Re-emergence

I am just returning from taking an 8-week hiatus from teaching and doing a few cartwheels along the way. This isn't the time away that we had planned. I canceled three retreats, two in Australia and one in Italy, as well as travel plans through Singapore and Greece. We were meant to be on the road for 10 weeks and, like many others, Covid-19 challenged our ability to let go and be adaptable.

What happened instead has been a reconnection to my childhood roots. Having grown up in Southern California, it was always a magical day to head off to the beach jammed in the back of a station wagon with neighborhood friends and a packed lunch. As we have spent the past 8 weeks exploring coastal California, I found myself reminiscing about those earlier days. Much of the childhood energy of the beach was present today. I guess that's where I first felt the power of the ocean and began my respect of Mother Earth.

Something about the ocean seeps into my soul. Perhaps it's the mesmerizing rhythm of the waves or how the beach is in a constant state of impermanence, it never looks the same and is in a state of change with each wave washing ashore. My husband and I spent literally hours walking along and staring at the ocean. We grew our knowledge of bird and ocean life, enjoyed the sparsity of people, and an abundance of fresh air. Not every day was a sunny day, some were laden with a heavy fog, giving a greater appreciation for when the sun burst out. Our vitamin D levels have been enhanced, our Achilles' tendons stretched and strengthened and our relationship deepened through long strolls and conversations.

The primary message I've received over this time is the importance of looking after myself and managing my needs. "Do less" has been the phrase that emerged. And as I say those words, putting them into action is definitely a challenge. I am pulled to serve others and, at times, ignore the messages from my own body. I have a few personal physical challenges, one of which is managing a long-time back issue which had gotten more painful over the past few months. The result is a stronger focus on doing less in my physical yoga practice and creating more core stability. I have too much movement in my lumbar spine which as a gymnast was a great thing but as a woman in her late 50's, not so great.

Students may notice a shift in my teaching as I re-emerge from this hiatus...I hope so. I've undertaken three courses of study over the past four months in pranayama with Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.D., spinal health with Dr. Stuart McGill and Bernie Clark, and an anatomical Livestream human form dissection with Dr. Gil Hedley. I continue to be in my year-long mentorship as a Wisdom Keeper in Shamanism through Gaia Wisdom School. I trust these resources will show through in how I serve others.

I look forward to connecting with you and hearing what has been shifting in your world.

Before I go...I'll head to the beach a few more times, bowing to Mother Earth and Father Sky for the lessons and beauty. I'm listening.

The Toolbox & The Tree

This moment in some ways feels like the end of the semester and we're headed into the summer break. I've taught my last class and cleaned the studio as we've just completed 17 weeks of live online Zoom classes and it's time for me to take a respite and recharge. Quarantining, social unrest, a challenging economy, and a bunch of uncertainty has offered up a plethora of topics on which to focus over these past four months. The time is ripe for "doing our work" and it feels like we've all undertaken an extended course of study.

Yet, I know that many students feel stranded when their teacher isn't in front of them. I've had experiences, thankfully not that many, where I was subbing a class for another instructor, and upon entering the room their regular students would roll their eyes at the "sub" with even a couple of people leaving before I even began. We get attached to our teachers and our routine. And I am here to reassure you that if you've been coming to the mat with some level of regularity, all of the times you've been live with your teacher, have been embedded in your being, and now is the time to trust all that you know. An embodied practice is your toolbox. Think of every time you've been in savasana, the final relaxation pose of a class, and know that it's during this refractory period that what you have just undertaken is now finding its home within you.

The complementary part of this week's thought is "the tree". Recently, on a call with one of my best friends in Australia, she said I have been like a tree over the past four months as people have come to lean on me. Then she asked, "How are you feeding your tree?" Oooooh! I thought that was a rich question! I feed my tree by taking a good chunk of time off every year and look for someplace to put my feet in the ocean.

All of us are trees in some way - others may come to rely on us for support, some come under our shady canopy for refuge and solace, others admire how our branches are always searching for light and providing a playground for kids, birds, and other critters.

As Friedrich Nietzsche said, "For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks." I thought this to be a most appropriate quote as these times have been hard, our soil being less than optimal and rockier than we could ever have anticipated. We need to know how to dig into our toolbox in order to nurture and nourish our own tree. 

Self-care and recognizing what supports strong roots, solid trunks, and expansion takes a consistency of coming to our mat and asking the question, "What do I need to nourish me in this moment?" Over time, often years, we fill up our toolbox with a variety of skills, becoming deft at adapting the many practices to the present moment.

A couple of tips to stay connected to your practice when you're on your own is to: Roll out your yoga mat and simply get on it. Trust that if you get quiet and listen, asking yourself what you need in the moment, an answer will arise. Second, stick with your routine. If you always practice 9 am on a Monday morning, continue to practice at 9 am on a Monday morning. Keep it as part of your weekly schedule and stick to it. Third, perhaps recruit a yoga buddy and practice online with them. You can support, socialize, and hold each other accountable for sticking with it.

Ultimately, my job is to teach you about yoga and how it fits into your life. It's to open the doors to a deeper understanding of your own needs, to sharpen your inner listening skills, to support you in trusting your intuition, and to let you fly on your own. One image I have when trainees in a yoga teacher course are about to graduate is they are sitting on the edge of the nest and I have one foot at their backside, ready to give them a loving and gentle shove off the edge. They always seem to fly, some even soaring higher than anticipated.

It's time for you to fly. Open your toolbox and love on your tree.

You are so worth it. You can do it. I believe in you.

Integration

Can you visualize a thousand-petal lotus at the top of your head? And, as it blossoms, a radiant white/violet light emanating from this portal shining out into infinite space? If so, you are seeing the energy of the crown chakra, called the Sahasrara Chakra. This week in classes, we have been exploring the seventh chakra and the word associated with it-integration. Not only is the crown chakra supported by and connected to the lower six chakras, but it is also the portal by which we integrate with the vast ocean of collective consciousness.

Imagine standing at the shore of an ocean of consciousness: infinite, eternal, unchanging. As we individuate into each lifetime, by taking on the form of a physical body, it's as though we are holding an empty cup. As we stand at the water's edge, we dip the cup into the vast expanse and carry it with us throughout our entire lifespan. When we die or "drop the body", as they sometimes say in yoga, the physical form dissolves and the internalized universal energy once again merges with the vast collective consciousness.

The tricky thing is we forget this consciousness is an inherent part of who we are, so one aspect of our yoga practice is the removing of obstacles so we can remember we are a micro-reflection of the whole. Our ability to "rise up" into the upper chakras is often set on the foundation of the lower ones. If we don't feel safe (base chakra), are numb to our emotions (sacral chakra), feel powerless in our lives (solar plexus chakra) then it's super challenging to connect to the highest essence of who we are. It is thought that dormant energy sits like a coiled snake at the base of the spine and once the energy centers become clear, the energy rises up through all of the chakras, blossoming at the crown of the head, also known as enlightenment.

The qualities of the crown chakra are experiences of peacefulness, deep joy or bliss. It deepens our spirituality and union with the divine, welcoming a state of thoughtless and doubtless awareness. Yet, it's difficult to have those experiences if not supported in the more earthly chakras, hence, we need to "do our work" through all of the energy centers in order to experience more bliss. In other words, no shortcut exists for a speedy awakening, no insta-enlightenment, or by-passing what we may find challenging along the way.

One practice that takes us to the crown is that of meditation and silence. So many of us have difficulty in what seems like simply being...sitting still, with no distractions including relaxing music or white background noise. Just silence. Unlike the other six chakras, the Sahasrara Chakra has no bija/seed mantra but is all about silence. By practicing silence, we can actually uncover that something else exists within it, and only through experiencing silence, do we discover what is there.

Realize that the path to a deeper inner awareness takes time. It takes repetition and consistency to peel away the multitude of layers that block us from remembering the vast pool of consciousness from which we came. The arduous journey is worth it as, in the end, we are thought to merge back into the collective consciousness. And when we know it's already within us, perhaps we can more easily get to the end of our time and release our physical boundaries and experience the deepest state of surrendering and bliss.

May you come to know and recognize your truest self, your highest vibration, and manifest it in the world through living your soul's purpose and calling. Getting connected to our crown will help reveal to us why we are here in this lifetime and remind us to walk firmly along our own path.

Intuition

Have you ever had the experience where you had a momentary nudge about something, didn't trust it fully and instead rationalized and reasoned your way to a different answer? I have and let me just say, that I've had to do a few about-faces having been led astray by my "reasonable" mind. I tap my head and silently admonish myself for not trusting my first instinct. Had I trusted it, I would have not only saved myself time but angst as well. Thankfully, I've become better over the years of deciphering the language of my soul or as Dean Koontz says "intuition is seeing with the soul". I now have greater trust in those momentary nudges, not always, but more often. 

Intuition is associated with the sixth or Ajna chakra. Located at the brow center, it's powerful seed sound is OM and its color is indigo/purple. One way to open the channel to this energy center is to visualize a vortex of light spinning at the forehead, chanting OM repeatedly, and imagining an expansive and open spaciousness. By closing our physical eyes, we awaken the Ajna chakra by opening our inner Third Eye, the pathway to seeing beyond the obvious.

Intuition always makes sense to the person intuiting as it's the language of their innermost being. And how we get better at understanding those nudges is to understand how they show themselves to us. Four ways of sensing the more subtle language of our being are through: clairvoyance (the ability to receive actual messages/images); clairaudience (receiving auditory information); clairsentience (receiving information through others senses); and claircognizance (receiving thoughts/ideas directly from spirit). I never thought I had special telepathic gifts until I began to open up to the mere possibility that I did but simply didn't know how to articulate what I was receiving.

As my meditation practice has evolved and deepened over time, I'm able to receive more intuitive insights as I am getting better at holding the space open in order to get the message. If we're constantly drawn outward, into the external world, seeking and searching through our open eyes and maintaining a certain vigilance, the quieter messages get bowled over. As we sit in meditation, we become more of an open vessel to "hear" the deeper whispers of our being. What I've discovered is that I'm quite clairsentient as I sense things, largely in my chest and belly. I've only had a couple of strong clairvoyant experiences one of which was receiving a "vision" in the wee hours of the morning that I needed to be running yoga retreats in Australia. The message was purposeful and precise. 

As I awoke from the sleep from this vision, I perked up and thought to myself, "so that's what I'm meant to be doing...!" and proceeded to email my Australian friends to ask for any leads to retreat centers Down Under. Within a relatively short period of time, we discovered Sanctuary Retreat and have visited and offered retreats multiple times over the past decade. It was as though my soul's purpose was being called into action and I was fortunate to not only have heard the message but to have acted upon it. What resulted was many life-affirming experiences in a magical place.

The primary message of this week regarding intuition is twofold. First, open up to receiving insights. Get quiet, meditate, focus on the upper three chakras, breathe, and stay open without expecting any particular answer or outcome. And second, when you do receive a message...trust it. Trust it completely. It's the voice of your soul speaking to you in your own language, guiding you from a place of deeper purpose and meaning. Trust that it's something you don't need to analyze, rationalize, or reason through. It's the truth showing itself.

May we always know our truth.

Listen

People all over the world are out in the streets...shouting and protesting for better treatment of marginalized people. They're shouting through face-masks and megaphones. They're shouting despite the higher risk of gathering in large numbers amidst Covid-19. Are we hearing their message? Are we listening? Is anybody listening to their cries for change in a way that change will actually happen?

From this disrupted landscape of social unrest, I have been drawn to the energy of the throat chakra, the center of expression and communication. Located at the throat, the fifth energy vortex of blue light is not only connected to what we say but how well we listen, and this is a time for so many of us to listen to the requests, anger, and needs of others. 

It's a practice, often a challenging one, to simply sit and listen without judging or interjecting our own thoughts or tidbits of advice. How good are you at holding open the space for another person to express themselves? To having moments of silence, keeping that silent space for deeper expression? If you're anything like me, this is challenging as I want to help, offer advice, and throw in my two-cents. I want to "fix" the problem and offer solutions and often as it so happens, as I'm thinking of the solution I stop listening. It's as though I throw up the non-verbal wall and put an end to allowing the speaker to truly off-load. And it gets derailed even further if I step into "should-ing" all over people..."you know what you should do..." equals toxic shutdown of all communication. Instead of letting the person speak, I superimpose my own stuff all over them. Hence, the difficulty of the practice to be a listener rather than a fixer. 

In yoga teacher training, I teach (as I was taught) the trainees to ask permission before making a physical adjustment. "May I touch/adjust you?" are common questions before taking action. So perhaps this can be transferred to offering an "attitude adjustment". "I'm happy to just listen, so if you need feedback or want suggestions, let me know" might be an indication that I'm holding the space for expression and won't take it personally if they wish to just vent or if they're actually seeking my viewpoint.

I had a big "aha" moment with my mother one day when she was venting about what to eat, not knowing if what she was eating was "right" and how she could lose some weight. In the past, I would jump in with my "professional" opinion, making suggestions and would get frustrated when she seemed to more or less ignore all of my good intentions. On this day, I paused and kept listening instead. I finally said to her, "I'm not sure if you're asking for my advice, so let me know if you're actually wanting it." I heard silence on the other end of the phone. I had never responded like this before when she brought up this topic. I realized with the silence that she wasn't really wanting a solution to her "food issues" but needed to off-load her frustration around it. I didn't take my default path of fixing, asked instead, and it shifted our interaction on the subject for quite some time. I realized I couldn't meet her need of finding a food solution and needed to simply be a better listener.

To begin a practice of becoming a deeper listener, sit still for a moment and close your eyes. Give yourself this time to simply be and listen to all the sounds you can detect. Can you do so without judging? Without thinking, "Oh I like this sound but that other sound is simply annoying." Can you simply notice how sound arises and falls away? Can you notice it's fluid nature and impermanence? The next step is to transfer that to a person you're having a conversation with. Can you just listen without analyzing straight away? Can you ask a question of "is this something I can help you with?" and await the answer without offering advice?

When we honor the speaker and let them release whatever they need to say, we may gain valuable insight into what they are actually needing and, in return, if we can support them in that need.

I am listening. Deeply listening. Listen.

Metamorphosis

Pain. We are wired to move away from something that is painful toward something that is pleasurable. It is thought that when a snake sheds its skin, it's a difficult and painful process. Now, I don't know how they asked the snake what their pain level was during the process, but needless to say, undergoing change can be a difficult and daunting experience.

With the mass protests over the past couple of weeks amplifying the collective message addressing police violence and racial inequality and giving voice to the movement that all lives matter when black lives matter, it has stirred up not only my own consciousness but that of many. I'm a white, privileged person who has had many advantages from that basic premise, many of which I was never even aware of. I was raised in a white, middle-class suburb in Southern California and didn't have a black schoolmate until I was in junior high school. A few more African American students appeared once I got to high school but I wouldn't call any of them friends. We didn't mingle and I didn't get to know them.

Then, just before my 17th birthday, I went to Australia. Again, a white, Anglo-Saxon culture. And although indigenous Aboriginal Australians have walked the Australian continent for thousands of years, I didn't meet or see hardly any. We didn't mingle. I didn't get to know them.

The first time I didn't feel the bubble of the white majority was when I spent 6-months hitchhiking and traveling through Africa. I had occasions where my boyfriend and I were the only white people sitting on a bus or train and we were now the minority. Young girls especially were often curious about my blondish, wavy hair and I would find them "accidentally" brushing up against it to feel what it was like. Our interactions were positive and I remember on so many occasions being welcomed. What it did for me, was begin to open the doorway to empathy.

The protests have prompted a new level of conversation that so many of us haven't had in our lifetimes. What has been sitting in the shadows, out of the eyes of my white privilege, is being brought into the light and, although I've had glimpses before, the intensity of this realization has deepened. And for that, I am grateful. It's as though the covers are being pulled off blind eyes and so many of us realize we have been complicit, even if not intentionally, in the suffering of others. And my heart is calling for this to change.

Change is often motivated by pain. We would rather stick with something that is familiar than undergo the process of self-examination and action to do or be something different. In order for us to shift our cultural thinking to embrace true equality and justice, we must shed old beliefs and awaken to new ones. This process will be difficult. It will take time. It will be uncomfortable and confronting. Our yoga practice teaches us to pay attention to our habits, thoughts, and physical sensations. It teaches us to awaken our awareness of our own experience as it ultimately intertwines with the experience of all beings. Our practice is guided by Ahimsa-compassion and non-violence, so as we practice, we realize we often need to release previous thoughts and behaviors in order to receive a new way of being and thinking.

As Jodorowsky said, "If a caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying 'And then I shall have wings and antennae,' there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains." 

Taking this into my own practice, I must accept the disappearance of my previous identity in order to evolve into a more accepting and compassionate being. I choose to let go of the limits of my current thoughts and beliefs and listen deeply to the thoughts and beliefs of others. When I am able to see the experience of others moving out of the shadows and into the light, the depth of my empathy grows, and perhaps I can be part of the greater shift towards equality.

Two Worlds

Just when I didn't think things could escalate in intensity, they have. What do I mean by "things"? Well...massive social unrest with protests on top of a 3-month pandemic that has seen much of the world quarantined. You know, those things.  Just as so many people are looking for a relief valve from being safer at home, just as people are sticking their heads back out in public, a wave of protests have seen people marching in the streets, marching for social justice against police brutality. People want their voices to be heard as well as to express their rage and immense sadness. Enough is enough and a pandemic couldn't contain the need for action. Bearing witness to the unrest has left many people feeling uneasy, vulnerable, scared, and nervous. 

The theme of this week of two worlds is the internal and external worlds in which we live. The internal world is our personal experience and what we inhabit from the moment of arriving at birth and every day thereafter until our death. The inner experience is a complete matrix of emotions, physical sensations, a plethora of thoughts, and our spiritual expression. The external world is everything that's happening "out there", beyond our own internal world.

To say the external world is in a state of chaos is hardly an exaggeration. Protests have erupted all over the country and in other parts of the world. People are feeling empowered and that by seeing the inequities brought to others and the energy can no longer be contained through passive action. It's a ripe time for noticing how the external world influences and affects our internal world and to honor that our internal world can influence the external. 

The focus of practices this week has been on bringing awareness back to where we have some form of control. Our locus of control is within our internal world as we have very little if any, control of the outer. We may have influence, but control is unlikely. It's complex and intertwined, so it's little wonder that people have felt disheartened this week. When we are losing the thread that links us to the powerful energy of our heart, turning to the heart chakra is a way of remembering its presence and strength.

The Anahata Chakra is the fourth of seven chakras (energy vortexes). It is the conduit of energy between the lower, more physically sensed chakras (elements of earth, water, and fire) to the upper, more elusive chakra energies (elements of ether, sound, and space). It all comes together in the heart with the element of air representing this energy center as something that is both necessary and difficult to see. Its predominant quality is one of love and under this umbrella, we find empathy, compassion, kindness, and forgiveness. So when we get yanked into the outer chaos, it's easy to understand why we forget that love is also present. We get pulled into the external world, a place where we have little if any control and can ruminate on the idea that the world is on its way to mass destruction. So we come back to the heart and, more firmly than ever, deepen what we need to remember its power.

Part of this practice for me is to deepen my intention and actions of compassion. In order to strengthen this, I decided that throughout the month of June that my daily meditation practice would include 108 repetitions of a mantra to Tara...the feminine energy of wisdom and compassion. As Linda Heaphy says, "Tārā is a female bodhisattva and an important goddess deity in both Buddhism and Hinduism.  More properly, she may be regarded as a set of forms or avatars that represent different aspects of the same qualities, principally those of compassion and sympathetic action.  Tārā represents the fundamental female aspect of the universe, which gives birth to warmth, compassion, and relief from bad karma as experienced by ordinary beings in cyclic existence (samsara). She engenders, nourishes, and has profound sympathy for all living beings, but also acts to relieve suffering wherever she can."  More on Tara here.

Empathy sets us in motion to undertake the action of compassion. When we begin to better understand the experience of the "other", we begin to realize there is no other...just one human family. 

As I undertake this month-long practice of chanting and meditation, my intention is to fortify my internal world so I can better face the unpredictable external world. In bringing what I don't know about inequity from my own shadow and into the light, I can begin to strengthen my empathy more deeply to those who are suffering and how I'm complicit in that suffering. And as my ignorance is brought into the light, at that moment, I become empowered to shift what I need to shift for the betterment of not only myself but all beings.

My wish for you is that as you read this, you remember that you are a powerful being with endless potential to love and be loved. My wish is that as we look after our own hearts, we can look after others. My wish is for people who have been silenced and are sitting in the darkness have their voices heard and brought into the light so change is not only possible but necessary.

Om Tare Tutare Ture Swaha.