All of Me

I remember calling up an orthopedic center asking for a particular doctor. When they asked what I was being treated for and I said, "my knee", they replied..."oh, that doctor doesn't do knees." And so it goes in the medical profession of specialization, which isn't a bad thing, particularly if I have something wrong with the knee. If that's the case, I want to see "the knee person", not "the shoulder person." We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as body parts, diseases, and symptoms. Thankfully, a growing number of functional and integrative medical practitioners, who treat people holistically, is expanding. 

And the good news is, that yoga does, and always has, looked at the totality of who we are, without breaking us into pieces.

This week's thought is about just that...looking at our whole self and understanding it through three perspectives. If we think of ourselves as being the element H2O, that of water, we can understand the idea in a manageable way. 

When H2O freezes, it becomes ice. It's solid, tactile, and we can perceive through touch and sight. We can liken ice to being our body, solid and perceivable. We also know that ice is impermanent. If we hold it in our hands, it begins to change form and melt.

If we think of H2O in its liquid form, we notice how many moods it can possess. Water can have qualities of a still pond with no ripples on the surface, as well as a turbulent ocean with huge waves crashing about. It can be turbulent and elusive. Ever have a leak in the house which you can't quite find? Water has a way of seeping into unseen places and it's more difficult to hold in our hands without losing some of it through the cracks. Water in its liquid form has the qualities of the mind. Often difficult to capture, sometimes overpowering, and frequently shifting through various moods and states.

And if we bring H2O to a boil, it turns into steam or vapor. As my tea kettle boils, I can momentarily see the steam escaping, but I'm not able to grasp it. It's more elusive as its molecules dissipate into space. This is the quality of the spirit...we know it's present but difficult to see and challenging to grasp.

These three qualities of water are who we are in various forms. As a practice, yoga invites us to find harmony and union within body, mind, and spirit. It's as though body, mind, and spirit are the composite parts of a giant, stabilizing cable. When the three are equally "pulling their weight" the structure is at ease and balanced. If one or more is weakened, then imbalance is created which over the long-haul can lead to deterioration.

This week, check in with where your energy goes - into the physical, mental, or soulful self? Is there one thing that you could bring into your practice or let go of that would cultivate a greater sense of harmony in your being?

I recognized a few years back that the physical strand of who I was dominated. I was identified with and well-versed in the body, both practically and theoretically. Yet I knew that to cultivate a deeper connection to my inner world, two things needed to happen. Meditation and Seva (service).  Prior to committing to my daily meditation practice, being with myself and all the crazy mind-chatter was something I never practiced, so it was like taking a chance on how I'd react in certain situations. Meditation opened up the space between action and my own reaction, shifting how I related to myself and others. The other piece, service, was a gradual unfolding. I discovered that when I served others, it brought an element of connection not only to those being served but to an unexplored space within my own heart.

Now, both meditation and Seva (service) are the two most powerful parts of my regular practice. They've helped to calm the ever-fluctuating thoughts of the mind and brought a sense of compassion into my life. In strengthening those intertwining cables of body, mind, and spirit, I ride the waves of change and find states of equanimity in a peaceful and harmonious way. I can't help but think that all of us have this potential for greater lifelong ease. I feel if I can do it, the kid who was so physically active for so many years, you can do it as well.

Take some time to see what will serve you on the deepest level of who you are and step directly toward it. It'll serve you...all of you!

Big Surf

4 AM. I look at the clock and think to myself that this must be my new bewitching hour as I've been waking consistently around this time for the past week. And I know why...I have many things happening, seemingly all of them at once. But in reality, it's not all at once, it just feels that way.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, our house is in escrow and we're buying a condo. We are undergoing a massive downsizing, from 3200 SF to 1400 SF.  We have items for sale and have been clearing, sorting, packing, donating, taping boxes together, trying to figure out what will work in the new place. Fortunately, we have less stuff than we had three years ago when I stepped onto the path of simple living and decluttering.  Nonetheless, at the moment it feels like a superficial pass over a bigger challenge. We've lived in this house for 18-years and I've come to realize that my "storage and saving" methods are similar to what was modeled by my Mother (who literally didn't throw anything away). Although we're definitely not at that level of keeping things, we have drawers and boxes that haven't been opened or used for quite some time. I've also realized that with technology certain things like CDs, hanging files and videotapes are now obsolete space hogs.

As we sort through our personal piles, we also decided to hold a "pre-loved" sale at the yoga studio since we're not allowed to have a traditional garage sale due to our HOA rules. This translates into an added layer of hauling and pricing to prolong the life of many items, avoiding the dreaded landfill option. All of this is taking place in the open spaces of my week, which just narrowed as we launched into the next 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training and Mentorship programs. 

Just to be transparent...I'm not complaining. I'm actually really excited about this purging transition. We set the intention a while back to begin to travel more lightly in the world, putting our house on the market and beginning the process of letting go of material objects. These are things we've chosen and now it's coming into manifestation, it just seems as though time is a valuable commodity and we're under the clock with a deadline. 

Then life happens during all of these best-laid plans.

Just before the first session of Module One of the YTT, my Mom got ill and ended up in the emergency room six-plus hours.  Thankfully, my husband was the support crew and I joined them at the ER after training finished for the evening. Again, thankfully a pesky urinary tract infection was the culprit and Mom was released to go home. We all know the saying, "the straw that broke the camel's back" which isn't "the brick that broke the camel's back", meaning it may just be the addition of something that seems relatively minor to knock you off your surfboard.

We all have moments of great intensity and pressure in our lives, and it may seem that the smallest of things added to that pressure pushes us to a tipping point. What our yoga practice teaches us, is that all of this is impermanent and transitory. Our personal practice becomes the touchstone for steadiness, no matter how big the waves pounding at our feet. For me, it's been my daily meditation practice, the non-negotiable in my life. And this week in class we've been practicing five steps to help us navigate high-intensity times:

Breath, Relax, Feel, Watch and Allow. Take a deep breath and relax any tension in the body. Feel the sensations in your body from moment to moment. Watch your reaction to the situation at hand without judgment and allow it to be what it is, without the temptation to fix, change, or run away from the present moment.

My thought for the week is about learning how to surf the unpredictable waves of life.  It's as though I've been standing in the surf being pounded by multiple and seemingly endless waves.  At times they seem to last forever, wave after wave.  But as I surrender to the process, the waves still come but get further apart and less intense.  They are still coming, most notably in the quiet hours of the early morning or when I awake in the middle of the night. I then tap into my practice of conscious breathing trying to coax myself into relaxation and a return to sleep.

Breath and relax...it works in any situation!

Layers

This week's inspiration came to me as I was taking a morning walk while listening to a podcast. The conversation in the podcast was about how these people had been experimenting with making changes in certain areas of their lives. One piece of advice was to do a small amount of change at a time in order to establish it and see how it works for you. It got me thinking about how our yoga and meditation practices are ongoing. We make our way to the mat and see what happens. We sit in meditation and notice how active, agitated, or calm our minds are during the session. The more we do these practices, the more we get to see how dynamic a process it all is. Things shift and change, often beyond anything we can control. Life shows up to challenge our best-laid intentions and, in doing so, we walk through the mud of transformation.

But are we actually transforming? Or are we simply trying to get back to the basic notion that what and who we are is inherently divine perfection?

In yoga, it is believed that we are born fully whole and nothing outside of us defines who we are at the core of our essence. Yet as we age, layers begin to form around this inner light as we learn to cope and grow in the adventure of being human. Over time, we gather layers of identity, sometimes connected to life events, often traumatic ones, and we define ourselves by what we do, how we look, and the professions we undertake. And instead of them being flimsy layers, they can become armored and seemingly impenetrable. We may be seen as tough, overly chatty, drearily quiet, reserved, outrageous, or slightly crazed. We describe ourselves through what we do - for example, I'm a yoga therapist/teacher and business owner. We can latch onto these descriptors whether they're actually true or not. It's like being given a nickname and unable to shake it throughout your life. It sticks and we believe everything connected to it.

If we're lucky, conscious, and/or curious, we may come across a method or practice that helps us to begin peeling back these layers of identification and once again begin to glimpse who we truly are. Having drunk the yoga and meditation flavored Kool-Aid years ago, I firmly believe it offers us a way to peek into our inner landscape. The ancient yogis described us as having five layers, or Koshas, making up the entirety of our being. Beginning at the most obvious physical layer they move toward a "bliss" layer as we pass through mental and emotional parts of our being. Our culture is notorious for getting overly stuck in the physical, body layer of how we look and the material wealth we accumulate.

If you've never undertaken this practice, take a couple of minutes and give it a try. First, make a list of who you are-you might include your name, occupation, how you're related to people (sister, father, aunt), your interests and descriptors. Next, imagine that you've taken this piece of paper, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into a fire...completely obliterating your identity. If you are none of those things, then who are you? This is a common question posed along many spiritual paths. When you drop away the external shell and turn to your internal self, what do you find?

This is particularly potent as it relates to aging consciously. As our body changes with the loss of muscle mass and agility and as our memory may become sketchier, if we're overly identified with those parts of ourselves, we begin to create our own suffering. 

I used to play competitive tennis and "tennis player" would have been high on my list of what I was all about. Then I had a shoulder surgery that took me out of the sport as I wasn't able to play the way I had previously. A fellow tennis player said to me that she wouldn't know what she would do if she couldn't play tennis. I didn't really know how to respond to her other than to say that I had other things in my life which I loved and were fulfilling. I had made peace with letting go of that part of who I was and by doing that perhaps I stepped a bit closer to knowing that I was more than the label of 'tennis player'.

As Ram Dass so eloquently said: 
"I am not this body. I am in this body, and this is part of my incarnation and I honor it but that isn't who I am."

Vertical Time

This past year,  a new concept came to my awareness through the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, and it's one worth sharing.

If we think about when we are born and follow it to this very moment, we can look back and reflect upon all that has happened.
The result has us sitting where we are, right now, reading this particular blog. Everything in your life, each experience, and sensation, no matter how "good" or "bad" they may have been, has molded you into the person you are in this very moment. If we use this very moment as a starting point and project into the future we may have certain goals and aspirations, none of which have been fulfilled as they are sitting in that space that is yet to unfold. And we don't know how much remaining time we have along this life continuum. This is known as horizontal time...the chronology of our lives which, for many of us, is where the majority of our attention is spent, either reminiscing in the past or projecting into the future.

Now take a moment to simply sit quietly and sense all that you can...what do you hear, see, taste, smell, or touch? When we sit in this state of awareness, we are no longer moving along the horizontal continuum, but are in what Eckhart Tolle calls "Vertical Time", the state of complete presence, bearing witness to our current experience. This often unfamiliar and unexplored state helps us to be fully alive in the present moment which often reveals itself as being completely whole and in need of nothing else.

I began teaching this idea in our Advanced Studies program this past year in the module associated with Yoga for Healthy and Conscious Aging. For so many in our culture, when we sit in the present moment and begin to launch into future thought, it can be wrought with anxiety and fear. How much time do I have left? Do I have financial resources that will support me until the end? Will I be healthy or experience pain? How will I cope with the loss of friends and loved ones? This futuristic thinking can capture a great deal of our energy and attention and in doing so, drag us away from what is actually happening. It's as if vertical time is screaming at us, "Pay attention...You're missing your life!".

The idea of vertical time was amplified on our recent seven weeks of travel in Australia and Bali. Since both my husband and I have been working with the concept of being in the here and now, every once in a while we'd be traveling someplace, discussing future possibilities and travel fantasies until one of us would simply say, "vertical time" to bring us back into being exactly where we were and not drifting off to some imagined futuristic place. It occurred to me that one of the reasons I love to travel extensively is because it encourages me to be in vertical time. Being in an unfamiliar environment, the senses light up and we take in so much more than in our day-to-day routines. The wonders of nature, different and exotic foods, all sorts of smells both pleasant and not-so-much all provide the perfect setting to be fully present. It literally enlivens the senses and challenges our regular internal status quo.

Often when we return from our holidays, we step back onto the horizontal axis of time through the repetition and mundane nature of habitual living. Our practices of both yoga and meditation, even though they might be familiar, provide us with a sense of spaciousness to simply check-in to what's happening, both in our internal and external environments. We sense the experience we're creating through our yoga poses. We connect to the now moment through the simplicity of being with just this one breath. We get quiet and still so that our inner wisdom and inherent intuition can be heard.

A sobering statement that I once heard at the beginning of a guided meditation is that "We're all going to die. We just don't know when." A part of me resisted hearing this, I mean, who wanted to hear about our impending, someday death when all I wanted to experience was a blissful peacefulness? Yet what the statement ignites is a sense of being grateful and present in each moment of the life I'm living. I don't wish to be tangled in the thoughts of what and when something might possibly happen and miss the incredible moment that I'm fortunate to be alive.

Get vertical. Your heart and soul are calling you to do so.

Note: This is my 500th blog post! 

Time For Balance

I'm back in the States and back at work. It's been quite a break for me, not any longer than last year, but quite a different experience. Our trip was ironically book-ended by two funerals, which when experienced with travel and vacation in between, is a powerful reminder of the fragility and preciousness of life. Perhaps it added a sweetness to the experience, bringing the sensations of travel and the unknown into a more vivid experience. Adding to the colorfulness of the trip, our house went into escrow when we were a few days away from returning from Australia. This, in turn, added a layer into the saying of "hit the ground running" which we didn't plan for nor expect.

Needless to say, my motto for the week has been to remind myself to make room for welcoming rest among the chaos.

And what a powerful reminder is before us! The Equinox is happening this weekend-the shift from one season and into the next. We mark and celebrate both Equinoxes and Solstices every three months as they are powerful turning points as well as compasses in our lives. The Equinox is about balance and equanimity with daylight and night hours becoming more or less the same as we sense a shift out of the more extreme temperatures into more mild conditions. The Solstices represent the extremes, longest day and longest night of the year. I think of the Equinoxes as being the more gentle reminders of change, beckoning us to get outside, either for the first time in the spring or for the last few times before winter arrives.

Our last day in Melbourne was spent in the Royal Melbourne Botanical Gardens (a worthy and spectacular place to visit if you're ever in the neighborhood). We could sense that spring was getting primed to burst forth, noticing buds on plants and smelling jonquils, jasmine, and cherry blossoms. And this week in the desert, you can sense a shift simply by looking at the forecast over the next week with no temperatures predicted to pass the 100F (38C) mark. The dragon's breath of summer is beginning to recede, the Harvest Full moon has passed, and the Northern Hemisphere is taking the turn toward the cooler and incubating fall and winter months.

As it relates to the physical practice of yoga, it encourages us to check-in to see if there's an underlying current of energy that is one of ease rather than distress or agitation. In Patanjali's Sutra 2:46, Sthira Sukham Asanam, it states that the "asanam" or posture finds a state of yoga/union when it is both alert and relaxed. Nowhere in the Sutras does Patanjali suggest that we need to push, strive, or struggle during our practice. To me, it says that although we may be challenged, whether it's sitting quietly in meditation or practicing a Warrior Pose, within each of those moments we have an underlying feeling of ease and presence. It can seem quite counter-intuitive as I was always rewarded for "trying hard and pushing through". I was "tough" and that was a good thing, so to back off and not always "do my best" feels uncomfortably unfamiliar.

We all have a tipping point where whatever we're doing is no longer beneficial. Beyond this optimum point, what may have had an essence of ease shifts towards struggle. Our physical structure is like that as well if we push our bodies too hard, the tissues begin to break down. Our practice is an amazing opportunity to deepen our internal awareness or our interoceptive ability, to notice if the ease has gone out of the equation and to once again cultivate its presence.

My thought of the week is no matter what you're doing in your life-a yoga pose, closing escrow on a house, recalibrating your schedule, or taking a driving test that you check-in to see if ease is detectable. If not...back off, take a deep breath, and find that sweet spot!

Adventure

It's been whispering my name ever since I can remember...that small voice that lit my wanderlust. Maybe it's because I was born to American parents in England and was in-utero as we cruised across the Atlantic. I felt the pull to see as much as the world as possible. Apparently, my first camping trip was when I was about three, and we roamed the United States, pitching a Coleman tent and sleeping on cots and in lumpy sleeping bags throughout my childhood. My father, in particular, liked to get out and explore, hiking on trails, spending time at ranger talks and in visitor centers, looking for the wonder that you find being in nature. It stuck as not much inspires me more than looking forward to my next adventure.

The idea of having an adventure can mean different things to different people. Some might be drawn to bungee jumping, whitewater rafting, abseiling or hitchhiking. Those adrenaline-provoking, heart-pounding experiences which are both exciting and terrifying all in the same moment. For others, having an adventure may be on the opposite end of the spectrum-undertaking a new course of study or trying a different food. So what sounds like an adventure to me, might not be the same for you. 

Whatever it is that makes you feel uncomfortable, yet excited at the same time, is your adventure and it's important to find it as often as possible.

Having an adventure means stepping out of our personal box of comfort, stepping beyond our normal boundaries, and experiencing something from a new or different perspective. Traveling the world has given me one major lesson -a broader world view and perspective. When I've been away traveling and return to wherever home might be, my previously parochial view has been altered. It teaches empathy and compassion. It offers an education that can never be taught in any school or structured system. It connects us to each other and to our own selves of self-reliance and curiosity.

To approach something with adventure in mind, go someplace you've never been. It might be something in your hometown that's off your well-worn path, or it might be buying a one-way ticket to some exotic place in the world that you've only ever dreamed about going to. Say "yes" to the inner calling of travel and exploration and try to avoid having to have everything be perfectly in order before you head off. Why delay what you can do now? What are you waiting for?

Some of the most exciting times I've had unfolded without having a firm plan in place. It reinforces the practice of presence. It connects us to meeting our basic needs of food, transport, and shelter and, in doing so, much of the peripheral details of life that we can become overly obsessed about begin to subside. 

I know I will travel for as long as I'm able, particularly reinforced as I bear witness to the shrinking world of my own Mother, who has dementia. An adventure for her might be getting her out for a pedicure and frozen yogurt. As we never know what's next, what I hope is next is my willingness to say yes to the next thing that scares me a little bit and brings a smile of anticipation simultaneously.

I'm packing my big boots. I'm off...to have an adventure and I hope to hear about yours when I return. And to quote Winnie the Pooh:

"When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure an Adventure is going to happen."

~A.A. Milne

Delayed

About a week ago, I returned from running my first Icelandic Yoga Retreat-Experience the Midnight Sun! It was a fantastic week, filled with lots of yoga, waterfalls, lava flows, windy beaches, and Icelandic horseback riding. We were fortunate to have a group that jelled and were fun and supportive of each other throughout the week. It was magical...once we all got there! To begin with, my husband and I had a five-hour layover in the ginormous Dallas/Fort Worth airport, only then to be delayed by three hours. I stood looking out the terminal window as the lightning struck the ground and with a sickly feeling in my gut of, "oh...this doesn't look good".

The delay in our arrival meant that we would miss the first half of the first day...a foodie walking tour. As the instructor/leader of the group, I began to feel anxious at the prospect of not being there from the beginning. I began to text my contacts, figuring out the next steps of arranging new transport from the airport and catching up with the group. Once we arrived in Iceland, we hit the ground running, grabbing a pricey taxi to the hotel, dumping our bags and connecting for the final two stops of the walking tour. We arrived...finally...safe and sound, albeit a bit harried.

Unfortunately, another retreater was delayed with a flight cancellation and missed the first day altogether. At the end of our morning yoga practice on the second day, we would be picking her up at the airport on our way to the tour for the day. I suggested that we offer her a big, loving welcome upon meeting. As we found her at the airport, I slid open the doors of the van, jumped out and yelled, "Welcome!" as I gave her a big hug. At the end of the week, she said that this was one of her highlights of the retreat!

The point of these two stories is about letting go of what we can't control. Both of our delays were due to bad weather. Nobody's fault. And, it's about recognizing that our yoga practice really begins once we step away from the mat. What we do in our regular practice is to reinforce and build resiliency so that when life throws us a curve, we are able to steady ourselves sooner rather than later. All of us could have stayed angry at what happened, but instead, the practice showed up. I definitely felt strong emotions of anger and frustration, contributing to being anxious and nervous. As I recognized and felt these sensations in my body, I was able to respond by walking around the airport, laying down and listening to music creating a new playlist, stretching and meditating. Many deep breaths and giving myself permission to let go were also part of the process. It was vital that I personally let go of the more negative energy as to not carry that forward into the retreat once we actually arrived.

It was also interesting to simply people-watch at the airport. We had yet another short delay on our way back to Palm Springs from Dallas/Fort Worth and as I sat waiting for things to get moving, it was fascinating to see how people were responding to things not happening at the time/pace they wanted. It was as though you could see those who had some sort of practice of being present and those who perhaps didn't. Agitation only seemed to accelerate the discontent and, as a yoga teacher, I thought that these moments, although they challenge us, are the perfect moments to practice letting go. 

Our practice begins once we leave the mat or meditation cushion. It helps us to be consistent, building a stronger connection for when life isn't going the way we want it to be. And all of us have had those experiences of being delayed and having to change course, so in some ways, your practice can only get stronger and stronger as life will undoubtedly show up in unexpected ways.

Take a deep breath. Get centered and enjoy whatever the present moment has to offer. That's it...that's all there is!