Beginning again and again

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mindful" by Mary Oliver (Inspiration as August ends)

Mindful

Every day
  I see or I hear
     something
        that more or less

kills me
   with delight,
       that leaves me
          like a needle

in the haystack
   of light.
      It is what I was born for ---
         to look, to listen,

to lose myself
   inside this soft world ---
     to instruct myself
        over and over

in joy,
   and acclamation.
      Nor am I talking
          about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
  the very extravagant ---
     but of the ordinary,
        the commonplace, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
   Oh, good scholar,
       I say to myself,
          how can you help

but grow wise
   with such teachings
       as these ---
          the untrimmable light

of the world,
   the ocean's shine,
      the prayers that are made
         out of grass?

from Why I Wake Early, Beacon Press, 2004

Enjoy the Illusion, Return to the Truth

This weekend not only do many of us put on costumes and play at being other-than-normal, but we change the clocks -- "falling back" an hour. Such a good opportunity for seeing the way we use the mind to organize the world around us! Seeing the world from behind a mask, makes us feel so different. Clearly the sun rises and sets at its own intervals based on relationships of rotation of sun and earth, yet we call some hours day or night, make these longer or shorter based on hours we assign, and our work schedules. For example, "my day at work" could mean an all night shift, or a morning of teaching.

The truth is one of construction by the mind to help us be organized, and yet we attach so much more to create the illusory world we live in. What am I talking about? For example, we have feelings about getting up "early" to go to work. We attach meanings to staying "late" or "finishing early." We feel "pretty" in our silks,  "fierce" in our claws, and hidden with just a simple mask. 

We attach meaning through judgments and associations to just about everything. This makes life rich like a multi-layered embroidery. It can also fill us with anxiety, frustration, lethargy and even feelings of entrapment and oppression, even as it can liberate the dancer, the lion, the mysterious being behind the mask.

Here's the thing -- just a few moments of stopping the cycle of attachments and judgments can help loosen the grip of illusion! It won't make it harder to do what you do or take away the fun of the costume when you want it. It can reduce the way these unseen patterns of attachment and illusion chafe, worry, stress and oppress you.  

Return to the truth.   Let go of the good-bad/early-late attachments even for THREE BREATHS every so often during your waking hours, and you will feel the shift back into your own vital energies, no longer pushed and pulled entirely by the mind's gripping. See the darkness and enjoy the shadow shapes and twinkling lights. See the sunrise and revel in the turning of these astrological bodies that give us that which sustains all life on earth! Find the grace of your inner dancer, the power and ease of your big cat, the deeply mysterious nature of your own being without the masks and costumes. 

The best part of this interruptive breath focus is the way it helps to re-align you with your life energy and gives you the space to see the mind's gripping, being alert to your reactions and patterns. Some of these ways are traps, and some are facilitations. Once you see them, you can begin to use the facilitations and step away from the traps. You will have choices about the mind patterns that otherwise run your world.

Breathing is with you throughout every moment of your life. LOL! but true! That is why it is such a natural place to turn your attention, again and again. What else could be so stalwart, steadfast and supportive??

Inner Layers Align, Koshas of an Asymmetrical Body

I'm standing in my kitchen thrilled by the quintessential integrity and alignment in this little teapot by Hsin-Chuen Lin on my shelf. How can an object be so beautiful, proportioned perfectly, balanced in every way in form and function and not be symmetrical? In my own daily life, I see so many moments when my inner dialogue seems designed to keep me off balance. I think of how my mind offers me criticism, praise, observations, excuses, prompts, and shifting values in every moment, all of which push and pull me around. I'm learning that my sense of inner alignment comes from some where else, some where other than all that ongoing mental activity.  I think this little tea pot reflects inner alignment and more than just the physical skill of the potter who made it.

In my first yoga training, I was introduced to ideas about the Vedantic and yogic concept of Koshas, the layers, conceptualized as sheaths or "bodies," in which we function and experience awareness. There are said to be five of them, the physical body (Anamaya kosha), the breath body (Pranamaya kosha), the energy body (Manomaya kosha), the mental or wisdom body (Vijanamaya kosha), and the bliss body (Anandamaya kosha). Of course they have names in a number of ancient languages, but for my purposes they are layers of living awareness, each rooted in some aspect of my concept of self, and expansive in ways that are becoming more accessible to me through daily life by way of my yoga and meditation practices, and my growing mindfulness. I don't have to separate them, or define them by anyone else's terms, though sometimes what others say or experience does shed light in places where I'm not so clear. There is a delicate balance between allowing myself to let go of defining elements in order to experience reality without distortion or projection.

It is as simple as being fully present, a practice that takes everything I've got. I can allow this in anything I'm doing -- a level of cultivated awareness from which I slip in and out. In my yoga practice I take a standing pose of warrior one (Virabhadrasana I). This is similar to a standing lunge with the back leg at more of an angle and the back foot fully down on the floor so that each hip is rotating a little differently from the other. To start with, I am probably full of technical check points, sensing the difference when my left ankle is the rear support or my right ankle takes that role. My awareness scans my body - so much variation day to day, moment to moment, in this hip or those quadriceps or shoulder. First layer, Anamaya kosha indeed, full of recorded experience as well as sensations in this moment. I notice that my breath inhabits my form, operating on another level. I notice the slight twist in my ribs as I breathe, feel expansion inward and outward throughout my body, and feel that I am gaining access to my energy body, flowing inward from earth and air and outward into earth and air. I can sense dull places where there are less open channels, and vivid places that are like energy centers. In all of this my mind is awake (at least some of the time). This is not the judgmental, critical, assessing mind, but a spacious, curious mind. Beyond these sensory, physical, intellectual or emotional facets arises a inclusive connectivity, that in some inexplicable way accepts the space where I stand, the air I breathe, other living beings and myself in this without distinguishing hierarchies or values, offering a sense of total being.

All this happens with continuing messages from my stiff left ankle, knowing that my right shoulder is not level with my left, and listening for that wasp dive-buzzing the corners of the window nearby. I'm not driven towards perfection, not expecting my physical form to be symmetrical or to accomplish some kind of measurable feats in order to be worthy of my respect. My body is not unlike the little teapot, a graceful offering of internal alignment, within its functional range of motion.

Joy rising from the dirt

There is a point in March when looking around the garden and yard feels overwhelming to me. Cleaning up from the winter, re-establishing garden in the midst of the wild fields, raking the driveway gravel out of the grass, starting all over with the process of nurturing plants and watching them become food for other wildlife, tackling the ever shifting vagaries of vegetables that thrive and succumb to the myriad issues of weather, soil, attention and bacteria... Well, it feels like more than I can stand. Alone I cannot prune all the trees, dig out those rocks, re-form the raised beds or even haul all the brush. So there are relationship matters to accommodate in my spousal partnership, allowing the priorities of both parties and energy levels of each of us to be thoughtfully and non-judgmentally considered.

And then there is that moment in early April when we can watch the dry brown grasses greening up over the course of three days of sun and slightly warmer nights. All this and the compost pile is still frozen.

Still, in January I begin to contemplate the vegetable plots and their rotations and by February and early March the seeds arrive. They sit and wait patiently in their envelopes, just as I go through this churning of helplessness and interpersonal negotiations. Then, as trees bloom in warmer climates and all the yards in New York City begin popping with color and fragrance, the little corner of upstate New York begins to awaken too. Where my garden lies is in the shadow of a north facing hill, and once all the snow and ice is gone, the cold soggy earth starts sorting itself out. The birds return and start house hunting. Just putting out the bird houses is an act of faith in the dark days of March.

Though I have not yet been able to turn the soil, I must pile all the earth to the middle of the beds because the wooden forms around my raised plots have rotted after so many years. By the next week, there is new wooden framing, the plots have been turned, and yesterday the onions were planted alongside the now 8" tall garlic greens.  My pants are filthy, hanging over the laundry basket waiting for me to put them back on for this morning's plunder of the thawed section of the compost pile.  My garden maps have been redrawn to make room for the arugula, spinach, lettuce mixtures, radishes, snow peas, sugar snaps, little shell peas, carrots, chard and beets. Packets of seeds sit in my basket, still waiting for my clumsy gloved fingers to open them in the bright sun and cold wind.

For the last two nights I have woken as the waxing full moon set across from the rising sun glowing behind the hill.  My tired muscles slightly regrouped after the night's rest, I am filled with joy at the prospect of another few hours laboring to welcome the seeds into the dirt we have prepared for them.

This is the practice. Seeing what is so and accepting that all of it is connected. Developing the ability to abide: patiently acknowledging while not judging the tough times, diligently putting in the effort as one must, but softening as one can; welcoming the joy that arises from the dirt with full knowledge that not all the seeds will thrive and some will produce splendor to share even with unwelcome guests. We are not separate from this ever-shifting inner and external see saw. It is the practice that gives me balance and equanimity. Now to put on those mud-shoes and get the morning job done.

Body as Home, Breath as Being

Sometimes when you've been out on your feet for many hours, getting into the car feels like home. I've seen  people pick their noses in their cars as though there were curtains through which no one could see. The car is a vehicle, a vehicle that moves through space giving a sense of enclosure and perhaps even a sense of security. Out in the world it is our own body that provides us with that home (complete with a fabricated sense of security) but on the body we actually do place curtains in a way: our clothing, styles, habits, the stuff of appearances. We dress ourselves as we hope to be seen, within the limitations of our ideas about our self and our willingness to put time and resources into the project. This physical vehicle in which we experience life does not really have an external life of its own. We can surely be judged by others based upon it, but if you judge me by my shoes, I become invisible as a living being. It is our breath that animates us. Awareness of  our self as a living being can shift us away from this false sense of privacy or security into the truth of being fully alive in the world. The breath can help us feel and fill that space where we are authentic, alive and at home. No curtains needed. 

So often it is the metaphorical curtains that seem to fascinate us, about ourselves and on others. We use the outer shapes and decoration to tell one story after another. Our mala beads,  turban,  yarmulkas,  or veil all speak of the culture of our spiritual practices,  reveal a bit about our desires and self concept. Our fashions show our grasping at affinity groups, and hint at our philosophy to avert the worst of our fears.  We imagine physical condition as a reflection of character. All of this, like a silk wrap, falls away when we cultivate our focus on the breath itself.  There is no strategy about being who we are when we are simply being a living being. There is no style or design to it, other than the human form that uses this continuous influx and outflow. Stories we have been told, and the ones we tell ourselves or another, can also be seen as shifting reflections in the windows.

The human form has a shape and that shape has its effects. Like any point of origin, it's influence is both subtle and deep. If we find ourselves living in a female or male body, or with chronic illness, or with acute  sensitivities, it can shape us invisibly and visibly. Seems to me, though, that even these attributes are window dressing  rather than the core of the living self.  We can continue to see each other as these external forms, and ourselves as well, or we can begin to cherish these forms as expressions, and see beyond the curtains. 

The mind is like a vast loom, constantly weaving all available strands into patterns. Each strand, if pulled,  unravels only one part of this constantly shifting design. It is being, the presence of mind without attaching to the distractions of the curtains or the shifting designs, that unifies all of our life experiences into this life we live.  It unifies this life into a much larger fabric comprised of all the lives around us, known or unknown to us, and in fact to those who came before us and will follow us. We do not make that happen by fingering our prayer beads, or covering our faces, but by breathing in and breathing out. It is part of the yogic path to draw awareness within, to cultivate a single-pointed focus, and to observe the workings of the mind itself. The breath is the constant, regardless of the strands, the patterns, or the curtains we use to cover to the changing reflections.

When a thread is pulled and parts begin unraveling, we are willing to take that which remains as though it were whole. This distortion is what we think we know. Operating from this is like imagining that the window is  in fact the self,  with or without curtains. It is easy then to ignore the space within the vehicle, shaped by the breath, that offers authentic wholeness, regardless of  curtains  open, closed, threadbare or missing.  Standing on the subway underneath NYC, it is not my shoes, or my hair or skin color, or my language that define my life. I am using all of that to decorate, and perhaps convey that I am a person in a community with a task and appetites. it is my breath that defines me as a living being, something I share inarguably and intimately with every other living being on the train. It is the awareness and acceptance of this energy exchange that keeps my heart open, my mind alert, and gives me a place in which to be truly home anywhere.

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.