Eclipse: why we need the dark

eclipse

Solar eclipses are spectacular.

There was recently a partial solar eclipse. Miraculously, the perpetually cloudy Vancouver skies cleared at just the moment of the eclipse’s maximum expression.

I raced out onto the office patio, shielding my eyes and squinting up at the sun (an enthusiastic, but slightly dumbass move, since you’re not supposed to look at the sun with your naked eyes). And although the sun’s light still shone brightly, a piece of it was missing. A strange dark leviathan had moved across its face, making the sun less than perfectly round. And in that moment, the edges of the sun – and its brightness – were visible.

A solar eclipse is special because the moon is moving across the face of the sun at just the right angle to partially obscure its sunlight from the earth. In a full solar eclipse, the moon completely covers the sun’s face, so that its rays create a spectacular halo around the dark edges of the moon.  Through being obscured, we can see the sun’s true luminosity shining from behind.

Although we continually feel the effects of the sun, we usually don’t really see it. It’s simply too bright; it lives in the world “up there” and is only visible to us when it descends deeply enough towards the horizon to be obscured by our planet’s atmosphere – or when there is a solar eclipse. The sun’s own brightness masks it from perception.

We experience similar galactic movements.

The brightness of our highest essence is always present, visible in the effect we have as we express ourselves in the world. However, this light is so ubiquitous to our “us-ness” that we don’t directly perceive its power. Similar to the sun on a cloudless day, our highest nature is strangely invisible; we are hidden by our own brightness.  When our lives are joyful, we take the light for granted, and we do not see ourselves.

Darkness bring revelation.

I remember sitting with my ex-husband on the battlefield of our marriage, the day that I told him we weren’t ever getting back together.  We were both emotionally exhausted. depleted, depressed.  Through our pain and fear, we had torn each other down, been blind to each other’s pain, and utterly depleted our resources. Like collapsing binary stars, the gravitational force that had originally pulled us together was now destroying us. In my despair, I had turned to cutting myself to relieve the pain.

We may not always like what is revealed by the shadow.

The darkness that came into my life through my marriage revealed what had been hidden from view.  When life was happily rolling along, I did not see my broken edges, my unfinished business. Only when the shadow fell did these places become exposed. And only in the darkness was there an opportunity to witness, heal, and connect consciously to a greater source, a place of deep compassion and growth in the midst of vulnerability and pain.

When the darkness reveals who we are, can we sit in the vulnerability of our exposure?  Can we dare to be so poignantly revealed?  The darkness allows us to more fully experience our resiliency, grace, compassion, and power.  We shine from behind. We become more sensitive to our sweetness, vulnerability, and humanity.  Through the shadow, we perceive our light.

With my ex-husband, I wanted to resist the revelation; to avoid the terrifying exposure of who I was and what I had created through my fear and pain. But only through this exposure could I heal my broken places. In the darkest hour of my marriage, I discovered my ability to become accountable, speak my truth, and stand in my own light.

The darkness provides the very instruments through which we are able perceive and evolve our highest selves most fully. While we may not embrace the darkness for its own sake, we can open to its poignant offering to become more exposed, visible, connected, and alive. Through darkness, we become most fully, brilliantly, and sweetly revealed.

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of night.  – Kahlil Gibran

Lean into uncertainty: the liberation of self-expression

“Rachel, what’s going on?”

“….”

“…Rachel, clearly something is on your mind….just say it.”

 

I am silent: my oceanic feelings are contained behind the steel-trap of my teeth. I feel, I feel, I feel, and I have no words for my feelings, because I’m desperately afraid that if I say them, the person in front of me won’t love me anymore.

Daring to say how I feel is terrifying.  When I was growing up, certain emotions were acceptable (joy, curiosity, humor, even sadness), while others were met with disapproval (anger, hurt, vulnerability).  I learned to edit my self-expression in order to feel safe.

As an adult, I was adept at easily (and unconsciously) avoiding emotional conflict. Rather than communicate my hurts or concerns, I ferreted away my feelings as burdens to be privately dissected and endured. I held imaginary conversations with my partner in my head, rather than aloud. The open space of real conversation was so scary that I ended relationships rather than talk through its problems.

And oh the irony: because I was smart and didn’t yell or storm out of the room, I thought I was an excellent communicator.

Self-expression – real, vulnerable self-expression (not the reactive, unaccountable kind) – requires bravery because we never know how someone else is going to react.  And we certainly can’t control it.  When opportunities arise for us to really be seen and heard, it’s often more comfortable to retreat rather than be exposed.

For me, I falter in the emotional landscape. For some of us though, the vulnerability of self-expression emerges when we’re asked to share our intellectual opinion or reveal ourselves creatively:

  • “I don’t sing,” we declare. “Trust me, you don’t want to hear it.  It’s like a cat dying.”
  • “I hate public speaking! get so nervous. No,” we demur, “I’d rather listen.”
  •  “Dancing? In public??  Maybe after about five drinks.”

Whatever the venue, these peremptory, self-imposed shackles limit us. Scared of being rejected or judged, we allow our fear to box in our full range of expressive possibilities.  We become smaller, quieter, more muted.

Rather than running away, can we lean into the discomfort? The more we lean in, the more we learn to trust that the feeling is temporary, illusory, and ultimately benign. Beyond that temporary feeling of discomfort lies freedom: the self-expression that is purely and gloriously yours.

Wouldn’t all of our lives be richer, more colorful, and more empowered if we dared to reveal more of ourselves?

Let’s put our voices into the world.

Lean in.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

Autumnal lessons: stripping to the bone

https://www.flickr.com/photos/47089990@N02/8385123454/
Finding your essence by cutting back

Imagine a gorgeous rosebush in the fullness of her bloom: overflowing with fragrant flowers, dripping with honeyed scent, full of wild, buzzing bees.

During the summer, we are like this rosebush: lush, busy, sensual, full of distraction and sensual delight.  We romp late in the perpetual daylight, drink pink wine on patios, dance attendance at outdoor barbeques, and romp enthusiastically into nature. Our lives are full of social engagements: weddings, friends, and (in Vancouver, at least) eating an inordinate amount of salmon.

Summer is an invitation to expand, open our petals, and – like the bee – follow our nose hither and thither for a taste of everything.  Our lives are rich in feeling, sensation, sunshine, and good company.

And then the weather changes.

We look up into a darker sky, feeling the first raindrop or chill in the breeze.  The bbq invitations dry up, the paddleboards and kayaks go back into storage.  Patios begin to offer blankets and heating lamps. Our own petals begin to brown and drop away, revealing the skeletal branch system beneath.

Autumn.

The emerging beauty of the fall is stark, skeletal, clear. The sudden clarity of the air and bite of the cold is an invitation to slough off excess, prune back the extraneous, and reconnect to the core of who we are. By pausing and pulling in, we can consciously define who we are and what we want. Rather than explode rampantly into a million summertime distractions, we hone in, narrow down, and clarify what is most essential.

In our yoga practice, a summertime practice embodies flow, feeling, and lush sensuality.  Like the roses, this practice is a rich and nourishing affirmation of our vitality and expression.  However, sometimes this freedom – unchecked by structure and form – can become a method to avoiding the heart, the kernel, the sticky points.  When we freely move according to what always “feels good,” we can skirt challenges, avoid – if you will – eye to eye contact, and miss opening our dense and gnarled center.

An autumnal practice invites straight lines, clean energy, and direct movement. Rather than flow around the muscular obstacles that arise (stiffness, weakness), we narrow our focus and  direct ourselves into the heart of the challenge.  Head on, unflinching, we reclaim the length and strength that comes from structure and form.  As we hold ourselves to the standard, our essence is revealed.  When do we want to turn away?  When do we want to flit off rather than move through?

Embrace the autumnal invitation. Strip away distraction – both in your practice and in your life. Clear away the non-essential in order to expose the power and heart of your own essence. Concentrate your energy into the very bones of who you are and what you want.

Life practice:
  • If you only had one goal for the next three months, what would it be?
  • Can you narrow your focus down to what is most important to you?
  • Clean the house, clear out the basement, de-clutter your closets. Pare down your schedule.
  • Question:
    • What no longer reflects who you are?
    • What have you been holding onto that is more distracting than revealing?
    • What holds you back from letting it go? What do you gain if you do?
Yoga practice:
  • Rather than flow around obstacles, move through the heart of the weakness, the stiffness, the restriction.  Mindfully channel your energy to stay.
  • Give yourself time at the end of each practice to move your attention inwards, to refocus on you and your breath.
  • As you leave your practice, take this quality of introspection into your interactions.

 “At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cezanne

What bunny ears have to do with compassion

A Rabbit Noticed My Condition

“I was sad one day and went for a walk; 

I sad in a field.

A rabbit noticed my condition and 

came near.

It often does not take more than that to help at times – 

to just be close to creatures who

are so full of knowing,

so full of love

that they don’t

-chat.

they just gaze with

their 

marvelous understanding.”

-Meister Eckhart

I don’t like to cry in front of people.

My habitual strategy for managing strong feelings verges on Vulcan; you can tell when I feel sad, or angry, or vulnerable because I’ll cock my head to one side and look baffled.

It’s not that I don’t have feelings. In fact, my moods were legendary in our household: “Rachel’s in one of her states again,” my family would say, rolling their eyes and giving me a wide berth. My well-meaning parents taught me to be “nice,” “polite,” and “in a good mood.” Sadness was considered self-pity; anger was disrespectful. I managed my emotional peaks and valleys by trying to hold my feelings in. Sadness became stoicism. Anger was directed inwards: cutting, self-denial, silence.

Re-membering

Part of my journey in yoga has been to “re-member myself:” to seek out my abandoned orphan parts and usher them back home.

When I start to experience my darker feelings – whether it’s anxiety, sadness, vulnerability, fear – I often have a knee jerk impulse to “fix” myself.  I try to lock the feeling away in order to seem okay.  However, “fixing” implies locking something down, freezing it into stasis by gluing it into place. Ironically, by “fixing” ourselves, we make monuments of our hurts and give them a permanence that they don’t necessarily have.

The nature of our emotions is watery; when we “fix” them, we plasticize that which should freely move, and turn our wild and magnificent emotional ocean into a stagnant and settling swamp.  When instead we can pause, feel, and resist fixing (or hiding, or shoving, or icing over), then our feelings are able to re-claim their watery nature.  And in their ebb and flow, they clear away and heal any ragged markings in the sands.

The practice

When feelings surface, can we resist fixation and instead create the space to simply be and feel?  Like the rabbit, can we be so full of love and knowing that we hold ourselves with marvelous understanding rather than “chat?”  Creating space for our own experience without judgment – or even labels – allows us feel the depth and breadth of our humanity without needing to make it right, wrong, or different.  When we are able to be with how we feel – without compulsively justifying or blaming – then we can truly “re-member” ourselves and embrace the fullness of who we are.

Yoga practice:

  • “You are not a problem to be solved.”
  • Embrace feeling, not fixation
  • Allow the practice to be a tool for self-reclamation, rather than a measuring stick.

Life practice:

  • Practice listening to your friends and loved ones without comment or judgment.
  • Be the space, not the solution.
  • When you want to comment, pause, and see if there more power and grace in simply listening.
  • Listen to yourself – your body, feelings, and mind – as you would listen to a dear friend.
  • Sit with your favorite creatures – cat, dogs, rabbits – and just be.

What fake POF profiles have to do with self-love

It began with a text exchange:

Hey Rachel, that’s a sexy, sassy new POF profile!

…What new profile?

…Uh, you’d better call me.

A friendly Fish directs me to the username of the new profile that has cropped up on Plenty of Fish.  “It’s definitely you,” he says with animated concern, “The pictures are of you.  I was surprised, but though, oh well, maybe she’s going in a…uh, new direction?”

The new profile – called “FlexibleRachel” – depicts a sassy and garish – though not entirely unattractive – version of me.  Vaguely demeaning.  Titillating photos. Coquettish posturing. You get the picture.

The first flush of incredulity washes over me, “Oh…my…god,” I say, staring at the insipid captions.  “This took a lot of time.  And this person has obviously been reading my blogs, too. Like, they’ve done research. Wow.”

“Yeah.”

A fake POF profile.

Of course, impersonation must happen all the time.  The world of social media is run on the honor system and people are primarily regulated by their own good sense.  But because I would never think to post a profile of someone else, I just couldn’t have imagined that someone would do it to me.

“Are you okay?” my friend asks.

I search my feelings.  Am I okay?  How much does it bother me to have a ditzy avatar out there in the plenty of fish world?

I had mixed feelings. After all, we live in a world of digital identity.  Our “character,” which used to be revealed through our personal interactions with other people, is now branded, packaged, and tied up in a bow through pithy FB comments and photo streams.  We have replaced our social character – in some ways – with our personal marketing.

However, the question at the bottom of the rabbit hole is simple: where does my sense of self truly come from?  Am I who you think I am?  Or am I who I think I am?

The practice

Our yoga practice sometimes suffers from a similar confusion. While the traditional intention of the yoga practice is to foster a rich, deep, and trusting self-connection, we often turn the classroom into yet another opportunity to compare:

“I can’t do that pose as well.”

“She’s better than me.”

“Damn, I am good, I nailed it!”

“How do I look right now?”

“Don’t fall over…don’t fall over…don’t fall over…”

“I will not take child’s pose! I will not take child’s pose!”

Even our yoga class – which can be a sanctuary for inner nourishment – easily becomes a ground for self-judgment when we practice on auto-pilot.

Reclaim your sanctuary 

It’s time to reclaim your practice as a sacred place for trust, love, and nourishment.  A place to come to our steadiest, deepest  home: ourselves.

  • Let your own inner voice be the loudest,
  • Be an audience of one,
  • Discard “should,” “right,” “wrong,” “good” and “bad” and replace them with “feel,” “trust,” “nourish,” “risk,” “play,”
  • Give yourself permission – for just an hour – to use the tool of your practice as an instrument for deep feeling and love rather than judgment.

And begin to watch your non-practice life transform.

As we begin to trust ourselves more deeply, we can remain steady when the external winds – whether it’s a job change, the end of a relationship, or a fake POF profile  – begin to blow.  Rather than scrambling to protect how we “appear,” our inner trust will support us and allow us to respond mindfully and with integrity.

 

Go to yoga class.  And come home.

What crossing your eyes has to do with gratitude

What crossing your eyes has to do with gratitude.

Cross your eyes.

Go ahead. Do it.

 

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face,” they say, and if you take a moment to cross your eyes, sure enough, you’ll see that there is a big, dark, shiny thing that lives right between your eyes.

Yep, it’s your nose.

And what’s crazy? It’s there all the time. And, if you’re like most people, we don’t even see it.

One of the gaze points in ashtanga yoga is the nose. As I was practicing (and looking at my nose), it suddenly occurred to me that I had never really noticed my nose before. Even in the practice, I wasn’t really taking it in. And yet it’s there. And not only is it always there, but it’s always visible, unlike, say, the back of your knee. My nose lives daily in my line of sight, but I have gotten so used to it being there, that I don’t even register its presence.

 

This is akin to the time I came home and found my roommate in the kitchen.

“What do you think of the new plant,” she asked.

“What new plant.”

She stared at me, “The one by the front door. The large bushy one that you have to practically trip over in order to see it. That large plant.”

“Oh.” Huh. “I didn’t see it.”

 

I’m starting to wonder: what else is always there that I simply don’t see anymore?

The support of friends? The safety of living in Canada? The love of family? Breathing? Being alive? Now?

 

What have I grown so accustomed to, that – like the nose on my face – I’d only really notice it when it was gone. Or – as in the yoga practice – when I’m encouraged to really look at it for a long time, over and over, until I finally see that its there.

 

  • Pause to cross your eyes.
  • Pause to feel your heart.
  • Pause for a deep breath.
  • Pause to be in the sensations of your miraculous body.
  • Pause to be now.
  • Pause to acknowledge who or what support you in your life.

Pause to love.

 

What dolphin plank has to do with monogamy

Sweet, sweet freedom.

Oh the freedom to date whomever I want, whenever I want!  To run amok with plenty of fishies, tinder dandies, and e-harmonics!  What could possibly be more liberating that to have the absolute freedom to date anyone I want without commitment or a care in the world!

Right?

Hmmm.  Actually, no.

I have been confused about the nature of freedom.  Generally freedom sounds like liberation, which at first seems like a good thing.  Surely being able to do whatever I want whenever I want is ideal, right?  As my native state declares boldly on our license plate, “Live free or die.”

But the trick is, all that restless flitting about doesn’t really feel liberating.  Sure, going on five coffee dates in one week may look exciting from the outside, but after awhile it just feels like distraction and too much caffeine.  Running from thing to thing (or person to person) is really just another form white noise.  Plenty of variety…but no depth.

True freedom doesn’t come from our ability to run away.

We earn our freedom through our fortitude to stay put.

Binding ourselves to one spot and learning to stay there – despite the conflicts, challenging conversations, and awkward silences – propels us into a more elevated type of freedom. If we can simply check out when the going gets tough, we are reacting rather than choosing.

Our ability to stay, feel, and witness leads us through our limitations.  We thread ourselves through the tiny eye of the needle in order to create the tapestry.  In doing so, we discover that true freedom is our capacity to choose from a place of pro-action rather than reaction, decision rather than fear. Whether we bind ourselves to a person, value, or job, our decision to mindfully limit ourselves is paradoxically the very act that liberates us.  Otherwise we leave the coffee shop at the first sign of discomfort  – and never really discover who we are or what we want.

And so: dolphin plank.

When we stay in our dolphin plank for 75 seconds, 90 seconds, or even two minutes, we give ourselves the opportunity to practice staying put.  Now, as far as I know, no one has ever been broken doing dolphin plank.  But it’s a pose that provides a lot of feedback where we can see our desire to distract, run away, and opt out.  When we practice committing to plank, we strengthen our capacity for resiliency and dedication – the same capacity that helps us to stay in the room during a conflict, be patient with our screaming kid, express our vulnerability, or – god forbid – go on that third date.

When you are next in dolphin plank, remember that you are doing more than firming your core; you are strengthening your own inner fortitude: your capacity to stay in your discomfort for the sake of something greater.  Every extra second that you stay can act as an affirmation of your inner courage.

So when we are faced with a real life situation that makes us want to run away (screaming kid, conflict, third date…), we can remember how strong we really are…and then choose.

 

“Courage is not the absence of fear; but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

-Ambrose Redmoon

Reality in yo’ face. Or: your ex and viveka.

club denial

I love to live in denial.

Not deliberately, of course, but it kind of slips in around the edges, hovers just outside of the edges of my vision.  And the funny thing about denial is that I don’t even know it’s there.  And when it finally swims into focus, the wake up is often astonishing.  Like finally noticing a giant black hair that must have been growing out of my chin for weeks.  (And yikes!  How does that happen? How did I miss it when it was just a little hair baby?)

This is how it goes:

My ex sent me an email to let me know that he was dating again.

I sit, staring stupidly at my computer, trying to register the polite words on the screen, “I don’t know how to come out and say it, so I guess I’ll just tell you: I’m dating again.”

The flood of unexpected feelings is fast and hot.  I have been punched in the chest.  I am angry, I am hurt, I despair.  I have been abandoned, cast off.  I am alone.

And as all these feelings engulf me, and I surprise myself by crying over my keyboard, the strange little (and not unkind) thought surfaces, “Well, I guess you weren’t quite as over that as you thought, were you.

Reality in yo’ face

Reality checks can be extremely uncomfortable.  Suddenly, the way we had viewed the world, and the way that the world actually is, collide.  Perception and reality square off, and, friends, reality always must win.

Sure, we can shove it down, push it underwater, or cover it with blankies, but ultimately reality is our benevolent and relentless teacher.

My ex’s email was a wake up call.  My attachment to him was exposed, like an upturned rock can reveal life swarming beneath a quiet surface.  The rational part of me that glossed over the breakup was shattered, smeared by the emotional monster underneath.

The crack in my reality armour was revealed.

In relationship, these moments happen continually: at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.

beginnings

When we are just starting to get to know someone, it is so tempting to fill in all the missing pieces with our favourite hopes and dreams.  We project-vomit all over our subject, endowing them with habits and desires that are surely compatible with our own.  Or sometimes our projections produce anxiety and fear, as we fill in the unknown with the necrotic remnants of previous hurts.

So the practice becomes staying in the unknown.

middle

As we move from dating into relationship, the practice becomes to keep our eyes open.  Discerning the real from the unreal is viveka, or discernment.  As well-wired neurological beings, we will shape our perceptions according to what we expect (or want) to see.  Seeing our date or our partner for who they really are requires wiping (and re-wiping, and re-wiping) our perceptual slate clean so that we can experience them without our own agenda.

end

As my ex-husband and I split, I noticed that an alarming distortion began to permeate our relationship.  He began to say he “didn’t know me at all,” and that (despite 4 years) I “wasn’t the person he thought I was.”  To cope with the ragged awfulness of the split, we began to turn each other into strangers.  It was easier to believe that the other person was “wrong,” “evil,” and “selfish” than to sit in the reality of a mutually created split.  However, being “right” hardens us and divides us from the tender and complicated truth.  In conflict, the far more difficult spiritual path is to feel the whole scope of the situation, and to uphold what we need to do nonetheless.

The practice:

  • Get comfy with uncertainty.
    • When you notice yourself fantasizing about an imaginary future or conversation, pause.  Stop.  Do a one-minute meditation and breathe.  Bring yourself back to the “is-ness” of the now.
  • Be open to real information.
    • See what you see.  Hear what you hear.  And feel what you feel.
    • When you notice interpretation happening (“He didn’t mean that.” “She must have meant….”): Stop.  Ask.  Get more information.
    • Notice what you wanted it to mean, and ask yourself why.

And finally, be sweet to yourself.

When reality strikes, take a breath and pause.  Give yourself some space to process and integrate.

Reality is the gift that keeps on giving.  The more we soften to its wisdom and reflection, the clearer our vision can become.

 

Yoga and neuroplasticity. Oh, and saving humanity.

When I was a kid and my parents wanted to have a “talk,” that meant something bad was about to happen. Usually I had done something thoughtless like forget to clean the birdcage, left a mess the basement, or hurt my sister’s feelings.

“Rachel!” a voice would shout up the stairs, “Did you leave the lawn mower outside?”

“Uhhhhh….” I would cringe, reading a Star Trek book in my room.

“It’s raining out! It could get ruined.”

“Ummm, not sure…maybe?”

A big sigh, “Let’s have a talk.”

I was a sensitive kid, so having a “talk” became cross-wired in my brain with an irrational, gut-level fear of my parents not loving me anymore. As an adult, those old habits from childhood still want to run the show. When a partner or good friend gets that serious tone and wants to have a “talk,” I still experience a stabbing fear and self-criticism that easily spirals into anxiety. Several relationships have even ended because I couldn’t figure out how to get past this fear of communicating about complex emotional issues. So, how do we change these old, ingrained habits? Yoga In the yoga sutras, Patanjali says that our practice must be “consistent, devoted, and for a long time.”

1.14 Sa Tu Dirgha Kala Nairantarya Satkarasevito Drdhabhumih

Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break, and in all earnestness.

“Take practice and all is coming.”

– Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, Ashtanga luminary

About six months ago, I started practicing Ashtanga again. Ashtanga is a set series of poses that are done again and again, day in and day out. I began very modestly, only practicing for about forty-five minutes when I began. My teachers would observe me, offer occasional insight, and sometimes add poses to the series as I was ready. However, from one day to the next, no remarkable change occurred, and my practice seemed to vary very little.

Six months later, though, the culmination of this consistent practice has yielded a remarkable transformation. However, this change is only visible through the lens of time. In our instant gratification society, I want to see results now and it’s easy to forget that change – real change – takes a long time. In fact, change may be imperceptible until we learn to trust the process and stay in the game for months, years, and decades.

As within, so without.

The physical yoga practice provides a mirror in which we can witness our capacity for radical change through slow and consistent efforts over time. Neuroscience has revealed that – like our bodies – our minds are plastic and adaptable, and our synapses can become re-wired. Re-wiring our brains is often extremely and strangely uncomfortable. (Trying to give up my morning coffee is excruciating!) Because real change requires time, we don’t get our usual hit of instant gratification. Also, although emotional and mental change is the deepest kind of change-work we can do, it is not tangible or particularly visible from the outside. To persevere, we must cultivate shraddha, or faith. In moments of doubt, our physical practice is a reminder that our dedicated and patient efforts can’t help but move us towards becoming the people that we want to be.

And world peace

Now consider the effect of evolutionary biology; if we think our childhood patterns are entrenched, just imagine the tenacity of the survival tactics that have evolved over millions of years! Although our technology has evolved radically, our old neurology (fear of the “other,” fighting for resources, showing no weakness) is still running the show, albeit beneath our veneer of civility. We can clearly see these drives propelling the dynamics of world politics, overfishing, racism, global warming, and materialism.

But take heart, fellow yogis. Look through the longer lens and remember how far we’ve already come. In the last one hundred years, women can vote, we are beginning to embrace diversity, and gay marriage is slowly becoming legalized. We acknowledge global warming, and we are questioning how we consume and relate to the planet. While we may not see it in our lifetimes, our slow efforts to mindfully evolve will eventually transform the world and how we live. The next step in our evolution as a species must be a continuation of our baby steps into conscious awareness, proactive learning, and a diligent re-education of our minds. We have to move faster than our prescribed evolutionary biology, and consciously step into our conscious power to transform. We have become the stewards of our world, and we must use our power responsibly. The next step in evolution is not biological – we don’t have time to wait. Our next evolutionary step as a species will be self-directed. And it begins with each of us being willing to step with faith and courage into our discomfort and make the small, daily choices that reveal us to be the best that we can be.

Change won’t be fast. But through dedication, effort, and consistency, we can – and will – get there. And it starts right now.

And now.

And now.

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,

Your thoughts become your words,

Your words become your actions,

Your actions become your habits,

Your habits become your values,

Your values become your destiny.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

What Plenty of Fish has to do with compassion

plenty of fishI’ve recently returned to the online waters after a hiatus. Towards the end of my last go-round, I had gotten to the point where I was dismissing profiles with incredulous gasps and eye rolling.

“OMG, can you believe this one?” I said to my girlfriend, “His only picture was clearly taken at his wedding and his wife’s face is blacked out.”

“God!  Ew!” she exclaimed, swiping left on Tinder, “Don’t they know anything?”

“Seriously!”  I said, “And this one has a picture of his boat and his house, but no picture of him.  Does he really have no self-esteem?” I continue swiping, “This one has the spelling of a fifth grader…”  Swipe.  “And this one, oh my god, the only picture is taken from about 60 feet, and he wants to have his first date ‘at his house.’  How does that not sound like a serial killer?”

I paused and stopped.

“Ummmm.”  My forehead crinkled, “Wait a minute.  Have I become too…judgmental?”

”God, no.” She waves her hand, “I scan the height, the job, the location.  If those don’t match up, I hit delete.”

“But seriously,” I tug her attention off her Ipad, “Is doing this making us more, well, callous?”

She paused, suddenly thoughtful.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” she finally sighed.  “But who has time to answer everyone?”

Online dating (or fishing, as it were) is a fast-track to becoming desensitized to the human being on the other end of the Wifi.  It’s so much easier and faster to swipe left/ hit delete/ block user than to have a meaningful or uncomfortable conversation.

However, coming back to the online Coliseum, it is my current spiritual practice to respond to every single email that I receive.  Even when the email is from “MrMeatTube101,” “SirBeerGogglesU,” and “AgedStallion779.”

And because I can’t control how the men respond in kind, my practice is to uphold myself without any feedback.  In other words, I am not answering to be “nice” or make them feel better; I am replying because responding with care and respect makes me feel different.  It reminds me to see the humanity and vulnerability in each person.  I do it because it keeps my ego in check and softens the judgmental calcification that was too easily starting to form.  After all, humans aren’t video game characters.

We’re all on POF (me included) because we’re trying to find some kind of connection in this complicated world.

Why not be a good swimmer?

Stage fright and Patanjali. Oh, and hamsters.

I was a theatre actor for many years, and I had terrible stage fright. About a week before the show, the little hamster voices inside my head started to whisper:

“You’re going to trip.”

“You’re going to mess this dance step up.  It’s so hard.  You messed it up in rehearsal.”

“You’re going to go up on your lines.”

Rather than tell these insidious little voices to fuck off, I would gasp and run to my script, and study my lines over and over until I was certain that I would be wordperfect.  Unfortunately, I was really practicing being terrified and in my head.  During performance itself, I would have an out of body experience where I spoke and moved on cue while my hamster brain was frozen in the headlights of the audience.  Being a proficient actor, sure, I looked fine from the outside; but my worry had killed my artistic joy and abandon.

This year – as a present to myself – I decided to confront my hamsters and perform again.  I would sing for my office.  Karaoke backtracks, done in the lobby: nothing fancy, but meaningful to me. About a week before showtime, the hamsters started sniffing around, their pert little noses twitching.  “Just run through the words in your head,” they cajoled, “make sure you know them backwards and forwards.”  The rubbed their little paws together, “You don’t want to mess it up…in front of all those people…”

This time, when the hamster voices arose, I stepped in and firmly grabbed their furry little tails. “Look, hamsters,” I said, “Fuck off.  It’s going to be great.  It’s going to be tons of fun.”  And I put them firmly back into their cages.

Don’t believe everything you think.

We all have these little voices, our little hamsters of worry and anxiety and what it.  “He’s going to leave me,”  “I’m going to blow the interview,”  “I can’t run the extra mile,”  “Dolphin plank sucks,” “I can never balance in Ardha Chandrasana” or, “I’ll forget all my lines.”   Patanjali (ancient yogi guy) says when we have negative thoughts, we need to step in and cultivate the opposite.  He calls this pratipaksha bhavanam.  A more recent sage, Wayne Dyer, says, “change your thoughts, change your life.”  The Dalai Lama adds that if we can’t find something positive in a challenging situation, we should simply put it out of our heads entirely.  Worry is a waste of time.  Worry is hoping for something bad to happen.

We can change this. By noticing when the hamsters start, we can step in and redirect our thoughts towards something positive. We train our minds to practice good stuff rather than bad.  Sure we’ll have some hamster thoughts, but that doesn’t mean we have to run around in their fetid little cages with them for hours. Whether the hamsters fret about singing, the relationship, running a mile, or dolphin plank, let’s take the proactive moment to question the mind chatter.  Create the space to respond from our highest vision for ourselves rather than react from our hamster brains.  If we’re going to create a vision, let’s aim high.  Let’s aim for joy.

So put the damn hamster down.  And start singing.

What zombie hands have to do with yoga

I have a bad habit of reading my phone while walking into heavy traffic.

Yesterday, walking to lunch, I had to deliberately return my phone to my bag on three separate occasions after, zombie like, my hand decided to reach in and pull it out.

“No, Rachel, No!” I muttered out loud, as if my hand were a recalcitrant child that could be scolded into behaving, “Jesus.” I nearly walked into a parked Volvo. “Get it together.”

We are growing so connected, so “on” all the time. Information is strapped to our bodies, “Let’s google that,” we say, rather than “I don’t know.” “I’ll text her now,” rather than “I’ll ask her later when I see her.”

When there is that odd moment between the doing – like when walking or waiting in line – I instinctively rush to fill it with this information/ connection glut. It is much more comfortable to reach for my phone than to take a breath. There are so many delightful options at my fingertips that provide an immediate rush of competence and popularity: email, texting, Tinder (ahem), flipping through Facebook…there’s always some hook to catch.

It’s not our fault that we are uptrained to technology. Our culture supports this electric conductivity, encouraging us to be in our virtual minds as much as possible to be popular (you’re not on instagram?), well-informed (you don’t get google scholar alerts? what about the political gabfest podcast?), connected (you’re not on linked in?). Information and connection, at this point, are so prevalent that it is no longer a matter of if we can connect, but how we filter out the noise. For human beings, wired for community, connective technology is sugar for our psyche.

Connecting out is easy, fast, satisfying.
Connecting in is slower, messier, and can be scary.

When the furor dies down and the waters become still, pausing and turning into ourselves can reveal hurts, thoughts, vulnerabilities that are easily  scotched over in the fluster of our lives. At the end of my day at home, I sit and watch my compulsion to do anything (budget, email, eat glutinos, watch House of Cards) rather than breathe into the soft animal of loneliness that sometimes comes to visit. But when I am brave enough to turn in, connect, and invite myself to feel, then through the bittersweet human pangs there arises the deep sense of hereness, of being, of safety in myself.

The space between the doings reveals us again as human beings, breathing in the vast, unfathomable, and heart breaking space of simple aliveness and all our unfinished business. We move (as Jon Kabat Zinn eloquently states) from the digital world to the analog. Time is slower, counted by the footfalls on a forest hike rather than in the impatient milliseconds it takes a page to load. In the being moments, we are perfectly imperfect, practicing just being with ourselves as we are.

Yoga practice offers us a rare and precious space to turn inwards. To feel. To reclaim our deeper, older, and wildish aspects. We connect with that which is beyond words and speaks in the language of sensation. We make space to feel our physical bodies, our animal desires, our emotions, our intuition, our breath.

As we move in, we nourish the deep roots, dig into the dark soil of who we are. This re-integration gives us the solidity and form that we need to be steady amidst the winds. We can remember our purpose, our love, our softness.

Our hand then remembers to leave the phone in the bag. Because the walk is so much sweeter without it.

Feeling the whole elephant

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.
“Hey, the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.
“Oh, no! it is like a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.
“Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
“It is like a big hand fan” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
“It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
“It is like a solid pipe,” Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, “What is the matter?” They said, “We cannot agree to what the elephant is like.” Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, “All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said.”
“Oh!” everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

Courtesy of Jain World.

I’m a thinker. Almost everything I experience gets processed through a Spock like filter, “And captain, I understand that the alien woman is throwing herself at you, but I fail to understand the cause.” Our history, genetics, and upbringing all serve to shape the manner in which we see the world. Interestingly, we then start to see the world through this veil of expectations, our experience then in turn lets in the information that reinforces what we already believe. Which shapes our perception of the world. Which reinforces this perception. And on it goes.

These filters are essential to our sanity. Our most basic filter is the capacity of our senses themselves: the perceive only the bandwidth of light, sound, smell, taste, and pressure to which they are sensitive. And thank goodness! How distracting would it be to see radiowaves in our daily lives?

We also filter based on our personal experience. If we have a wonderful experience, we will associate that event with pleasure, and seek it out more frequently. But have one bad brussel sprout as a kid, and that veggie is off the table.

As a kid, I was praised for my ability to think my way rationally through a conflict. With such nice reinforcement, I continued to use my logical brain as a mediator for my experiences. The only problem here is that my logic bias began to dull out some of the other information that was coming my way. Just like someone that dislikes brussel sprouts as a kid may never think to try that veggie again. Like that old story about the elephant, we continue to experience only the part of the elephant that is immediately in front of us, and don’t know that we’ve only got the tail.

One of the goals of our yoga practice is to begin to clear away the veil of expectations, so that have the opportunity to experience the world more freshly and in its wholeness. By quieting our mind’s perpetual quest to associate and evaluate, we can move into a space of more possibility. (Maybe I will sample that green thing on the table and experience how it tastes!)

For me, one of the gifts of yoga is its capacity to invite us to arrive fully and unedited into our experience. In our culture, because we are often praised for thinking and analyzing, we frequently leave our emotional and physical bodies behind. In essence, we are the elephant, and we only get to experience our trunk! Our practice gives us a safe and open space to reclaim any neglected missing pieces. We shed the restrictive layers, and take the time to feel how we feel. By giving ourselves the gift of our practice, we expand our capacity to feel the wholeness of our human experience.

In practice:

  • Take time to settle into your skin before you practice. As you let go of the tension, breathe and create room for your emotional experience. What bubbles up? Give yourself permission to feel whatever you feel, trusting that these feelings will move through you, shift, evolve.
  • As you move into your physical practice, let go of alignment and form as “rule” or “obligation.” Instead, use alignment cues as a way to feel deeper into your body and as an invitation to experience your physical body in a different way.

Breathe. Move. Feel. Better.

Gossip begone! Ferreting out our need to natter

You know how it is. Picture this:

You’re at the water cooler.  Your galpal comes up to you, looks around, and hisses under her breath, “You are not going to believe this.” 

Your ears prick up.

“What?…What?“

“Maria, in accounting,” she gets a little closer, “she just went out to lunch…(dramatic pause)…with David.”

You gasp, “What?”  Your galpal has been harbouring a mega crush on David.  The kind you had on Patrick Swayze after watching Dirty Dancing.

“Yes.”  Her face falls,” They looked really…cozy.”

“Well,” you try to rally your friend, “Maria goes to lunch with a lot of guys…if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” she sighs.  “Slut.”  She still sounds sad.  

“Like last month, she went out with that guy from HR.  If that isn’t trying to climb up the ol’ corporate ladder, by, you know, climbing on something else…”

“Yeah,”  your galpal is sounding more lively now.  “Gross.  If that’s the kind of girl he wants, them I am so not for him.”  She  sniffs defiantly.

“Yeah!”

  Oh, how easy it is to fall into the Jaws of Gossip. We gossip for many different reasons.  There is the delicious, spiteful, schadenfreude gossip.  (Schadenfreude: taking pleasure in the misfortune of others.)  Or even better: gossip hidden behind a veneer of compassion: “Can you believe that Meredith walked on Andrew!  She’d been a beast for years.  I hope that he is surviving this blow, I am just so worried about him!”  Or there’s gossip intended to raise our spirits, like the example above.  And of course, there is the gossip that is not intended to be either malicious or  compassionate, but is simply a conversation point that serves as a way of connecting with others.

So, is gossip really bad?

The gossip trap

There are two big problems with gossip:

  1. It creates false realities.
  2. It undermines your integrity.

Creating alternate realities

Most of the time, gossip is based on speculation rather than fact.  Two thousand years ago in the yoga sutras, Patanjali made a distinction between “true knowledge” and “verbal delusion.”  Even then, the yogis understood that our words have the power to create our reality.  After all, “reality” is simply what we take in and believe with our senses.  When we gossip, we are in the “verbal delusion” realm and are fabricating a reality that may or may not be true. In the example above, we actually have no idea why Maria and David went out to lunch, what “cozy” means, and we also probably have no real evidence for Maria’s past exploits either.  Our galpal is filtering everything that she’s seen through a lens of insecurity and jealousy – so she probably doesn’t have the most reality-based interpretation of events.  As soon as we create a story about someone that is beyond the bounds of what we know to be true, we are creating alternate realities.  This leap of imagination is not so harmful when it involves people we don’t know (“Jessica Alba is having a twins with Ashton Kutcher!”), but it can quickly become toxic and confusing when it involves our co-workers and friends.  Unfortunately, “saying it” often makes it so.  And these stories become hard to dis-believe, even once they’re proved untrue.

Boom goes integrity

When gossip is close to home, it fosters cliques, secrecy, and an “us versus them” attitude.  After all, it feels far more powerful to stew in righteous indignation or judgment than to be vulnerable, have a confrontation, and risk being wrong.  And if we are gossiping locally, there’s always the fear of the gossipee finding out!   This fear leads to alliances, codes of silence, and general duplicity.  Now that we’ve gossiped, we have to be nice to someone that we were just complaining about. When we are forced to act differently on the outside than we feel on the inside, we are compromising our integrity and we become less powerful, open, and loving.  Gossip creates barriers and prevents us from extending the benefit of the doubt or our compassion to others.  There’s a reason that Don Miguel Ruiz advises us in the Four Agreements to “Be impeccable with your word.”   Gossip doesn’t just create a false reality; more importantly, it causes powerlessness, disharmony, and contraction in our own being.  We become smaller.

Removing gossip from your life

In order to be our best selves, then, we need to shelve the gossip.

So, how to we get rid of it?

The first step is to notice when you want to gossip, and to figure out why.  Knowing why you want to gossip will give you keys to stop it in its dirty little tracks. We generally gossip:

  • For power
  • For entertainment
  • To connect

Power gossip!

Problem: we gossip because we feel powerless and we are trying to get our power back.

Solution:  When you feel the urge, ask yourself:

    • Gossip is cheap, short-term solution.  Is there a longer term solution that I can initiate?
    • What vulnerability am I deflecting through gossiping?
    • What avenues do I have at my disposal to create more options for myself?

A note of distinction: there is a difference between gossiping and needing to process an emotional (and potentially messy) response to an event.  Having a good friend that you can  entrust with your process is healing and valuable.  Trust your inner voice to tell you the difference between the two.

Entertainment Gossip

Problem: Quite simply, you’ve got nothing more interesting to talk about.

Solution: Go get a more interesting hobby.  Join a book club.  Ride horses.  Or at least talk about Ashton Kutcher rather than your co-worker.

Connection Gossip

Problem: You want to find a bond with someone, but can’t find a way in.

Solution: Ask them about themselves.  Work a little harder to find a topic with depth.

Gossip Begone

Rooting out gossip from your life is a challenge, but it is well-worth your restraint.   Although initially it may be uncomfortable to refrain for participating in this socially acceptable pastime, upholding your own integrity will ultimately engender you with a sense of clarity, honesty, and inner power.

A final tip: When someone is gossiping near you and seeks your participation (as they will), remember that they are gossiping as a way to find power, entertainment, or connection.  With a bit of compassion and curiosity, you can look a little deeper at their motives and consider speaking to the true underlying cause.  Although this may lead to a more vulnerable conversation, it could also widen the possibilities for a real connection.  And after all, that’s the good stuff, right?

What Tinder has to do with Gandhi

Tinder.

The new art of dating.

Tinder is a strangely compelling (and slightly disturbing) app that allows you to connect with potential dating (or friends?) in your vicinity.  It’s like Angry Birds meets Plenty of Fish.  How it works: you set some parameters, view the profile pic of potential candidates, then swipe right if you’re interested, swipe left if you’re not.  If you both have swiped right, then – BAM- you’re a match and can IM with each other.  Whoo hooo!

Friends, I have been astonished by most of the guys’ profiles that I see. Here’s the breakdown (you can see I’ve given this some – uh, too much? – thought):

  • 35%: pictures with girlfriends or wives that have been sloppily cut out (or even sometimes not),
  • 20%: clearly drunk with the homies (or en route),
  • 20%: with a fish,
  • 10%: it’s a pic of Homer Simpson.  Or a dog with sunglasses on,
  • 10%: jaundiced bathroom selfie, brooding gaze, naked abs optional,
  • 5%: awesome.

Given that a picture and a brief description is all you’ve got to go on, you’d think that the fellas would take a little more care with their selected images.  After all, this is the face they’re putting forth to woo a mate.

Tinder as a spiritual practice

Okay, so before I go too far afield with well-intentioned suggestions for profile improvement, here’s what Tinder has to do with living a spiritual life:

Humans have a rare quality on the planet:  consciousness.

We get to choose, moment by moment, who we want to be.  On Tinder (and most social media), our capacity to consciously choose how we arrive in front of people is obvious.  (If it’s not obvious, you may want to consider how you’re tweeting/fbing/ instagramming yourself.)  But outside of social media, we are arriving in our relationships every day, in every interaction that we have.

How we choose to present ourselves in our relationships – with our family, at our jobs, with strange – is a direct expression of who we are and who we want to be.

On Tinder, we default when we let the app post our Facebook pics with no curatorial input.  In life, we default when we show up mindlessly, unconsciously, and without choice.   When that occurs, we are letting the habit of who we have been dictate who we are becoming.

Rather than defaulting to the easiest path, we can take a little care and make a choice in the moment to be better.  We can step up our game and consciously embody our best vision for ourselves.  And when we make these conscious choices, day after day, who we aspire to be becomes who we actually are.

As Gandhi said: BE the change you want to see in the world.

How do you currently arrive in the world?  How do you want to arrive in the world?

Return, moment by moment, to the extraordinary power of your own ability to choose who you wan to be.  Through his courageous act, others will be inspired.  Change will ripple.  We will all become brighter.

So gentleman, cut the selfies and the drunken pub crawl pics.  Pull out that photo of you in the tux, or with your kids, or on the mountain.

In the process, we’ll raise the bar for everyone by arriving in the world as our best selves.

But most importantly, we’ll remind ourselves of how amazing we really can be.

 

The Bodhisattva’s Smile

When I first starting practicing yoga, I knew that it would change my life.

After my first sweet Savasana, I suddenly realized that if I practiced diligently and consistently, I would become calm, kind to stranger, sweet to horrible children, magnanimous with ex-boyfriends and generous with catty women.  As I looked upon the serene and clear faces of sculptured bodhisattvas, I knew that I, too, would undoubtedly become serene, placid, and imperturbable.

Um.  Well.

That didn’t happen.

The more that I practice yoga, the more I feel.  Ugly, gorgeous, complicated, fleeting, terrifying feelings.  Rather than being sweetly equanimous, I have been riding up and down on a rollercoaster of sadness and joy.  Instead of becoming increasingly serene, my palette of experience is widening rather alarmingly.  Rather than muting to a pale and pleasing lavender, the spectrum of my emotions is becoming garish, rainbow, neon.

As kids, we learn to protect ourselves against the heartache of the world by armoring up.  Feel less, guard more.  We are taught to armour up in order to navigate our world with any dexterity; after all, our culture frowns upon open displays of raw emotion.  However, with each application of protective coating, our originally radiant emotional spectrum becomes grimy, dimmed, contained.

In the yoga practice, we are invited into a safe space in which to participate fully with our own experience.  If we allow it, we can peel back the armour that we have diligently applied like so much nail lacquer.  Through our body, we explore a wide array of sensations (some pleasant, some unpleasant) and are asked to breathe, feel, and discover the underlying grace in our the experience.

In our practice, we can choose how we react to discomfort: do we harden and armour up? Or can we soften and sense?  Can we move past an instinctive recoil against uncertainty and instead explore with tenderness the multitude of sensations and feelings that lies beneath our skin?

Practicing courageous and compassionate feeling in our yoga increases the spectrum of emotion that is available to us in our daily lives.  Father than hardening, we learn to soften and sense the wildish emotions off our lives with groundedness and softness.  As we feel into our bodies more with kindness, we begin to increase our graceful fortitude, that is, our ability to ride the waves of feeling and yet stay non-reactive and connected.

I was mistaken about the bodhisattvas: they do not smile so serenely because they only feel peaceful.  No, their emotional cup is not so shallow.

They smile because they feel everything, and hold the ocean of their deep feelings in the open hands of their grace.

Yoga and the Perks of Being a Wallflower

“We accept the love we think we deserve.” – Mr. Anderson, Perks of Being a Wallflower

Consciously, we know that we are good, smart people.  Good people who try hard and deserve to have good things.

So why do we find ourselves in situations in which we would be aghast to find our friends?

Through relationships, the deeper currents of ours subconscious – or hey, let’s call it karma – are revealed.  While our conscious mind is happily thinking that we are cleverly avoiding all our usual traps, unconsciously we are re-creating patterns that expose our deeper hardwiring.  These are the patterns that we ultimately slap ourselves on the forehead about: “God, why am I here again?”

Not only do we accept the love we think we deserve; we accept the jobs, the friends, the criticism, the boundaries, and the lives that we think we deserve.

What a blessing.

Through active and mindful participation in our relationships, therefore, we can begin to gently and compassionately unearth our blindspots…and consciously make choices to reset our patterns and update our beliefs.  When we witness our relationships with the world, we can clearly be in the reality of who we truly are – not just who we think we want to be.  And from that honest and tender place, we can be brave enough to accept our “karma” and make decisions that are more in line with our vision for our highest selves.

Our yoga practice offers a clear and present mirror, where we similarly “accept the practice we think we deserve.”

Do we feel unhappy with ourselves?  Perhaps we have a deep feeling that we’re unworthy and need to be punished.  We will find opportunities to create these experiences in our practice.  Do we think that we are lazy, inept, imbalanced?  These beliefs will show up there, too.  Do we feell like we’re victims?  Bingo – in the practice.  Do we feel that we deserve to feel, to be nourished, and to express ourselves unselfconsciously?  Voila, our practice.

Our yoga practice is a blank canvas, waiting for us to begin to paint.  Through witnessing the art that we create, we are privy to a clear and present window through which to recognize our conscious beliefs, as well as our deeper, hidden patterns.  By honestly watching our thoughts and actions, we can compassionately begin to recognize who we truly are.  And through our yoga practice, we can then sweetly and mindfully untether ourselves from old beliefs and create a higher relationship with ourselves.

First within, then without.

As we begin to shift the tectonic plates of these old beliefs, our outer world will begin to shift too.  And while we will still be accepting the love (and the practice, the job, and the friends) that we believe we deserve, “what we think we deserve” may evolve to be something quite different.

Ask yourself:

  • how do I treat myself in my yoga?
  • what beliefs surface about myself?
  • are there any consistent thoughts that keep surfacing?
  • how do I want my practice to be?
  • what would I have to give up – or let go of – in order to allow this to happen?
  • what do I lose if I do?
  • what do I gain?

Go explore, you beautiful creature.

Feel, move, love.

The courage of awkward

Awkward happens when “who we want to be” is revealed to be different than “who we are at this moment”.  Maybe we are trying be suave in front of that cute guy, savvy when we talk to our new boss, or awesome in all our yoga poses….when suddenly we insert foot in mouth, lose the thread, topple over, and sheepishly look up from a crumpled heap on the proverbial  floor.

But here’s the sweet soft spot in the middle of that embarrassment: awkward only happens when we are invested, when our hearts are engaged, and when we’re trying.  There is an earnest beauty to awkward that only comes from putting our hearts on the line, risking embarrassment, and testing our boundaries.  Awkward, as it turns out, is incredibly brave.

How often do we stay safe rather than risking awkward?  Over time, to avoid that hot flush of embarrassment, we start to limit our behaviour and our possibilities.  Perhaps we hide our Star Trek books and pretend we don’t wear a mouthguard (um, that’s me), or we resist walking up to cute guys and girls because the potential risk of looking interested just isn’t “cool.”  We hug in the boundaries of our potential in order to be hip or socially acceptable.  And in doing so, we limit our freedom to really express our silliness, our joy, and our abandon.

We can only grow from pushing our boundaries, falling over, and getting back up.  So give me your awkward family Christmas videos, Star Trek memorabilia, and posed cat photos!  Show me someone who isn’t afraid to fall over, share their enthusiasm, and be excited about their lives.

In your yoga practice, have the courage to risk being awkward by testing your boundaries, embracing failure, and laughing as you pick yourself up.

Through the fire of awkwardness, new possibilities will be revealed.  And as you embrace your inner ugly duckling, you give permission to those around you to similarly free themselves from the restrictions of cool and hip, and instead get down to the business of living from their beautiful, earnest, vulnerable hearts.

 

 

The Power of Meow

JonesyI took my kitty to the vet.

Now for any pet owners, you know that taking your kitty to the vet can be a pretty harrowing experience.  There could be claws, there could be flying fur, there could be plaintive meowing to break a kitty mama’s heart.

Jonesy – my cat – was a little trooper.  Primarily because she was terrified.  At the vet’s, she shook uncontrollably, kept her claws to herself, and quietly subjected herself to the indignities of palpation and a heart check.  Her silence in the vehicle on the way home had me fearing the worst.  If she hadn’t had a heart attack, certainly I was in store for days of skulking and litter box abstinence.

When I got her home and opened her carrier, she popped out her head and jumped from the carrier.  Finding herself in a familiar setting, she gave herself a little shake, perked her ears, put her tail in the air, and made for her favorite kitty tower, none the worse for the wear.

After giving her some well-deserved catnip, I took a moment to marvel at her process.  Here was kitty, fully in the moment, allowing herself to be afraid, meow, and shake.  And because she’d be completely in the experience, once her vet visit as over, she had been able to completely let go of the distress and move on.

When something hurtful and scary happens to me, I do not react like kitty.  Rather than meow and shake (or articulate my feelings and cry), I batten down the hatches, act reasonably, and stuff my feelings into the box labelled “unacceptable and vulnerable reactions.”   Then later, instead of moving on, all the little goodies from that box start to leak out and worm their way into my thoughts and actions.  The experience lingers.

What if we could be more like kitty?  To fully experience the breadth of feelings in the moment without apology, and then – because our feelings had been given their due – to move on and freshly into the next experience?   Now, reason is a lovely tool, so I’m not suggesting that we all run amok with our emotions without reflection.  But kitty’s ability to experience the moment and then move on also gave her the capacity to immediately forgive me, enjoy some pets, and peacefully nap for the rest of her day.  Her teachings remind of Eckhart Tolle’s passion for the Power of Now, in which he invites us to be awake fully to the present moment.

We can learn a lot about life from our little furry friends, feline and canine.  In our yoga practice, consider how we hold onto our day, our agenda, or even our experience of one pose to the next.  In the practice, can we instead return again and again to the current moment and our experience?  In doing so, we give ourself the opportunity to be fully present to the breadth of our sensations and emotions, and we also clear our palate to available for the experiences to come.

Then, we could say that we too would experience, “The Power of Meow.”

Why I stopped practicing. And why I started again.

The beginnings

When I first started practicing yoga, it was one of the most challenging and rewarding physical disciplines I had experienced.  I got stronger, I felt great, and my practice improved.  I felt like I had come home.

After several years of yoga-euphoria, something changed.

First my practice plateaued.  And then it started to hurt.

Although my  mind and spirit loved yoga, my body began to whisper some objections.  I injured my hamstrings (chronically overstretched), tweaked my knee (too much ego in lotus), consistently dislocated my rib, and lost contact with the whole gluteus family: max, med, and min.   As theses injuries compounded, my balance became worse, my hip started to ache, and my practice declined.  Worst of all, the wear and tear caught up to me in my daily activities.   Loathe to change my practice, I decided to “work through it.”

The moment of truth

It was the touchdown that finally pushed me over the edge.

While playing touch football on the beach with my family over Christmas, I made a mad dash for a touchdown. As I launched into my sprint, my chronically stretched and weakened left hamstring finally gave out.  Although I made the touchdown, I spend the rest of my family vacation icing my leg.  I couldn’t walk without a limp.

I loved my practice.  I just didn’t like listening to it.

After my hamstring injury, I finally had to acknowledge that my physical practice needed to change.  The slow, strong yoga style I’d been doing for years had not prepared my body for dynamic movement.  My poor hammies and neglected glutes couldn’t sustain the rapid, power move of my dash.

Now, there is nothing wrong with yoga.  It’s simply that yoga – like any repetitive physical activity  done over time – will dole out specific stimulation and specific wear and tear if it’s the only exercise that you do.  And the way that I was doing my practice had created some weak links.  If I wanted to really take care of my body, then I needed to make a change.

Hello gymrat

I pulled up my yoga stakes and started going to TRX and the gym.  I got a personal trainer.  I did squats.  My goals were straightforward: get my balance back, find my glutes, make my hamstrings happy, and run 20 minutes.

I wasn’t the only yogi looking around for some extra fitness on the side.  Senior yogis in the community were going to Cross Fit.  Teachers whispered to me in secret that they were going to the gym.  Long-term yogis wanted to rediscover the parts of their body that yoga was leaving behind.

Yoga’s new look

As yogis start cross-training to balance out their bodies, priorities in group classes are starting to shift.  New ideas about the form of yoga are starting to percolate.  Whether it’s Jana Webb’s “Joga” (Yoga for Athletes) or Desi Springer and John Friend’s “The Roots” (a glute lovin’ romp that focuses on empowering the back line of the body), we’re starting to see the pollination of modern athleticism into the yoga studio.  Power and core classes increasingly derive ideas from personal training and other physical methodologies.  Functionality is more important than putting a foot behind your head.

Is this yoga?

Does an evolution in the physical form of yoga detract from “tradition?”

Heck, no.

While the physical yoga practice has really only been around a couple hundred years, the meditative heart of yoga has been around for millennia. Regardless of the shapes of the physical practice, the real yoga continues to happen in our mind.  The shapes are the roadmap, the destination is you.

Why I started practicing again

Yoga is a place to come home to my body, my breath, my emotions.  While I love my TRX and HIIT classes, listening to Katy Perry and running on a treadmill doesn’t give me the same kind of self connection.  I returned to yoga in order to find a quiet place to come home to myself. I returned to yoga to address the crazy voices in my mind.  And I returned to yoga because through the movement of my body, I can experience the mystery of being alive.

I’ve returned to my practice with a great deal of humility.  I use props, bend my knees, and do a lot of standing poses.   The daredevil postures that I used to practice may be somewhere in my future, but I’m not in a rush to get there.

And wouldn’t you know: yoga still has some surprises up its sleeve. Even though I’m returning to essentially same practice I left, my body feels radically different.  Hamstrings are happy, ribs are happy, and I’m unearthing some crazy little imbalances that TRX and the gym had left unaddressed.   Most importantly, I’m willing to listen to my practice now.

Love everything

Moving forward, I’ll try to keep up with some jogging…and I’ll occasionally try to lift heavy things. To keep my body happy, I’ll do my best to balance the slow beauty of yoga with some quick sprints and fast movement.  There’s beauty – and yoga – in jogging, too.  And I’ll continue to do my slow-ass, propped up practice, and let it unfold in its own time.

Yoga’s real secret is that is really doesn’t matter so much what the practice looks like. So choose the style that makes your body smile.  Whether it’s hatha, Iyengar, ashtanga, yin, or hot, when it comes down to it, our yoga practice is a safe place for us to be, feel, and come home.