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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.
It's everywhere: fast food, Instagram, overnight delivery, ready made and frozen meals, texting...ways in which we can get instant gratification with little effort and little need for patience. Gone are the days of the Pony Express, Aerograms and other forms of snail mail, growing and hunting for our food, taking a train cross country or even waiting for our dial up internet connections. Things move fast these days, faster than they did even five years ago. People sometimes yearn for the "good old days" of slow cooked meals, leisurely conversations and canning their home grown produce. It's so missed there's even a "slow movement" underfoot as it relates to exercise, eating, traveling and socializing.
With a mentality that the more we get done, the more productive and successful we'll be, we over-stuff our day which can have the opposite effect of leaving us feeling unproductive and somewhat frazzled. When we don't get to the 10 things on our to-do list, we might feel that we just aren't quite good enough...oy! I do have a little secret to share with you...slowing down might actually make you more productive.
Two things that haven't changed over the past many years are the broad practices of yoga and meditation, paths leading to more balance in your life, more awareness of your impact and your connection to the whole. And these practices are a slow process. The choice to undertake them is often prompted by the knowledge that they'll be good for us, but we have never been encouraged to look at the long term commitment it takes to truly see its magic. We become impatient, looking for a faster solution because that's what we are accustomed to, so many people stop their practices without giving them time. It's as though we have a societal schism, with one side telling us to be economical and do it efficiently and another side begging us to slow down. Can the two actually coexist? Being both busy and slow?
I have often heard the excuse that "I'm too busy to sit still. My mind just won't settle down. I've tried meditating, but it just doesn't work for me". And here's another part of the secret, in sitting down to meditate we need to let go of having any form of expectation of what we'll get out of it, especially if we're new to the practice. I feel as though I'm still in the early stages of my nine years of committed daily meditation. I have come to understand that this was something that I chose to do for the long haul and it took some prodding from my teachers for me to finally launch into a daily practice.
With that being said, I know that the practice has many moods. Some days it's serene and peaceful. Some days, I'm agitated and bored. Other days my mind seems as though it's racing and some days I find myself being in that perfect place. The point is, it varies and my practice is to become at ease with all of it. What I've noticed from the years of concentrated meditation is that I can more easily slow down and step aside from chaos. I have more ability to pause and notice my reaction before doing or saying something I'll later regret. Over the years, the practice has become a complete part of my day and without the practice, I don't feel as centered throughout the day.
If you're one of those people who loves the idea of meditating or stepping into a yoga practice but hesitate, give yourself another chance. Give yourself ample time to begin to find your way with it. We know that a ton of research has shown the myriad of benefits of different mindfulness, contemplative and meditation practices, but the real benefit is your own personal journey. When we sit, we begin to really get to know ourselves. Like any worthy relationship it will hold up over time.
Begin with 10 minutes of dedicated time each day and give it a year. If you don't feel any different then maybe it's not for you. I'm curious as to what your journey will reveal...are you willing to give it a try? Are you in it for the long haul?
Grateful...easily my word and thought for the week. It all began late Sunday after I had finished running a 3-day Restorative Intensive workshop. At the end of the workshop, we all sat in a circle as I asked the participants what they were taking away from the weekend and what, if any, they may have had. As people shared so openly and from the heart, my own heart space seemed to expand. I couldn't help but absorb the feelings of thankfulness that were pouring forth. And it wasn't from them thanking me, they were thanking each other for being supportive, understanding and caring. They were thanking the community that came together and how they loved being a part of it. You could see on their faces, that after three days of shifting out of the busyness of the everyday and into a relaxed and restoring state, that life seemed a bit more compassionate, bright and easy.
And it kept unfolding...as I awoke Monday morning, I began the 21-day mantra meditation offered by Oprah and Deepak Chopra. The theme: finding grace through gratitude. There it was again-Gratitude! It seemed too easy to choose that as the theme for the week, so as I drove to begin my teaching for the day, I waited to see if another stroke of inspiration would hit. Nothing. So, I put up the word "Grateful" and as a student walked into the studio and saw the word of the week, she exclaimed, "Grateful! That's SO perfect!". And so it went throughout the week, noticing moment after moment of things for which I could be grateful.
As I explored the idea further, another emotion arose...that of fear. I began to realize that a profound connection exists between fear and gratitude. In recent events we have heard the rhetoric of fear...the Iran nuclear deal; the Greek financial crisis; gas prices on the rise. Fear is heard in the voices of those debating the issues and not only is fear present, but anger can be heard as well. When fear arises, the heart shuts down. It's near impossible to hold love and fear in the same moment and if we begin to attach ourselves to the fear, if we begin to become identified with the story, our ability to feel love diminishes.
This is when the practice of gratitude arrives. When we find ourselves stuck in the mud of negativity and realize the abundance that exists in our lives, we begin to shift the focus away from the fear. Instead of being fixated, we begin to understand that we have an opportunity to make a different choice of where we place our energy. Research has shown that a daily practice of gratitude can shift our emotional state in a positive way. I did this publicly a couple of years back on Facebook where at the end of every day, I would post five things I was grateful for. Some days it was challenging, but over 21 days, I could still find something to acknowledge. The interesting thing that happened through this social experiment, was that other people began posting things that they were grateful for...a rippling out of gratitude was an unexpected result. It felt good to be part of that wave.
One more thought around gratitude is that our true self is always grateful. That's a quote from the Oprah/Chopra meditation. As I sat with that, I realized they were referring to us connecting to the seat of our soul, that eternal, never changing part of our selves that sits in the truth of who we really are...not the roles we take on, not the persona we project, but at the core of us all is the essence of love. If we have the consciousness and tools to dive below the outer, often turbulent noise that pulls us away from our inner selves, we can move deeply into the well of inner silence and knowing. This is where we "trust our gut" and "feel it in our bones". We just know from a place of inner wisdom what is true.
Once again, connecting to gratitude helps us to dive deep and touch our essence. So in this moment, I am grateful to all of you who commit time in reading this and perhaps reflect on what it means to you. What are you grateful for today?
This week my thought has been inspired by the celebration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday. From the first moment I heard him speak in Melbourne, Australia close to 20 years ago, the word compassion is what I think of when I hear his name. He is the living embodiment of what compassion in action truly looks like. Through his own life's struggles, he is still able to come from a place of love. How does someone do that, particularly when they've seen violence against their country and have been living in exile since 1959?
I believe part of the reason has been the commitment to his practice for a very long time. If you consider this is his 14th incarnation and he's now 80, he's had many lifetimes to refine his practice. In addition, all the stories that are recounted from people who've met him say the same thing: He really sees people as being no different from each other. He offers love, eye contact, sincerity and laughs easily. One aspiration I hold is to emulate even a fraction of what he displays...so my practice continues, day after day, just as his practice has been embedded within him for countless years.
A few weeks ago, my husband Ed and I were attending the Palm Springs International ShortFest. As we were sliding into our seats in a packed theater, we had to navigate past two seated women. I shuffle into the row and sit a couple of seats away, followed by Ed. The next thing I hear is "OW!" by one of the women, with Ed replying, "sorry!". I didn't hear the next reply from the offended woman, but only heard Ed say, "Well, what would you like me to do?". He then sat down next to me, a bit fired up and told me that the woman said, "Sorry isn't going to cut it!"
Following the films we were discussing how it was that the woman's default comeback was, "sorry isn't going to cut it"...where does that thought originate.? My reflection was that she obviously is suffering in some way and over the years has tread a path that isn't reflective of love, compassion or her higher self. If she should hold any desire to change, she's got some work to do. Now imagine if the person sitting in the same seat was HH the Dalai Lama. What would his response be? My guess is that it would have moved to his default reaction of finding love and compassion for his bumped foot and for the bumper of the foot.
One human characteristic is that we fall into the same patterns of behavior, some which serve us (such as our yoga practice) and some that don't (such as getting angry in public with little provocation). When we are acting from a place that isn't coming from our higher selves, it can seem as though we have no choice in the matter..."that's just who I am". Yet if an opportunity arises for us to pause, we begin to see that we actually have a choice in our behavior. The big challenge however is to find the pause and to do so, we need to slow down. Our lives are so often buzzing around us that it all becomes a blur. How can we possibly recognize the opportunities to act differently?
Stepping onto our mats, sitting our backsides on a meditation cushion, study of the wisdom traditions and being surrounded by people who support positive behavior are ways in which we can begin to slow down the spinning cycle. It sounds incredibly easy, yet this can be a lifelong practice. Begin by recognizing all the things that you do that are supportive of how you want to be in the world and keep doing them. Check out of the stuff that drags you down and puts you back onto the hamster wheel of self-destruction rather than self-realization. And listen to that powerful internal voice and feeling in the gut about your actions and their ripple effects. We all have an ability to make a difference not only in our own lives, but in the lives of others.
I bow deeply in gratitude to have such an example as HH the Dalai Lama. If he can do it, we too can take our own baby steps toward emulating him. Happy birthday His Holiness!
