Song of The Open Field

photo: jesse r meredith

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense. -- Rumi


The analytic mind has its place. The fullness of sensory lushness has its place too. Experience, that instant recording of sense and intellect, combines in giving us a history, a sense of our self, a place to stand from which we can define and evaluate all that constantly shifts around us. Yet even deeper below these aspects there is an ancient urge to inhale and exhale, to shield oneself from harm, to test the truth as perceived. Much in our human experience rests in the responses of this ancient center of the brain and neurology. Call it fight or flight, or anything you want, if not ruled by it, we must consciously recognize it and work beyond its impulses.

I love this poem of Rumi's (Sufi mystic poet) that so simply steps beyond these limitations of mind's self-absorption. Recently I acquired a Tibetan singing bowl, and even with my totally rudimentary skills, the song it sings goes so deep. This vibrational quality resides in music of all times and places, and can be held in the simple tone poem of "OM." In my classes I sometimes say that it is present in all things and we hear it when it rises to the surface, but it works the other way too. Even without vocalizing, just being present, this vibration can reach deep into the being quality without getting stuck on words, meanings, separations of self or other.

Devotional chanting is not something that makes everyone comfortable, kind of like singing in a church choir is not for everyone. There is an uncanny feeling of self awareness when sound emits from your own throat and joins almost indistinguishably from ambient sound. Self begins to separate and merge along with the sound itself. This can happen even without vocalizing. Silent "OM" is often more wide open than even that which we speak.

Meditation can be an invitation to be in that place, that field Rumi refers to, where the dualistic right/wrong, me/you cease to exist. Even being there for one second as you read Rumi's words, even one second in that field can change everything else.

Inhabit the body, Focus the Mind & Find This Moment

Within a few breaths, the room full of office workers feel their shoulders melt, let their attention rest lightly on the breath drawing into their bodies and begin to let go. We had lifted each leg and felt its weight, then released that weight into the floor, into the structure, into the earth itself. Lightness had already begun to seep into the faces in the room. I cannot imagine they had ever sat together in a room with their eyes closed, breathing gently and feeling so complete.

The purpose of my time with them, all the countable minutes of one hour, was simple: to offer a release from stress. Basically help them relax into a genuine experience beyond analysis and words, goals and priorities, to live in their bodies without criticism and learn a little more about who they really are. Just get them out of the dualities of thinking. Just offer them a view of their own personal roller coaster. Just let them be free. That's all. Oh, and do it sitting in standard issue office armchairs, under fluorescent lights, surrounded by tables and chairs.

That evening, I gently tucked a blanket under the head of a 60-something year old woman in Savasana who was experiencing her first yoga practice. She had her knees propped on blocks, and her shoulders open beneath her ribcage. Her palms were softly open, her mind focused on the glow of her energy pooling there. Her breath was so light, her body weightless. If I had the right kind of camera, I bet I could have captured an image of her energy body along with the other 15 glowing beings on the floor around her at the medical center. Practice began with them spreading mats and distributing blankets to each other, commenting and taking care of each other while waiting for everyone to arrive. Just settling on the mats took time, tending to the truth in their bodies, accepting those findings, and encouraging the breath to discover them too.

This morning, as the sun rose, I watched seven beautiful young faces, eyes closed, breathing in and breathing out, each envisioning a pool of luminous energy in their pelvis as they sat on the mat. With every breath I could feel the energy radiating from them, deeply concentrating as they lifted a blind face towards the ceiling on the inhale, then releasing the chin towards their heart with the exhale. It took a few minutes to get them here, inhabiting the body using the mechanism of the breath, cultivating a focus of attention in the mind on this inhale, this exhale. For just a few minutes, they could let go of the outside shapes of the asana and gave up on competing with themselves, not needing to be more than this, accepting right now.

It only lasts a moment. But that is all we ever have, isn't it? This is why I practice and teach yoga. So far beyond the rush of exercise, so deeply moving in the cells, so full of open space and endless possibilities, regardless of time, place, props, age, body weight or condition. I mean what I say: the only pre-requisite is if you are breathing.

A Foundation in the Breath

Sometimes we lean too hard where we think the support is and throw ourselves off balance entirely. This kind of interaction wastes energy, and ruins relationships. No one else can give you the map, but teachers (and fellow beings) can help you with your map reading skills. I believe the map actually begins to draw itself as we as make our own inquiries. It is convenient to begin with the body, since we each live in one through which we accumulate experiences. I have taken plenty of yoga classes that felt like they were all about the body.

When I started going to yoga classes, I had trouble communicating with my toes. I'd ask them to leave the floor and spread wide and they just looked back at me until I laughed. The same thing happened when I wanted to move my rib cage in small circles, or lift my legs in anything resembling Navasana (boat pose). I could make a long list of what wasn't happening and what was happening. The mind woke up to the shock that I was living in a body I really didn't know, even after all this time and all we'd been through together. There were flexibilities I never realized, and abilities to match the inabilities. There are ways of hearing that internal voice that wants to share who I really am, and allowing stillness, along with unifying movements helps develop the level of consciousness where the inner voice can speak.

In my own practice a shift began as I realized that it is not strength or will that lifts the body, but the ability to allow energy to rise from a foundation of support. It may seem hokey, but even holding oneself on hands and knees and lifting one hand will help inform the body about where the support is really coming from -- the core and the breath. As awareness turns the light on, the body can release and relax all the other clenching muscles and allow the core to use the breath. This lift makes the weight resting on the knees and hands actually lighter. Yes, lighter. So it is not always a matter of pressing down into the earth with one or another body part. I suggest softening the foot into the floor and drawing core energy up the body as you lift the other leg into Vrksasana (tree) or fly a bit in a elementary standing version of Balikakasana (crane) and you may find that balance is no longer a struggle.

There is a significant athletic aspect to yoga in this day and age, in this place, and among many students, but really in my view that is not even half the practice. I, too, admire strong, lithe bodies that can achieve amazing things, seem easy and fluid, and exude grace. I have not felt that I lived in one of those, but I am coming to find those attributes exist even in my aging, asymmetrical lived-in-half-century body. I attribute this to my explorations of yoga, which have definitely not been approached as any kind of physical training in any athletic sense, but truly is a methodical opening of the communication and energy channels inside me. The practice helps me learn theinner languages and more fully understand the messages.

Connecting in the dark

My 88 year old dad called me in the middle of the snowstorm to tell me that the electricity was out but that he and his wife were fine. He told me that he wasn't sure how long his cell phone charge would last. He told me that a kind neighbor had shoveled their stoop and that, although the street was not plowed, he could at least walk to it. He said it was cold in the house, but the stove and plumbing were still working fine.

I am 350 miles away. There was a flood of feelings at his call. I heard the exuberance in his voice over the beauty of the storm, the slight edge of anxiety over the unknown duration of the power outage and its implications, and the pleasure that he could share his adventure with me even so far away. Whether I had been concerned about him or not, his reaching out to me brought me into his experience and placed him solidly in my day. I told him to turn off his phone to save charge, and that I would like to hear from him later to get a progress report.

The blizzard opens that energy channel of compassion that connects us. Sharing food, a fireplace, shovels and playfulness, people in my father's neighborhood feel a natural inclination to connect to one another, be helpful, and even to ask for help. His call to me spread this even deeper into our relationship, allowing us to feel the closeness of people who care for and support one another from any distance. It was not always so.

The freedom in this relationship has evolved in the same space that the neighborhood snowstorm connections have grown. Understanding that we share a set of conditions by being human beings, whereby we suffer more without one another than we suffer with each others' open hand and steady gaze. The position or stature of father-daughter became irrelevant when the channels opened. Past history, inner turmoils, what I call "the story" faded away. It is the release of judgment, the end of the attachment to the roles of the past and the projections of the future that liberated us. Just as in the snowstorm, from miles away I can help him shovel and throw a snowball from his front stoop. Not warning him of this or that, nor directing his attention here or there, I can just let him feel my presence beside and in him, my willingness to include his wellbeing in my own heart.