Equanimity as a Method of Problem Solving

My personal problems are so insignificant in the scheme of things, and yet my reactivity can completely consume my energy.  The facts are clear that if I am kind, the world around me is a better place for other beings. The facts are clear that if I am not gripping one opinion above all others, there is more room for change and possibility. The facts are clear that there is enough misery and desperation in the world without my petty emotional attachments and rationalizations.  But even so, I am a human being and my basic design puts me and my emotional upheavals at the center of my universe, until I learn how to see that pattern and shift my weight towards equanimity.

I saw a portion of a PBS Newshour program in which children of displaced families were being treated for the most severe life-threatening conditions of malnutrition, basically babies and children spending their earliest time here on earth starving instead of growing.  One doctor was asked, "who does she blame, or what is the primary cause of this terrible situation?' She answered, "the war." What I saw in a matter of a few moments on television is just the surface of a very deep and deadly problem my species seems to have... the inability to embrace each other with compassion and acceptance. War is the expression of conflict -- acts of war are horrific destructive behaviors towards our own human family, and the very world in which we all live.  The doctor, in spite of the unbearable sadness, devastating cruelty, and endlessness of the situation, is dealing with families, the dying, her co-workers, her community with compassion and acceptance; working flat out to ease the suffering for those for whom nothing can be expected to change for the better, and somehow being an island of equanimity in the sea of chaos.

Every mouthful since that program aired has brought me gratitude, sadness, and confusion. I walked to my local food co-op to buy groceries, passing a flattened baby bird on the sidewalk with a sparrow on a wire above me singing ceaselessly. This little bird baby, like the little human baby who weighs 7 pounds at 11 months old, had a beginning with possibilities. What can I do to change these outcomes?

I can walk more slowly, make eye contact, listen more and speak less, offer more and take less, support those who are in positions to take actions that I cannot take to directly assist others who are suffering, prioritize generosity, do my utmost to do no harm, and most importantly see my own reactivity and self-importance more honestly as distractions.

It hurts so much that communities and governments do not open their borders and coffers and food supplies to their own citizens in need, nor to other people from or in other places, without asking for some kind of power or control in return. What if that power and control is useless in the face of the loss we are living with as a species, as a family? So I will continue to build myself as a safer place for others, developing my practice as a person of no importance who is changing the world by observing my own gyrations as gyrations, and growing compassion and acceptance in every way I can.

A life could be spent making pilgrimages to places where human beings have been unspeakably cruel to each other, but perhaps more can be done by making every place I go part of a path that offers equanimity, compassion and acceptance. And so I will continue being joyful, even as the weight of sorrow becomes part of my normal weight.  Perhaps I can make space for others to find these two parts of the same possibility and act from a state of balance. The image in this post is a painting my father did in a food court in suburban Maryland. He looked for beauty and love in relational spaces. Even though he has been gone 7 years, his vision still comforts me.

Beginning again and again

Yoga is repetitious, like exercises, or practicing a musical instrument, or learning a new language. Each engagement with the practice posits questions familiar and unknown. The body responds to repetition. It builds muscle, it builds strength, it gets sore, it inflames, it stretches. The mind responds to repetition too, creating patterns, offering resistance, placing goal posts, questioning, criticizing and comparing. When approaching the yoga mat, or turning attention to the breath, or trying to speak in a new language, the possibilities are endless for how this combination of body and mind will coalesce in the moment. Yoga as a practice offers truthful, skillful means to combine these possibilities.

Even as I gain knowledge, I forget something. Even as I gain physical competency, I find pieces of the posture missing, or parts of the body unwilling. This is where the practice of yoga asks to put yoga philosophy into action: to take a light grip on what must be and adopt an ever widening view of what is possible; allow a truthful vision of what is actually so and develop a warm hearted acceptance without judging that vision.

It is nine years since I certified as a Registered Yoga Teacher with the Yoga Alliance, after 8 years of classes and my own practice. I've racked up nearly 1,000 hours of teaching, and many different types of trainings pertaining to the body, the mind, the breath, conditions, and even trends in practice. Yet, each time I approach the mat, I am a simple practitioner, like my students, like immigrants learning English, like children starting the school year in a new class. I notice the jumble in my mind, and scan the open and closed spaces in my body. Like looking for familiar faces in a community meeting, I hope to find aspects of my self that I can rely upon as familiar, and yet, as I begin my centering breath and movement, in a most essential way I am meeting my self as for the first time. Who is this? What is this? How is this? Feeling this, being present.

I can only start from where I actually am, with honesty, with generosity of spirit, without judgment, without defined goal or limitation. When I have conversations in Spanish with my teacher in Oaxaca via Skype, the first series of "¡Hola! ¡Hola!" (hello, hello) in which we see and hear each other across so many miles, brings such joy to us. We begin each class with boundaryless smiles, with rising heart energy, and joy in the moment. Ready to communicate, to listen, to share who we are and exchange what we know and what we don't know. So it is also with my yoga practices, with my yoga teaching. I can accept my always aging and changing physical body, my always remembering and forgetting mind, my always opening and closing energy. Truth is not as complicated as the grasping hold on a fictional certainty or judgment we have told ourselves. Starting with truth in this moment opens possibilities, no matter what the truth in this moment may be.

I propose allowing energy to fill you as you breathe in, and to relax your body as you breathe out. Let go of the tight grip on what you expect, or fear, or want, or hate, or need, or have lost. Breathing in what is so, breathing out possibility. Whatever the reality is, you are here, now, breathing. Practicing this form of breathing gives you a beginning in this moment. Your breath and awareness combined in this way offers continuous support for being, allowing some freedom from the inner structures from which comes so much suffering. There is no exemption from this suffering. I recommend beginning in this yogic journey, again and again.

Sharing this inhale with all living beings. Honoring the possibilities for all living beings with this exhale. May all beings displaced from their familiar and beloved people and places take solace in the breath we all share.

Spring Buds - The Mind and Its Unfolding

How do we know when we see a bud whether it will open into a bloom or into leaves? Some plants go straight to the bloom, drawing in the energy and starting the fertilization process that the leaves will feed throughout the warm season.  Other plants uncurl leaf clusters that draw in the energy the plant needs to produce the buds that later produce the seeds to continue propagation of the plant.  Each species in its own way puts forth the possibilities and brings out what it needs. But there are unforeseen circumstances! Too much rain, too cold temperatures, and the vagaries of wind and location can challenge any individual bud, whether bloom or leaf.

And there are so many all of a sudden! One day of warm sunny weather and the world around us begins reflecting a burst of energy. It almost seems that the sun transfers this energy directly through its heat! Yet we might walk by the most exquisitely blooming purple plum tree without noticing any of the thousands of blooms. Our thoughts can keep us worrying about how long it will take to get where we are going, or planning out our errands, or replaying the scene we just left.  Perhaps one magnolia bloom catches the eye and for one instant we stop to admire this moment of blossoming.

Isn't the mind just like this? Some thoughts catch our attention, so many others flow past while our focus is on something else?  Each of us budding and blooming again and again, whether seen or unnoticed, we add to the world around us.  How do we know if this bud will be bloom or leaf? Must we attach so much importance and meaning, judgment and expectation upon that uncurled object?

Closing your eyes, imagine a bud. As your mind drifts away from this, just bring your attention back to the bud. As with softening the focus of your eyes, allow your mind to focus on this bud softly. Feel the presence of possibility in the bud along with accepting the idea that whether leaf or bloom, the bud is intact and complete.  Allow the bud to connect to all its sources ... water, rain, sun, twig, branch, trunk, roots.  Allow the bud to connect to all its processes ... opening, losing petals, dropping leaves, crushed on the sidewalk, washing into the street drains, composting into the earth. Keep your attention on the bud as you allow this broad view of interconnectedness to hover around the bud. It might feel a bit like staying focused on the breath while you are still aware of the sounds of the street, and the general sensations of the body.

Not closing off from the widest experiences of being, continue to bring your attention to the bud.  Releasing this focus after a few minutes (5-20), soften your eyelids, and allow them to part.

Perhaps you will continue to see the bud in yourself, and others around you. Full of potential, unattached to judgment and goal, yet fully connected to sources of energy and possibility.

fake it til you make it: pretending to meditate

Not knowing how, or knowing that you don't know how, are common reasons to avoid a meditation practice. Thinking that meditation will solve something, cure something, liberate something is all still just thinking about your own judgments of yourself and your life and really not approaching the practice. But of course, if you don't know how to meditate, you wouldn't know that the beginning of meditation is to see that no matter what else you are doing, you are thinking all the time.

You can fake it as long as you don't lie about it.

In other words,  you just set a timer for 15 minutes, sit yourself down, align your body so that it takes the least amount of effort to stack your bones and release your muscles, and then pretend you are meditating by allowing your mind to wander all over the place while you keep bringing your focus back to one place (maybe the part of your body where you sense the breath the most). Do this every day for a while, pretending that you are taking your seat and meditating.

That timer will shock you, and you may have to start setting it for half an hour.

No matter what happens, no lying, okay?  But it's fine to fake it until you can accept that you are allowing your mind to think all it wants, while you focus on your breath for a while. You will gain the muscles of mindfulness that help you turn your attention again and again to one point. And you may begin to see the patterns of thoughts and feelings, distractions and roadblocks that your mind has been making for you.

Take a minute to turn some kind, friendly feelings towards yourself as though you were an old friend.

Be curious about what all is going on with that friend, without judging any particulars in the stories you tell yourself.

Just set the timer and take your seat. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were meditating...

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.

Freedom is Beyond the Mind's Construction Zone

A year or so ago a friend of mine posted this on Facebook: "There is always unconditional happiness present when one is going through personal suffering. You just have to awaken to it. Feel inspired..."

To me, this was a neat way of expressing the idea that most of our suffering is directly related to what we think, or more precisely, what we think we are experiencing. It was especially poignant to me at that time, since I had just lost my parents to conditions of aging beyond their control.

If pain or loss in the moment overwhelms our sense of being, then all we have in that moment to experience is the misery of pain or loss. If we can remain present, the suffering becomes one level of our experience but not all of it. This leaves that little bit of leeway, or breathing room, to feel alive beyond the pain or the loss, and become aware of other options.  Sounds a little other worldly, but it can be quite a surprise to find that there is still a layer of being that is not consumed with the conditional and reactive part of life.

We excel at constructing a mental world in which to live, each of us serving the continuously running mind. It is a bit as though our lives are all about walking our heads around, or even just sitting on the couch swimming in mind soup.  Sometimes watching TV or engaging with the computer can really bring this out: the body sits for hours and hours, but the mind is running along with whatever is in front of it on the screen.

Stubbing a toe brings up the immediacy of reactive nature, yet we continue standing on the other leg (there's hope for life beyond the sheer pain of the moment).  Perhaps there is a thought strand about "what should I do for this toe right now?" and also perhaps a strand that triggered an emotional line of "stupid idiot" thinking aimed towards the self or the leg of the chair or the person who left that rock in the path.  Meanwhile, the body goes on standing or hopping, and the digestion creates an appetite for lunch, and part of the mind is remembering why one was walking in this direction anyway.


All of this can simply be left to happen on its own, and there we are, a constant construction site with louder aggressive moments when the jack hammers or circular saws are going, as well as quieter ones more like plastering or even laying cement for the brick or tile work. All active, some by choice others by condition, yet our awareness and possibilities go far beyond all that. Even with jackhammer in hand we can feel temperature on the skin, smell the blooming clover wafting in from the empty lot next door, and even softly hum a song remembered, or a rhythm that supports our activity.

Past all that is equilibrium, the part of the self that knows even in the moment of loss that we will keep breathing when our loved one stops breathing. We can strengthen our ability to tune in this way, to get past the construction zone into that more open space of mind. With practice through meditation, and yoga,  we can learn to allow ourselves to detach from reactivity while still reacting; we can create a structure of acceptance that is not judgmental so that we are free from the good-bad aspect of the situation and can actually just feel fully; and we can lean in towards the deeper understanding that we exist beyond just feeling the intensity of this particular moment. Just as with the stubbed toe, or the dying parent, that moment will be intense, but freedom seems to come from being present fully in that moment, not clutching at nor shying away from what is happening.

Balance & Politics: Finding a Leg to Stand On

Oh the politics of the moment are such fertile ground for my practice!! Watching the pingpong ball fly back and forth between angry outraged entrenched political adversaries just tempts my blood pressure and old habits to rise to the occasion.  How to find center, that ground upon which I can stand and see clearly that the intentions on all sides are fundamentally emerging from well meaning impulses, and get beneath the superficial slapdash untruths to the kernels of fear and control that shape political policy and so often public opinion and beliefs.  Just try standing on one leg to get in touch with that combination of fear and desperate desire for control.

There is a moment of fear for all of us when we take one foot off the ground. Funny that every step we take requires that one foot lift off, and with practice and experience we begin to have confidence that momentum will carry us forward to the next step. On stairs too, or stopping in mid step to change direction, we must get through that moment before touch down.  Sometimes we choose not to notice that moment. In my yoga teaching I call attention to that moment, making it mindful, cultivating awareness of the great possibilities that are already within us to let go of the fear-based pattern, and judgments -- allowing the reality of the moment through.

In asana practice, we seek the source and structure of balance, the foundation that supports that lift so that it is no longer mysterious. We find our muscles and bones, we widen our hands and feet on the earth, we stretch through the binds and open where we thought we were closed. It is still scary.  The mind can create the scenario in a split second, without words or threats. The body reacts to the intensity of risk and effort; our self image is on the line. The foundation holds steady, and the breath, with mindfulness, continues smoothly expanding and releasing.  Perhaps we experiment with ankle rotations, or lifting that leg and straightening it, or propping it against ourself, foot to inner thigh. The permutations of balance become endless once we find that center. In reality there is freedom where in the grasping for control we lose our foundation.  This is the difference between standing on one foot and standing in fear of falling off our self made pedestal.

Still, this is a solitary pursuit. One body, one mind, working closely with faith and memory to maintain equilibrium, dwell in equanimity, experience openness and find the possibilities.  Creating a social environment that fosters this ability in others, no matter where they stand, now that would get my vote in a flash. Not that yoga practice will necessarily change one's politics ... but at least there's the opportunity to be clear from whence our motivations arise for the impulses to run the lives of others with rules of our own making.

Certainty is an act of Imagination

Every moment is an opportunity for drama. Consumed with physical and emotional feedback, we play out scene after scene from the moment we wake and even throughout the roller coaster of dream life at night. As with traveling in a foreign land, each difference from our expectations can bring thrill or frustration; each aspect of experience or sensation that we cannot control or explain offers us another chance for self involvement and crippling attachments.  We confirm our suspicions, we seek out the familiar among the unfamiliar, we attend to our reactions with endless interest.

Being fully present in the moment does require a level of engagement that is intense, but without the drama of self-centeredness that seems to block vital qualities of awareness.  Noticing what I feel, physically or emotionally, is not the same as being ruled by that or literally living from that reactive state.  I am beginning to see certainty as an act of imagination, a construction that we each build with the blocks of experience available to us. It is complex to function within the wash of conflicting feelings and insights that arise when I don't pin down meaning, or block out the untamed data as it comes in. Yet that is a most wonderful way of experiencing the self in action.

There is nothing wrong with knowledge, experienced or learned in other ways. But knowledge is not in a vacuum. To be useful to me, it takes seeing context and conditions and accepting the array of possibilities that can literally change what I think I know. Letting go of knowing as "certainty" and understanding that illusion does not mean unreal, just profoundly impermanent.

And as when traveling in a foreign land, as soon as I begin to make generalities, I know that I am blind to the truth, which is myriad and ever changing. I consider the variation when opening one bottle of wine after another, made from the same grapes grown in the same row of vines, harvested the same day and filtered and fermented the same length of time. This just reinforces my growing sense that an open and curious mind gives access to the broadest palate of experience, and an intensity in living.

What else are we here for, if not to experience our own lives, through the filters we have developed along the way? We can let the filters be like blinds and shutters, that we can adjust once we see them clearly. We cannot really set this aside, but can live with blinds and shutters set in position, or take on learning to see them for what they are and adjust them for the light at any time of day or night. We can still protect ourselves from groping in the dark or being blinded by the brilliance of direct sunlight depending on what we require for visibility or privacy.  Imagination can help us make these adjustments and enjoy where we are in the moment.

Money & Watering Asparagus

No one talked about money when I was a kid growing up. In truth, our family just made ends meet on the salary of my dad's job as a meteorologist/government scientist while my mom tried to keep painting with 3 small complicated kids. I didn't have much stuff and wasn't involved with spending money or managing it within the family. Oh well I did get my ten cent weekly allowance to help me learn about money, and saved all but a few pennies and opened a savings account in a local bank just as I was expected to do. That bank that actually went bankrupt when I was about 10 or 11, and they didn't have Federal Deposit Insurance so I lost the sum total of my childhood wealth - $25 as I recall. The pennies I spent went to penny candy, the memory of which remains as I can feel it right now, as though standing in front of the array of boxes and jars: this one 2 for a penny, these 5 for a penny, these 2 pennies each. Knowing that whatever I chose would be candy, knowing that I could only have as many as my 5 pennies would buy, these were the parameters within which I considered packaging, shapes, quantities, and flavors. If my older siblings were along, which one or both invariably were because I was not allowed to walk that far from home without them, there was influence according to their tastes and their ideas of "value." More for the money seemed crucial to them, where I, 5 years younger, didn't always feel that way.

Over time, I was progressively more responsible for myself financially until I was through college, paying my way with summer jobs and part time work, sharing apartments with others, and eventually selling my day times and life effort for one salary or another. As it turned out, my husband was much the same, and we joined forces with a small savings account and frugal habits of home cooking and a tendency to the cheap entertainment of walking around town, foraging in second hand record and book stores and cooking and eating with friends. Then children, then elderly parents, then managing financial affairs for my elders, then losing my parents and inheriting some of those same resources that I had so carefully managed for them.

As I stand at the edge of the asparagus bed with the hose pulled out to nearly its longest extension, I watch the drops fall onto the dry earth. I carefully soak each patch of this rectangle and move the cascade of water to the next section to give the earth time to soak up the moisture before returning to that place a second or third time. Asparagus roots grow from at least a foot deep and spread the crowns in a network close to the surface. Watering the surface is not enough to support the plant, and evaporates in the day's heat.

Broadening my view, I see the edges of the asparagus bed, our cultivated blueberries on one side and the wild raspberries on the other. A bird flits through my range of vision and awakens the realization that I am also perceiving the myriad sounds of birds, the hungry nestlings in the bushes beyond the raspberries. The opening of the downward slope glows in the bright sun, though I stand in the shade of what I know to be a birch tree behind me. I hear its leaves overhead in the breeze. Further behind me is the gravel drive (baking in the sun), the lilies, the wild grass, the road, trees, field, rocky ledge, hill, sky, onward towards where the sun rises and the moon too. I shift the hose to the next dry patch, keeping the center of my focus on soaking the new spears emerging from the bed, and encouraging the roots of the fernlike greens of the spears too thin to pick that have gone on to flower and seed. The muted hills across the valley are like dreams in a ring around me.

Staying focused on what I am actually doing, I am learning to allow my awareness to include what else is also present beyond my own action. What a shift this is from self absorption! In this way I am trying to manage my new condition of having family money that in some ways still feels unreal to me. I've invested most of the money in hopes of providing for a time of life when my husband and I will not be required to trade our time for money. I find that my generosity can express itself in new ways beyond what I can do with my own hands, presence or words, helping others with projects that require funds up front in order to keep on with their missions of building joy and possibility for others. Part of me knows that all I will ever have is living with my choices and offering possibilities to others. How much money changes this is yet to be seen. The biggest change is to offer my husband the possibility that he does not have to continue to earn more money to ensure our future financial safety, which is all an illusion anyway, but which definitely feels more secure with more resources. This is a a huge consequence of our frugal saving, and now the addition of generational savings.

When the asparagus grows too tall, it loses its sweet succulence. I cut it anyway, for the health of the bed, and make broth from the inedible (at least for me) stalks. This is also not something I learned as a child, where we never had a vegetable garden, nor did my mother enjoy cooking (though she loved to eat beautiful fresh foods). My parents were basically first generation of immigrant parents who were not farmers but intellectuals and tradespeople. Probably their grandmothers (or their neighbors) had small kitchen gardens, but that was not what came to America with the next generation. There was an emphasis on intellectual pursuit and freedom of expression, not surprising given the oppression, segregation and limitations set on them from whence they came. There was one branch of cousins that experimented with farm life, attempting to take on agriculture and social structures in the Midwest in the early 20th Century. Mostly it resulted in advanced degrees in scientific fields among the offspring of that clan.

So I stand at the edge of the asparagus bed, feeling sure that the money in the retirement account will be subject to the vagaries of our political and cultural unrest. I am just as sure that the heritage of my ancestors in some way showers down upon the asparagus crowns deep in the earth as I shift my hose onto this quadrant for the third time. The weather has been so hot and dry (blazing wild exuberance and despair in fires out West); the sweet crispness of the raw asparagus is startling and deeply moving. Perhaps the idea of independence is turning away from control towards the freedom to broaden awareness and take in a fuller view. It is this vision that I wish for the people living now. This is their only moment to be awake.

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.

Taking Each Chord and Playing The Possibilities

I just heard a wonderful interview with jazz musician Herbie Hancock in which he eloquently explained a basic principle of my yoga practice. He was answering questions about his new project, and talked about his interest in all sorts of music making. He spoke of jazz and described that vulnerable place where he could respond fully to what was possible in the music, listening to what the other musicians were doing, and really being present. The interviewer referred back to Hancock's early training and the formative experiences he had working with mentor Miles Davis.

It was at that moment Hancock said, and I'm paraphrasing, that he was performing in Europe with Davis and everything was going so well, when in the middle of a performance, Hancock played a chord (he was on piano) that was glaringly awful and wrong. As his heart was sinking, Miles Davis took a breath, and then played notes that fit into the chord pattern, making that chord work in the piece. Asked about the importance of that moment, Hancock said that it was at that moment when he realized Miles Davis did not think the chord was wrong. He did not judge the chord. He simply took that as something new, an opening of possibilities. He went on to say that if, in playing jazz and in life, you can leave the judgment out of it, you make room for that vulnerable honesty that gives you access to the music (and the truth). He said in that space, you learn to trust the other musicians, and to trust your self, in essence being authentic. Being present. It helps him connect with people all over the world, and play all kinds of music.

In truth there is freedom, in letting go of judgment, the limitations are loosened. Imagine yourself on the yoga mat, with all your usual thoughts about what you can and cannot do. In the middle of a lunge, the teacher asks you to lean over your thigh. Stretching your spine, you lean over your thigh and then you're asked to hook your elbow and twist over your thigh bringing your hands to your heart in Anjoli Mudra. You've never done this before and yet you find yourself twisted, hands moving towards your heart, feet grounded in a lunge, gazing over your shoulder to the back of the room. If you had been thinking about this shape, or how hard it is to stay in lunge or how you twist better to this side than that, you would not be where you now find yourself. Is that all there is to it? No, just step forward keeping your knees bent and you will be twisting in Utkatasana. Is that hard or easy? Is that the right way to "come into" Utkatasana? Let it go. Perhaps being open, not judging, authentically in the inquiry, you will find out more about who you really are, and how to play with the chords you find in you.

Reducing Reactivity: No goal, No Judgment

Doing it my way, not-so-subtly pushing for my point of view, feeling it as a negative when asked if I am going to do what I am already doing, or being told or asked to do something differently. All these situations depend on ego and reactivity and are traps that very often make for serious suffering in the form of hurt feelings, resentments, rejection. The self takes a beating whether building up in resistance or tearing oneself down with criticism.

What is the point of forcing opinions on someone else? Why the tendency to illuminate each intersection of a disagreement or take someone else's point of view as a personal attack? How is it a benefit to resist the way someone else does something or to feel that they must change what they are doing to meet one's own ideals? Is it really worth the conflict and bad feelings of arguing over doing something a certain way? This way of being comes up over doing dishes, planting seeds, organizing children's schedules or the classic squeezing the toothpaste scenario. Of course it potentially infects anything where individuals cross paths, coordinate actions, rely upon each other, or find themselves interacting. Strangers, intimates and family members, co-workers, anyone can be the source of this reactivity or the spark that ignites it in ourselves.

For me, a bigger perspective really helps. I am learning to be much more effective and generalized about releasing the reactive thought before I act upon it. A friend was just talking to me about how important it is to allow oneself to pause, giving just that instant of time in which to breathe, to adjust, to release, to see the pattern before plunging irreparably into the mess. It's not uncommon as a strategy to deal with anger, the idea of counting to 10 or taking a few deep breaths. This is so obvious, but the reasons that is helpful in adjusting the anger is that it allows the observing part of awareness to see the situation and by delaying the reaction, lets go of the intensity of the need to react.

That is a behavioral strategy, and it does work most of the time. For me, though, getting to the undercurrent has been very revealing. It is the goal I have set, consciously or unconsciously that makes me feel desperate to have things a certain way, and it is judgment that makes it feel so intolerable to have things go any other way than that to which I am attached. A pause can help me see the larger picture, not just delaying the response so that I can see my reaction, but actually enabling me to see the source of the grasping, the fear, the shame, the threat, the self-judgment, attachment or desperation over outcome that underlies my reaction. In the course of normal interactions, does it matter so much if this or that happens a specific way or in a specific sequence or with a specific result?

From teaching I have been thrilled to find that no matter what I suggest or introduce in a session, each student has their own experience, guided in various ways and with widely different effects from the words and movements of that moment and the next moment. This is a continuous reminder to me that we are all working with the same material and that our conditional experience is always subject to the individual levels of awareness, patterns and openness. There is nothing finite about us, and in that there is possibility that may escape us at this time, but is never far beyond reach. The practice of letting go that is part of yoga is cultivated in each moment. Savasana (the relaxation of "corpse pose") is when most students "work" at letting go, but in every breath the exhale can be a reminder to release what is no longer necessary.

Finding the Jelly Beans

I did not grow up celebrating Easter, but my life began to include some of the traditions when I had children. One of our family activities was to hide jelly beans in plain sight all around the kitchen and invite the kids to find them. Some years we wove little paper baskets, other years just handed out small collection bowls. Always we made sure there were high ones and low ones, that the colors of the beans matched as many of the objects upon which they were hidden, and that it would be fun rather than a chore to find them in unexpected places.

Discovering that which is hiding in plain sight seems to fit in naturally with a yoga practice. Maybe it was those jelly beans helped teach me to look more closely for the parts that merge into the form or color, the pieces that actually are not part of the object. Even my own breath can shed bits and pieces that have attached to it. If I really allow my attention to follow my breath, I discover that I can release a certain amount of unnecessary effort even there, that there is a specific texture to the breath in this moment, that the breath can direct the body or that I can choose to direct the breath. Over time I can see that I use my breath in specific ways, and can discover new ways to allow my breath to support me.

Our habits seem obvious to others, but sometimes remain strangely invisible to ourselves. The jelly beans are hiding in plain sight. Patterns that have evolved as useful in the past, placed carefully at one time, become less useful and sometimes a great inhibition in the present. Simply turning attention on this helps reveal the little bits that have been added and sometimes reveals the structure. These can then be taken apart and set aside for use when useful, or simply let them go.

Through yoga practice we see obvious but unrecognized elements, like our tendency to cross right leg over left, and not so obvious, like holding our breath in utkatasana (chair/fierce pose). Noticing the pattern that is right there in the open is the first step... like finding the red jelly bean sitting on a red milk cap, or the yellow one resting between the bananas. This is the beginning of seeing who we are, and once that begins, the study of oneself can lead to all the treasures resting in the nature of being, being human, being part of the larger world, feeling alive.

Its All There! Buds, Seeds, Falling Petals & Dust

Early Spring in all its incarnations has taken hold of Brooklyn, NY. We get the warm sun, the cold wind, the driving rain, the deep stillness. We get the bare hardscrabble earth in abandoned space, divinely pruned horticultural specimens delicately budded, and wildly profuse weeds in their vibrant green leafing. As I walk to teach yoga I am struck by the co-arising energy of everything around me. That bare ground will be weed-covered, that delicate specialty rose will be wilted and bare. I remember an exhibit of artifacts from ancient Egypt in which there were seeds resting in the bottom of a ceramic pot. Some of that seed resting unseen for thousands of years actually sprouted when given soil and water and light.

I see this idea that all the possibilities are present as another way of thinking about emptiness. The paradox delights me, that emptiness is everything at once, the world beyond the illusion of this-is-this, that-is-that. Okay, this way of thinking is not for everybody right this minute... perhaps eventually ... but my point is this: It is our human way to attach meanings to an object or set of conditions, to associate emotions with our perceptions and not something inherent in the object or condition itself. The rain is not good or bad. If we build houses in a flood plain then too much rain is hard on our expectations, perhaps washing away good growing soil from one place and rejuvenating soil elsewhere in the flood plain. If personal gain is the way we measure, then this is "bad" for some and "good" for others. Yet the rain itself seems to me to have no intrinsic goodness or badness.

We do this all the time with plants and animal life. This is a lot full of weeds, this is a flower bed. This is a beloved pet or endangered species, this is a pest or public health hazard. This is murder, this is food. Dualistic definitive thinking is in our nature, but must we let it rule our lives? I hope not. Yoga has opened the conduits for me and many of my students to see beyond the waves of the mind (Patanjali's Sutra I.2 yogas-citta-vritti-nirodhah), at least part of the time.

Lately I have been deeply investigating Anjali Mudra. To me this is not "prayer hands" as many of my early yoga teachers referred to it. Anjali Mudra is a hand asana that expresses many aspects of our potential awakening. Holding the base of the palms together and allowing the ends of all the fingers to gently meet by gently bending the first knuckles, we find stability and balance between right and left, a foundation in the base of the wrist and lightness and space between the palms. The slight natural cupping of the hands brings a feeling of grace, the contact of the finger tips is lively yet peaceful. There is a deep, gentle and profound sense of completeness. Such a simple thing to do, yet it brings us directly in contact with ourselves and with all the possibilities that open within us. Many speak of this as a symbol of the potential to open our hearts, as often the hands are held before the heart, the head naturally bowing slightly towards this form. There is no doubt for me there is reverence in it. There is also, for me, the availability of directing prana (life energy) through the mudra towards others. A.G. Mohan suggested using Anjali Mudra in many asanas, in order "to bring us humility rather than the ego boost from achieving the form of the asanas." I have been exploring this with great interest.

I like to take Anjali Mudra in its form of representing everything at once: perfection and imperfection, hardness and softness, dominance in balance with surrender. I could go on and on in this same vein. Essentially it represents emptiness and completeness and all the potential of the seed and bud, the soil and the sun, the rain, the breath, the space for the breath in all living things.

A dramatic moment stands out for me when I fully and instinctively understood that everything exists at the same time. Thirty years ago, in the midst of a calm and happy time together with a visiting friend from college days, I felt an enormous surge of what I felt as anger towards him, and out of the blue blurted out at him (suddenly weeping so copiously that he took me in his arms), "When you are a decrepit old man I want to be the one pushing your wheelchair!" There was so much pain and joy in the deep understanding of my love for him that I simply overflowed in all emotional directions at the same time! In that moment, I could see old age in his beautiful youthful form, and feel despair of his loss as I came to understand the depth of his presence in my life. It wasn't long before we both realized that we would spend the rest of our lives together.