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.

Fearing the unknown Self

I remember years ago wondering what would happen to me, to my life, to the people around me, if I acted on the deepest impulses of my heart. I felt a yearning and the impossibility of giving it all up. I was presenting myself with a false choice at that point, that I would have to renounce all my ongoing connections and commitments in order to meet my heart's urge to be of service. This was a perversion of a romantic ideal of giving up everything to offer oneself to the greater good.

Meditation can feel like this too in the beginning. There is an idea that we must somehow give up our thoughts, our patterns of mind and habits in order to open this other mode that will be pure and somehow better. If that were the case no one could meditate. It is actually through quieting the reactive mind that we can see our mind work, find the patterns that support us and the ones that thwart us. Finding the self already operating and being curious about that is one of the richest parts of meditation or asana practice.

Meditation and yoga can offer an open hearted approach to oneself. These are not fundamentally problem solving strategies, not memory aids. There are possibilities for seeing personality in its ongoing negotiations. When we avoid a few minutes of putting the self at the center of our own attention we might be reflecting our fear- what will happen if what I experience changes the way I see myself? What if I am revealed as a fake? What if I can no longer rely on the patterns that have held me together?

Well, it's just like that idea that you have to leave everything behind in order to be true and good. Your experiences in yoga and meditation will add to the toolbox you can use to do what matters to you, and allow you to see the patterns that support you as well as the ones that subvert your energy.

You are not a fake. Even if you feel mixed feelings or conflicts, even if you don't always tell the truth or know what you actually feel, you are not fake. All this is the surface where winds stir the water with mud, or build up momentum with wave action. What is beneath all of that is basic goodness. Nothing fake about it. Experiences have taught you this and that, circumstances confront you and you respond, based on reactive patterns of mind and emotional histories. Doesn't it add more to life to see this, accept it, and go on with a greater awareness of your choices?

In meditation and yoga practice we have a chance to see this as a built structure. we can keep building, remodel, admire, and understand. We don't tear it all down, nor do we judge what we find. It is scary to imagine that we don't really know ourself, or that what we do know will turn out to be terrible. What happens is quite different than that. There is a basic strength in your good heart from which internal shame, fear or pain,  physical ineptitude or habits can be held with grace and possibly even good humor.

If one leg is shorter than the other, perhaps investigation can reveal how to stabilize the pelvis and spine given that truth. This is not "correcting" oneself but supporting and nurturing the self as it actually is. See what is so right now, and use that to offer freedom from struggle, increase possibility rather than define your limitations.

We can fear our self as an unknown, as the undiscovered fake, or a fragile construction ready to fall apart. The first most remarkable experiment in the practice is to stay with this moment, this one moment, and in that monent experience that you are intact with everything you need.

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.

Changes Moment to Moment, Practice & Life

coleus the day before freezing temperatures

Arms swinging softly from side to side as I strode down the street, I was thinking: "hips moving, shoulders moving, how lucky I am." I waited for the light to change, crossed the street, began up the next block and my feet went sliding on a sheet of black ice. My spine twisted one way and the other, my knees bent, and I straightened up to find myself standing solidly on the curb, one hand on a parked car. Wow. The other side of the street was bathed in sunlight, a dry, clear sidewalk waiting. I walked carefully across the street, taking stock of my formerly sprained ankle, scanning interior spaces for pinches, pulls or any other signs of distress.  All in one moment, an injury can change a busy life of teaching yoga into a deep practice in acceptance and letting go.  I had been grateful just a moment ago for the fluidity in my joints, the sweet synchronization of breath and body movements. A moment later, any part of me could have been significantly damaged.

I arrived 20 minutes later to teach a student who had herself had a near miss just before our session. She had been talking with a friend, crossing a street, turned and in a split second was actually hit by a cyclist. Being a cyclist herself, she was utterly astonished that she hadn't seen that coming, nor could the cyclist have predicted her hesitation and uncertainty mid-stream in crossing the street. Again, neither person was injured, though both were rattled by the turbulence in the steady pace of the day.

How many times do we take for granted the moment we are currently experiencing? I would guess most of the time. It doesn't have to be the small stuff, sometimes it is the enormity of life and death that shifts in a moment. From going off to work and handling the myriad aspects of daily family life, to signing one's life partner up for hospice after imagining that the endless uphill struggle would result in a view at the top of that hill, and a vista of an endless life of the quotidien. How on earth can we prepare for this roller coaster drama in which we all live?

In the practice of yoga or sitting for a moment to watch our mind in action in meditation, we can strengthen the muscle of mindfulness, becoming more aware of our way of operating, and more at ease with who we are. That strength of self knowledge helps focus our attention in that slippery moment, when the heart sinks below the horizon and the mind cannot close in around the ramifications.  Watching the moment, just as one watches the mind in meditation or observes the distribution of the breath in an asana, there is a real possibility to remain present, ready to accept and adapt to what is happening.  This is a baseline of practice, standing in a warrior pose (Virabhadrasana I, II or III), or twisted in a revolved triangle pose, or meeting the gaze of a grieving friend, we practice to bring the self fully present in that moment,  not fuzzy, nor lost in projection. It enables us to hold steady,  not confusing presence for control, or judgment for reality.

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.

Being Able to Feel

Building and Earthquake

How easy it is for a dream to construct

both building and earthquake.

Also the nine flights of wooden stairs in the dark,

and the trembling horse, its hard breathing

loud in the sudden after-silence and starlight.

This time the dream allows the building to stand.

Something it takes the dreamer a long time to notice,

who thought that the fear was the meaning

when being able to feel the fear was the meaning.

Jane Hirschfield, from "COME, THIEF" Poems, 2011

The practice is not one of dilution nor erasure. It is not curative nor corrective. Let's call it a practice of immersion and illumination. I find this is where life becomes a reflection of truth and broadens to let in all the possibilities.

It is particularly poignant to me that Hirshfield uses the framework of a dream here. I've been struck by how vividly dreams hold the mind and provide experiences even while we sleep. This is such a lovely way of noticing that the mind creates all of our experiences, even the illusions that we rely upon so deeply in order to go on about our lives.

The dream opens slowly to the dreamer, as witness to the mind's story. This, too, is a most remarkable moment when we see ourselves seeing, and are able to feel ourselves feeling.  

In my yoga teacher training at Kripalu we delved into the idea of meditation in motion that yoga offers. More than the placement of this foot there, or drawing a line in the mind from point A to point B; more than losing track of thoughts or feeling the rush of endorphins that bring happiness and loss of memory about the pain we walked in with, yoga is that space in which we can take "a long time to notice." It is the being itself that has meaning, not lost in the reactive, but able to take it all in.

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.

Sensations as Sensations

This morning I slipped on the icy shoveled sidewalk. One foot began moving away and the other ankle folded to catch my balance. Pop, twang, and back on my feet. All in a moment, yet in that moment I had a flood of sensations that triggered a heightened awareness. Gratitude that I was standing on a sidewalk, fear that I was injured, amazement that so little had happened and so much had changed, fear that I could not trust my body to function normally, curiosity about the condition of my ankle, pain, hesitation, gratitude the foot took my weight. This all took just seconds. Each momentary feeling took hold and let go, took hold and let go. Then the investigation began.

I have been using a meditation of noting sensation and allowing sensation to be sensation, freeing the sensation itself from the tag lines of feelings, interpretations, anxieties, memories and projections. For me, this means actually choosing not to name the sensation that arises, simply sense it. Each sensation has the potential to reveal the way I operate, attaching thoughts and feelings, assigning meanings, planning etc. in response to the sensation, which has by that time passed into something else. What remains is the construction I've built around it.

So I tested my range of motion, began tentatively walking, using leg muscles and experimenting with how I put my foot down, when to transfer weight to the heel, how high to lift the leg to relax the ankle before its landing, etc. Very slowly and with attention to each step, I got where I was going. It was an amazing journey.

Sometimes I speak about the space in each breath when we remember to notice. I have often spoken about awareness of how we transfer our weight to the earth. Today every single step is an experiment in awareness, letting the fullness of the sensations be just that, and watching the moment unfold.

A friend posted a quote on FB "Every setback is a detour to my goal." -- NFL Colts Head Coach '09 This is a marvelously subtle way of letting go of the steering wheel and the judgmental mind and allowing experience to be just that. We cannot get anywhere from here, we can only be here. By being here, fully, we are just where we need most to be.

I have canceled or postponed all my teaching for today and tomorrow to tend my new project, to experience my body and allow rest and healing to be part of every step. What a blessing my practice has turned even pain into curiosity, even fear into openness. The saying attributed to The Buddha is "Pain is part of life, the suffering is optional." My twisted ankle is such a good teacher!

Illusion is not the Self

Rem Koolhaas building at IIT, Chicago, IL

It seems to take a very long time to let go of the basic framework that every little thing I think or feel is real and important. Yet I can sense that this shift is happening. It comes forward when I can laugh at the way I feel aggravated in my interactions with the guy from the garage when he disrespects my schedule and commitments. It appears as I kneel in happy confusion in the midst of a challenging yoga class when the teacher has called for an asana that is totally incomprehensible to my tired brain-body connection. It slips up to the surface listening to my sister on the phone creating analogies for herself to explain my experiences. No hard feelings, no reruns, no regrets or disappointment, no shame attaches to the moment.

Why is it so hard to let this aspect of self-importance go? Perhaps my "Western" cultural orientation is part of the gripping on this, that deeply embedded concept that the defining structures of intelligence and self respect require assigning importance to the fleeting and impermanent. Several people have expressed to me that they do not want to live into an old age when they can no longer "be themselves." I see this as gripping at the control mechanisms that are probably operating in them all the time to "be themselves" as a construction defined by these same ideas, judging themselves as to their worthiness. Letting go of that grip will not change who they are, if they can accept who they are in the first place. The question of worthiness of self is a puzzle of endless pieces that will never be complete as long as we keep any piece clutched in our tight grip.

The yogic path has no guarantees, no warranty, no hierarchies of grace or benefit. Each moment offers the entirety of being present, and demands the entirety of being, a self that is not separated into bits. This is not some super-high-concentrated-focus-entirely-on-something state of being. In some quite absurd way, really anyone can accomplish this way of being if they can let go of the self-importance and criticisms, allow themselves to be open to the truth, and accept the impermanence of all the mental constructs. This sounds huge and maybe even scary. The fear is a part of the construct material that we can really just leave on the bench and simply walk a distance away. It isn't gone, it just doesn't have to be the puppeteer holding our strings. It can become another one of these lovely objects we can observe and appreciate. Fear helps us identify our attachments, among other things. It serves as a warning that there is something on the path to observe as we take our next steps.

No one has the blueprint that shows who I am supposed to be, or how this particular life of mine is meant to go. There is nothing I can do that is untrue to my self. I may feel preferences, even have strong opinions, and act with passion and conviction, but all of that can be turned in any direction and none of it is good or bad. Without the judgments, criticism, gripping of attachment, there is ease, some open spaces of freedom, even as I do something silly and give that mechanic more fodder for his attitudes. Perhaps my humor on the mat as I fail to pretzel into a "yoga pose" is supportive to someone else in the room, and I've long since learned not to tell my sister how to interpret her own thoughts! So I am "being myself" all the time, learning how this works, and living with a kind of spaciousness in everything.

Staring Down Fear & Its Partners

Claude Monet, Haystacks, Art Institute of Chicago
Every twinge in my shoulder starts a little fear reaction that I can see coming. I feel the twinge and I see the fear right there. Then I stretch out the shoulder and know that even if some day I can no longer stretch away the pain, I do not need to succumb to the fear. The changes we go through can teach us a lot about our attitudes of attachment, judgement and fear.

Loss is a very distressing aspect of caring about other people, or about objects, or about systematic ways of doing things. Loss enters into a deep partnership with fear. It can be as simple as mourning that glove, now abandoned in the gutter having fallen out of the pocket, once treasured as a souvenir of a wonderful trip to a beautiful place. It might be the sorrow and denial while sitting at the bedside of a dying loved one, knowing that even these moments of tortured breathing are marks of a presence that will be taken and gone. Perhaps it is just that lapse in memory of how to make that origami figure so familiar and easy from childhood, but now beyond memory's reach.

So here we all are, surrounded by our desires for things, our craving to have the next moment go the way we want it to go, to control the level of pain for our loved ones, and to avoid pain ourselves. We live in a web of our attachments to people, patterns, behaviors, and preferences. Every part of our existence has potential to threaten us with something we fear to lose, or make us feel we must defend against loss. Sometimes it boils down to fearing change in those persons, things, systems. The relationship is not what it used to be. This hip is not how it once was. Vision and memory, endurance and strength, digestion, clothing size, the very voice with which we sing, all these aspects can and do change. It is our attachment to them as though they were or ought to be permanently a certain way that causes so much suffering and fear of loss. We measure and judge, hold tight and lose.

We can practice being okay just as we are. We can practice accepting that we are okay just this moment. Maybe we are not the same as we "used to be" and perhaps we can not hang on to that which we once treasured, but in this very moment, yoga can help to return our focus again and again to the conditions in this moment. We can let go of comparisons to past and stop threatening ourselves with diminished conditions of the future. We can release the attachments that corner our loved ones or erase the genuine moment for the sake of the role being played in a context set just so. There is enormous freedom from the ordinary pain of fear, when we can take things as they are, and let curiosity open the possibilities available now. Perhaps they are not the same possibilities of a few years or months, days, or moments ago. Who is the judge of what is loss and what is gain? In visiting my family recently I was struck by how very much everyone still has in the way of possibilities, regardless of what might seem like limitations. The biggest impediment to those possibilities seems to me to be the fear of loss and its partners, attachment, judgment and grasping. When those lose their grip, there is so much more time for happiness and joy.

Setting fear aside as "feeling fear," or walking towards it with curiosity

Yoga practice offers the opportunity to step out of the doubts, out of the patterns, out of the feelings that trap us and keep us from fully being present. There is excitement, risk, and sometimes fear of what might happen if we let down our guard, stop protecting ourselves with the stories, excuses, and strategies that help us avoid seeing our own truths. In a physical sense, it may be true that at this point in my practice I cannot touch the back of my head with my foot, but it has no bearing on whether I can breathe into my spine, release my hips, and open my heart. Telling myself "I can't do that" is simply a strategy of avoiding discovering myself as I really am, preferring to substitute an image or icon of myself for the truth. Last spring I participated in a workshop where an assistant working with me was exhilarated as my head came quite close to my foot. He asked if he could help me "get there." I declined. I had no goal to achieve with the touch of foot to head or head to foot. My goal was accomplished by simply being right where I was, walking towards my fear with deep curiosity only to discover it was not rooted in my body but in my mind. This was a joyful moment.

Yoga is not always full of joy. Sometimes the revelation, or insight that comes through practice and meditation, loosens something painful and dark. Buried and ignored aspects of earlier suffering or patterns can be opened and spilled into the light of day. Sometimes I can watch myself grasping, negotiating and manipulating myself in order to rationalize my fear or the pain of the truth. The fact is that time and again, I can let go of the protective reaction, I can see the reaction for what it is and label it as a reaction. What I find is that the truth has always been there, and is a welcome part of me. There is enormous freedom in seeing what is actually there. Rather than imagining that the coiled rope is a snake, I can approach it with diligence, openness and curiosity. Regardless of what I fear, that shape in the darkness is already a rope or a snake, or perhaps simply a shadow of something else.

I don't expect to learn everything there is about existing in the world through yoga practice, but I have found these revelations to be a consistent part of the yoga journey. Learning myself as I am in this moment, holding myself with compassion rather than as an illusion that disappoints, exploring without judging in my physical practice has led quite directly to a similar experience with my other layers and ways of defining myself.

The photo here represents this journey to me - simple flip-flops left at the door of my yoga studio as my students bare their feet to walk upon the stones, warm or cold, to enter the studio. This is a metaphor for the simple baring of the self through practice. Not knowing what we might find, ready to hold whatever it is with compassionate curiosity, we enter the domain where we can see or feel without letting reactive human nature drown out the rest of the self. And this is where the opening begins to reveal so much more about the physical self, about the emotional and intellectual self, and nurtures a sense of being that reaches beyond "the self" into the eternal and infinite. I have no label for this, cherishing the spacious quality, the safety offered, the depth of being present.

Fear - I, Me, Mine?

Living with one kidney I would imagine, if I was making this up, that I would fear kidney failure more than anything else. I know, though, that other things scare me more.

Struggling with caring for my mother has brought me so many layers of awareness of what being is about. I don’t have to love her. I do love her. I don’t love her. She always judged me, she never judged me; she still can’t see me, she can no longer see herself. Dementia will do that to a person’s mind. Her heart is still very engaged, full of some sense of self and open in new ways, oddly enough.

I used to joke that if I could no longer cut my own toenails I would jump off a bridge and that would make a clean ending. It doesn’t. My kids wouldn’t think that was a clean ending. My husband wouldn’t either. My husband losing his mind, or his willingness to live in his body, is truly frightening. Am I a caretaker or can I open my heart and accept a transformation into simple wholeness? My mother says frightening things when I visit her, like “Thank you for coming. When you are with me is the only time I can find myself.” Oh, yes that is terrifying. Is this a new responsibility I have to take on? Is being me really enough?

So sometimes I think death doesn’t really frighten me. I have a very clear sense memory of moving towards the light until it was me and I was no longer separate during one of my surgeries. I could hear my dad calling me back, and I came. Thanks Dad for the next 50 years.

It is living inside a place that is no longer mine to claim or control that frightens me. What if my children have to see me as I now see my mother? She was only living the life that came moment by moment and she ended up here. Isn’t that what I am doing? Must we really let go of everything? Diapers and all?

Now I have been practicing yoga for nearly 9 years, and teach yoga in order to share the open space that is all of us. I am in better physical shape than I ever have been in my whole life, even with the arthritis, bone spurs, one kidney, whatever else there is… watery eyes and all. Every time I practice I feel my inhibitions and the total freedom that resides in me.

I guess that is why I started a blog in the first place. And certainly why I joined the 215800 project . I am coming to understand layer by layer what it is to be a human being who is not separate from any other living being. Our pain is differentiated into some level of separateness by our definitions and our ideas … our beautiful waves of mind will rock us. But deeper than the light reflecting off the waves on the surface, we are the water itself and we are the light too. All these atoms and tiny bits in space make an illusion of a separate entity.

I just put my sitting bones down on the earth and take a deep drink of air into my entire body. I no longer have to judge myself as separate from others. It is okay with me to let my projections go now that I see them, and my fear goes with them. I take a breath upside down, as a white haired one-kidneyed woman, and feel the way lightness enters my spine. I don’t think about what I look like, it is all possibility on the inside.

Controlling the Scene

When I was nine years old, I went sailing with my dad on a lake in the city of Seattle. We were living there for a year, and he was studying for his skipper certification while working on his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University there. We had a remarkable moment together, when, with a sudden wave activity from some motor boat, our little sunfish began rocking dramatically. He was new at this, and had his littlest kid with him, while his two older kids (all of 14 and 15 years old) were off in their own boat. He was panicked, trying to be in charge of both boats, shouting instructions to my siblings off in the distance, and as our boat began tipping, he jumped out and began thrashing while shouting instructions to me to hold on and such... until he stood up to find the water was just barely above his knees. Obviously, he was relieved, held on to the boat and looked to see that my siblings were doing just fine in their boat, in fact they began sailing circles around us.

I tell this story because it resonates with my yoga practice. The enormous effort we all make to try to control the situation, or to make it into something specific that fits what we think or feel, this effort is, in and of itself, inhibiting us from finding out what is going on. I laughed back then as I watched my very serious dad realize his own situation, but he did not. His good watch was ruined and he felt foolish. Still, the best part was that everyone was really fine... and in fact the two teenage kids in the other sailboat had done quite well on their own, about which they felt pretty good.

There are times in an asana or in meditation when it feels as though the waters are too rough, or the breath just can not be enough to support me, or when I see a little too clearly how my fear inhibits me and it paralyzes me. If I could just slip off the boat and stand up, I would realize that I can find out how deep the water really is, and if it is shallow enough I can walk my boat in. If the water is actually over my head, I can at least dog paddle until I figure out which way to swim.

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.

On the mat as it is in life

When my legs begin shaking in utkatasana (chair or fierce pose) I deepen my breathing. I draw my attention to my feet and notice where my weight is resting. I let a little ease open my upper back, relax my shoulders and open my heart with my exhale. The intensity of heat in my thighs begins to scream at me and I take in a longer inhale, pressing out my exhale with deliberate evenness. I might roll my wrists, or lift my toes. The shaking does not stop, but my panic has left me. The shaking does not stop, but my body understands that this is a moment of possibility. I am not hurting myself. I will feel no ill effects. I am simply breathing through the hard stuff, to strengthen and to help release my tendencies to effort where I do not need to exert energy, like in my shoulders.

The gratitude I feel as I fold into uttanasana (standing forward fold) is a combination of amazement at the flood of sensations from the physical change of pose, and a deep rush of joy that I am able to be in utkatasana and to shift into uttanasana.

I can clearly remember that when I began practicing yoga even holding utkatasana for 3 breaths made "fierce pose" an apt name for the asana. Teachers would say, sit back as though you were resting in a chair, and I would reach desperately at the word "resting" and "chair" as if they would save my wildly aching leg muscles. The concept of resting in a posture that is strenuous was quite new to me. It still amazes me, every time. I may feel the shaking after a longer period of time, but I will always continue to have those moments on the mat that ask me to reinvent myself, to investigate how I approach my own life in that moment.

The breath illuminates the moment and brings awareness into my life off the mat. A friend recently gave me driving instructions, saying, "Now remember this is a country road and it will wind, there will be turns and pieces that go off in other directions. It is a simpler way. Just stay on the road and when it feels confusing, just breathe into it, and you will get to where you see the signs. The signs are large and clear."

How well that describes the practice! The fear rises, the legs shake, the worst appears in the mind, the emotions ask for sympathy, the mind doubts and portrays all the obvious shortcomings or devastating consequences. Breathing in and breathing out I can let all that go and see the signs, so large and clear. Yes the path will turn, will twist, will splinter off; and I continue to explore the simpler way.

Grateful for the Wet Wind

Do you find yourself rushing into your day, rushing in the cold, the rain, rushing through lunch, rushing to meetings, to classes, even to yoga? What is it that pushes you towards that which you cannot yet see, the next place, the next task, your expectations of yourself? It is the mind reacting. Once I hold still for a moment, I can see the uncertainties, fears, hopes and cravings, the anxieties and judgments in my rushing. What is the hurry? Getting somewhere or doing something before what happens? Finishing, leaving, arriving, going, doing all in the frenzy of preventing disasters that my mind presents to me.

In the moment itself, there is nothing amiss. I can walk in the wild wet wind of the day, relishing the way the water clouds my glasses, feeling the strangeness of my own skin and the merging of my watery eyes with the rain itself. The wind has its reasons for its rushing past me, the warm air hurrying to replace the cooler air, the shifting pressures encouraging the movement of energy. It is my will that moves me, the mind in action. I have presented myself with a task, or a commitment, a responsibility or a choice and I am acting upon that in space and time. Being right where I am, I will still get to the train to wait for the next one or catch the one that happens to be pulling right in as I arrive. My rushing will not change the train that is already ahead or behind of its schedule. My mind can entangle me in the urgency of the moment such that I cannot even enjoy running for the station, should I choose to run. Yet even the running can feel exuberant, full of grace and gratitude.

Where are you right now? Rushing pushes us out of this moment. What do you lose? Can you allow yourself to be right there in the wet and wind, on your way to whatever is next but existing in this moment, discovering your own grace? Encourage yourself to be glad of the legs that carry you, your eyes that water, that runny nose, even the cheeks that feel the edge of cold. Experience the moment your feet make contact with the sidewalk, walking or running! Notice how your legs move in your hip joints or how beautifully your body balances, spine rising even as it sits in a wheelchair. Enjoy the way the water droplets find you, and relish your own reactions. This is the path to gratitude and awareness that brings freedom from those very fears, anxieties, pressures, expectations and judgments that push me out of my own life into a whirlwind of suffering.

There are moments when we move faster, moments when we move slower, but the mind can remain open, mindful, and grateful. I can detach from the story of rushing (missing something, losing something, risking something), and bring myself gratefully right into that wild wet wind. I am on my way, and being right here, right now.

Standing the World on Its Head – Mine

When I first started yoga, I had no idea that I would be finding myself upside down.

Headstand. Salamba Shirshasana. By its nature this asana offers endless ways for me to compete with my view of myself. I have tried to muscle my way, I can use preparations and props, I can read all about it, but when it comes down to it, I am standing the world on its head. And that world is my world, and that head is my head.

Headstand presents me with a very different way of interpreting the idea of carrying my weight. In fact, if I can actually relax in headstand it becomes breath in a state of weightlessness. And it changes my perspectives all day long: reminding me that illusion can seem quite serious, but things can easily be turned on their heads.

I work my way towards headstand in stages. First by strengthening my understanding of my shoulders and how they relate to my neck. I have learned how to release tension there when I discover it taking hold. This can be in a cross-legged Sukhasana (easy pose), or a simple sun breath as I start practice. I might play with eagle arms or focusing conscious attention in these muscles throughout my practice. It can’t hurt my explorations of bridge, or wheel either.

Core body awareness is another discrete area of development in preparation for headstand. This begins with drawing energy up through the core in every seated and standing posture. I especially enjoy moving from the first two chakras even in cat cow stretching.

Carefully exploring hand placements in Adho Mukha Svanasana (downward facing dog), I use dolphin (hands interlaced, elbows bent, forearms on the floor while in Adho Mukha Svanasana) to strengthen my upper back and keep my shoulder relationship easy. Adho Mukha Svanasana is an inverted posture, and drawing attention to the alignment of my head, neck, shoulders and back and core in this asana will build strength and accessibility for the future… who knows, maybe handstand, Adho Mukha Vrksasana!!

Finding balance in Tadasana (mountain) brings awareness to the way my body aligns over the foundation. Like the old song, the knee bone is really connected to the hip bone, and so it goes, with the breath actually helping to draw energy up and down the line of the spine. Feeling this in Tadasana is a huge step towards feeling this in Headstand.

Understanding fear is an ongoing part of this practice. It can come while making too much effort in Ustrasana (camel), or when feeling that tightrope and imbalance in warrior (Virabhadraasna) or Trkonasana,(triangle). There is an exploration of the fear of failure in so many of the asanas, noticing the way the inner critic measures and impedes the exploration is an important part of being in the moment. Allowing myself to be playful in situations that call for the unknown or the “impossible” has led me to arm balances and extensions I could not have imagined. My laughter when falling out of a posture in class prompts a wave of release and rising energy.

It reduces my fear when I provide safety for myself. This might mean attempting to invert only so far as to extend my spine, (a bit like dolphin with my head down) and keep my legs out of it, or play with lifting one leg at a time feeling open to that moment of weightlessness, If I feel shaky or am worried about attempting to hold the asana for a longer time, I sometimes position myself a foot or two away from a wall, so even though I am inverting fully on my own balance, that wall is there for my psyche.

Oddly enough, the image of trees helps me with Headstand. The network of deep roots and the arch of the reaching branches give me a symmetry in both directions without any hierarchy of importance. My feet are no more important than my foundational arms and head. My head no less rooted than my feet are free. It seems to integrate my mind into my body as I take my stand in the sky.

Paying Attention to Suffering

Daily life is a balancing act of attention to the ordinary and the extraordinary. It seems to me that whether we take the attitude to suffer in ordinary life or to reject suffering even under the most extreme circumstances is a choice of awareness or consciousness. I look at how easy it can be to turn missing the bus into a disaster. In this crisis moment in Haiti, we see people who in the face of a natural and overwhelming disaster can turn open-heartedly towards one another with goodwill and compassionate effort. If death is seen as disaster, we must all face it. Knowing that, we can also observe that in dying one can attach to the suffering more or less. In letting go of the attachment to suffering, death might be transformative. People can go on living after great suffering and find joy and gratitude, even though they bear the scars of the pain they sustain.

Many of my students experience physical or emotional impediments in their daily lives. Some are obvious, some invisible. That metal plate in the body pretty much guarantees that the leg will not flex, or the mechanics of missing fingers changes the balance in a hand mudra not to mention in down dog. Yet this does not stop their yoga practice, nor necessarily predetermine suffering. Adjustments and letting go of the definitions of "wholeness" or "flexibility" can enable deep experiences, and the struggle to accept that which is present in the moment often seems to liberate people who make the adjustments. The release of judgment and letting go of the attachment to one's impediment as a deficit are keys to this freedom. So many times I have seen courage, openness, curiosity, and humor in reaction to this struggle. Frustration sometimes dominates, and watching that conflict, I see human nature in action. It seems that we are offered constant choices as to attachment, judgment, and awareness. That's actually the good part! In every moment we have the opportunity to choose.

I don't feel it is true that my situation is better because someone else is in a worse situation. It certainly doesn't make me feel better to think about someone else's suffering! Time and time again I have seen that it is whether I attach to my suffering that makes it hard on me. It is all about the level of awareness I bring to the moment that will color that moment.

Waiting for surgery is scary! Even imagining that I might require surgery brings up many emotions. I can feel the fear. I can review my many references from earlier experiences that compound my anxieties. I also know that I am here today after those experiences, and that I am living in this moment. If I run from this moment into the past or the future, my suffering increases enormously. Staying with my breath, I am fully present, already full of life energy and awake. In that condition, even being on the edge of fear is not a "bad" place to be. I can draw my attention to the suffering itself, my own attachment to my own conditioning. I am simply being, and in that way, with my ever present breath, I am in balance.