Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address

 

I finally finished reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer . And I don’t mean finally, as in what a slog, but rather as the conclusion to something quite inspirational. I took my time reading and contemplating the book, savoring its unique perspective. Something about it felt like a reconnection to a part of me and the rest of humanity that is within us but lays dormant. I would often feel the words resonating in my belly, like I know this, yet felt as though I was hearing it for the first time. Perhaps this was precisely the book I needed to be reading during this time as I have just completed a year-long study of Shamanism and the Medicine Wheel. The culmination of this time has been the message to return to ancient wisdom and to listen not only to the elders, but to the voice of the natural world.

This past week was the national holiday of Thanksgiving and the frequent go-to theme is obvious – what are you grateful for? Yet being inspired by the above, it felt fitting to introduce and quote from The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, Greetings to the Natural World. This translation of the Mohawk version of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address was developed, published in 1993, and provided, courtesy of: Six Nations Indian Museum and the Tracking Project.  It addresses 17 different aspects of the natural world: The People, The Earth Mother, The Waters, The Fish, The Plants, The Food Plants, The Medicine Herbs, The Animals, The Trees, The Birds, The Four Winds, The Thunderers, The Sun, Grandmother Moon, The Stars, The Enlightened Teachers, and The Creator. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is a tribal nation originating in the northern part of New York State and borders with Canada. They are made up of six tribes the Mohawk, Onondaga, Seneca, Oneida, Cayuga, and Tuscarora.

The address honors and thanks the various aspects of the natural world, knowing that they all support us in being able to survive on this planet. In its recitation, “Now our minds are one” is the closing statement. It’s not only an acknowledgment of the natural world, but an understanding that we are the stewards of the earth. As the Earth Mother looks after and provides for us, even in an injured state, we in return must look after her.

What I took away from “Braiding Sweetgrass” and the Haudenosaunee Address reflects so many aspects of yogic philosophy, including that of interconnectedness and reciprocity. We are all one yet each of us has our unique role to bring forth in the world. When we honor each other by allowing each of us to offer our gifts, not only do they benefit the fulfillment of purpose but become interwoven with the giving and receiving cycle of all beings on the planet…including the 17 forms honored by the Haudenosaunee.

One of the reasons these words are resonating in my belly is knowing that I have been complicit in the harm that humans have caused to the earth. I use plastic. I drive a hybrid car that still uses fossil fuel. I haven’t always asked permission from the earth to pick up a stone or a feather. I like to fly on jet airplanes. I’m no longer composting and unfortunately, on it goes. I have become more aware of my impact over the years yet more can be done. So these ancient words of wisdom and respect have been the inspiration that not only do I need to do more, but I need to support others in taking action as well.

The next phase of my action is beginning to take shape although I don’t really know what it looks like. I trust from past experience that in order to get things moving, having a starting point of some form of awakening is vital and I believe this is the moment. When we become aware of something we can make a choice to keep repeating the same behaviors or start to make different choices. I trust the Universe to guide me in the right direction now that I’m beginning to ask the right questions. How can I be of service to the Earth Mother? How can I honor the ancient wisdoms? How can I leave this planet in the hands of my grandchildren and their grandchildren in a better state than it’s currently in? And how can I encourage others to do the same and build a collective consciousness that benefits all beings?

I hope you are curious about this awakening, unfolding, and call to action. I hope that you can connect into the abundance of the earth and bow in gratitude. And I trust that as I continue to navigate this path, I will continue to be inspired and be shown where to place my footprints. I know the elders have traveled this path before me and for that I honor and hope to perpetuate their wisdom.

Our minds are one.

Click here to link to the full Haudenosaunee ThanksgivingAddress

Channeling Goldilocks

Once upon a time, many of us were told the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. For those who need a reminder, this girl, Goldilocks, walked into an empty house that happened to be owned by three bears. She decided to do a bit of exploring and sat down to eat some porridge. As she tasted Papa Bear’s porridge, it was too hot. Mama Bear’s porridge was too cold. Well, Baby Bears porridge was just right so she chowed down. She had a few other adventures in the house that involved chairs and other things until she finally made it into the bedroom where she tried out Papa Bears bed...too hard. Mama Bears...too soft. Baby Bears bed was just right, so she hopped in and fell asleep. And on the story goes, which if you don't know the ending, you'll have to Google it or ask someone else.

Now you might be wondering how the story of Goldilocks makes its way onto a blog about yoga. What I like about this trespassing youngster is that she was in search of what was "just right" for her. And as we step into our yoga practice or move through our day, do we know how to find that sweet spot of what's just right for us? If we shift the emphasis of the story to Papa Bear, we learn that what is just right for him is hot porridge and a hard bed, illustrating that what is just right for each of us may be quite different. As a yoga instructor, I don't know what's right for my students. Only they can determine that through their own awareness. By allowing people to search for what's just right for them, it provides each of us an opportunity to pursue a different path. If we can do so without placing judgment on what's right for me or for you, a particular acceptance and freedom arises...not only on the yoga mat but far beyond.

As we channel our friend, Goldilocks, we want to embody the non-criminal element of her behavior. I mean, she did enter the Bear’s house without permission and messed with their stuff…not very yogic behavior. Another element of the story is the search for Goldi’s own truth and preference, which is quite particular to her. If we explore this topic further we can turn to the Buddhist path of “The Middle Way” which acknowledges that opposites will always exist in exactly the same moment. In situations where we find ourselves being challenged can further our own suffering as we we cling to extremes or our own preferences without considering the “others” perspective, which can taint the reality of the present moment.

As so often happens, what we need to practice is right in front of us. We are in the midst of experiencing extremes with the political divide and the ongoing pandemic which has exposed and accelerated differences in areas of our society that have been neglected. Our holding onto either side of the split is causing a level of suffering that many of us haven’t experienced in our lifetimes. To say the least, these are tough times and many of us feel powerless to do anything about it except to respond by tightening our grip on what we believe to be “just right” for us. To quote Rumi,

 “Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”

Perhaps in order to soften the impact of the moment, we not only offer ourselves compassion and self-care but take some time to sit in the opposite view and understand the complexity of any given situation. We don’t have to adopt it but rather to listen to it and know its presence. This is called empathy, an ability to see and sense the present moment as experienced by others. When our heart sits in empathy, it is unable to sit in anger, even for the briefest of moments.

 A metaphor to describe this practice is to sit in the messiness of our own lives as though we are sitting by the edge of a pond in stillness. As we sit, we watch all the different creatures, beasts, demons, animals, opinions, and beings that come to drink at the pond. We simply watch and stay in the middle of the experience. This is a practice of finding equanimity where we give ourselves time to observe rather than to simply react. With this gap between what we observe and how we act, we may very well choose the same thing but at the very least, we’ve done so consciously. In living with an open-heart, we recognize differences and honor the “just right” not only for ourselves, but for all beings, everywhere.

Relax and Trust

 

Yet again, another week of uncertainty and chaos. It’s beginning to sound and feel repetitive. From riding the waves of the US election to an explosion of Coronavirus cases with no end in sight, the ground beneath my feet is feeling unsteady. As I checked in with students prior to classes over the past several days, one thing was prevalent…tension. People were voicing “I need a good stretch. I need to just show up today. I need to unwind and relax. I feel tight. I’m holding tension in my neck…” and on it went. If the body is noticeably tense, it’s a sign of being threatened and being in the vigilant aspect of our nervous system. And then, a friend reminded me of the quote, “Our ability to relax is in direct proportion to our ability to trust life.” Wham. There it is.

As I contemplated the above quote, I asked myself, how have I come to not be trusting life?

I began to take stock of what got my knickers in a knot and noticed that I had moments of being sucked into the black hole of media. I turned it off on Election Day, giving myself a buffer from the anxiety, yet when I turned it back on in the subsequent days, I got quickly sucked back in. I noticed myself not trusting the greater power of humanity and being lured into the drama narrative. The lack of trust in what was happening outside of me was pointing me in the direction of fear-based reactions and thoughts.

In order to recalibrate and align with what I value in my life, that of compassion and equanimity, I needed to remember what I do trust in life and how to switch back toward what was supportive rather than destructive of my own inner health and peacefulness. The list below is what emerged:

 

•         It’s time to listen. I need to stop talking, stop trying to fix it, and simply listen to what is being said.
•         It’s time to be on my mat. Every day with full presence and openness.
•         It’s time to remember my deeper purpose. Why am I in this embodiment, anyway?
•        It’s time to come back to my heart and get out of my head.
•        It’s time to trust what I have trusted before-my intuition, my practice, stillness, and the discipline of my daily practice.
•         It’s time to unplug to encourage relaxation.

When I come back to what I have control over and return to the inner spaciousness and wisdom of my own being, my need to avoid what I don’t like begins to dissipate and I can work on finding ease with whatever situation I’m facing.

When we turn our energy away from our inner being, it’s easy to get overloaded with anxiety about things which we truly have little control over. It shoves us into the part of our nervous system which is on high-alert and has real physical consequences, particularly if we never break out of it. Relaxing is imperative for our health on all levels and isn’t accomplished through avoidance, online shopping, self-medicating, prolonged anger, or anxiousness. BY coming to our mat, we give our weary heart an opportunity to unplug from the outer and plug into the inner, where we truly have a locus of control and agency. If we can offer ourselves 15-20 minutes of a supported relaxing pose (such as corpse/Savasana), spend time sitting in meditation or doing conscious breathing, we can interrupt the disruptive pattern that knocks us off our feet.

We are eight-months into the pandemic and I’m still in my studio, by myself, teaching to the small screen of my iPad. I’m grateful that I can do my work in the world and see the incredible reactions of our yoga community and how thankful they are that we can gather and practice, albeit, virtually. And at the same time, I see no quick or easy solution. In order for me to stay connected to what’s important, I need to stay with what supports equanimity and offer myself compassion during challenging times.

Magic lives within this practice we call yoga. Get on your mat and let’s remember the magic together.

Jane the Great

 

If you're wondering if this statement refers to me, well, yes it does. I officially changed the spelling of my name many years ago to Jayne and the above is how I was identified in my early years. As my siblings and I were preparing our Mother's house for sale, we had the imposed rite of passage of clearing out 54 years of “stuff” from an organized packrat. Mom literally never threw anything out and as my brother, Ken, emptied out the jam-packed attic and opened a dust covered box, he started to laugh and showed me the above folder. Apparently, way back then I had a high level of optimism as to how my life was meant to unfold. Perhaps my elementary school self knew on some level, that greatness could be an aspiration and that, perhaps, inking the moniker onto my folder would affirm it.

The theme this week isn’t completely about individualism as that would appear quite divergent from the yogic philosophy of interconnectedness. But it is about knowing what our individual and unique gifts are to the world. It also beckons the question of how your life has impacted others, the “why are you here?” inquiry which lays at the heart of many spiritual practices. We so easily get stuck at the point of identifying who we are by our descriptors --- woman, friend, spouse, yoga teacher etc. but what if we are none of those things but simply an energy that people couldn’t quite put their finger on? I have met only a few such people whose presence is what I felt above all else and in that presence, the message that was conveyed and was too strong to ignore was based on love.

Imagine going through life in a way that when people asked, “Who are you? What’s your name?” and you replied, “I am love…” I bet the reaction would be one of surprise with words like “You are crazy” getting whispered under the breath. We express our identity through labels so we can more easily make sense of our relationship and commonalities with others. We don’t know what to do with “I am love”…how do you interact with that? “Ok, love…see you at the game?” Instead, we work through the visage of what identifies us and ultimately, trust that if we step into our greatness it will resonate away from us.

My grade school self knew that greatness could exist within me, but what she didn’t know at the time was how that would be expressed over a lifetime. I have had many moments of greatness and awe and inspiration, yet articulating many of those becomes more elusive. In conversation with my husband, I asked what made him great and he hesitated. Then I re-framed the question to how has his life made a difference to other people’s lives? He also thought that any of the qualities we were talking about weren’t unique to him-loyalty, honesty, direct communication, a drive for social justice and equality are some of many. Yet, I said to him, not one person walking this earth expresses it in the way he does as there is only one of him and his way is beautifully unique.

My quote of the week from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants” reflects the way of the Three Sisters which are corn, beans, and squash. Each individual seed is unique unto itself, yet when the three are planted together in a mound of dirt, they “provide a visible manifestation of what a community can become when its members understand and share their gifts.” The corn emerges first from the soil and grows tall, followed by the beans which find anchorage along the cornstalks, and the squash create an underground network so that broad leaves can shade the soil to optimize moisture. The three work together although they have different and individual qualities.

Given where we are at this point in time, with division and finger pointing abounding, I am inspired by the Three Sisters and reminded that although it might feel we stand alone, when we merge and express our greatness, everyone benefits. It is up to us individually to create the “Namaste Effect” as coined by Nischala Joy Devi. When we are truly connected to our inner radiance and we recognize another person connected to theirs, no division exists…we are connected and we are one. The light in me, sees and honors the light in you, and when we are both present in that moment, we are one. Namaste.