The Jagged Tooth

"The tongue always finds the jagged tooth" is a quote from my teacher, Judith Hanson Lasater, and my thought for the week. It doesn't exactly relate to orthodontia but more to noticing how often we bring our focus to things that are challenging, difficult, negative, or "jagged" in our lives. It's a metaphor for focusing on the glass being half empty and can usurp so much of our attention that, over time, we begin to identify with the "jagged tooth" as who we are.

When I was a kid, my Dad had a gold cap on one of his teeth. He had it following an injury during high school football, but when I asked him how he got it, he said, "When a tooth falls out, if you don't stick your tongue in the gap, a gold tooth grows in." Of course, my naive young self wanted to believe this to be true so on many occasions when I lost a tooth, I challenged myself to not stick my tongue in the now vacant hole. Needless to say, that lasted all of a millisecond with the result that not only did I not get the golden tooth, but I couldn't leave the gap alone.

Our yoga and meditation practices are one way in which we have the opportunity to notice when we've been drawn to the more negative qualities of ourselves, others, and life-events. We can begin to gain awareness as to how much of our daily energy is being consumed by things that draw us away from living a compassionate and loving life. As humans, part of us is programmed towards a negative bias. We often slow down to gawk at a car accident, get drawn into scary or violent movies, or participate in the alluring conversations of the drama of other people's lives. We can spend so much time poking our tongue at the jagged tooth of life that we become consumed by it. Many of us have come across people who seem as though they can only talk about their illness, recovery from an injury, their divorce, or troubled child. They begin to almost wear it as a name tag saying, "I am the person who's going through this....". It can be a difficult cycle to break and we often notice when our identification with whatever it may be, begins to reveal itself through our body via somatic experiences.

Those moments of recognition that something needs to shift for us to feel better are powerful and awaken us. As Martha Beck said, "the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising." The things that are the most difficult for us can become our own personal puzzle to solve and in the process, "satori" or "sudden enlightenment" begins to appear. The process of this discovery takes time and happens often in layers, with our yoga and meditation practices allowing us to sit quietly enough to hear the message. And if we're lucky to have a teacher guiding us as we navigate through these challenges, it may be an enormous shift in our own personal evolution.

Our practice for this week has been to take a moment to reflect on the goodness that is sitting within us. What is one good thing you did yesterday? Can you see the good in others, even those people who may be prickly? So if you notice a knot in your gut, tension in your shoulders, or you're clenching your jaw, check in to see if it's related to the amount of energy you're giving to those "jagged teeth" in your life. Then pause, take a deep breath and acknowledge the good. Give it a go. It might just set you free!