Dementia Reveals the Swirling of Real and Unreal

I've just been spending time with a dear old friend who has dementia. Her condition is reflected in significant memory losses, some anxiety and paranoia, with some deeply emotional and personality magnifications, and occasional confusions about words. One of the aspects of her behavior that is startling and evocative, is her way of asking the simplest questions, the answers to which reveal the substrate of human relationships. She asks, "Whose house is this?" as she walks up the stairs in the house in which she has lived for many decades. She looks around her, discovering everything with delight and pleasure, but when told "This is your house," her face darkens in confusion. She meets my gaze and asks, "Really? How can that be?" Of course I can tell her the story of how this house came to be hers, but her questions ask something so much deeper. She often simply asks, "Where am I?" and for that the answer is also simple and deeply complex.

Much of the time she seeks a sense of safety, some reassurance within the boundaries she feels and sees, that she is protected and secure. This can be physical but is often much more than that. She seeks protection for her heart, and of the transitional spaces in which she now functions. Beautifully dressed for an occasion honoring her partner, surrounded by guests she has known for years, she will engage each person with charm and standing quite close, offer sotto voce intimations of shared secrets. "Only you know exactly how that happened!" she might say with an endearing smile and light touch on the arm, without giving any more of a reference. Each guest receives her gift of intimacy with grace and honor, to be brought in close, and treated with such trust. Substance has receded into the most essential materials with which we connect and sustain each other.

When tired or anxious, she grasps at a defense and holds firm, while some around her try to distract her and others speak directly to the underlying causes of the fear or anxiety. There are no more corrections, when people say, "No, you were not there that time," or "I didn't say that," "You never did learn to do that," or any other denials of her momentary realities. She will move on, taking each moment fully as it is, creating the network of supporting evidence she needs to convince her self, or others, in that moment. The purity with which she asks, "Would you like my cup?" or "Are you staying?" makes each moment so full of grace.

I can't help but wonder why we spend so much time trying to convince ourselves and others to agree about data and facts between us that may well be simply illusion. We put way too much meaning and false value in controlling and manipulating this fluid surface and its meanings. It seems so clear to me now that when my friend joyfully exclaims "That's my son!" there is really no longer any need for him to ask her, "So what's my name?" as if that is a test of her memory. She clasps his middle-aged face in her hands and says with a voice saturated with love and longing, "You were a beautiful baby boy." What more is there to say about anything, other than "I love you?"

On the Mat: Being Where You Find Yourself

It is no surprise that sitting on a yoga mat can be much more than a physical experience. Discovering that your neck is stiff, or that one hip is crankier than the other is one way of getting to know yourself with more honesty and attention than usual, but something else happens too. The stillness we allow on the mat in order to pay attention to that hip is often uncomfortable in and of itself. In that space, with attention focused on breathing, we begin to see ourselves in vast and discrete ways simultaneously. All the efforting to adjust the hips, the stream of judgments about the tensions in the breath, the constant remembering to release the seemingly continuous tightening of the neck muscles and the realization that attention has wandered yet again to the person next to us... provides an unfiltered experience of our own being.

So much energy goes into making ourselves over, wishing we were different than we are, covering, editing or erasing parts of ourselves we don't like or can't figure out. This way of operating creates layers and patterns, puts some of our most authentic qualities and understandings out of reach, and makes it hard to connect deeply and honestly to other people. So often even in intimate relationships there is a sense of not being known, or of disbelief when it comes to accepting appreciation or love. If we can not see and accept ourselves, we cannot believe anyone else can know or love that self either. Often our self acceptance is with reservations and exclusionary clauses that we have come to consider part of the self.

There is something uncanny, magical and simple about training our attention on the breath. When we soften our physical effort around the breath, we set aside some of the basic resistance to being who we are. Not concerned with what our faces are doing, letting go of preconceived ideas of what that hip can or cannot do, we can approach our own inhaling and exhaling with curiosity. We develop more acute observational skills as we discover things about its texture or length, seeing the variety of efforts we make to control or direct it, and accepting quite basically that it is just what it is and that the breath, as itself, can be trusted. Trusting the breath is a profound step towards accepting oneself and finding a safe space, in some ways a very sacred space, in which to explore just being.

We find that there is no need to judge our breathing. Letting that idea permeate us for even a moment makes space to let go of judging ourselves generally. Curiosity about the breath leads to a genuine awakening of curiosity about the self: exactly how is this rib cage situated around the inhale, moving on the exhale, releasing and empowering a sense of being. Centering attention, maintaining focus without judging, directly nurtures a sense of well-being. It is remarkable to discover that we, along with every other living being, are breathing and being in each moment. We make space for ourselves on the mat and this space goes with us off the mat. If we open to finding ourselves as we are - breathing, being, curious and whole - we have the ultimate freedom to accept ourselves (and others) as worthy of happiness in all its forms. Without judgment and with awareness, we no longer need to manipulate ourselves into being worthy, we find that we are naturally worthy of being.

The Worst or The Best Yoga Class

I just enjoyed a taste of yoga yesterday at Integral Yoga in the West Village, NYC. It was my first time there, and I was offered a free second class if I filled out an evaluation form of my first class. So I did. But as I got to the second side of the form, I was asked to rate the teacher, and in some ways, the teaching. This was funny to me since the experience of a yoga practice is not something I usually rate or judge in terms of "E=Excellent," "G=Good!"

Then today I happened to skim through Elizabeth Gilbert's short article in the recent Yoga Journal relating her discovery that yoga was neither gym class nor religion. She describes the moment when she realizes, suddenly, deeply and somehow permanently that her being is opening and healing through this simple combination of moving the body, stilling the mind and breathing. She mentions that she now takes yoga all over the world, wherever she is, and writes, " And you know what? It doesn't even have to be a good yoga class. Garrison Keillor once said that the worst pumpkin pie he ever ate wasn't that much different from the best pumpkin pie he ever ate, and I feel exactly that way about yoga classes -- that even the sloppiest or most rudimentary studios have provided me with the opportunity for transformation."

This thrilled me, because I, too, have found this to be true. I've come to understand that every teacher is offering a guide and a space within which it is my own breath and prana that emerges. If I chafe against the words being used, or my hip criticizes the sequence introduced, or perhaps my heart fails me as others leap into a place my body dares not go, I can only gain. Surely as I feel the earth below me in savasana, I can open to the possibilities offered to me in any class. Perhaps it is a power yoga class, perhaps it is a meditation and hatha class, but they each open the gates to awareness.

I remember feeling unsure in classes, and even having strong negative reactions to some teachers who did not seem to be on the same wavelength as I wanted to be. It is that "wanting to be" that is illuminated. Yet even with someone shouting and counting breaths, urging me to "do it-push it-hold-it" in ways that felt like a workout and nothing like yoga, it was my own response that I investigated, and my own breath that I used for support and softness. A class can be very quiet and not rev up the engines that burn off the toxins of the day, but that quiet space is where strength of focus can surely be nurtured, and the distracting mind seen fully.

So I rated everything "E" for excellent on my form, smiling at how even that exercise gave me a new look at myself and my yoga practice. I'm not sure when I will make it back for that second class, but I am sure to learn something from it whenever I do go.

Chanting - Finding a Shared Voice

There's this funny country song, that I've heard done by Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodgriguez, called "Don't Speak in English." It reminds me a lot of how I reacted to chanting in Sanskrit when I first ran into that in yoga classes. The main deal is that we can talk about anything and everything but if we do so in a language that we don't understand it has a totally different effect. The lyrics of the song go along covering many emotionally difficult things, such as "You can talk politics, get your political fix, but don't say words that I understand, 'cuz I've had enough, of that kind of stuff, for a long long time." Using words like "God" and "blessing," "surrender" and "transformation" can raise hairs on many necks and would feel inappropriate in many contexts in which I teach yoga, yet chanting "Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya" is simply felt to be moving and compassionate. It's meaning is "may I surrender to that which sustains me," which can be turned and turned and turned as we come to explore ourselves, our foundation, and our breath.

I did not gravitate to yoga in order to find a religion or to have anyone else tell me what to believe and what not to believe. Part of what melted my boundaries in yoga was the fact that the exploration was at once entirely mine, and totally shared by all beings in some aspects. So to be asked to repeat and chant something in a language I didn't understand felt strangely liberating to me. I was not being asked to accept the long litany of stories that might accompany the Hindu god to whom we chanted, nor even to understand the significance of that deity in that belief structure. Like chanting "AOM," the experience was vibrational, emotional, intrinsically unifying and helped me make the journey out of embarrassment or self-consciousness.

Before I taught any public classes, I secretly wondered how I would ever manage to open my mouth and guide any chanting. Nothing is routine for me in yoga, each moment is new, so it was a total surprise to find myself softly chanting to my classes in Savasana (corpse pose/relaxation), offering them prayers and encouragement to be, to open, to feel safe, to know themselves as the divine eternal beings they may come to recognize in themselves. It was as though something soft and vast was moving through me and into their sweet soft breathing, there on the floor.

I cannot even always translate the chants that come out of me in Sanskrit! Part of my own practice is to attempt the words in English, so that I feel the language is not the allure, but the meaning itself. Yet I do think that it is the vibrational quality and rhythmic nature of the Sanskrit syllables themselves that open us to the experience of chanting together.

So my class can happily chant the name of the great protector and remover of obstacles from an ancient tradition not their own (Ganeesha!), louder and softer, in major and minor melodic intervals, finding their own voices and at the same moment losing their singular selves into the beauty of merged sound. For those who do not sing, this can be a unique and deeply new experience; it has encouraged some to take up singing. Finding our voice is part of finding our self. Stumbling over syllables like children singing grown up songs and making the words our own (some of us did this with the Pledge of Allegiance as children in school...), we can investigate our own ego, the question of knowing and not knowing and how we judge ourselves and others. This all happens in an instant!

Watching a fairly random group turn into a swaying, harmonizing, energy field is a most remarkable experience ... if I separate myself enough to open my eyes while chanting right along.

Living the Life I Have

I've been reading through letters and papers of family members who have passed on. My grandparents, some of their generation and earlier, and my maternal uncle who died in his early 60s. Some of these papers are deeply touching, like my grandmother's school papers from her English class in 1915; some beyond imagining, like my uncle's theoretical mathematical papers. One thing comes through from the collections of cards, letters, newspaper clippings, photos and notes, it is the saturation of character and personality in all this ephemera. I felt as though I was visiting with these people in ways that were unavailable to me even with those I knew when they were alive. There is such a pulse or rhythm of their own in each person's materials.

It is so clear from these papers that we live until we don't. My uncle developed his musical talents, his brilliant mathematical thinking, his wry humor and satirical writing, his teaching, his travels, his interests in wildflowers and education. All of this ended when he stopped breathing. His friendships, intellectual exchanges, musical partners, lovers, and family seem alive in his papers, and show how fully he was living in the days he had. There is no doubt he suffered along the way. I won't get into the details here, but he also lived with a vividness and commitment to using what was in him, and exploring that in many directions. Even though he's been dead for many years, he is very much alive in the moment he wrote the letters and that comes through.

The same is true for the other people slipping out of these papers. Each, whether they intended to or not, clearly engaged in the exploration of who they might be, here in a world where they learned new languages, took on intellectual and social roles, forged alliances and relationships, and withstood the trials and stumbling blocks of immigration and political turmoil throughout the 1900s. In most cases they were unconscious of this deep personal development, they were busy living flat out in the context of the day. The phrase, "make something of yourself," applies to them all. And yet, they were busy being themselves, for the most part without focusing upon that.

The inquiry is the same great undercurrent in my life too. At each phase of my life I've been fully myself, consciously or unconsciously. My yoga practice brings this into focus. I can develop an awareness of the process, and this allows me to continue reaching into the substance of self and enables me to live in consonance with that. I know that my own character and personality saturate the choices I make, while my practice gives me a way to accept more fully who that is. I am simply and literally able to operate from a deeper place.

I feel hugely like cleaning up my act! These boxes full of handwriting and onion skin typed pages remind me that I, too, have only this string of moments in which to do what I am here to do.

Listening to Your Body's Wisdom

Yoga can be adapted to bring benefits to any body. When I first began my practice, every part of me had something to say after each yoga class! I discovered spaces and muscles in them between my ribs that I had just never known before. My legs would shake in standing poses, and my breathing would be slower than that which the teacher was directing. My shoulders were chronically tight. Gradually my body began to find its way into the patterns of breath and movements. After 8 years of experience, my yoga practice always begins with awakening of this deep coordination of breath and muscular activity. My hips stiffen every night, my shoulders need to respond to an exploration of their range of motion before I ask any thing else of them. Though my legs have flexibility, the big hamstrings need to warm up before going for a full forward bend.

The first aspect of a safe and healthy practice is to let the judgments of yourself go. In order to listen to my own body and use it fully as the vehicle for my practice, I have to be willing to notice its actual condition without the overlay of pre-set ideas about myself. My students quickly discover that it is their own knee and hamstring combination that will tell them how long a stride to take in their warrior pose (Virabhadrasana I). Whether long or short, it is the knee over the ankle that will protect their joints, softening the shoulders, finding the breath deeply moving through, and this is what will allow them to continue to explore the openness in their hips, and the ease of their spine. It is through this process of finding their foundation that begins to release into the support that allows longer holding of the asana and movement within it. Overriding their own needs, and over-reaching cuts off all the possibilities. As the body opens, so does the stride. Taking a posture to look a certain way without listening to your own body is not yoga.

So it's great to take a beginning class, a slow flow class or a more technical take-the-asana-apart workshop in order to work with a teacher who can offer the adaptations and reasons why using a block or a blanket will help you gain the benefits of a posture. Teachers usually explore a series of postures and preparatory actions that help open your body, your breath and your mind for the more advanced asana to come. At each step along the way, noticing what you can relax and release, noticing the source of your foundational support, and keeping your attention on the breath will help bring you deeper and deeper into your practice, no matter what "shape" you are in.

Just As it Is

I've just returned from traveling for a few days, taking my monthly visit to check in with my elderly family members in another state. These trips are squeezed in between my teaching commitments, and packed with emotional, administrative, and unexpected events. This trip I found that I managed to check off all the to-do items, and stayed available and open for the relational parts of the visiting. Lately I've been finding it easier and easier to take things as they are, to see the excuses and simply not make them. This has felt really good. Accepting that I have made choices, rather than finding ways to explain to myself (or others) the why or why nots of all the resulting situations or conditions. Who knew that this would also save me a lot of energy, making me feel less weary and more available even when I am just as "busy?" It has also reduced the sense of pressure on me, results in much less of the emotional backlash behaviors like argumentativeness or over eating, and helps me keep myself rested and ready for what is there to be done or felt.

This new sense of freedom has evolved recently even more as I've been exploring the Niyama of Tapas (discipline and purification through inner heat), one of the principles of yoga (see recent blogs on this subject). I find that I can act upon my intentions, giving myself what I need, without making excuses or needing any rationales. I was able to simply include a short yoga practice in every day even with travel and many demands on my time. This helped me to be more rested, more receptive, and much less judgmental. It was as though I've been strengthening and developing my muscles of action rather than those qualities of judgmental mind that bring endless comparisons and projections. This seems to also liberate my ability to work within much more realistic time frames, and establish more achievable goals. I am amazed.

Openness to inner discipline also directly relates to all the other yogic principles of the Yamas and Niyamas (see recent blogs)... Saucha (purity) and Asteya (non-stealing), Satya (truth) and of course Santosha too (contentment). When we let ourselves be truthful rather than explaining, restrain from taking that which is not ours to take (like the attention of others to our point of view), clear out the clutter of misrepresentation and judgment (all the justifications and should, would, coulds) and allow contentment with what actually is (finding gratitude and joy), well, we no longer need to hide behind the excuses and rationales that explain the choices we make. We know that we are responsible for the choice and act, even if it is a correction of a prior act.

I could also title this thought "Trkonasana," since triangle pose embodies a combination of truth, discipline, nonjudgment and awareness. Like life itself, it is a balancing act, a serious stretch, opening on one side making new internal space, and by necessity yielding into the strength required. Finding triangle can begin in any moment, since it evolves out of a steady foundation, an elongated, integrated and soft spine, and a steady and unified sense of energy in the breath that moves between earth and sky. In any given day my body opens to Trkonasana to its own degree, the breath flows the length of me, my spine releases or clenches, my feet feel firm and easy on the earth or I may be shaky and off balance. I love discovering my true self in this way, never knowing what the moment will be until I am that moment. Triangle offers every possibility boiled down, what actually is so in that breath. And even the one inhale does not predict what might be possible in the next. I laugh at the joy of discovering revolved triangle emerging - twisted and reversed - or at literally falling to the mat out of triangle on one side as though the world was turning just a little too fast for me that day. Simply being makes self criticism unnecessary. Any asana can offer the same exploration; and endless understandings come through the practice.

Discipline and honesty are a beautiful combination on the path to truth and contentment, but you can take the path from any direction. Exploring contentment will take you perhaps by different turns and twists, to clarity and ease of judgment. I've learned to be curious rather than afraid of these big concepts. They are just what you discover in them. And the more I explore, the more I discover. I don't spend time worrying about what I don't know, because the vastness of that would paralyze me. I simply keep wondering "what is this?" and investigate, finding that the inquiry itself is liberating me to see more and more "just as it is."