When Hauling the Heavy Stuff, Give Yourself a Breather

Here I am, hauling pain, anger, disappointment, sorrow, worry ... so I seek out that space where there's love. I can turn away from the bitter taste, or savor it; wash it away with a sweet Manhattan (cherry at the bottom of the cup), or paint it on both sides of the tee-shirt I'm wearing, my anguish doesn't stop. My mind is a generator that keeps on going but I have a way to unplug it.  There's only one thing I can count on for that space in which I can tolerate myself and even love being alive, no matter what crushing weight I am hauling.  I take my focus to my breath for several minutes. One or five minutes aren't enough in bad times, but 20 minutes gives me a literal breather.

Taking the load away from the center of my focus offers me a real rest that impacts on my whole body and shifts my mind too. I can see the bigger scene, and can find my place in that scene without the same piercing pain of it.

So much of the anger, agony, sorrow comes from wishful thinking. We rerun or grab for all the scenarios we want to change, or want to banish, or where we wish we could change the script. Even physical discomfort gets worse when all we can think about is getting rid of it.  Sometimes finding a way to live with it, accommodating the situation, actually lessens or even alleviates the stress around it, and just through that mechanism, the pain itself lessens.

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.

Walk the Dog, Even if the Dog is You (Subtitle: Making Time for Asana and Meditation)

My father died as an old man, a month shy of 90 years old. Right up until the event that hospitalized him, he was responsible for walking the dog morning and evening. This assignment got him up and out into the world, among neighbors, into the forested walkways and power line cut throughs near his suburban home, where he observed the changing seasons and configurations of wildlife, erosion and wildflowers. This established a routine which was accepted by his wife, who was cognitively impaired, because she knew that he would walk the dog and return. This open space in his morning was not part of the plan on his own behalf, but it was critical to his well being.  The evening walk was usually shorter, and depending upon how heavily dinner sat in his belly, he would take on a small uphill under the streetlights. He would notice the moon phases, the silhouettes of trees, the other passing dog walkers and again have a moment to himself. His mind relaxed and contemplated all manner of things when he was out with the dog and he might take time to relax the constant vigilance his wife's care required.  Without the dog, there would have been none of that in his days or nights.

How much we are willing to do for the wellbeing of another varies from person to person, but many of us will take on tasks of cooking meals, walking dogs, running errands, taking on jobs and all manner of responsibilities to benefit those we care about.  Can we program each day with the time to take care of our self?

A personal practice, whether yoga or meditation, requires the same approach as walking the dog. It doesn't matter what the weather is, or how late you were up last night, that wet nose is there in your face to say, "Aren't we going now?" Imagine that in your practice you are both the dog and the dog-walker. Giving yourself the time, the open space, the exercise of those internal muscles of awareness, and most of all, the care you deserve for experiencing well being and connecting to the world around and within you. And as with a simple walk, it can be a half hour in the morning, or evening, enough to separate yourself from the patterns of the day and place yourself squarely in the center of your own attention. Neither the dog nor the dog walker requires a two hour commitment that pushes into your other obligations and activities. Nor can this unspoken contract of care and attention between you and yourself be skipped without consequence. One simply cannot say to the dog, "not today."  Imagine that your health and well being relies upon that half hour, and see your self staring at you with that query of "Are we going now?"

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.

This Asana is Contraindicated for ...

me, and yet I practice. Listening to my own arguments, I hear fear and I hear determination. There is goal setting and there is wishful thinking. There is regret and self-doubt, and there is hopefulness and curiosity.

When I began practicing yoga I took any class that fit in my schedule. I was approaching 50 years old and I knew less than nothing about the lineage, names of luminaries, history, even potential health benefits. I didn't even know what shape I was aiming for in the Asana of the moment. I listened deeply, worried on the surface about mixing up my right from my left, and began breathing into a new space of awareness inside.

This fall my practice will be much the same as it was 10 years ago... I will be discovering that I can change the angle of my lower spine by remembering my big toe, and I will use the wall to prepare for Ustrasana (camel pose) just to see how much energy I can raise from my Tadasana (mountain pose) knees. There are many Asana I can explore in my practice, and of course, my practice does now include teaching which is a magnitude of exploration I could not have imagined in those first few experiences.

Every Asana has benefits that reach into the basic functioning of the body -- circulation, nervous system, muscular strength and flexibility; and the mind -- judgment, intention, challenge, determination, curiosity, resilience and focus; and the organs -- etc. Every asana has contraindicated conditions, for example shoulder or ankle injury, stages of pregnancy, frailty of bone, uncontrolled high blood pressure, etc.

As a teacher I may mention a few of the "if you have this, modify in this way" instructions, but I find it hard to say, "just don't do this." I find it especially hard to say it to myself. At the moment, I have two physical variables that would contraindicate nearly everything I do in my yoga Asana practice -- including what might seem simple like sitting in a cross-legged position.

So here is the secret: Do not hurt yourself. Follow the path of the breath and prepare your physical body for practice with an open mental attitude of exploration rather than goals and end results. Use props and find out what is actually happening in as full a way as you can in that moment. It is not getting into the full pose of Ustrasana that will help you if you have low back issues or rotator cuff problems. Yet many of the steps along the way will be exactly what your body can best use to mobilize, stabilize and strengthen, stretch and explore.

It is the mind that wants to take the full expression of Urdhva Dhanurasana (Wheel). Deepening and exploring a supported heart opener over a bolster or block, or using blocks to support your sacrum and your upper back in Setu Bhandhasana (Bridge pose) will give you more possibilities to experience your life than you could imagine.

So it can really help to find a teacher who can help guide your practice into the deepest places you can explore, and slow things down, rather than attending classes that continually show you what you can do to hurt yourself. It helps when you don't believe that everything rests in the final pose, and keep an open mind about what might open your practice.

Let's Not Talk About It

A vital part of teaching yoga is allowing students to hear their inner voices, to rest in the awareness of being, to find their reactive natures and witness themselves in action. Verbal cues can make a huge difference in directing attention and cultivating awareness, and they can also blur into a sound wall that blocks all those inner levels of investigation.

In conversation the same thing can happen, and I know that I, specifically, can be totally the perpetrator of a wall of talk. I grew up in a family where there was competitive talking -- and had to learn as the youngest in the gang, how to enter this, or even whether to enter in. Then, out of that context, I had to learn how to hear myself stomping all over the possibility of an exchange. Part of it is probably defense. Okay, I am a passionate type to begin with, but believing in what you say is not an excuse for not listening.

Believing in what you say is not an excuse for not listening.

Listening. Believing.

Believing in what you say can also mean not listening to what is inside your self. Taking a position, holding a position, knowing something so firmly, so elaborately, that it can, all of its own massiveness, block out the possibilities inside your own head, body, awareness as well as anything coming from any where else.

Silence is not a negative quality. Not talking offers a possibility, rather than a negation of speech. The mind is always full of chat, and if we let the chat fill in all the spaces, well, where's the space for awareness?

So, yes, meditation is a way of observing all of this, but yoga practice is that too, and attending yoga classes, and teaching yoga classes, and having breakfast with your lover, and walking your dog or without your dog. Even engaging in casual conversation with someone on the subway is an opportunity to observe, to listen, to find the spaces that surround the piles of words and ideas, yours and theirs.

Sometimes it is infinitely richer to listen more fully than to talk more about it. Not saying that keeping things to yourself is the deal; there are plenty of times when it is essential to share and words are one mechanism.

Words are one mechanism.

Exploring the others is a marvelous journey. So for just a minute, let's not talk about it! As Jacques Pepin says at the end of every TV kitchen episode, "Happy Cooking!" Do the doing, be the being, listen to the fullness and emptiness of whatever you come across, inside or out.

Walking Is Walking

Here it is - When I walk to the store, I am walking. When I walk to teach, I am walking. When I walk to the creek, I am walking.
Here it is - When I practice 15 minutes, I am practicing. When I practice an hour, I am practicing. When I practice 2 hours, I am practicing.

So don't tell me that you don't have time to breathe, or that you can't take ten minutes for yoga in 24 hours each day. Everyone gets the same number of minutes in a day... and we make so many choices about how we are going to spend them. In fact we spend way too much time on the planning, thinking, rationalizing, explaining, etc. side of things. It's the way our minds work, so that's fine, just accept it. But put the practice in the day. I am suspending all the rules for you about time of day and routines.

Today it hit me as I ate my morning melon: Listen. Loosen. Open. Relax. That's the practice. You can add challenges, you can work on specifics of anything within that framework. Try chanting. Use Ujjayi breath or Bandha locks. Balance. Twist. Invert. Let the mind go beyond and look back at itself. Send yourself or someone else compassionate acceptance.




LISTEN: Let the breath take over the whole system. Allow your interest to connect to being present. Find what your own wisdom has to offer you. Take the risks, find the sources. If this is all you do, it is your practice.

LOOSEN: Warm the joints, be merciful and compassionate towards your soft side, your weak limb, your striving nature. Allow your body to come to the breath for support and nurturing. Find where the catches are and let them go. If this is all you do, it is your practice.

OPEN: Explore where you actually are. Allow temptation to flow through you and open your question marks into movements and shapes, forms and breath. Find what leads to what and let the energy find you right there. If this is all you do, it is your practice.

RELAX: Take it in and let it go. Close your eyes in recognition that you have all you need within you, the earth below you, the breath -- the very air itself -- moving you as it will. If this is all you do, it is your practice.

So you have a lot to do today, or you did a lot today. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Listen. Loosen. Open. Relax.

Boiling the Water

Sometimes in yoga a teacher will speak about finding your edge, or pushing to your edge. This has, at times, raised my hackles, since I do not think of a yoga practice like a competitive sport where one has to continuously try to get beyond where one has been before. But then, as I think (say or write) this, I realize that it happens all the time in yoga! What keeps us up in headstand?

The big difference is that in yoga finding our edge is a process of discovering that which is sustaining the effort and releasing into that support rather than pushing past something. Sometimes, as with headstand, there can be fear that might be "pushed past" yet the joy of yoga is finding the core strength that makes the inverted lift feel light and allows the breath to continue to flow comfortably. This is not the result of pushing past the fear, but rather of seeing it and letting it go. What's the worst that can happen? One attempt, two attempts, many many attempts only lead to that frantic quality of reaching for a goal. Preparing for strength, for balance, focusing on the breath and alignment, the inversion begins to rise on its own.

I was boiling water for tea and realized that there is something to this idea of an edge in practice. Like reaching the exact temperature at which water boils, each of us in any given moment has that specific temperature at which the impurities or impediments can be released and the kettle of the self begins to sing. Avoidance and resistance are part of our human nature, and so in any practice there will be moments when you will need to find a little encouragement in order to stick with it, to breathe more consciously using Ujjayi pranayama (ocean sounding breath) or even Kapalabhati to maintain your focus while your legs shake, or your heart wavers. We know it takes a consistent application of continuous heat to get that water to boil. It can be the same in our yoga practice, then let your kettle sing!

Nowhere to Go When Avoiding the Path

There are many times when the going seems unclear. Sometimes the path seems to split, or to be obscured by fog or confusion. Sometimes it seems there are enormous roadblocks put right in the way, by others or of our own design. Sometimes we find that we are simply playing out a pattern that is becoming all too familiar, and just cannot seem to switch it off, or step out of it. My students bring me such dilemmas, hoping that I will turn on a stronger light, sweep aside the doubts and debris, or clearly mark the destinations for each fork in the road. Yet, in what may be an irritating way, I tend to play the mirror in those moments... reflecting back what is being shared, so that my students have a chance to take another look from another point of view.

Often the dilemma is related to avoidance. It's a familiar feeling. Sometimes we have a deep awareness but we just don't want to do it. Perhaps it's fear of the unknown, or distrust of what we know. Perhaps it is being unable to project the outcome, and not having enough confidence in our own flexibility to make the best of whatever the outcome might be. So we tend to put in place a whole host of counter measures. Maybe we put a roadblock or conflict in the middle of that path so that we are shunted from it, or stopped in our progress. Sometimes we obscure our understanding so that it no longer looks like the way to go, just too murky. We also invite others to stand in the way, maybe through emotional flares or just by pushing them in front of us so that our steps must go around rather than directly down that way. We cause ourselves pain, and sometimes even blame others for it.

A friend recently asked if I thought it was okay to give up practice for a few weeks since he was in such physical discomfort. He had been keeping a schedule of taking daily classes and pushing himself to the his "edge" in every one. I ask about this edge, letting him explain to himself (and me) how he is straining and grasping for some shape that meets the criteria of each asana, meanwhile he is tormenting and twisting his internal self. No peace there, and no space for the breath either. His physical flag is being thrown on the play to get his attention. The first step he took was to stop action. Perhaps learning to soften into the breath is much harder than muscling into the posture? A few quiet minutes of allowing himself space to breathe as he first gains awareness in the morning -- those moments when you realize you are waking up -- might be a good way to practice for the next few days. It is not a matter of giving up the practice, but allowing the practice to take its natural shape. He said rather sorrowfully, "but you go so deep, and I have only been practicing a year or two." I smiled and asked if he was breathing, to which he answered, "of course!" We can work way too hard to avoid what is already there. We don't accumulate frequent flyer miles for each time we show up on the mat, and when we truly show up, there is no one there.

Maybe we resist making the reservations, or putting on the gear, perhaps its struggling to stay quietly on the cushion, but whatever it is, best not to pretend there is a way around it. Sooner or later, one or another flag is thrown. My experience has been that staying with it is the way through it. Sometimes the thorny stuff can actually be left by the side of the path as you go along. Sometimes we make snakes out of the coiled rope just to scare us out of the room, only to find our hand is reaching for that very rope to free ourselves.