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Not long ago I had a conversation with a student who expressed difficulty in focusing on anything that was good in his life. He said, "I am constantly drawn to the negativity in my life and the different challenges that I've been handed". I could see the deeply etched suffering and chronic stress that he held. This was a moment for me to hold the space of compassion and to offer the possibility of something new---holding suffering and the broader picture of who we are, both at the same time. To make room not just for the challenges but to broaden the field of awareness to all that we are and what we experience. This is called expansion.
When we have something happening in our lives that is deeply emotional, we tend to contract around it. It becomes the primary focus of our thoughts and feelings. Just think about the first time you "fell in love". For me, I would float through the day, thinking of what he said, when we would meet and what might the future might hold. On the other end of the spectrum is when we broke up. Both times, same relationship, the experience of clinging to the major emotion was present. When we pull our energy and attention into one thing, we often forgot all else, which isn't a bad thing if you're serving for the championship match at Wimbledon, but not so useful when we become overly fixated on an emotional event or happening.
Grief is a prime example of contraction. When we have a loss it tends to hold so much power over us, often leading to moments of deep despair and being overwhelmed with all of life. When I spoke this week in class about expanding around the feeling of grief, someone reflected back to me later that they didn't think it was possible. My reply was, "Initially, it might not be possible. But over time, we are able to broaden the space around the deeply held grief and begin to realize all of the other emotions existing in our experience. Grief might be the most obvious one, but it's not the only one."
One way to work with expansion is through our physical body. Emotions and events tend to lodge themselves in our physical realm. When we get better at noticing a particular sensation held in the body, such as tightness in the chest, butterflies in the stomach or a knot in the shoulder, we begin to connect to our body-mind matrix. You may have heard in a yoga class the cue, "breathe into your hips". Now as far as I know, we don't have nostrils in our hips so "breathing into them" seems impossible. However, if we think of it in terms of tension, we can use our breath to begin to relax the muscles around the hips, which seems to create more space from the inside out.
Our bodies are our emotional barometers and the better we get at reading them, the more freedom we begin to invite into ourselves on both a physical and mental level. To practice creating more space and ease within, close the eyes, slow down the breath and bring your awareness to your body. Where do you feel the most tightness? In your throat? Heart? Belly? Can you sense what's driving this constriction? Can you relate it to how you've been expressing your energy in your day to day happenings? Next, find your breath and visualize it moving into the tight area and opening the spaces around the constriction. Give it lots of room and no judgment. Allow yourself to be with what has arisen within your field of perception and realize you can hold all that is present.
Now take a deep breath, relax, let go and expand beyond the borders of your physical being. See where it takes you!
As I sat down to write this week's thought, I went through my past blog posts (over 300) to see if I had this as a previous theme and/or title. Much to my surprise I did not! The reason for it to be surprising is that the topic of letting go seems so fundamental to the practices of yoga and meditation.
Some of the first yoga teaching cues I was taught was to "let go of judgment, let go of competition and let go of expectation". Those three suggestions have firmly stuck with me, partially because when I first began practicing it had never been suggested to me that this was a starting point. I was often judgmental without much of a second thought, have always been competitive and held all sorts of expectations (both high and low). When I was asked to let go of it, it was a completely new way of being in my world. But I liked it...the confronting began to awaken my own awareness as to how often I held onto judging, competing and expecting. Those words were powerful and as I began my role as teacher I began sharing them with others.
Over this past week I have watched the students reaction when I said the words of the week were to "let go". In the pause between that announcement and what was next said, I watched faces of recognition and contemplation as though those words held some personalized meaning to each nodding head. It's as though many of us know on a subconscious level that holding onto thoughts, things, words and beliefs will create our own suffering. A part of us fundamentally recognizes that in the end it's about being free of our "stuff". It's in the unclenching of our rigid fists that we begin to find true liberation.
So throughout this week we practiced different ways of letting go. We began with letting go of the exhaling breath. Our breath is on loan for our entire lives. At no point do we own the breath, but rather simply pull in what we need and then release it back into the greater atmosphere. But focusing on seeing and feeling the breath leave and dissolve into the greater realm, we have a momentary insight of letting go.
Another perspective is to look at the path of our lives in relationship to the body, mind, spirit paradigm. If we break our life into three parts the first chapter would be focused on the body. As we are born and grow we find our physical way in the world through seeking food, learning how to move and in creating relationships with others. The second chapter is about using our mind to establish who we are in the world. Our attention is on education, family, career and placing down our roots. It's the time where we seek to discover what our role in the larger scheme of life looks like. The final chapter, having let go of the first two, is spent in delving fully into our spiritual self. It's the time for contemplation, introspection, reflection and passing wisdom along to others. If we are fully in this practice the ultimate letting go of our bodies as we die is something that's a natural transition rather than one of regret or surprise.
A third perspective is learning to let go of the heavily ingrained reactions we all possess. Pema Chodron describes this as shenpa, or the act of not biting onto the baited hook. The easiest place to get hooked is from our familial relationships as they are typically the longest. We are so used to having our buttons pushed, that to have a different reaction seems remote. However, when we begin to see the bait and decide not to bite down on the hook we have that moment of awareness where we can choose a different path. We let go of what might have been familiar and open up to a freer path.
As I end this weeks thought, take a moment to see if there's something that you're ready to let go. A toxic relationship, self-judgment, an unfulfilling job or a momentary habitual reaction are all great candidates for finding more liberation. Realize that in letting go, we find freedom. Deep breath in, slow exhale and see all returning to the whole.
This entire past week, I've been teaching around the theme of wholeness. It took some contemplation to find the word that would convey what had inspired the thought and wholeness was as close as I could get. As I mentioned in the previous weeks blog, a member of my extended family passed away at the age of 103 and her funeral was held over the weekend. It was officiated by a rabbi and as he spoke, I sat there thinking that what he was saying was the kind of thing that I would talk about in a yoga class. I realized that although he was coming from the Jewish perspective (and I'm not Jewish) that we were still viewing humanity similarly. He was viewing if from his lens and I through mine, just as we all view the same thing from our own viewpoint, yet I felt connected to what he was saying and connected to the other people in attendance.
So often, particularly in fear-based cultures, institutions and religions, we have an "us versus them" approach; "I'm right, you're wrong"; "me and you". From many of the wisdom traditions, it is said that the root of suffering is the belief in separation. We see ourselves only as individuals and forget that we are all inextricably inter-connected. One of my teachers explained it to me like this:
A vast ocean of consciousness exists throughout the universe that is eternal and whole, sometimes called super-consciousness or ultimate reality. When we come into being, we are given a cup of this consciousness, as though it were scooped out of the vast ocean of ultimate reality. And when we die and are no longer in our body, it returns to back into the vast ocean of all pervasive consciousness. It's a reflection of the word that is often said at the conclusion of a yoga practice, Namaste'. The translation I gravitate toward is:
"The light in me, sees and honors the light in you. And when we are both in that place, we are one".
What I take that to mean is that although we may think we have nothing in common, we don't even have to like or agree with one another, we at the very heart of it, hold the same element of connection within us. We are all connected at the most fundamental level and in recognizing that, we are no longer separate.
Another aspect of wholeness is our own personal balance between body, mind and spirit. Often we don't realize when we're out of balance until we tip so far to one side that something shows up in either our body such as a physical ache or illness or in our thought process which can manifest as anger, frustration, greed or selfishness. What makes staying in balance is the ever-changing fluctuations of simply being alive. One day we're full of pep, the next day, not so much. How do we know when we're out of balance? If you're curious, try the following:
Sit quietly and take three deep breaths. If it's comfortable, gently close your eyes and ask yourself "what could I being doing more of to keep me in balance? What could I be letting go of?" Sit for a few moments and see what pops up. Once you begin to become more conscious of what helps to support you keeping in balance, honor that and see if it can be part of what you undertake on a regular basis.
We know that when we are in balance, the energy that we send out to others comes from a completely different place then when we find ourselves under-nourished. Since we are all connected parts of the whole, what we say, how we act and what we think affects others. When we are in balance, when we are whole, we recognize our connection to the larger web of all life in a deeper and more profound way.
Namaste'.
It never fails. I seem to be reminded of the important things in life with many seemingly small daily lessons. This past week, in two separate families with whom I am close, saw the passing of a beloved 103 year old grandmother and in another a beloved mother. Just over two weeks ago, was the date of the passing of my father 33 years ago. And it's not the dates of their deaths that matter but the reminder of the value and impact that each of those lives had on so many others.
One of the strongest lessons I was exposed to with my Dad's death was that life is short and you never really know when your time will come. It taught me to not wait for the perfect moment to make things happen, to get out there and fully experience life. One constant truth is that all of us will die...you and everyone you know. Yet, we often live in a state of denial, bypassing true connection by getting distracted by things that simply don't make any difference in the big picture of life. We get tangled in drama, we let the emotional situations become grand stories and we begin to shrink away from living with an open heart. We begin to close down just to get through the day.
Take a moment to think about something that has taken a big chunk of your emotional energy. Perhaps it's a family situation, an upcoming gathering where the organizers are doing things differently to how you would do them. Or perhaps, it's a work situation where a colleague is getting under your skin for not getting back to you or doing a task in a different way to how you might do it. Sometimes we have our own projects that take on a life of their own. We want to get a new dishwasher and end up remodeling our entire kitchen.
Part of our yoga and meditation practice is to become a witness to our own experience. It truly is something we need to practice as this doesn't come easily to most of us, the ability to actually take a step back, to pause and notice things simply as they are. To quote Jack Kornfield:
"When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice."
The lessons of people passing, of situations that challenge us and of emotions that tend to overwhelm us, is to recognize that they are all teaching us something. If you look to the stories that have consumed your emotional energy, what have they taught you? In these moments can you pause, take a step back and look at the grander big picture of your life?
As I journey down this path of transformation, I more easily recognize how the little dramas truly pull me away from the beautiful unfolding of the present moment. In those moments, we have a choice to further indulge the distraction or to put it all into perspective. We are all connected through the same wave of energy, through breath and ultimately through love. Holding gratitude in our hearts for the daily little lessons reminds us of something much bigger. Thank you to those who have brought these lessons to us and have passed along. May we all find peace and live with ease.
