Niyamas are part of the Eight Limbs of Yoga as described in Patanjali's Sutras. Fertilize the seeds of gratitude, "Breathing in Love, Breathing out Contentment."

Present Moment: abiding with uncertainty

Each moment crosses all the boundaries of time and space. It's a little bit like stage fright, this feeling of not knowing what will happen and caring very much about doing my best. Living with that can heighten anxiety, complacency, hyperactivity; creating a spiral of uselessness and unworthiness. In any moment, what have you done? what have you done? (How will you be measured? valued? seen?)

Acknowledging this anxiety allows me to unravel how much I worry about what others think of me, trace my need for usefulness, and at the same time see how constantly I judge myself. It is not that hard, once opening that up, to begin simplifying. Literally,  I return my energy to the universe like a borrowed library book. This reinforces my responsibility to fully engage and use that energy, knowing it is endless and recycled.

My deepest happiness comes from drawing on the authentic in myself, and when that is my source of action, I feel that I do less harm. Not waiting for anything, just being in it thoroughly, whatever it is, in this moment -  a definition of effortless being, even with physical or mental effort in the action itself. (There is a moment at waking from sleep as the mind and body reintroduce themselves, yet all the while "being" is ceaseless, and seamless. This is not a mechanical arrangement of breath and heart beat, but a deeper cultivation of awareness.)

This authenticity comes from a well of basic goodness in me, and serves as a protection even with my pockets of ignorance. (Ignorance is like a blind spot where I have yet to learn to see, from which I operate on assumptions and projections, creating illusion and taking it as truth. It seems a certain amount of this is inevitable, yet I keep working on finding the edge of it.)

Uncertainty is possibility. Uncertainty is acknowledging fear of the unknown. Uncertainty is curiosity writ large. Uncertainty is not ignorance. Uncertainty is balancing in the moment, abiding.

Satisfaction seems to imply judgment, as in being enough, measured against something else and easily deflated.  It is contentment (Santosha) that implies acceptance with gratitude of whatever we have or do not have. This is not mere semantics, it is the practice of abiding with uncertainty.

Moving from the heart

The practice of supporting the heart is a practice of using the heart for support.

Learning the Lyrics by Singing Along

Repetition and patterns are powerful ways of teaching ourselves, so it is no surprise that when we have the same reaction again and again, we learn to cement that response. Perhaps it is laughing at jokes that are not funny, perhaps it is swatting the fly that buzzes nearby, perhaps it is resenting another day on the job.

Think of how much easier it is to sing along with the song on the radio, or the ipod, then it is to remember the lyrics on your own. We sing along and sing along and with the support of the music we begin to remember those lyrics, hum-humming where we don't quite remember the words.

It may sound like a plan of positive thinking, but allowing yourself to experience the possibilities of reacting differently, and practicing that, can have the same impact as humming along until you get most of the words. You can learn a new song and enjoy even humming along til you know it better. Maybe stuffing envelopes feels demeaning or is boring or obviously doesn't use so many of your other positive attributes and skills. You can try stuffing envelopes with an awareness of this attitude, and open yourself to enjoying even this job more. Perhaps you will come up with ways to improve the work itself, offering to translate the mailing into a series of pre-printed postcards or emails, making those envelopes unnecessary. Perhaps you will come to appreciate the reaching out that each envelope represents.

Give yourself the freedom to choose, separating from a repeated negative pattern.

There are so many more songs that you can sing.

Being Some Nobody

It is lovely to be nobody.

Breathing in the coolness of the evening.
Scanning the horizon as the sun sinks below the hill.
Wiping the mud from my shoes.
Turning my gaze in the direction of the calling bird.
Feeling the smoothness of the yogurt against my throat.
Stretching the muscles in the arch of my foot.
Watching the man I love kneeling on his kneepads planting onions.
Listening to the slow constancy of the creek down the way.
Straining to distinguish the sounds of the owls in the night.
Cuddling the fuzziness and heat of the cat in the dark.
Giving up all hope of finishing a task on this day.
Finding the soft resistance of the mattress below my hip bone.
Cherishing the depth of my own breath.

It is lovely to be nobody.

This might be the morning I rise in the dark to see the moon shine.
This might be the day I begin with savasana at sunrise.
This might be the day I plant the rest of the onions.
Perhaps there is more than this.
Perhaps there is no more than this.
No matter where I am, I am just here.
No matter who I am, I am just nobody.
How lovely! Free to be, entirely free.

Pre-Dawn Yoga: Shoveling in Deep Snow

The outside world seems to present me with reflections of my inner self. Surrounded by a deeply snowy landscape in Upstate New York, I can feel the sequence of events, like a 3-part (Dirgha) breath. As with the breath, I can take it either way top to bottom, or bottom to top. I can move from the top surface light powder that overlays a heavy crust, below this is two-to-three feet of soft moist snow, resting on the underlayer of crusted ice that presses on the wet and yet solid surface of flattened greens holding tight with their roots in the semi-frozen ground. Or I can begin from underneath taking the reverse: the slushy greens softening under several feet of fluffy blue-white yet heavier-by-the-day snow, compressing at the top edge by the weight of a slick hardened crust and topped with a dusting of delicate bright white snowy filigree. As I shovel, I run into all of it.

Sometimes I penetrate from the top, cracking the crust before shoveling in stages through the deep snow, and finally ramming the shovel below the deepest crust into the softening mush in an effort to clear the surface. Sometimes I begin at the bottom, wedging my shovel's edge as deeply under the whole thing as I can and try to remove the support of the deep half-frozen slush so that the whole depth begins to loosen, crack and fall in chunks that are manageable to lift with my shovel.

Early morning yoga practice is sometimes so much like shoveling this nearly 4 feet of snow from the edges of the curving, sloping drive. I want to clear a wider path, make movement possible. I know there is more here than I can deal with all at one time. My perseverance, breath and lightness of heart will help me. There are layers that resist, sometimes crumbling in large chunks to reveal the deep softness within, only to find that there is another hardened layer made by hidden melts and freezes and solidified in the darkness. My back is already getting worn from the efforts. Yoga shines the light there. Turns out there is slush below that. And with careful, mindful breath, I just might find the effortless effort that loosens that deeper crust, reveals the vivid green lushness of grass and wild weeds long weighted down. What happens next? Savasana takes me deeper still where I rest, leaning on my shovel, reveling in my beating heart, eyes watering and blinking in the sun's light on the snow.

And lest anyone think that this has to be all about physical effort and endurance, I have found it even more challenging in my sitting meditation practice! That soft layer runs right into the crust of my open mind wandering mind in either direction, so my focused one-pointed shovel of attention must be steady in its work.

Santosha In A Bit of Rolling Snow

Standing in my snowshoes, I watched transfixed as a small bit of snow detached from my pole and began rolling down the surface of the hill. The dancing bounce and roll of this little clump was both delicate and driven by enormous forces. Skipping down the surface, it left a beautiful chain of marks like a necklace impressed in the light snow topping. Honestly I do not know if I was breathing or holding my breath for the length of time it took for this little nodule of snow to come to a halt, but the moment it stopped, I looked all around for some way to exclaim the marvel of it.

All around me was the steady light of day upon snow and surfaces. Though I heard the chatter of nearby chickadees, silence enfolded me and my exuberance. In that moment I earnestly wished someone was right there to see and share this remarkable beauty, yet I also immediately felt connected to all beings who had ever stood transfixed by a natural occurrence. It was as though a vast space opened around me and inside me simultaneously. Alone and yet totally one without any regard for individuality, time or space. There was simply the air, my cold feet in snowshoes resting atop the temporary surface of the earth, chickadees and my own beating heart keeping me company.

I watched as my mind began to observe the impulse to imbue the moment with meaning, in a way reaching for ownership of the event, making inner arrangements to document and file the experience. It felt as though I was turning on an internal light and illuminating the inside of my own structure. I could feel this rolling snow as an indicator of danger - to a deer or rabbit, where another could stand in awe as I had done. How many of these small motions had taken off down the hill before I stopped to notice? The same miracle happening again and again without my observing eye.

It is exactly thus that I live in the world: entirely unexceptional and entirely unique, fully conscious and a somnambulator. I can appreciate the human desire to open my heart, to experience the world in tandem with another, and yet know that even my most solitary experiences are deeply universal beyond even my own species. Feeling this, experiencing this without grasping at it, allowing it to just come and go like the breath itself, fills me with gratitude. Santosha, contentment, opens my path.

Just As it Is

I've just returned from traveling for a few days, taking my monthly visit to check in with my elderly family members in another state. These trips are squeezed in between my teaching commitments, and packed with emotional, administrative, and unexpected events. This trip I found that I managed to check off all the to-do items, and stayed available and open for the relational parts of the visiting. Lately I've been finding it easier and easier to take things as they are, to see the excuses and simply not make them. This has felt really good. Accepting that I have made choices, rather than finding ways to explain to myself (or others) the why or why nots of all the resulting situations or conditions. Who knew that this would also save me a lot of energy, making me feel less weary and more available even when I am just as "busy?" It has also reduced the sense of pressure on me, results in much less of the emotional backlash behaviors like argumentativeness or over eating, and helps me keep myself rested and ready for what is there to be done or felt.

This new sense of freedom has evolved recently even more as I've been exploring the Niyama of Tapas (discipline and purification through inner heat), one of the principles of yoga (see recent blogs on this subject). I find that I can act upon my intentions, giving myself what I need, without making excuses or needing any rationales. I was able to simply include a short yoga practice in every day even with travel and many demands on my time. This helped me to be more rested, more receptive, and much less judgmental. It was as though I've been strengthening and developing my muscles of action rather than those qualities of judgmental mind that bring endless comparisons and projections. This seems to also liberate my ability to work within much more realistic time frames, and establish more achievable goals. I am amazed.

Openness to inner discipline also directly relates to all the other yogic principles of the Yamas and Niyamas (see recent blogs)... Saucha (purity) and Asteya (non-stealing), Satya (truth) and of course Santosha too (contentment). When we let ourselves be truthful rather than explaining, restrain from taking that which is not ours to take (like the attention of others to our point of view), clear out the clutter of misrepresentation and judgment (all the justifications and should, would, coulds) and allow contentment with what actually is (finding gratitude and joy), well, we no longer need to hide behind the excuses and rationales that explain the choices we make. We know that we are responsible for the choice and act, even if it is a correction of a prior act.

I could also title this thought "Trkonasana," since triangle pose embodies a combination of truth, discipline, nonjudgment and awareness. Like life itself, it is a balancing act, a serious stretch, opening on one side making new internal space, and by necessity yielding into the strength required. Finding triangle can begin in any moment, since it evolves out of a steady foundation, an elongated, integrated and soft spine, and a steady and unified sense of energy in the breath that moves between earth and sky. In any given day my body opens to Trkonasana to its own degree, the breath flows the length of me, my spine releases or clenches, my feet feel firm and easy on the earth or I may be shaky and off balance. I love discovering my true self in this way, never knowing what the moment will be until I am that moment. Triangle offers every possibility boiled down, what actually is so in that breath. And even the one inhale does not predict what might be possible in the next. I laugh at the joy of discovering revolved triangle emerging - twisted and reversed - or at literally falling to the mat out of triangle on one side as though the world was turning just a little too fast for me that day. Simply being makes self criticism unnecessary. Any asana can offer the same exploration; and endless understandings come through the practice.

Discipline and honesty are a beautiful combination on the path to truth and contentment, but you can take the path from any direction. Exploring contentment will take you perhaps by different turns and twists, to clarity and ease of judgment. I've learned to be curious rather than afraid of these big concepts. They are just what you discover in them. And the more I explore, the more I discover. I don't spend time worrying about what I don't know, because the vastness of that would paralyze me. I simply keep wondering "what is this?" and investigate, finding that the inquiry itself is liberating me to see more and more "just as it is."