Truth through the Paradoxical Lens of Yoga

Impermanence is obvious. It's dark and then it's light. I'm sleeping and then I'm awake. This pear is not ripe and then it is. I'm breathing in and then breathing out. My eyes are watering in the wind. The water is boiling and transforming into steam. Oh, you can fill in a thousand immediacies that were different a minute ago, or two weeks ago or will be shifted by the time you read the next word. Blink. Blink.

In all of this intermittent reality what is truth?

Is truth drowned and lost in the sea of impermanence? Is truth substantiated only by the moment, an ever shifting, yet layered history, like the earth? A reality, when examined, that reveals conditions from yesterday, last year and millions of years ago? Doesn't what you find depend upon where you dig; and depends upon how wide a site or context you examine with what skills?

So it seems the truth is situational, and personal, yet constant and universal. Surely this is paradoxical.  I apply my pre-existing assumptions, my learned expertise, my experiential practices to what is happening in this moment. If I cultivate an ability to be aware beyond the reactive, by repeating this practice, applying my attention in many different contexts,  I can begin to perceive  these personal elements: my pre-existing assumptions, my learned expertise, my experiential practices. Patterns of reactivity or my very own personalized systems of layering observations and experiences begin to separate out from the original sources, or instigations. Over time I can see how even these internal structures of mine have changed. 

In this mash up of interpretation and experience, how do we know when something is true or not true? I remember as a teenager,  my history class was given several different first-hand accounts of one historical event and we were asked to attempt to detail what actually happened from putting these differing points of view together. Of course, this was interesting and challenging, but even with the same multiplicity of accounts, each of us put together a different view of those events, as filtered through our own pre-existing interpretive structures.

Is it any wonder that in our current political context, reality is being played like a game of telephone where each person whispers to the next what they thought they heard, interpreted through their own pre-existing patterns of vocabulary, reactiveness, contexts etc.

Can yoga help us hear ourselves, each other, and the truth? I think so. Once we accept that we are each a complex mechanism of interpretation for each grain of truth, it's possible to see how, when seen from another vantage point of experience or understanding, the same object looks different. The object itself is not frozen in its form either, being a continuously transitioning little bit of impermanence itself! So there is lots of space in each moment for compassionate embrace of confusion, tolerant amusement at the desperate gripping for the one-true-reality that we all feel at one moment or another, and application of a series of observational mechanisms for helping us find our own foundation and stay open minded in that moment.

Paradox is welcome in my view through the practice of yoga. We can be physically releasing into the elemental force of gravity through our feet, while at the same time feel an uprising energy throughout the body. With practice, it possible to embrace both/and as a way of seeking truth too.

When Hauling the Heavy Stuff, Give Yourself a Breather

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

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

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

Asana & Mind: Twisting as a State not an Action

Don't we imagine that the goal is to twist as far as we possibly can? Of course we all begin with striving and measuring how we think we do in relation to images in our mind or presented by the bodies next to us. The next stage is our effort to identify what is happening and how it happens  and in doing that we get attached to the specifics like pressing into the thumb and index finger in downward facing dog or focusing on drawing the left ribs towards the back body or towards the ceiling in a spinal twist. But these are not the goals nor are they really the pivotal mechanisms in that down dog or spinal twist, warrior or headstand. We can only find our way once we see where it is in our self that yearns and overworks, where our energy disconnects or pools, and how our judging mind blocks our path and builds our habitual patterns. Yes, there is a building of familiarity with how the body works, and our own body in particular, but the twist is more about opening the mind, than seeing the room behind you.

Beginning,  we open our attention to new places in the body and experience our own efforts with both wariness and awareness. Once we feel the outer edge of that foot in a standing pose and discover the internal shift it takes to feel the inner heel at the same time, we can stop focusing on that and begin to follow the line up the body, balancing the pelvis between the legs, then drawing the energy up the legs and in towards the pelvis and then moving our awareness from place to place, adjusting the fulcrum of our attention and effort. In  beginning we must activate an acuity of attention and forge a balance in our awareness and effort.

Then we let that go. We are not perfecting a particular pressure of foot or angle of hip. We are not drawing the ribs around the body to create torque in the spine and a sore ribcage. More effort is not the goal nor does it produce bliss. Even worse than our habitual patterns might be replacing them with over efforting and rigid assumptions. In this process we can learn about inquiry, about our actions, our urgencies, and our minds.

Effort is required of the mind to observe and attend to the body in any moment.  Effort is also required in the body to bring the mind into an alert and informed state. It is at this point that spaciousness and ease can enter the practice. The equation shifts when we allow the body to relax into a posture of supported effort and the mind to release judging and adjusting that effort and begin to explore being in a pose. It is this quality of being that opens the box of possibilities.

It is this moment that may be missed  if our practice requires constant  motion and use of effort to keep going. though we may burn through resistance of one kind we may be catering to habitual patterns of resistance too. We can build muscular and cardiovascular strength and cultivate intimacy when we let go of the constant physical negotiation for deeper, harder, or really just more.  In the silence of being in a pose, we find our breath, we can use the mind to soften the fierceness of the body. By opening ease in the midst of all the effort we begin a new adventure of adeptly holding a posture without continuing to "work" on it. Then the work is in the energy, breath, and awareness, supported by mindful conscious alignment of bone and muscle.

At a certain point in the twist it is important to let go of the act of twisting and experience the support and clarity of being twisted.

Body as Vehicle for Experiencing Life in the Mind

Looking at this image of a pie is a way in to the way my mind works. Even if I didn't have associations with the experience in time and space of being served this pie (which I do), I react with admiration, appetite, and curiosity. This image sparks my body into hungry messages, and my feelings about diet, body image, flavors, my own pie making, and on and on.  This image of a pie is a way of triggering all kinds of information about how my body and mind work.

The physical practices of yoga are just like this pie, offering unlimited ways of revealing our selves to our selves through the experiences we remember, project or have in the moment, including feelings and all kinds of associations. The body postures (asana) and breath practices (pranayama) are available to us now in so many ways, styles, places, and tempos.  Each time we approach the yoga mat, no matter where or with whom, there is an invitation to combine the mind's attention with the body's experiences.  Teachers ask students to direct their attention to this through instructions about dropping shoulders down the back, or feeling the weight in the outer edge of the foot, or lifting the Mula Bandha to engage the deep abdominal muscles.  This is mind seeking out the communication channels in the body, literally making the connections. So many of us confuse our right arm with our left as we process verbal instructions, but that is not a problem really.  Some of us can't lift and lower only our big toe, but that is not a problem either. Yoga opens these lines of communication and invites us to let go of the judging of what happens or doesn't.

It is not for the physical experience alone that we come to the practice, and the practice will not leave us alone at that level of engagement.  Finding that we don't know how to lift those deep muscles of the Mula Bandha from the base of the perineum, we wonder how to activate this area? Or perhaps we do know how to lift the Mula Bandha but only in association with moments of sexual involvement and find ourselves embarrassed and inept at making that deeply personal connection in the context of a yoga class. This is invisible, as is the sensation of weight in different parts of our feet -- or so we think.

The physical practice of yoga is deeply personal. It allows an intimacy with oneself physically that draws out the mind, engages the emotions, and may trigger many unexpected experiences. In the classic yoga structure, Asana and Pranayama are but two of the eight limbs of yogic practice, the rest are philosophical and relate to energies and attention,  dealing directly with mind in all its aspects and attributes.  It is the physical practices that reveal to us that the body is the vehicle for experience that the mind can use to discover itself.

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

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

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

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

the mind of not all or nothing: just see what emerges.

Walking in the light powdery snow, I was bewitched by the transformations, leaves became cups and simultaneously appear as knife-like edges in the snow. Distances in the valley are aflutter with white flecks turning air and space into volumes. Definitions disappear. Here the submerged log emerged with its tinge of velvet green moss. What is the truth about the light snow, the maple branch below or the leaf litter? Can the surface be surface, while the depth is a huge mass of fallen tree, and the snow be falling too?

All bound up in thinking, I bind myself up with projections, goals, memories, ideas. Reaching for the shapes that I think, I practically block any sense of the real. I cannot pretend to give up thinking, nor do I want to do that. I am beginning to see that it doesn't take huge complicated tools though to loosen the tightness of the bind of my thinking. It is like the way I learn not to reach too hard to catch my own hand to bind an asana only to give up on my spinal alignment.  It begins with noticing that my thinking is confining me.

More and more I see how selective my letting go has been. I seem to release this grip, but not that grip. I believe this, but not that. I tolerate this, but not that.  Once I see this personal structure, this selective way of grasping at one aspect while avoiding another, I have the opportunity to be more fully. Truth and freedom, equanimity and clarity glimmer in all the levels of letting go. It is not an all or nothing proposition, like light appearing in the dark. It is always light.

In my snowy walk, the most striking thing happened as I turned to return to the house. I felt thrilled and surprised to the core to see the subtle impression of my own tracks:  a slight disturbance in the powdery snow with delicate crushing of the leaf edges into the powder. This evidence of my own steps seems most marvelous of all -- holding for just a moment all the wonder of impermanence and presence.

Music & Silence

Breathing. This is the sound I hear of oceans and wind, of expansions and contractions. Releasing whispers. Releasing sighs. When I teach, I most often use music as a way of shifting the orientation of my students away from the external world and into their own energy lines and their own bodies, yet music remains external. It is like a prop that helps extend your spine by lifting your hand on a block, the music disappears and reappears when you need it. That is, if it is doing what I hope it is doing. Music can work against the inner rhythms at times, a mood introduced with words or associations that is distinct from the practice. Yet often a person will not even know what the music was during a class, and simply flow along. There is so much going on, after all.

Yet practice in silence is so deeply tuned to the breath in the body, that I begin to wonder how we ever practice with music at all. The sounds of others breathing can be more powerful and supportive than the music, encouragement to deepen, to let it go, and to feel less isolated. Of course sometimes those exotic sighs from across the room will be distracting! Or that particularly vibrant Ujjayi sound will introduce doubts about one's own quiet waves...

I am not one sided on this, and find music in classes can bring flow and sustain effort, ease tension and even tease out humor in a tough moment. But I am not listening to the music as I teach. Truthfully I hear it when it distracts me, when it intrudes into the silence. I feel it settle the students into the closing asana as we prepare for Savasana, and then I want deep quiet for them.

Midday Traffic: A Lesson in Equanimity

Driving down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on a repair errand, heading towards the neighborhoods that reach the sea. Double parked trucks and cars, impatient zoomers tucking in between the obstacles and cutting back into the reluctantly single lane of barely moving traffic. The bus here and there, lumbering in and out of the current; slow heavy construction vehicles grinding along methodically avoiding left turn lanes and thereby blocking everything else. A very hot day it was too, the sidewalks crowded with people from nearly every nation on earth.  What a heavenly enterprise! Imagining that I could take the short time between my teaching commitments and get this thing done!

When I felt a sense of time rise up, it turned into an endless hot open field. As a low slung car with Pennsylvania plates cut back in front of me for the third time, I burst out laughing. This driver is staying busy, I thought, moving in and out as if they are getting ahead, yet every time they end up right in front of me in my sluggish journey, steadily heading towards that specific authorized local repair shop on Quentin.  Any tension about my schedule shuts down my energy and my sense of good humor, so I let it go, figuring that I made this decision well informed and with every chance of success. Anxiety about the light changing to red before I get to it closes off my good will, which I feel towards the small car in front of me full of chatting young women. Why waste my time on that? I have watched them try once to get around the dump truck and ended up back in front of me. Eventually we both made it around that truck. They are occupying themselves with each other's company, so I choose to enjoy that too. Why worry about traffic lights as we wait for the green light in tandem?

When I take a revolved balancing posture in my practice, I know that my energy lines must be open in the same way as when I drive down Flatbush Avenue in mid afternoon. Ready for anything, steady of purpose, good humored about the flailing or throbbing or whirling outliers of body, mind and context. Keeping my energy openly flowing in all directions, without judging the wobbly foot or the tangled gaze, I can find spaces in my spine as I twist, and in my mind as I watch where the struggles arise.

Noticing that impulse to want the light to remain in my favor is the same as noticing that I want my left hip to allow the same twist as my right. It might, but the desire for that only clogs up my energy and shifts my focus from being fully present. I am much more likely to lose the integrity of my spine or my footing as I reach for conditions, or for judgment or for outcome. This turning of my inner focus towards equanimity happens all along Flatbush Avenue, and throughout my yoga asana sequence. The depth of the practice is what allows me to have good will towards what is happening, and to choose where to turn my focus, keeping my attention on opening my energy, noticing where it gets caught up. So from Flatbush I find myself turning onto Quentin, and in my practice, I hold steady with energy flowing towards foundational support and endless possibility.

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.

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.

Escalating Practice: Encouraging or Lost in Ego?

It is nearly impossible to ignore the sparkle of doing more, the allure of the challenge in the physical asana, or the hierarchy of yoga classes and practices deemed a "higher level." We all see yoga in the external images, those crowning aspects of back bends and inversions that seem so graceful yet unapproachable to so many of us. Without exception, we can find ourselves in classes with bodies that seem more able than our own, or at the very least, we know of such classes labeled "advanced." Is this how we deepen our practice, inspired and driven beyond our current limitations? If not for setting a goal of building strength, or gaining flexibility, or holding steady through that moment when we want to give up, how else do we get beyond feeling weak, inept and unsure of ourselves?

The way I see it, the very first commitment we make to our practice is a step beyond this allure of escalation. Embedded in that first commitment is an inkling of non-dualistic thinking: that even with our flaws and weaknesses, strengths and proclivities, we can experience the truth of this moment and release our judging mind into the role of observer/witness. Even as we struggle in the first moments of a meditative centering, even as we worry about our tight hamstrings in a forward fold or weak abdominal muscles or sore wrists or tight lower back or whatever it is, we can begin to see it as it is and with a focus on this inhale and exhale we can allow ourself the experience of observing as our own awareness begins to broaden. This is the heart of practice at any stage, after any number of years. If you began the practice as an accomplished athlete in perfect physical form, you would still run right up against this greatest challenge: to be fully present in a broadened perception with a focus of awareness in this moment.

And so it is that I find myself too, right in the middle of standing on my head, and up until a specific moment, my energy is flowing freely and I am observing an array of sensations, including an openness and startling ease. Then, in an instant, my attention turns entirely to counting my breaths, and my mind establishes a goal -- that number of breaths that would put me in the "I DID IT" category. My experience of the moment is hijacked into holding on tight, counting my breaths and encouraging myself to just keep going until I reach that magic number that I've set myself. I hold on for that accomplishment and when I do release from the posture, I pause, observing the flow of energy in response to the asana, the sweep of the experience and my breath in that moment.

Is it any surprise that my practice was to see the grasping at the goal, after experiencing a new level of openness in the asana? Not at all. This is the essence of the practice itself, declining the invitation to escalate into a physical competition, inviting the increase in awareness of what is actually happening, and as always, seeing the dualistic way of thinking/being and not getting lost there. The significance in the number of breaths I remained in headstand is indeed in the experience of that gripping, my fear reaction to the openness in the pose, that by its very nature challenged everything about the status quo of my conditioned ways of seeing myself in the world. So much benefit in perceiving the choices of where we turn our attention! So much freedom comes in those choices!

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.

Applying the Practice

I look out the window and see the bare hills, the dark leafless trees, the bright gray cloudy sky. Birds are busy at the feeders, and though I am North now, I know that there are roses still budded and blooming in Brooklyn. Today the winter's day will shift into the longest winter night and from here on the daylight grows by tiny increments. Mild temperatures and moisture could fool me easily into imagining it is early April and Spring is around the corner.

But that is not so. Choosing an image for a season's greetings, my husband and I agreed on a deeply snowy image.

My elderly mother-in-law is no longer traveling and so, my closest clan of four will transport ourselves to spend this next weekend together with her and my sister-and-brother-in-law. This makes me feel happy and grateful even as I pack a bag and try to organize for departure. Convenience and ease are not the reasons I exist on earth. I am acutely aware that there is no knowing what comes next, and there is virtually no point in imagining what the next winter solstice will bring, snow or blooming roses.



Sadness washes through my system with regularity these days. I feel a turning of my gaze towards the faces that are no longer here with me, and the small actions of preparing for the ritualized holiday season bring up the softly dark spaces once occupied by people dear to me. Last year I did not know they would be gone now, and here in this moment, I can allow the feelings to arise, see them for what they are -- love and longing, appreciation and gratitude -- and go on about putting candles around the house. I do not try to push the feelings away, ignore them, or feel sorry for myself. I simply feel the feelings, as energy arising around my heart and filling my mind with memories that add a dimension to everything I am doing.

In meditation teaching I often say that we are not trying to erase or stop ourselves, correct or change ourselves. We are making the space to see ourselves, experience our self and begin to explore possibilities that are otherwise drowned out by the constant shifting and noisiness of mind and reactive nature. On the mat, the yoga asana flows from physical effort to an understanding of energy and attention.

At this time of year, it seems these practices come directly into my every day moments. I am not on the mat, I am in the kitchen preparing for a family meal, remembering turning my hands towards other meals. I am not quietly sitting on a cushion, I am sitting in a zooming crowded car on a busy interstate highway. It is even more amazing to open up my awareness and focus my attention in these contexts. I feel the sadness, nod at it and let it slide past like the blur of exposed tree limbs. I am glad to be on my way, and there are roads I no longer need to travel. It is complicated to understand this delicate balance of love and loss. The first aspect is to go ahead and feel it, notice it, see what it is. So I use my asana practice here too, to be present in body and energy, connected beyond the reactive state of mind and filling with joy.

Back to Basics Again

There is a constant cascade of words, feelings, sensations, ideas, memories and sounds. I could be watching a student breathing, or riding on a subway, or drifting in and out of sleep and this would still be so. Somehow there are ways to narrow the focus of attention and at the same time open up levels of awareness. It turns out that it never works to try to shut all this down, turn it off, ignore it, block it out. The only thing that works is to open awareness even wider so that, in some way, all this billowing, thrashing, distracting material becomes just a very small bit in a much much more vast expanse.

Sounds unbelievable even to me, and yet, if the breath is the raft and my attention is floating on that, everything else is just part of the ocean.

So sometimes the swells are noticeable, or a wave crashes in and totally pulls me away from the breath. The funny thing is that it doesn't matter at all, because I can smile at this (or not even react beyond noticing that it happened) and turn my attention right back to my breath. Not getting sucked into judging the situation, or hanging on to the idea or the feeling that splashed onto my raft and caught my attention, I lose nothing.

Who is measuring how many times I climb back onto my breath-raft? Who is laughing at the object that managed to pull me off? Just me, all me, not me at all. There is a swirl of energy around my breath that contains everything -- that which will distract me and that which grounds me. The ability to focus my attention gradually gets stronger, more able, more adaptable to the movements of words, feelings, sensations, reactions in general and conditions in particular.

So I come back to the most basic practice again and again: simplify, experience, abide. And it is the breath that takes me, follows me, holds me, sends me, returns me and enables me to play this game at all of observing and being my self.

Constancy: the discipline of being

Every month I go visit my elderly relatives, parents and aunt, about 150 miles away from where I live. Every day I take a few minutes to meditate and practice even just a bit of yoga aside from my teaching. Every night that I am home, I share a meal with the one(s) I love who are living with me. These are not ritual patterns, they are mindful acts.

Being present is not a casual operation! With time and practice, mindfulness and awareness become more constant as a way of operating, of being. But to get there from here takes intention and action.

So just as with checking mail or washing dishes, there is a determination of value in it even when it has nothing to do with how the world will judge you or what others think of you. This is something that comes from inside, the urge to find your self or to shed layers of the self that no longer suit you, or that chafe or cause pain.

Meditation and yoga practices do not take you from yourself. It seems to reveal a more vivid quality in fact. I can see my wandering mind, I can notice that tight muscle buried deep in the hip socket. I can watch feelings rise and fall in myself. These are part of me, and I can adapt my functioning to accommodate in different ways once I am aware.

Choosing to travel every month, choosing to show up on the mat every day, these are ways of connecting. The energy, relationships, awareness and peace that come with being present are vast, seem larger and more inclusive than anything I've run into before. This state of being can accept sorrow, can include anger and pain, can hold joy and excitement, can be all the facets of emotional and physical self and still be intact. It is this undamaged quality to the energy, the being, that is the revelation. No matter what else has happened, or we think is happening, this inner energy is whole.

Curiosity and constancy are enough to get there, add a dose of intention and suffering to pull you deeper into the inquiry and all there is to do is let go of resistance and be.

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.

Illusion is not the Self

Rem Koolhaas building at IIT, Chicago, IL

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

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

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

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

Deepen at Any Point

When people ask me about the weekly community class I teach, I say that it is a beginning class, but that every body is welcome. It is okay to be a person who has no experience of yoga or a life long practitioner. The inquiry involved is that of being present no matter what level of experience one has. I've been teaching this "beginning" yoga for a year and a half in the same little neighborhood studio. Every class introduces fundamental aspects of yoga. There are patterns, or sequences, or ideas that come in the door with me, some of which become the core of the practice, some of which dissipate once the practice begins. It is becoming clearer to me as I go along that the deepening of practice may mean building the stamina to hold an asana longer and thereby gain new experience of the self, or it can mean picking up on the more subtle inner questions about movement in the breath that directs a flow or asana sequence. It can be the stillness of Savasana (corpse pose, or relaxtion), or the openness of Savasana, or the sheer sensation of shoulder blades on the mat below the heart in Savasana that allows a person to simply be or to discover their own observing witness self for the first time.

A neighbor and sometimes student of mine asked me this week how to cherish the experience of every step if her feet already hurt. My first response is to accept the experience of the steps as evidence of presence in the moment. If you can let go of the attachment to the emotions that come up with the soreness of the step, in other words, the feeling sorry for oneself, or the story about how tired one is, or the fear over what might be wrong with the big toe, or the judgment of having bought shoes that don't fit... well, if you can detach and actually experience the steps, it is more likely that you can find a way of stepping that is less painful. It can be more interesting to allow awareness to explore the walking with discomfort without all that baggage, and, in fact, it can refocus attention enough to actually be less painful. Deepening the practice might include breath awareness, or bringing alert attention to alignment of the knee with the hip and ankle, the exact placement of the feet. These layers can also help alleviate the sensations of stress and sometimes even lighten the step, perhaps allowing the experience to transform discomfort and aggravation into an exploration of the way one functions in the world.

Watching the self go through an experience is another layer of practice that is available at any moment, whether you have a yoga practice of one week or several years. I have a feeling that even the most revered practitioners alive today have moments when grasping and attachment must be revisited. We each find depth as we go along, and it is wonderful to accept the practice as it is in the moment and use this moment to deepen the practice.

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.

Gunshots on Memorial Day

Standing in my country garden, the perfume of blooming iris in my nostrils, I methodically water the asparagus bed while listening to booming gunshots from the neighbors’ back deck as they reverberate off the hills around me. Breathing in, I am grateful that they have brought the violent and irrepressible nature of man into this moment reminding me that it is “Memorial Day.” Breathing out, I am filled with wonder that my species has survived so many hundreds of years.

I cannot pretend that I enjoy the shooting-for-entertainment going on next door. I feel my startle reflex with every boom. The home-made canon shot brings a reflexive gasp. I watch myself become accustomed to the sounds ricocheting off the hills, and I feel something akin to closeness to those who have been subjected to similar experiences though in places without the blooming iris and beautiful asparagus beside them for reassurance.

My Memorial Day, acceptance and care for those who served our country in the military, was formed when I was very young and felt the resultant fear and anger destroying a man I loved. He had returned from Vietnam, where he was a medic, to a country who reviled the war in which he fought so desperately to save lives. He was looked upon with suspicion and contempt by fellow students, as he tried to finish his education at the local state university. He worked in construction, using his extraordinary physical energy to build tall structures that were later burned down as training for the fire department. This cycle of work and destruction was hard on him, but familiar. He dropped to the ground at the sound of gunshot, or the backfire of a car. And when he rose up, his anger and humiliation looked for a target. He was a kind and loving man, who tended to his disabled sister with a depth of love I had never seen from a man towards a child, and he experienced joy with a roaring passion as exuberant as the fireworks whose cracking booms he could barely tolerate by clenching his jaw and wrapping his arms tightly around me. He knew we were safe, but not that safe.

And so I thank the young men down the way, up country where people use the word “freedom” to mean so many facets of “I want what I want and I deserve the right to have it,” for bringing Memorial Day deep into my heart. My dear friend survived the war in Vietnam, but was walking wounded from the war in human nature. For this, I hold myself responsible, and seek out the peace in my own nature when my anger rises against those who tear away at the possibilities for peace among humans on earth.