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.

Meditation: Hold the Railing in the Bottomless Pool

Right in the middle of dinner, a mood settles in, changing the textures of experience, tamping down on interactions and forming strange silences. There's a deep pool of possible feelings upon which to draw, yet like sipping through a straw, only one small part is sucked up, feeding the whole.  It wasn't like this just moments before, or perhaps yesterday was different. It feels as though a shift, like a tectonic plate, happened, and without knowing how it happened, or making up reasons why it happened, we feel as though standing in a place from which life looks different.  Right in the middle of life, someone we love  leaves us and we are lost in the bottomless pool.

It doesn't seem like a choice, since it is something we feel. Feelings surround us, like an immersion, and we cannot feel the bottom of the pool with our toes any more. Seems like either we drift with it, paddle in it, or drown in it. Is feeling really a matter of mind? a reaction to a condition? Does it help to know that the condition is impermanent, or is this feeling of the impermanence of everything like being in a bottomless pool, hopeless of finding our feet? Forever without the comfort of grounding? This is the wash of grief, the depth of loss, the fear of looking forward or letting go of what is past, unable to see the continuum of events as a constantly shifting mirage without feeling despair and agonizing incompleteness.

How do we live with equanimity if there is no bottom to the pool? Think of the shallow end of a swimming pool. There are stairs to give a gradual way into the water, where one can stay until more at ease with the depth and the shift from dry to wet. Even in the deepest end of the pool there are ladders for one to climb out, or to hold onto for a moment of rest. Understanding that the pool is bottomless does not mean giving up these supports, in fact it helps to see them as exactly that. There is little hope of understanding the sea simply from standing on the shore, we begin by wading in. We cannot know the deepest parts on our own, nor traverse the breadth of the sea as a fish might. Yet we can hold the concept of the mountain ridges beneath the surface, the universe of life and energy cycles playing out throughout. These are like the steps into the pool that we can use in approaching the ocean of our feelings and reactions, the seemingly boundary-less and overwhelming reactions we can have in a moment of loss, disappointment or fear.

Setting aside time from the viewing platform of meditation or a yoga practice can allow us to visualize the stairs, and the vastness of the bottomless pool, without reactivity. We can watch the whole scene play out without immersing ourselves in it. Notice the fear or grief arising, the avoidance or the urge to plunge beyond our depth. This moment of observation can be seen and even felt without being lost in it. We can learn to train our attention to hold the railing of the ladder while we let the mind follow the waves outward into the deep end. Let the breath itself be your railing.

Stuck on the Details

Irritation lives in the details. Admiration can also. Mostly it seems humans vacillate between micromanaging and the gross motor equivalent of emotional responses. It is that tiny splinter, or those dirty dishes in the sink, or that little chocolate on your pillow that triggers the focal point, but then the whole system kicks into gear around it.

I love this image because for me it is nothing and everything all at once. It doesn't represent any thing, yet is directly derived from something specific. It evokes many emotional and visual possibilities for me, yet remains undefined in purpose, place or object. It is actually a close up of a painting by Jeff Zilm that I saw at a recent art opening in Brooklyn. I'd never heard of him, having gone to the show to support a young artist I've been following since he was in undergraduate studies with my son. Amid the roar and heat of that boisterous opening crowd, the first thing that caught me like a spider in a web, was this quiet intricate flat work. From there, from this morsel, I was able to open to the other works, the dense noisy crowd, the artists and their brave show of art in the world: Detail as diving platform.

In yoga teaching it falls to me to cover minutiae and grand scale, to introduce the whole body-mind interaction of balance by drawing your awareness to the weight in your heel, for example. Yet I will warn you away from thinking too much about that heel, from getting stuck on the formula of sticking to that detail, and advise you to notice occasionally to feel your weight in your feet, to feel your feet on the earth (okay, really the floor). Broadening that out into how you notice this foundational support and your relationship to it, and when you notice that, developing your awareness of this interplay can shift the way you operate in daily life. Now that's a very big picture.

The idea of single pointed focus is a way of training the mind, not so much to see that specific detail to the exclusion of everything else, but really to enable the honing of attention without blocking everything else out. Noticing that you do or don't feel weight in your heel can help you develop a more complete sense of balance and understand what might be happening with your body's alignment to set you off balance. This can lead fairly quickly to discoveries of all kinds. Taking this into a different context, what would happen if the next time someone irritated or disappointed you, you could see that act clearly in a broad context. If you could hold that focus and be aware of the larger sense of that individual person, the structure of the situation, what you brought to it with your own expectations, the set up of the scene that put the two of you where you are now, the background and history of that relationship, and an idea of the potential for growth and sharing that exists in that moment ... well, you get the idea. It reduces the likelihood of a knee-jerk reaction, and lessens the interest in grasping at that detail, providing a different kind of opening for both of you to respond. Perhaps the insight of what you expected in the first place will give a view of yourself, and a relationship of how that person attempted to express themselves or meet your needs will begin to emerge. Perhaps an insight into the history of your reaction will enable a shift from what you thought to what is actually so.

Does it matter whether you feel your weight in your heel? Stand up and play with that for a minute, focusing on it as the center of an endless concentric field of experience and awareness. Well, that's you being here, using the detail, but not stuck on it.

The Fourth of July brings this idea into a new realm for me. It is awesome that many years ago several groups of settlers decided to hash out enough details to come up with a grand plan for functioning as separate and uniquely equal parts in a common structure for a greater common good. The details can be argued, and we know that many human and other beings were left out of this idea of equality and security. In fact, the majority of human beings living in this land at that time were left out. Women, children, native people and people from other parts of the world who were not directly descended (and even some who were) from the Western European male lineage were not included as sharing equally, but as property or less than human, accorded varying levels of disrespect for health and wellbeing. It has been a long time of working beyond some of those details, and using the framework established in those days has been both a benefit and a detriment.

So I celebrate with a focus on the central core of goodness and possibility in that action, actively working to see the fullest array of what we have here in this country without attaching judgment to it, and hope for growth in our global and individual view of humans on earth. It is not always easy to get beyond sorting out where I feel the weight in my own feet, and surely that awareness of balance must come first, but I do have hope for balance beyond that.

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.

Focus Right Where You Are

Focus on your breathing. Not changing anything. Where do you feel it most? Don't get lost trying to quantify more and most, or choosing here or there. Try to simplify and feel wherever you are feeling the sensations of your inhale and exhale just now.

Stick with that for a few breaths.

Notice where you are finding the breath to feel more vivid in your body, and if you've already wandered, come back to the inhale and focus on where you sense breath more fully in your body. Just for now, just right there. Allow your mind to quiet down a little bit.

Begin to find the three-dimensional quality in your breath, just as it is, just where you feel it most now.

Notice how it describes your internal spaces from front to back of you. Spend several breaths on this.
Notice how it finds a way to describe the top and bottom lengths of you. Spend several breaths on this too.

Just come back to where you feel it most. Perhaps that has changed. Don't think your way into this, just notice that you are thinking about where you feel the breath, and come right back to feeling the breath.

Continue to allow your attention to notice the way your breath describes you. I know you cannot notice everything, but imagine that you could! Follow your curiosity into your hip joints, along the back of your rib cage, into the subtle tilting of your pelvis with every breath. Is your inhale grainy or smooth, is the exhale noisy or soft? Are there qualities in this breath, now? coolness or heat, jaggedness or elasticity? Don't worry about using words to describe qualities. Notice what you can and come back to noticing without getting lost in cataloging. If you do get lost in words and trying to find language, just come back to focus your attention on the breath. No big deal. One great aspect of this is that there is another breath right after this one, so nothing is lost. Just come back to your focus.

Seek out any dull areas in your body, where you don't seem to feel any connection to your breath. Pay attention to that space for a few breaths, allowing your awareness of the breath sensations elsewhere to soften, like a gaze that is unfocused.

Restart if you got lost, and notice where you feel the breath now. Perhaps you can move around a little, do a few yoga postures (asana), or walk around a bit for a few breaths. See if the focus of your attention can keep coming back to find where you feel your breath and where you don't so much. After a little moving about, return to a position you can hold for a few minutes, sitting comfortably, or perhaps laying your body flat on the floor. Bring your attention back to where you feel the breath in your body, continuing to explore its three-dimensional qualities, seeking out any areas that feel dull or unmoving.

Even a few minutes of this every day helps support you in physical, emotional, and psychological ways! There is no "goal" or "end" to this; just set aside a little time to get interested first in what you notice, and then in how that changes.

This is one way of meditating. It offers a way to begin cultivating awareness, increase your ability to focus attention even with all the distractions in the mind, and to strengthen the connections between your mind and your body. This definitely helps me to be right where I am, wherever that is.

Back to Basics

Everything is part of everything else, but when starting a yoga or meditation practice, it does help to narrow it down a little bit. Keeping some basic ideas in mind can invite a more relaxed attitude as we begin a new journey.

For me, yoga has a simple set of principles to begin: breath, alignment, awareness, kindness, curiosity.

Traditionally, the eight principles of yoga, in plain terms, include our relationships to the world around us (yamas) and to the self (niyamas), alignment (asana), breath (pranayama), concentration (cultivating awareness), withdrawal of the senses (developing non-attachment), meditation (interacting beyond dualistic understanding), and the integration of being beyond a separate self (bliss).

Let's be satisfied with whichever part of all this we can hold in our awareness. Start with the basics:
• paying attention to the breath, when you remember; and return to paying attention to the breath when you realize you have forgotten.
• attend to your alignment -- the way your bones stack to transfer weight to the earth and support your movements; and when you realize you have forgotten about your alignment, simply attend to the effects of that and make adjustments.
• cultivate awareness, allowing your breath to lead you in and out of your sensations, reactions, emotions, and postures. Let your mind help you by focusing one one thing at a time, developing the ability to focus by accepting that the lens slips and requires readjustment.
• be kind when you find you have shifted into remembering, replaying events, hollering at yourself, projecting possibilities, wishing things were different, going over things that take your attention away from right now. Just smile a little at your human nature and cultivate awareness of any pattern that might emerge in your internal ways of operating.
• take an interest, be curious, about how your body works, how your mind works, how your interactions and reactions rise and fall away.

Any and all of this will lead to all the rest of this, without you having to make a list or keep a chart or memorize Sanskrit names or learn physiology. Let the names become generalized, in fact, when you notice that you are drifting out of this moment, name the drift -- "drifting" -- or a bit more specifically "worrying" or "dreaming" -- and come on back to NOW. You can do this on a yoga mat. You can do this right at your desk, this minute. Or brushing your teeth.

May all the hoopla over 2011 simply open the path as you make your way.

Judging the Falling Leaf

Walking in the detritus of Autumn. Traversing a landscape with piles of leaves, leaves blowing across the streets, swirled in corners against buildings, damp, dry, brilliant and crushed to brown soggy pulp. What a beautiful reminder of this constant cycle in which we all exist, that of our budding beginnings, coming into full leaf, pulsing with chlorophyll and the means of production to sustain life. Then at a certain moment, draining of that functional ability, turning into something of a different color, a flare marking our existence before detaching, letting loose from the juices of breath and voice, and drying, crackling, falling, drifting, rejoining the substance from which we came in the first place.

So what is beauty? What has value here? What is the meaning? Where is the kernel of justification for everything? Do these definitions and categories change anything about the bud, the green leaf, the tinged yellow, falling brown or decomposed leaf? It is natural for the mind to see the details and acknowledge attraction or repulsion -- does a rotting tomato appeal to you the way a red ripe one does? I don't think so, usually. But if you look without the judging as to whether you want to eat it or not, or touch it or not, perhaps you will see it within the confines of its own beauty.

Some practices put forth the contemplation of the dead as a way of understanding ourselves. To watch the decay of the body is a reminder that we are all one with the dust, one with the microbes and bacteria, one with the water flowing, the leaves falling, the next breath taken by someone else. It is a tough lesson to learn that way, and yet there is much beauty in it. The decay process is not ugly or beautiful, just as the brown leaf or the red leaf is not ugly or beautiful. It is the mind that makes it so. This judging mind is so often turned up to a high setting, aimed at ourselves or others, at each corner of the world in which we spend our days.

The yoga mat, or the site of any meditation, offers a place where for even a few moments you can contemplate letting go of the judgmental mind. Pick up a few leaves -- green, fall colors, brown -- and use them as a focal point for your practice. Let them suggest to you that judging them is a mindless inquiry. Seeing them is an awareness practice, can lead to single-pointed focus, and help you let go of pre-conceived ideas even of your body, your possibilities, your self. Allow yourself to feel the leaves as part of your own cycle, to feel your own beating heart as part of theirs.

I often feel the leaf in me as I drift to the earth for Savasana, not judging where I fall, noticing the support wherever I touch the earth, and feeling the lightness of my curling parts in the air, never minding the next gust of wind that takes me flying.

Repetition & Layers

In my own practice and teaching I allow myself freedom to explore the moment itself. This might mean that I do not follow a set routine, or series of movements or set up with preparatory thoughts, chants, or breathing patterns. Maybe this seems to be a lack of discipline, and perhaps it is. Maybe this is learning to listen and hear the deep teachings that are embodied in my physical self, and perhaps that is so too. There were periods of time when my practice was similar, day to day. Same pattern of warming up the joints, same pattern of following the Surya Namaskar (sun salutation) series of Asana, and adding in a this and a that of twist, or hip opener, of working towards inversions, then a similar series of forward bends and cooling down towards Savasana.

Recently in preparation for a training program through the Arthritis Foundation, I began following a DVD of the most basic Tai Chi foundational movements. Each little movement is preceded by the very same warm ups and followed by the very same cool down exercises. Once again I am in that phase of doing the same movements in sequence, adding in a little this or that of the previously learned lesson plus the new form, and then doing the same closing sequences.

As in all my yoga experiences, there are many levels in the moment. In the breath itself, there are textural changes. There is deep cultivation of awareness as balance shifts from side to side; the arm motion balances the leg shift, and the one hand posture stabilizes the movement in the other hand. It is so beautiful to find once again my attention drawn to feeling the energy in the core of my body in response or as the starting point of the movements.

The role of a good teacher definitely includes bringing the student back from the edge of their effort to the deeper principles. Dr. Paul Lam, who originated this series of Tai Chi for Arthritis, encourages the student to focus on one principle at a time for a period of their practice --for example a few days or a week with focus on balance, gentleness, fluid motion, soft inner energy, or breath in the core -- and then return again to focus on one principle at a time. Repeating the same warm ups, practicing the new forms, closing with the same cool down movements as I focus my attention on my shifting balance, or the spaciousness in my joints becomes a new experience each time I revisit the deep principle.

Try sitting in Sukhasana - a comfortable cross legged position. Imagine you have never done this before and just notice how it feels to be sitting just like that. Breathe into it for a few breaths. Now let your body make the adjustments that offer the support to free your spine, add the props, and bring in the subtle shifts that soften your foundation. Allow your breath to relax your jaw, your heart, your eyeballs. Now simply sit, with your attention on letting your body release and be open to the possibilities. How many times have you brought your body to the mat and sat it down without noticing that it was you, there, on the mat, being yourself? You can now bring all your awareness to any aspect of being, perhaps an intention is forming in your heart, perhaps the breath is now reaching into the back body, perhaps you can feel the flow of energy along your spine.

Doing "the same thing" is a brilliant light to shine into every aspect of your being. Repetition is never "the same thing." Is every inhale the same? Opening like the unfolding petals of a flower, your ability to be present in the moment will bloom with your focus and awareness.

Simplifying Even the Moon

I woke up this morning to a thick fog all around the house in upstate New York. Water droplets on the screens and windows full of white glare. The view held no trees, no hills, no valley, and gave no sense of what else might be out there. What is transformation if not new understanding? As in the discovery of sub-atomic and nuclear physics, the old ideas of Newtonian principles no longer applied to everything, yet had their sway over the mechanical world we can see. Beyond that, with high power microscopes and telescopes, the view of the world became so much larger and new "rules" seemed to make things work. And there is so much we cannot see if we must take everything as it appears. As with the clearing of the fog this morning, gradually the stone wall emerged, and a height of tree beyond, and eventually the valley with streaks of hill behind it. Now the sun shines bright and I can pretend that all is revealed to me. Let's not even begin to consider the insect life, or the microbes in the soil that are nurturing and attacking the roots of everything in the garden. Just that I know this is all going on out there is like the discovery of the atom!

It helps to simplify to the core of being. I watch my blind cat function in the world with remarkable stability and happiness, or what passes for that on the scale of human emotions. He doesn't see but can hunt, he doesn't see but can jump into the chair. He will run to the sound of my voice across an ocean of not knowing, and seems secure, purring and finding my leg to rub against. He is functioning in the deepest sense. It is this that I seek on my yoga mat as well. Can I approach the moon itself, or take in the energy of a star? Can I place my weight in my foot, feeling the energy align up through my leg into my pelvis, forces of gravity holding me securely while I extend in a most natural way through my spine, letting go of the weight of my head, and supporting a lifted arm and lifted leg for Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose)? It doesn't work if I start by taking my body in parts, aim for a shape, or present myself with the struggle of "balancing on one leg." I will not get there by pushing my leg into the air and reaching for an external shape. Yet by finding the root of my soft foot resting on the earth - deeply connected to the balance in my pelvis as the foundation - and then release the energy from in the core of my body - of my being - I feel the flying moon taking form in me. The moon does not balance in the sky, nor hang. Remember, it's visible presence is a reflection of light from the sun. Perhaps I'll use a block under my hand or place my hand on a wall to enable a natural extension in my spine, with energy connecting my heel to my fingers along both flying halves. Reducing fear helps my breath and my breathing helps reduce fear. Maybe I will elongate into this flying feeling on my way in and out of Trkonasana (Triangle Pose), playful, and without goals. Like the fog, the efforting and judging can easily obscure this shining moon from sight.

I think of the people around me with their heads full of ideas, goals, and desires. I love them and wish them well. May they find ways to release these desires and find joy in what they are actually doing (not wishing for summer when it is winter and wanting the sun when there is fog)! May they allow themselves the freedom from the external goals long enough to discover what they love to do (letting the passage or ride be as much for them as the getting where they are going)! May they see in the swirl of ideas an ocean of possibility in which they breathe each breath and explore their authentic self, coming, as they eventually will, into the brilliant light of the sun once the fog clears (just being their self). I cannot make this happen, nor will all my words or yogic teachings make this available to them. Only in their own explorations will their path emerge. As their foot steps in the fog the earth rises to meet it. I see my little cat leap onto the front step, my voice being the open door. People can also find that their breath and their foundation on the earth support their wildest adventures and the softest of moments. I would invite you all to fly as the moon itself.

Lilies & Emptiness

My husband and I have a daily mid-summer ritual of deadheading the lilies, and use that time and intimacy to acknowledge each bloom that will last only one day. Yet at this stage, on the first of July, I am surrounded by budded stalks of lilies from those still hiding in the leaves to those that stand tall as though their presence is the whole point. Slender or thick, singular bud or uncountable multiples, round or spiky, the green buds stand erect and stunningly beautiful in this moment of development. They might seem plain, nothing flashy. The brilliant colors are invisible. Their light fragrances, the graceful forms, all that is out of sight. But to me they are exquisitely and fully present. I know that in some years the deer eat off the bloom ends of this or that one before they open. Each year there are possibilities of those urgent hard summer rains beating down just at the moment when the blossom opens, battering and discoloring its one day expression.

These green stems with bulbous bud forms help me recognize and separate out from expectations and projections, and celebrate the moment. I find the beauty in the elegant grassy leaves and the buds that are luscious in their curves and clusters, embodying possibilities held within. This brings up a feeling of emptiness in me, a sense of fullness so vast there is nothing to it, no boundary and no need. If I should never see the bloom, I would still be filled with this awe and acceptance. If the bloom is a color I have never imagined, I will still be grateful for the drying brown leaves that hold the place for that lily all winter long. All of this is intertwined without a beginning or an end.

It is hard to describe the emptiness that includes everything. Being separate is like how it feels to look into another person's eyes, and realize that one minute I am focusing on one eye, and then the other eye... never seeing both at once. It leaves me bouncing between expectations and judgments, measuring and grasping, reaching for something defined by the mind as "looking into someone's eyes." Emptiness of the sort I'm experiencing is as though the gaze is wider, as though the focus of the eye itself opens to hold a wide swath just as clearly in a focused gaze. This view takes in the whole face, in fact the whole being, of the person in one gaze, not just the eyes as if they were a separate gateway into making connection. Expectations or definitions fall away and there is no need to separate the eyes as an endpoint. It is not an unfocused feeling, but one of clarity without boundaries.

It is wonderful how there is nothing dreamlike about those lily stalks emerging from their leafy clumps, pointing their energy up from the earth towards the sky. They are vividly present like silent guardians, standing ready in firm collaboration with gravity and light, really making themselves happen. Some few are already swelling, showing bits of color, nearly ready to open and offer themselves to bees, birds, rain, the wind, deer and me. Letting go of what they are now, not needing to be lily buds, or flowers, or seeds for that matter, they take their vibrant stance in the sunlight, making magic just by being. They seem to offer me one more possibility of being aware, and being present, of finding that emptiness where dualities drop away.

Clearing Clutter

There are lots of jokes about solving how hard it is to live with our family or with conditions around us by adding in so much more hardship that when we take that away, the original mess feels easier. This is the "bang your head and it feels good when you stop" idea. This is a little backwards, in my view. Of course the weight is lighter after you put on more weight and then take that weight off. I think it's important to acknowledge both what it is that we are carrying around and the particular set of conditions or reflexes that chafe or grind. When we can see these objects and patterns that have evolved because of our own existing structures, we can begin to unpack the real load, and clear the true space ... not just try to trick ourselves into feeling differently about it.

In his notes to his introduction for his 1988 translation of the Bhagavad Gita, Stephen Mitchell quotes Maharshi Sri Ramanasramam. The simplicity of this thrills me:

"Peace is our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that
we stop spoiling it. We are not going to create peace anew. For
instance, originally there is nothing but space in a room. We fill
it up with various objects. If we want space, all we need to do
is to remove all those objects, and we get space. In the same way,
if we remove all the rubbish, all the thoughts, from our minds,
peace will appear. What is obstructing the peace has to be removed.
Peace is the only reality."

That original space is already there, waiting for me to clear out the clutter. I watch my mind filling up like a floor with everything dropping upon it. With my attention focused, I can slowly clear away the stuff, filing it where it might be of use, putting it away as "stuff," or recycling it as material for some other time. The surface becomes clear and once again I'm able to walk, or stand, or even lie down upon that floor.

I feel this very directly in my asana practice. In order to reach my shoulder and release it from whatever is clenching it, I apply this idea of clearing out the clutter and focus on my breath, dropping the tension away from my shoulder joints. This focused attention and reliance upon the breath are key to everything for me. It is through this that I can separate the clenched jaw from the tight back muscles. Using the natural expansion of my breathing ribcage, I can release the shoulder to float on the existing structure, and let go of the holding and judging. Just acknowledging the fear I feel about moving the tight shoulder helps me to let it go . Seeing what is going on there (the piles on the floor), nodding at the worry about it (labeling the "fear"), discovering the way the elbow can shift the movement away from the shoulder joint (recycling what might be useful), exploring the possibility of doing less (putting things away to save for later) and allowing the deeper muscles of the breath to help.

Where my attention goes, so goes my energy. If I can focus on the breath and take apart the pile of junk clobbering my shoulder, I can find so much more space in which to be who I am, taking care of my shoulder and exploring all it can make possible.

Less is More - Make the Suggestion

It seems part of our human nature to push ourselves, to strive for things, to exert our energy and our influence in order to feel productive and even a little bit in control of the messy universe. I see my students over reaching, torquing joints in twists, yanking and pulling themselves inside and out. This is partly why they are in my class doing yoga, to have me reminding, cajoling, enticing, and surprising them as I gently suggest ways to let that go and find space of a different sort.

I have had some experiences with The Alexander Technique that had deep repercussions simply by suggesting that I think about something a different way. Just the suggestion evoked a new brain pattern, which in turn supported a new body pattern that brought ease where there had been tension, peace where there had been pain. Making the effort to put space in my painful shoulder did not work. There was no way I could muscularly pull that joint apart without tensing other muscles, and making more trouble for myself.

My yoga practice offers me the breath as the first tool, the first vehicle for change. Even though I practice often, teach often, and am living more and more in the framework of this practice, when I think of it I exhale and release my shoulders -- they are almost always carrying tension when I am not thinking about them. So I know that the vast majority of my students are also carrying their tensions, attitudes, anxieties in active ways throughout their bodies when they are not focused on releasing them.

Here is where the power of suggestion comes in. Doing less is certainly key when it comes to reducing the tendency to over-effort. But telling yourself to "do less" is like telling yourself "to relax" when you are tense. Yeah, sure, right, RELAX!! DO LESS!! (Can you tell I'm smiling?) We cannot effort our way into doing less or into relaxing, but we can make suggestions that often have quite wonderful effects.

Here are a few you can try with yourself.
Suggest that your skull is simply resting atop your spine. (It doesn't require any major effort to hold it there, it will not fall off!) Explore with tiny micro movements the way it can move by nodding ever so slightly, and turning as if saying no ever so subtly. Suggest that this connection can remain loose and spacious. (Just notice if this has any influence on the tension in your neck.)

Suggest that your shoulders, collar bones, and shoulder blades are floating above your ribcage. Let your inhale explore this feeling, rising throughout the ribs and allowing your shoulders to float like sticks atop the gentle waves of breath. Suggest that your exhale might leave bits of space between the bones of the shoulders, as the ribs gently rest on the receding breath. (See if your shoulders begin to relax as your heart opens, lungs filling the top of the rib cage, as the weight of the shoulders lightens.)

Suggest softness and space in your hip joints as you walk, imagining the bones of your thighs loosely wrapped by cushions of stretchy flexible bands. Allow this softness to permeate your movements, feeling the freedom of the swinging bones, the width of the motion, the range of your own stride. (Notice if your breath begins to follow your steps as you walk, taking pleasure in this new freedom!)

No one likes to be told what to do when they already know what to do. Perhaps we feel differently when we imagine that we do not know. I suggest that by opening an inquiry with suggestions rather than directions, you will discover all kinds of space and ease, and feel how much more there is in you when you do less! And of course, in every one of these suggestions you have shifted your focus, inward, to the breath, releasing the grip a little on the urge to control, to judge, to muscle. Through suggestion you offer yourself a moment -- this moment -- to be in the inquiry of who you are and how your body and mind work together in the present tense. That feeling is enough all by itself to help let go and breath a little easier!

DE-STRESSSING: Let Yoga Be a Way Out & a Way In

Last evening I was teaching a de-stress chair yoga for medical professionals and supporting staff members and one participant asked "How many times and how long can I do this to help relieve my anger and frustration?" It was a wonderful question, one rarely asked. It pointed to the deeper questions, of choices and reactivity, of mechanisms developed to support a series of patterns that might not be doing that person any good in daily life contexts. Even the de-stress yoga techniques I was teaching could be fitted into those patterns in a destructive reactive way, used to reinforce formulaic and judgmental responses.

The physical practices of yoga are not really a gym class. The linking of the breath to the movements in the body and the focus that this requires bring awareness to the moment in a way that is not about counting breaths or holding asana or mudra for a specific amounts of time. It might make sense to build strength by gradually adding in a number of chin-ups or time on the rowing machine, but with a yoga asana those challenges often come simply in returning attention to the breath again and again. In this way, doing a relaxation technique or routine of spinal movements may start out as a response to a provocative moment at work or in a relationship, but will open into something quite different than simple endurance or muscle strength (those these are also side benefits of practice!).

Directing attention to the breath and allowing this focus to clarify where there is unnecessary effort is a way of learning to allow the breath to release that effort. Every inhale can bring energy, oxygen, sustaining nourishment. Every exhale can release undue effort, let go of muscle tension, open the mind and body to possibilities. In this way, repeating a simple sequence of hand motions - folding fingers in on the inhale and exhaling, then opening the hand on the inhale and exhaling - acts as a reminder to remember the breath. More than the physical action itself, this is a practice in single-pointed focus, developing new muscles of attention that brings the practitioner into the present moment and releases the person from attachment to the tensions and reactivity that are clutching them. Part of the effect is giving the body time to have its reaction and release it, similar to the technique of counting to ten before reacting in anger; part of the effect is to draw the attention inward to the inherent stability of the breath rather than dispersing energy in reactivity.

Of course the movements of the body open energy channels as well - and provide tremendous benefits in joint health, spinal flexibility, circulation, mobility, organ cleansing, even moderating existing conditions that are the results of habits and emotions, imbalances and chronic behaviors. These net physical benefits also help to reduce stress responses on a physical level, but the key is a fundamental and simple matter. Even in the first experience with yoga a beginner follows the physical directions for body and breath and as the body attempts to follow the directions, the breath begins to support everything that is going on. Whether a student willfully remembers to breathe or not, the body will take the cues and inhale and exhale, extending and releasing, undulating and cleansing, flooding the body with oxygen and supporting effort and relaxation. Letting this sustain you can feel like understanding plate tectonics, gaining trust and understanding of the basic structures that support in being alive.

Of course yoga can be fitted into a judgmental or competitive pattern; an admonition to "practice every day" or to do "this sequence this way" can turn yoga into the same routine as a series of push ups and sit ups, with the same limited effects. And there are times when a yoga practice might become a targeted practice towards a particular challenge or process, like a "goal." Yet the open spaces in the joints are made of breath not will power. And the reduction of anger and stress on the job will not come from adding another reactive response to the sequence. The yoga techniques that help reduce that anger and stress do so because they are more than a reactive response, they quietly transform the reactive moment into a vivid, focused moment of being -- in fact the only moment in which you are actually living... and breathing. You can use them like editing pencils, but their effects will spread like water colors.

Finding Drishti - A Good Seat With Obstructed View

Lately at times it feels as though I'm in a theater but my view is obstructed and I just can't get or take in the whole scene from where I am. Meanings escape me, understanding comes haltingly and the scene shifts before I've been able to catch all the words. The direct antidote for this feeling is my practice. First, being open to what is there; second, acknowledging that what I perceive is subject to constantly changing conditions; third, not judging my responses and letting them come and go; and four, focusing my Drishti (gaze), my attention, whether it's an inner focus or an external one. The resulting clarity and calm helps maintain a willingness to stay in the theater, a good thing since, according to Shakespeare all the world is a stage, and we are merely players upon it.

I just returned from a visit with my elder family members during this period of particularly wild political, national and global news. This includes the on-going natural and human phenomenon in Haiti, the political story in Massachusetts, the rocking boat of national health insurance discussions, and the court's authorization for corporate money to jump with both feet on our political processes. Meanwhile I am absorbing the details of life among those living in the later part of life. The slower but in some ways radical events, feelings, meanings, and relationships are visible and invisible. Seeing through nonjudgmental eyes I feel a deepening in my ability to be connected and close to fundamental truths I share with them and all beings. This helps enormously in the wide world, and the very intimate one as well, where my reactivity can lead to sorrow, frustration and disquieting fears for the future.

There is no boundary that protects anything I know from what I might forget or re-imagine differently. There is no law that states this one set of positions or opinions is the only correct one. I can change my seat, but my view will remain obstructed as long as I am attached to the idea that "truth" is a particular story, or that "right" is a specific way of doing or being. This does not serve my being in the world. It seems obvious that memory issues change the way a conversation unfolds, the way a day winds through itself, the way feelings wrap and unwrap events, comments, relationships and decisions. In some very real ways all of history is subject to issues of memory, interpretation, point of view, and what a friend of mine calls "politics of location." I feel this quite personally, sitting at the table, or on the side of a bed, in front of a newscast, or on my yoga mat.

I find that focusing my drishti helps me recognize myself in each of my relatives no matter how different our situation or stage of life. I can find them in me. My openness to the whole stage allows me to see myself in shadows and in light. If I can know the shape of the obstruction, it helps improve my view. Meditation and yoga on a regular basis unfolds the eyelids and allows me to see the shapes more and more as I go along.

Setting The Whirlwind Aside

At the start of every yoga class I teach, I take a few minutes to encourage my students to become present. How funny that sounds! As if we weren't present to begin with! Yet it is clear to every one of us that doing nothing but sitting with our attention focused on breath and physical alignment is an intense and real change from simply plopping down on the mat. There is certainly an illusion that we are in the room, as we fuss over the padding under us, listen to conversations of others, wonder about the class to come, go over the details of earlier activities or worry about what will come after class. Once the breathing settles, the rush of interpretations continue inside each of us. Feelings and judgments about even the smallest things can demand attention for a bit until we regain our awareness of the breath. How many times does the mind wander to analyze something, explain something, or make judgments or tell a story? We can learn to let all that go; not necessarily stop it, but stop feeling the urgency of it, and exist in a fuller sense that is not ruled by the whirlwind of the mind.

Meditation may seem strange at first. A friend of mine once expressed this as, "I really am supposed to just sit and do nothing, think nothing? And this is supposed to make me feel good?" One of the keys to freedom from suffering is basically to stop defining our self, and let go of the misunderstanding that constant input and output equates to being present. It can be startling how much concentration it takes at first to stay with a focus on the breath. One practice is to count ten inhales, and if the mind wanders at all, start over. You can feel the mind like a dog on a leash, trying to dash here and there, restrained by the leash, until it learns, like the dog, that it is okay to just be right there. At that point, you don't need the leash to hold the mind still through 10 breaths. If numbers don't work for you, just think "In" as you inhale, and "Out" as you exhale. You might try letting the dog off the leash and see if you can maintain your focus on the breath while also being aware of the mind dashing this way and that. A practice that can help here is that of naming or labeling the thoughts and feelings that come up. We can use our mind's powerful observational skills to help release the hold that mind's urgent activity has on our sense of self.

So long as our sense of self is attached to the way our mind runs, our concept of our self clings to this and that, and we are unable to feel authentic. Activities are not in and of themselves bad for us, it is the mindless quality with which we do them, and our inability to set them aside, their urgency that essentially denies us openness to our self. We block out, we fill up, we manipulate and we unconsciously turn our selves off, using ever more frantic and constant messaging, e-chat, emails, meetings, news outlets, gossip, earphones, cable stations and yes, even blogging. It may seem that this protects us from something. Perhaps these mechanisms help us stave off the risks of feelings or circumstances, yet keep us unaware and disengaged from directly experiencing our self.

This is a typical human trap. We can chase happiness by ignoring who we really are, imagine we avoid risks by ignoring our own patterns and behaviors, and continue to overwhelm our senses, stimulating a hollow feeling of self-importance and deep doubts about the reality of our self. Our certainties and self definitions can be undone in a half second, we can feel our very self is undermined, and spiral into despair.

When I wake up in the morning, I give myself a few minutes. The first thing I do is notice that I am breathing. My awareness simply finds my breath. I allow myself to notice the quality of air on my skin, the warmth of the blankets, anything at all. I encourage myself to be vivid, even if it means noticing that my eyes are glued shut with sleepiness and one hip is uncomfortable. I do not judge my condition, just take it in. I have learned that I do not need to have judgmental feelings about myself or the day or my condition. This has been liberating, regardless of whether I'm well or fighting a cold, sleeping late or getting up very early.

In meditation the same quality of noticing is my starting place. Allowing my mind to find its focus on the breath: its texture, depth, all the little effects on the rest of my body. In a way this is a profoundly comforting way of accepting who I actually am in that moment. I also allow my thoughts to come and go. Sometimes I get lost in a sequence of thinking, surprising myself as I return to awareness of the breath, and realize that I was gone for a while. It is this that offers the opportunity to see who I am, what distracts me, perhaps exposing my anxieties and interpretations, and really getting to know myself as the operator I am in the world. Sometimes insights arise that my thinking mind could not configure without this open space.

Being present in the moment is the first effect of meditation. This has a ripple effect of giving me the chance to find real balance, ease, and openness with the person I am, making choices about where I turn my attention and use my energies. It is a bit like being in the eye of the hurricane where there is great stillness and you can observe and even appreciate the whirling chaos and power of the winds around you, yet not be swept away.

Just Noticing, Just Being, Just Doing

I remember many discussions with my kids about doing their homework that inevitably led me to remark that if they had just been doing it for the time we had been discussing doing it, it would be done. This is a pattern I love in human beings. It is something only we do, turning things around and around and making story all about it rather than simply noticing what it is and stepping into it. So many of our words connect to this process - most of the hypothetical what-if-then-should-want-will-would-can-could conditional structures help us separate ourselves from doing, turn the action into inaction, and surrender us to mind chatter. I don't mean we should avoid real conditional statements: "if it is cold, then I will wear my heavy coat." In that case, just wear the heavy coat!

It comes down to accepting that I will notice what I notice, understanding that there is much that I will not notice, and forgiving that self-selection. Working with that, I notice more about my ability to focus, and this helps me deepen that ability, keeping me in an active mode rather than slipping into that passive mind chat state. Sitting at my desk as I write this on the computer, I am aware of my seat, my weight in balance, the earth below me taking part in supporting my foundation, the air being drawn in and expelled as I breathe. I feel the release of tension in my neck and the looseness in my shoulders as I type, the background sounds, the quality of light from the day, even the sensations of appetite and the way my mind pushes the rest of the day's schedule aside as I do this thing now. Yet I can focus on what I am thinking and doing. This was not always so! It can still happen that my mind's chatter conflicts with what I am doing to the degree that nothing gets done, but much less so. I am so much more willing to go with what actually is, accepting what I am actually attending to by noticing what I am doing. Then I can choose to play in the mind's waves rather than simply get thrown around by them.

My yoga practice evolved simply and in fits and starts, gradually opening into this ability to focus myself, to allow what I notice to be just that. I didn't think this was at the center of my attention as I learned to sit on the mat, or breathe through a sequence of asanas, or discover where I was gripping, where I was able to release, or even feeling how I was judging all of that was happening on the mat. It was not a goal I had set, though certainly at times awareness itself was part of my intention. It seems it was exactly this process of coming to terms with the surface, allowing my attention to slip deeper and deeper into the breath, the overlay of the mind, the impulses and patterns of mind and body that brought me this ease of noticing, letting go of the attachment to what I notice, and bringing me peace with how it is in this moment. I'm learning to release the judgment of myself that separates me from being free in the moment just by noticing that I am judging in the first place.

Just notice what you notice. You can start with your breath, since it is always there and constantly changing. Is it deep, shallow - go closer to it - is it in your throat or belly? Does it have a texture, a quality of ease or catching? Do you feel your ribs widen and contract or perhaps your collarbones or shoulders rise and fall? Does your skin feel any movement, what about the edges of your nostrils? Release all this focus and just breathe. Can you continue to notice qualities in your attention itself, scanning the body, drifting to something else, staying easily this moment on the breath? The practice is to simply notice, drawing your attention back to the breath when you notice it has wandered. Even five minutes of this practice will strengthen your ability to just notice. And being able to just notice will enable more of the clarity that helps you to take action without so much surface distraction. Just see what happens, noticing whatever you notice, and don't think too much about it!