Seismic Shift

At 6:15 am this past Monday morning, I was awakened by the sound of a downpour, and then a few minutes later, a huge clap of thunder. It's the middle of a long, hot summer and the sound of rain pounding on the roof was a welcome one. It didn't last long but it certainly pulled me out of my slumber and felt like the perfect metaphor for ushering in my thought of the week---seismic shifts are underway.

Many of us who live in California also live on a fault line and thus earthquakes are a part of the California experience. We know the faults are there. And we know they will shift, but what we don't know is when and how much. If anyone begins to contemplate it too greatly, they basically would be discouraged to live in this sometimes rattling state. The idea of focusing on the "big one" can be quite anxiety provoking, yet, most people I know don't put their focus on the "when". 

Part of the theme this week is about finding ease with what we don't know, and it is happening within my own immediate familial bubble. This week we moved our mother into an assisted living facility here in the desert. She has dementia along with many other health challenges and has gotten to a point where she needs 24/7 care. To say the least, her world has been rocked after living in the same home since 1964. We don't know how she'll be. We don't know how she'll adjust and she doesn't know what to expect. This is certainly under the heading of a seismic shift as her entire world is being shaken.

Once again, I am in deep gratitude for my practice. Yoga is an incredible teacher as it supports us in sitting with things that are uncomfortable. My teacher, Judith Hanson Lasater, often asks the question when trying something different to what we're used to doing, "Is it painful or just unfamiliar?" What the question allows us to do is to drop into the current sensation(s) of our experience. It slows us down giving us the opportunity to answer the question.

All of us live in a place where we know certain things to be true, as well as to have uncertainty about other things. In our impatience, we search for answers. We are driven to know outcomes. And the big challenge is can we be in a state of ease and equanimity when we are with uncertainty?

One way to move out of the land of "what's going to happen?" to being in a greater state of ease is to become radically present. When we drop into our inner sanctum, that place of deep connection, truth, and compassion, we realize that in this moment all is well. This past week in classes, we have been working on finding our center. We can do this by softening our gaze and looking inward. We ask ourselves, "where in my body is my center located?" Some people drop into their belly, others into the space around the heart, and some into the throat or third eye (forehead). When we go to our personal center, it feels as though we are coming home to ourselves. Exploring this more deeply, we can imagine directing our breath through a specific portal that taps directly into this center. With our focus moving into the action of the breath, which is the inhale and the exhale, we can then begin to notice the stillness in the space between the breaths. If we are able to focus on the inner quiet lying within, we can't help but be fully present.

Our practice for the week may be to tap into this space throughout the day. Can you find your center standing in line at the bank or grocery store? Can you notice it when you're dancing around within the realm of not knowing, perhaps becoming more worried and then come back to your center? Can you find your center when you're having a difficult encounter? It sounds easy but it certainly takes practice. 

Knowing that things are going to shift, but not knowing when, allows us the gift of our practice of being here now.  We just never know when our world will face some seismic activity. Take a breath, find the stillness, and come home.

It Never Ends

This past week I got together with two men I have known since we moved to the desert in 1999.  We met through the tennis club we had joined and I eventually did some personal training with one of them. Joe, 97, is my former client and Burt, 91, had just stepped off the tennis court when I saw them. We greeted each other like long-lost friends. These two men, along with a few other nonagenarians I've had the privilege of working with and getting to know, have taught me so much about what it means to live a connected and purposeful life and they have found a way to still do many of the things that bring them joy.

My thought of the week is how the practice of yoga never ends. We never get to be so good at yoga that we no longer need to do it. I don't think the day arrives when we realize we know all there is to know and then move onto our next challenge of crocheting or learning to play the piano. That's the good news. And that is also the not so good news! The question is how do we continue to stay motivated in our practice both on and off the mat, forever?

Reflect back to the time that you first were drawn to yoga. For me, I came to the practice out of curiosity. It was a short-course offered at The University of Melbourne and it was hugely popular. I had to go see what all the fuss was about and enjoyed it, but wouldn't say that I got hooked by the practice until a few years later when I started to learn about the underlying wisdom and philosophy. THAT is what I had been seeking, the deepening of my connection to self, to self-love, and to have a wide angle lens view of how I fit within the greater scheme of the universe. The physical practice was great, but it wasn't a new experience for me as I had been engaged physically for most of my athletic life. It was the unfolding of a deeper sense that I had been seeking, although I couldn't actually articulate it at the time.

Much of what I continue to love about the practice is its adaptability. Whatever hooked us initially will likely have changed or will change as we get older. Our circumstances shift as do our ever-changing needs. At times, we seek a truly engaging physical practice, exploring the edges of how we are in the moment, building heat in the body, moving in the direction of poses that challenge our strength, flexibility, and balance. Other times we need to find stillness, solitude, and quiet so we may gravitate more toward a restorative practice, mantra repetition and meditation. And at other times, we crave to be challenged intellectually and philosophically so we can turn to the many sacred texts such as the Sutras of Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita, or any other such book from the many wisdom traditions. We can seek what we need from the practice to support where we are in the current situation of our lives. We adapt the practice to us, not the other way around.

In the Sutra of Patanjali, 1.14 speaks to the idea of what a committed practice is. One translation from Swami Jnaneshvara states:

When that practice is done for a long time, without a break, and with sincere devotion, then the practice becomes a firmly rooted, stable and solid foundation.

Alice A. Bailey's take on it:

When the object, to be gained is sufficiently valued, and the effort towards its attainment are persistently followed without intermission, then steadiness of the mind (restraint of the vrittis) is secured.

My take on the translations is that when we recognize how the practice of yoga supports us, it is then up to us to create a disciplined and enthusiastic approach to doing it. Part of that is to recognize what we need through the fluctuations of our lives as well as how to engage it. Support comes from teachers who point us in the right direction and a community that understands the process. 

I hold such gratitude from witnessing those, such as Joe and Burt, who have found a way to live long and fulfilling lives. They may not be active in a yoga practice but they have paid attention to what supports them and have stayed engaged throughout the process. Everyone has something to teach us and it's up to us to filter through it and put into action what we need. The Sutras say this is part of calming the mind chatter and I believe it to be true.

Enjoy the journey!

Feet

It's been a week about the feet. Recently, as we were driving north through the Owen's Valley in California, I was listening to a podcast called Slow Home, and something that was mentioned during that podcast really stuck with me, "Live Where Your Feet Are". I loved that, especially as just a couple of weeks ago I wrote about "The Tug" and how we so easily get pulled out of the present moment and into the past or future. Live where your feet are was another layer in supporting us in connecting to being present.

Then I got to thinking about our feet and how they have this incredible anatomical design. A size seven foot can carry around a grown adult, navigate terrain, adjust when needed, often without any conscious effort. The arches themselves have an adaptability through over two dozen bones that absorb shock and transfer weight. As an evolving species, our feet were another sensory mechanism for gathering information about our environment. We had to be mindful as we evolved largely without shoes or paved/smooth surfaces. It was a necessity to pay attention to where we stepped as to avoid sharp objects, thorns, slippery patches, and wiggly poisonous snakes. If you've ever injured, knocked, bumped or scraped your feet you know how many nerve endings are gathered in this area of our body. It's necessary for us to truly get a sense of where we are in the world in literally detecting the shape and texture of our terrain.

And yet, we've lost touch with the incredible sensations that our feet can detect through shoving them into supportive shoes and walking on concrete. We no longer have the same primal need for this tactile information and, in a sense, have become less connected to the earth in a most fundamental way. The beauty of our yoga practice is that it gives us an opportunity to come back to living where our feet are on so many levels--physically, emotionally, and metaphorically.

One of the great gifts of being in the Eastern Sierras was that it encouraged me to be connected to my feet. We spent time hiking in Lake Tahoe as well as walking along the lakeshore. The sand of Nevada Beach was incredibly coarse as it's made from granite. I was walking along the shore barefoot and was completely aware of my feet upon the rough sand. It was as though they were being exfoliated with each step and the beauty of the experience is that I was fully present. It brought me to truly being in my feet, feeling the cool water and the texture of the earth. I felt every step and was grateful for each footfall in this beautiful location.

Let's take a moment to honor our feet and the millions of steps they have taken. Think about the daily trails you carve as you wander from place to place in the home, go to the market, or slip outside for exercise. Reflect on the more structured and intentional walking paths from boardwalks, hiking trails, beaches, bushwalks to the planned treks on the Camino de Santiago, Inca, Pacific Crest, or Appalachian trails. Our feet are under us for every step and most of the time we don't even notice. Perhaps we are so engrossed in our surroundings that we disembody and merge with nature. Perhaps we have a blister and notice every foot strike. Either way, let's find gratitude for how our amazingly sturdy feet have supported us every step of the way.

Live where your feet are!

Ripples

Last weekend I was talking to a close, longtime friend who has also completed the 200-hour yoga teacher training course that I run. She teaches yoga as a side gig and was sharing with me that after her class last week she invited her students to view the TV profile that had been broadcast about therapeutic yoga, featuring yours truly. And then she said, "It just keeps rippling...". Some of what I taught my friend is now rippling out from the San Diego area through her actions. So my thought for the week is how we create a ripple effect from our actions and, hopefully, it comes from a perspective of positivity, compassion, and love. 

In yoga teacher training we talk about acting from our highest intentions which are driven from that inner place of wanting to have impact. When we act from the motivation of serving others with kindness, we certainly don't do so in order to see what comes back to us as a result. We teach without ever really knowing what impact it will have on someone and we keep teaching with authenticity to meet an internal need to be of service. 

I hadn't really understood how one person can have impact until we were getting ready to move from Australia to the United States. The previous four years I had been managing the group fitness program at the University of Melbourne. It was a large program with many enthusiastic participants with classes being held in basketball stadium size gyms, multiple classes each day and 20+ instructors to make it all happen. I taught every day in the program and I had my finger on the pulse of all the numbers over the four years I was there. I remember sitting with a friend for coffee one day and telling her that I had tallied the numbers for my time at Melbourne Uni. Over the four years, I taught 848 classes that averaged 45 people per class which translated to seeing close to 40,000 people! I was so stunned by these numbers, I double checked them. I said to my friend that I had never anticipated when I began teaching that I would have such an experience. It was truly the first time I caught a glimpse of the impact that one person can have.

This week is about honoring how each and every one of us has impact. Any time we act from our highest intention, engage in what we love and support others in thriving, we make an impression. To think that each one of us can lift another is a tremendous recognition of our own power. The ability to simply bring a positive moment and/or experience into someone's day is deeply humbling. I am beyond grateful that I can sense this experience on a regular basis and it makes my heart smile to once again be reminded of this. 

Let's celebrate the positive connections that we generate. Let's recognize how energy, action, and intention can move powerfully away from us and make a commitment to doing so from the highest perspective possible. And although some of my numbers might be staggering, it's not about that. It's about the quality of the ripple that we create. It might just have the power to blow you away...

The Tug

Imagine this scene. A couple is having a dinner party at their house and in the middle of a deep and thoughtful conversation with another couple. Almost imperceptibly, their 3-year old, who is meant to be in bed, is at Papa's side tapping on his thigh. The Tug...the moment that pulls us away from what we were currently focused on. Papa's a loving father and responds to the child's request for some water and leaves the conversation. Upon returning, he might say something like..."What'd I miss?" or "So, where were we?". The train of thought got derailed.

I've been talking about "the tug" throughout the week as it happens all the time. We especially notice it when we're sitting quietly in meditation and every conceivable thought seems to appear. Each thought is like that child trying to grab our attention and pull us away from our intention-that of staying focused on one thing. Our practice this week has been to honor "the tug" as we know it's coming and to recognize it as that moment of recognition in which we've been pulled away---the magical moment. We awaken to the moment of no longer being present. And when we wake up, how do we regain our focus?

Try this. Close your eyes and simply listen to all sounds you can hear. See if you can do so without attaching any judgment to the sound, just hear it. Every sound you hear is happening in the present moment. Have you ever heard a sound from the past or in the future? You may have a memory of past sounds, but those are living in our minds and not in the present moment. Now connect to sensations in your body. What does it feel like when the air moves in and out of the nostrils? Can you sense tension in your shoulders, jaw, or abdomen? Whatever we can feel in our body is happening in the present moment. Another way to find presence is to notice where your eyes are looking. In a yoga practice, this is called Drishti (the focal point of a held gaze). When on the mat, can you find only a few points that anchor your gaze as you practice? All of these techniques are ways in which we experience the NOW.

So why is this important? Why do many wisdom traditions, including yoga, emphasize being present? What's wrong with projecting into the future or reminiscing about past occurrences? Well...nothing. Unless you spend most of your time in those states of consciousness. The only place our life is happening is in the present moment. All moments that have gone by and all moments yet to come only live in our minds. It can be thought that anxiety is a projection of the future, and depression a reflection of the past, so we can begin to connect mental states to our current state by focusing on the living in the present moment. This is often referred to as mindfulness, where our current experience is one to which we are fully connected.

Mindfulness can find its way into all aspects of our day from how we pay attention to our morning rituals of getting dressed, grooming, and eating to connecting to one task (uni-tasking) at a time throughout the day. Just eat when eating rather than watching TV, being on a device, driving, or having a conversation. Pay attention to how your body moves through the day and what it touches (feet on the earth, clothes on the skin). Do one task at a time and really notice what it feels like to fold clothes, drive a car, wash a dish, or touch a keyboard.

The more we practice being mindful the more it gets infused into a way of being, rather than just a passing sensation. We can begin to truly live fully in every moment and not miss the extraordinary mundane moments of our lives. We'll begin to get better at recognizing "the tug" and honoring it for reminding us that we are always in a state of practice, coming home again to the moment of NOW.