Finding What Supports You

When I say, "allow your feet to soften into the earth," it might sound like gobble-de-gook or hocus pocus until we begin playing with the way we actually use our feet. This shift in attention brings a level of understanding that can help with balance, with organizing your bones above the earth in ways that help transfer weight without stressing joints, and also lightens the load even in an emotional sense. First we try the communication system between the feet and the brain. Are the signals getting through in both directions? It's good to let yourself laugh when that little toe just doesn't hear you, or when the ball of the foot rises instead of the toes. As with any relationship, humor can help a lot as we gain an appreciation of the other's point of view.

In any posture, whether doing yoga or not, you can explore the grounding of your body. It isn't always your feet either, sometimes it's your sitting bones below you, or the angle of your pelvis that help settle you so that your spine can follow its natural rise. Investigate the way the bones rest on the earth -- exploring while laying down on your back for example, you can just notice the way your breath lifts and releases you and discover exactly which parts of you are touching the surface below you. Cherish this discovery of how your spine works, and allow your attention to follow the breath as it gradually releases tensions and more of your body can relax into the support below.

Standing you can do the same thing while gently leaning your weight into the inner edges of your feet and then the outer edges. What does that mean? Well, can you feel any weight in the inner side of your heel, or do you tend to feel yourself resting on the outer edge? Perhaps more of this than that in one or the other foot? Just find out. Try bending your knees slightly and feel the weight naturally seep into the heels, stretching the front thigh into the hip socket a little can do the same thing -- draw your attention to this and play with it. It may feel like you will fall over, but relax into it with a little shake, a little boogie woogie, and then settle back into it.

Once your communication lines are open, you can really draw energy up the legs from the earth; you can relax into your seat and feel an energetic lift in the deep core muscles; you can ease the shoulders down your back upper rib cage and feel your ribs freely floating over your hips.

If you find the support below you, you can rise lightly and feel freedom in the joints as well as the mind. Give it a try. Focus on it for a moment, whatever posture you're in! The deeper support will become evident once you allow the exploration to begin with the surfaces of things.

It's Magical

Gently lifting arms with an inhale, wrists flacid, and on the exhale allowing the hands to drift back down to the thighs like seaweed softly undulating in the waves. A genuine effort for most of the 80+ year olds in the room, but their faces glow with peace and relaxation. Letting go of the tension in their fingers, of the clenching in the shoulders, they begin to sit taller, and settle their feet under their knees.

Eyes glowing after class, smiles readily spreading on faces, even with the very serious business of standing up and taking hold of their walkers, these students do not care if they are "practicing yoga" or "doing Tai Chi." We are sharing a morning of breath and presence, letting go of judging ourselves and each other. Sometimes I cannot help but exclaim, "Who would have thought we could be working so hard and feel so relaxed!?"

We do hard things. Sometimes the hard thing is communicating with toes, or attempting to lift one leg. Sometimes the hard thing is trying to inhale just a little more in a three-sip breath, or perhaps hold on the chair seat and lean to one side. Each body has its struggles, each mind has its resistance and predisposition.

Yet what happens is magical. Gratitude that we can inhale an arm upwards and release it on the exhale, that we can sigh an out-breath together to relish our effort and relieve more tension, that we feel lightness in our legs as we align the bones and let the earth carry us. It is this sharing, sweet and complex for every person in the room, that heals and encourages, that carries us through the dark times and hard losses. Again and again I bow to my students with reverence and gratitude.

Winds of March

Walking on two feet, my sprained ankle gently seeping deep gratitude with each movement. I was able to return to teaching at the Shelter this week, adding in this piece I had cut away to make space for my healing. Now the students bring their joy and sorrow to me, quizzically and laughing out loud, eyes closing, sighing and silently.

I pass through the seasons as I walk from shade and wind into sun and warmth, remembering the tornado that ripped through the neighborhood and took down big old trees. One huge sycamore trunk stands truncated with one large limb reaching out askew - a remnant still enormous. The piles of snow, gone.

I've been substitute teaching for a fellow teacher who went to India for 6 weeks, and her delicate aged student has offered me an open well from which to draw, dipping the bucket, winding and unwinding the rope. These days I feel the energy pulse from my palms when I am near her, and can feel her breath moving towards me.

My mother is dying. She is saturated with happiness to know that the path is now clear and no one is pretending anything about what kind of living she will do. Criticized all her life for not carrying a tune, she now hums to herself. When asked what she is humming she grins, yes, grins, and says "Why, I don't know!" Delightful. No need, no need to know, to hang on, to grip and clench, to explain, to ask, to argue or deny. No need, no need to put up with, or put down, to reach in or pull away.

This is a most remarkable time. I revel in it even as I careen a bit wildly on the road, as though a powerful wind is blowing and I'm giving in, just a little.

Nothing is Wrong, It's just Fear

It wasn't hard for me to tell my mother that she could let go if that's what was right for her. It slipped out as though it was always there, our eyes smiling at each other. She was fingering the scarf I made for her that only a month ago she said had reminded her of the taste of strawberries. Somehow, I was completely calm and relaxed telling her that I will miss her but that it was okay. Maybe it was because I could feel that the stream was already flowing in that direction. Perhaps it was because she seemed so happy to be floating on the water headed towards the falls. I can hear the falls, I just don't know exactly how far away they are.

Attachment. I suppose it is the big attachment, that we hold on to the idea of being alive, of other people staying alive, that life is what we hold dear and hold on tight. The practice of seeing my own attachment to anything, an opinion, an outcome, a schedule, a relationship, has been so revealing of how I make meaning where there are really just constantly shifting conditions whose visibility depends on the light.

So I sit in one place, open to the deep contentment I saw on her face, feeling the fear of the work I will have to do once she is gone, knowing that her presence is not some thing nor does it belong to anyone, not even to her. Her presence is the surface of the water that is everything in the sea: wave, froth, air bubbles, sand, beach, conch shells, sand crabs, sky, wind, the sound of the falls in the distance.

I don't know the way, but all paths lead there.

This Asana is Contraindicated for ...

me, and yet I practice. Listening to my own arguments, I hear fear and I hear determination. There is goal setting and there is wishful thinking. There is regret and self-doubt, and there is hopefulness and curiosity.

When I began practicing yoga I took any class that fit in my schedule. I was approaching 50 years old and I knew less than nothing about the lineage, names of luminaries, history, even potential health benefits. I didn't even know what shape I was aiming for in the Asana of the moment. I listened deeply, worried on the surface about mixing up my right from my left, and began breathing into a new space of awareness inside.

This fall my practice will be much the same as it was 10 years ago... I will be discovering that I can change the angle of my lower spine by remembering my big toe, and I will use the wall to prepare for Ustrasana (camel pose) just to see how much energy I can raise from my Tadasana (mountain pose) knees. There are many Asana I can explore in my practice, and of course, my practice does now include teaching which is a magnitude of exploration I could not have imagined in those first few experiences.

Every Asana has benefits that reach into the basic functioning of the body -- circulation, nervous system, muscular strength and flexibility; and the mind -- judgment, intention, challenge, determination, curiosity, resilience and focus; and the organs -- etc. Every asana has contraindicated conditions, for example shoulder or ankle injury, stages of pregnancy, frailty of bone, uncontrolled high blood pressure, etc.

As a teacher I may mention a few of the "if you have this, modify in this way" instructions, but I find it hard to say, "just don't do this." I find it especially hard to say it to myself. At the moment, I have two physical variables that would contraindicate nearly everything I do in my yoga Asana practice -- including what might seem simple like sitting in a cross-legged position.

So here is the secret: Do not hurt yourself. Follow the path of the breath and prepare your physical body for practice with an open mental attitude of exploration rather than goals and end results. Use props and find out what is actually happening in as full a way as you can in that moment. It is not getting into the full pose of Ustrasana that will help you if you have low back issues or rotator cuff problems. Yet many of the steps along the way will be exactly what your body can best use to mobilize, stabilize and strengthen, stretch and explore.

It is the mind that wants to take the full expression of Urdhva Dhanurasana (Wheel). Deepening and exploring a supported heart opener over a bolster or block, or using blocks to support your sacrum and your upper back in Setu Bhandhasana (Bridge pose) will give you more possibilities to experience your life than you could imagine.

So it can really help to find a teacher who can help guide your practice into the deepest places you can explore, and slow things down, rather than attending classes that continually show you what you can do to hurt yourself. It helps when you don't believe that everything rests in the final pose, and keep an open mind about what might open your practice.

Let Go of That To Do List!

I resist the whirling vortex of the list of what must be done and relax into this moment, fully free. You could say that I am taking refuge in the completeness of acceptance, or just that idea of "being here now." There really is nothing that must be done, (I am breathing in and breathing out), though there are many many ways I could use my energy, (I need to call the hospital and take that package to the post), and I do turn my energy. Every where I turn, my energy turns. Where I turn my drishte (my focus), so my attention turns.

This is a direct learning from my yoga practice. It is the focus of the attention that draws the energy to that point. We are breathing all the time we are alive here in this body, and yet when we sit still and focus on our breathing suddenly we hardly know how to breathe in and breathe out. We watch ourselves struggle to simply hold our own attention in one place. So it is a worthy practice to let go of the judging and the constant review of the items on the list, and practice simply being present.

Just when I start thinking, "oh my life is so complicated, I don't have time to do this, no one would imagine all the things I am juggling," someone else says these same things to me about them! I smile, maybe even laugh, fully accepting this is human nature. Celebrating that we are alive, we have nearly infinite (did I say "nearly?") ways of using the moment-to-moment life we have. Yet so often the focus is far away on something projected or remembered. That way is the path of anxiety, stress, insufficiency, and sorrow, in a word "suffering."

Resisting that whirling vortex of "must do this" and "should have done that" and "how will I ever get all this done!" I can quietly wash the beets, enjoy the red stain on my cutting board, hear the happy clicking of the oven lighting, and feel the firmness of my hand gripping the knife. Later, after I teach a few sessions of yoga, I will share these delicious roasted beets with someone I love. I do not have to put that on the list, nor resist it.

Moving from the heart

The practice of supporting the heart is a practice of using the heart for support.