What is Believing Anyway?

I have the word “believe” pasted on a collage in my yoga room at home, currently it’s situated on so that with every lift and swan dive I see that piece of art and the word ‘believe’ swimming in a sea of yellow. For the past few weeks believing has been my theme, I was in the midst of a great awareness and peace, and keenly attuned to just how many things were possible for my life. And then I got knocked off my game, I lost my peace and my sense of possibility. It was a low that took my breath away; as deep and dark as my previous weeks had been light and high. So what does a yogi do, practice. Sure my body was in pain and my brain was ticking like a metronome on speed but this is the work, this is the practice. So to the mat I went. I stood in front of that collage of all the things I hoped to manifest into my life and looked for something to dedicate my practice to. In this collage there are words like “keep is simple” “meditative state” “blessed be” and of course “believe.” I stared a that word for a few moments almost feeling betrayed by it, I felt the heat of anger stirring in my abdomen, like it was the believing that lifted me up only to drop me back to earth with vengeance. But ‘believe’ is only a word, so I closed my eyes, took a few deep breathes and began my practice with the simple breath mantra: “accept, surrender.” With every inhale I accepted where I am and the responsibility I have for where I am and with every exhale I surrendered to where I am and let go of the struggle to move forward.

So the yoga ended and sat for a few moments sealing my practice with a little meditation and what I felt was fear. I checked in with fear, which I will say is a very scary thing, to go into that fear to revel in it in hopes of understanding why it’s there. I took an inhale and accepted my fear, I took an exhale and surrendered and let the tears come forth. I had realized that it was fear that was keeping me from believing, fear keeping me from jumping off the cliff and believing I can fly. And for a moment I felt lifted, no I didn’t immediately fall back in to that blissful state of existence I’d been in weeks earlier, but this is the work, this is the practice. Every moment builds on the next, every time we touch on something good it gets a little easier to find out way back there. Just like in our physical practice, we work on arm balances and inversions even if we think they are beyond our reach. We practice, we accept that our feet or still on the ground and we surrender the effort we are making to lift off. I have had quite a few students come to the mat for the first time (or first few months even) with fear and over time I watch that fear transform into believing in their selves and their practices. And on really good days I see their first flight.

Yoga Cravings

Some people have will power; I am not one of these people. If there is a tin of Christmas cookies on the counter, I will grab one every time I pass it, chips and salsa hardly make it past a day and oddly enough if there is cereal in the house I’ll eat it for nearly every snack and meal except dinner. I’ve just never been good at moderation, at the very least with food! Which is actually something I struggle with as part of a yogic path, being able to control my cravings and impulses. However lately there’s been one thing that I’ve been craving and happily surrendering to those cravings: asana! I am absolutely loving being on my mat lately. Throughout the day I will start to feel that familiar urge, but what is unfamiliar is that it’s not in my stomach, not a little beeping telegraph to snack on the yummy things in the fridge. It’s a different urge, one that I feel in my legs, my shoulders and chest, the same pull as a food craving but a much happier one. There’s almost a sense of satisfaction that accompanies the craving, and I attribute this to the tumultuous year I just had when getting on the mat felt like a chore I had to carry out if only to point out how hard the task was because I had neglected it for so long. So now that my body is wanting yoga there’s already a sense of accomplishment which I think makes it even easier to get on the mat and practice. And what practices are being had, no classes on cd or dvd, no yoga podcast, just me maybe some good tunes and whatever posture my body whispers a hankering for.

For me these “multi practices” have been very slow and introspective, some lasting only 20 minutes but they have all lead to 2 things: 1. New developments in my physical practice and 2. Really amazing meditations. My body is starting to do things I never thought it was capable of, things like a full pigeon or getting my right shoulder open enough to grasp my fingers behind my back in cow face pose. I’m so thankful for the extra range of motion and also for the awareness to notice more subtle changes to my practice; like the extra fraction of an inch lower in Hanuman (the splits) or just a hair deeper into a twist. As for the meditations, well that gratitude carries right over into the meditation; waves of gratitude seem to wash over me whenever I close my eyes and draw my awareness inward.

I have no idea why in the past week y practice has seemed to lift off, but the theory I’m going with is that since I’ve taken the “should” (as in, ‘I really should do yoga today’) out of practice and now am simply obeying the yoga urge that basically the pressure is off. I’m not looking for an outcome (as in ‘I should be able to do full pigeon by now!’) or looking to asana as a remedy for the funk I was in last year. I’ve just accepted my yoga as a real and substantial part of my daily life and am honoring it. So I choose to believe that by honoring my practice, my practice is rewarding me by sending up more urges and encouraging me to go deeper with each surrender. So I’ll probably never get and grip on my cravings and indulgences but the way I feel it, if I’m gonna go down I’m gonna go down dog in yogic style!

Squeakign Along

You know what’s awesome? Being a yoga teacher. You know what’s even more awesome? Being a yoga teacher who teaches students so cool that they come to practice even when you don’t have a voice.

I just returned from a trip to Europe where among all the really cool things I saw and did, I also picked up a retched cold in Paris which has rendered me voiceless. All I can manage is a few rumbling squeaks between breathy sounds trying to form actual words. It’s really kind of funny, but less funny when you have a yoga class to teach. But selfishly or selflessly I could not keep myself from my studio for one more day, so I went to teach laryngitis be damned! And you know what, it was awesome! Students came happy to see me back in the studio and when my squeaky little voice came out not one asked how we were going to do class with a mute teacher.

The class itself was nothing special as far as the structure and the instructions, but what was really special was watching my students do their own yoga. Because I couldn’t talk through a sequence I gave them a few asanas with options for variations and kriyas and encouraged them to do what they felt worked most for their body. Then I shut up, I watched, walked around, made a few adjustments or suggestions and you know what it was…Awesome. I’ve been teaching full time in town for about a year, a few have been my students since the beginning, more started coming when I opened the new studio so I’ve been teaching and observing these students for a while now. It was such a fulfilling moment to see them own their own practice, to see the flow, the experimentation and the concentration.

People come to yoga for many different reason and when they start there is almost always some hesitation or self-consciousness about their bodies, or lack of yoga “skills.” It’s great to see those people make the decision to make yoga a part of their life and commit to it, to see the growth they achieve and the confidence they gain. Before I started my squeaky yoga class I said to my students “you know what to do.” And they do, and they did and I got to be the proud witness.

Home Is Where You Hang Your Head

It’s an odd sensation of realizing you have attained what you wanted. As I yogi I try not to “crave” things but as a human I still yearn. When I moved to my tiny town I knew how awesome it was, I knew how awesome the people are and I also knew that building a yoga community takes time but that that community of people coming together to share a practice, no matter how far along in their journey they are or what their ultimate goal is, is the kind of community or rather circle of friends in which I would find my niche. I was practicing so much patience and trying to hard not to want that group of people that I didn’t realize it had found me. Until New Year’s Eve.

Me and New Year’s Eve have a long tumultuous relationship, which normally ends with me off alone somewhere wallowing in self pity. This year with the overall roller coaster like frenzy of my emotional state, adding one more year to a very long spell of singlehood and then timely death of my last Grandparent (my Mom’s Mom) which meant that I would be spending New Years Day on an 11 hour haul across the country to attend her funeral well the closing of 2010 didn’t hold much optimism for me. And in fact I woke up that morning sicker than I’d felt in quite a while and praying I didn’t have the awful stomach flu that had been going around. But by Noon I was able to hold down toast and by 3 I even managed a trip to the studio to meet with the woman who would be subbing for me while I am in Erie. And by 5:30 I had made it to my tiny towns local spot to see the local band play and be among the living. And that is where I realized that the yoga community I had been waiting for was here. People who I have connected with through the studio because of our shared yoga; I melted into hugs form other yogis, I rested my head on the shoulders of students, I held and danced with their kids and I cried as I looked around my heart so full of love. I knew the next morning I would be off to visit my family and grieve and celebrate with them but right there in that moment and blessedly for the rest of my time in my tiny town I have a new family. I can’t say it’s the yoga that binds us but for me it’s definitely the language that lets me understand that where compassion is, family is.

2 pieces

I haven't blogged in a while. I honestly think I was waiting for this to happen, the death of my grandmother. My mom's mom, my last grandparent, the soft sweeping of a door closing, the symbolic closing of so many different chapters in so many different lives in this big beautiful heartsick family. I would like to be more poetic about all this but I don't think i have it in my right now and besides there are 2 pieces from much more articulate souls running on a loop in my head. Here they are; the first by Ranier Maria Rilke I'm not even sure he's writing about death but that's the beauty of poetry it's open for interpretation. And the second is by Kahlil Gibran from The Prophet which is my spiritual touchstone.

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I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~

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You would know the secret of death.

But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;

And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.

Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.

Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?

Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

-Kahlil Gibran

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So where's the yoga in all this? the "off the mat, into life" fortune cookie nugget? I don't know. I do know that death is part of life, it is not to be feared and that death is really only one more step on our spiritual journey. I know this all in my head but I don't feel it yet and that is my journey. So for now I will keep breathing, I will comfort my mother, I will receive comfort from loved ones and I will keep on this path and surrender to the fact that I may never understand the whole life and death thing and that is ok too.

Reading the Gita

You think asana is hard, have you ever tried to read the Bhagavad Gita? I’ve been trying for years, and that’s not an overstatement. I bought my first copy the year I got out of yoga school that was 2007! Now, 3 years later I’m find myself trudging through it once again. This time armed with 3 different versions I ordered from the library hoping I’d find a translation that, for lack of a better term, speaks to me. The thing about reading spiritual text…well there are a few so I’ll list some of my spiritual speed bumps for your consideration.

#1 For this one I’d go so far as to say this is across the board for any religion/spiritual way of life is that the texts were written thousands of years ago in languages no one speaks anymore. They are dead languages and they are ridiculously hard to comprehend. I just know the very, and I mean VERY, basics of Sanskrit and I get boggled by how many variations there are on ways to pronounce and spell just then names of the Deities. The big ones like Siva and Ganesh! And that’s in the actual Sanskrit. Once you get and translator involved all bets are off as far as I’m concerned. Most books I’ve read, even recent books by the Dalai Lama and translated into English, come out so dry or with obvious lack of knowledge of everyday English. Or worse you get them translated in “new age!” Now I come as granola as the next pagan/massage therapist/yoga teach as the next but even I draw the line sometimes. Maybe it’s my love of post modern fiction by the likes of Tom Robbins and Jeanette Winterson that I just can’t handle poorly constructed, wispy, un-engaging sentences. So there’s that problem.

#2 It’s not all in nuggets. At the end of every yoga class I sum up the meaning of the class or offer up and inspiration in the form of a quote. I call them yoga nuggets, they are short and clear and usually elicit a smile or giggle or thoughtful sigh, they make you think, or at least I like to think they make my students think. But when you are reading text like the Bhagavad Gita, it’s not all 20 word quips. No, no, no there are pages of things to wade through; sometimes they’re pages full of so much profundity that you are mired down and your brain can’t absorb it all or it’s setting or the 3^rd time something is being expounded on. Sometimes that extra explanation of a point is needed but maybe you got it the first or second time and are now day dreaming about what you’re going have for lunch.

#3 This one may just be my own personal problem but it’s a difficult one for me. I don’t soak up knowledge from the page I need more than that. I need discussion, experiments daily interaction with the theories and teachings. But I live in a tiny town and am the only yoga teacher here, somewhere lurking out there are more teachers and even some Buddhist but I haven’t connected with them yet. Which is frustrating when you are on a spiritual path and would like, if not a teacher, then someone to walk with you for while?

So those are the challenges I am faced with when all I’m trying, in essence, to do is sit down and read a book. What’s the answer? Well the same answer as when you come up on a challenge in your asana class; practice. Practice. Dedication. Self surrender. All the same principles as with our physical expression of yoga. Even if it means I read the same 3 pages over and over again for days, we do the same asanas over and over again until we “master” them and the you know what we still do them over and over again every day. Because yoga IS the journey not the destination and the Bhagvad Gita is a very important (and challenging) step on that journey.