Reality?

So, I am still dealing with a knee injury that I suffered about 3 weeks ago. I have to take a long time to stretch it out before practice or lotus is not an option, and I haven't attempted Mari D on the left, although, my Mari C on the bad knee (right) came back yesterday, so tomorrow I will attempt Mari D. Something my teacher/mentor said last week totally resonated with me. I think we were in Upavista Konasana which is not my favorite pose, but he has really helped me go deeper into it. He said something to the effect of "ignore the messages that the skin sends to your brain, because if you listen to them you will get stuck." I have been known to push to hard and it has hampered my practice many times. But pushing hard is your mind, your ego wanting to get into the pose. Ignoring the sensations of the skin is getting out of your mind and letting the body go where it needs to go and both the body and mind end up going deeper. Then my practice got a little spotty due to illness, migraines and the holidays, but I feel like now I am back on track and will enter the New Year with renewed vision and feeling for my practice.

I am also closely studying the second book of the Yoga Sutras for a project for a 100 hour teacher training that I am undertaking. I have read it before, but now I see how much it applies to the practice, to life. Seeking non-attachment and realizing that reality is subjective, I hope to lift myself and others around me. Already, a friend from whom I was estranged (not by my choice) has invited me back into her life. It filled me with such joy because we had been so close and shared so many things and then she had a baby, and I do not have any children, and things just started to fall apart in our relationship. I couldn't be there like she wanted me too and I think we both missed our carefree days of shopping on the weekends and having dinner parties and all the things that go along with being childless. I think that I couldn't relate to her new life and being so close, it hurt her tremendously and so she had to cut me out of her life. But now we have another chance and I hope this New Year brings peace and happiness to all of my friends and loved ones.

Practice

I was practicing last week. I was feeling very good. I was working deep into backbends and forward bends and I felt like I was moving to a new level and becoming lighter in body and spirit.
Then my ego took over in one class and torqued my knee, heard a pop and that was it. The next day every thing hurt. It hurt to walk, my practice was a wreck and so was I. I was trying to be good to my knee and stretch things I thought were tight and working 10 hours a day and assisting in classes. I took a day off and went back a little better. Then one day I woke up and I didn't want to go to mysore; my head was pounding and I was tired to the bone. I went to work and it was worse. My head was so heavy and my thoughts and my voice were dark. I only wanted to lay down, but I wanted to practice too. I felt as though my body was trying to rob me of my practice. But a little voice in my head - which turned into the voice of my teachers said - maybe this is your body telling you to take a break and you'll come back stronger. But what I really need to learn is to humble my ego - which laying in bed feeling sick will do. So I guess until then, I'll just wait with patience and humility, until my body and mind are ready to progress together.

My cat died and suddenly I believed in the existence of a Soul

That pretty much says it. I have never believed that we, humans, are anything more than a bunch of chemical reaction and nerve impulses; that when we die we become food for worms and that the only "afterlife" lies in the memories of those who continue to live beyond us. But my cat got a brain tumor and when he was sick, before we knew what was wrong I looked into his eyes and saw something there that was beyond scientific explanation. I thought, "this cat has a soul and he is going to be reincarnated in an even more enlightened form." That was it. I suddenly believed, after all of these years of staunch atheism, I experienced faith.
Then I realized that if I believed that we have a soul, then I had better find mine.

Equanimity

One would expect in a yoga community, especially within one studio, that the students would naturally bond together to support each other. We all study the yamas and niyamas, we're all taught that the purpose of yoga is to truly be in the present moment. One would hope that we would carry that off the mat as well. I have tried to cultivate compassion and equanimity in my life when I realized - after several people pointed it out to me - that I had a tendency to be stubborn and inflexible.
The meditation teacher in our teacher training introduced us to Buddhism and I have been studying and practicing intently for the past year. Oddly enough, some people have fallen away from me, while others have returned, or new people have come into my life. Whenever I find something bothering me I have learned to truly look into the root of what is bothering me. Often it is trivial and I can shrug it off instead of obsessing over it for days as I once did.
But it still bothers me when I observe those people in the yoga community acting in a "non-yogic" way.
Lately I have encountered shameless gossip, outright anger directed to trying to humiliate other students or teachers and petty, small snubs that are boring and pointless. Can I shrug these things off and concentrate on my mat, my breath and drishti? With the exception of the intense anger I have been successful and feel that I have learned something truly valuable in my studies and practices. But anger. Hot, burning anger directed at someone that I love. That I can ignore and focus on helping those who have been the object of anger.
I ask any yogi - what purpose does anger serve? One of my teachers gave me a valuable lesson when he says that the Dalai Lama can go on smiling, even as the Chinese government has forced him into exile and not say one negative thing against the Chinese government. That made me realize that any discomfort I might feel is nothing in comparison. May all those who practice yoga learn as Thich Naht Hanh teaches to "take care of your anger" by embracing it and directing all the love in your heart toward that anger until you can let it go. May we all learn to water the seeds of compassion within us and, as my favorite teacher says, allow yoga "to let us live in the world with equanimity." T.M.

Humility

This week was one of the worst weeks I've had for a long time. It seemed no matter what I did it backfired and I was attached to every negative experience and couldn't seem to let it go. I finally achieved a moment of peace when I sat down to meditate on Thursday and no matter how much I tried to focus on my breath, negative thoughts just kept creeping back in. I could not turn off the chatter despite all of my efforts. Perhaps the efforts were part of the problem.
Finally I gave up and went and got a book that I had just purchased called "Taming the Tiger Within" by Thicht Naht Hanh that had little meditations for dealing with difficult emotions. The first one was about the root of our suffering being our anger. I repeated that over and over again and finally found some peace. I think it took me the better part of an hour.
I realized how attached I was to my anger and I knew that I was angry because other people weren't living up to my expectations. This is why other people had gotten angry with me in the past - for having expectations, for clinging to the past. So I am stuck in this samskara of anger and more anger, but hopefully recognition is the first step to release.
This morning a friend and I did what was for me a very difficult yoga series. I was sweating profusely even though it wasn't that hot. I was sweating hot anger that I didn't need anymore. And instead of struggling as I normally would in a difficult series and comparing myself with other people in my head, I realized that I could open up just a little more with every breath and instead of gripping I tried to just let go.
I realized that I have to replace my anger with humility. Compassion is always there, or should be anyway. Obviously I lost sight of that as well. But, I think the true lesson that I learned this week was the need to be humble in all situations, to let go of my fierce ego and to be in the present moment.

Compassion

I have been trying to put real compassion into use lately. The kind of compassion where you put others before yourself. I believe this to be the essence of Buddhism and the Dharma. It isn't always easy but it essential to our lives. Thich Naht Hahn writes, " Compassion is the only energy that can help us connect with another person." It is full of love, mindfulness and understanding to the nth degree. I never would have thought that I had it in me before I began my "spiritual" journey to Buddhism, but it has shown me a true way of living that to be any other way makes me physically ill. Sometimes I wish that I had found this path if yoga and Buddhism long ago, before making my body and mind so rigid with running and other things, but then this wouldn't be my path. And I truly cherish every step.

Dedicated to: LHG & TCR

Other people's dreams are so boring...

But lately I've been having dreams like I've never dreamt before. I have to attribute it to my practice and to my studying of Buddhism and meditation. I just had to post this one because it was so universally true, but, as I said above, I won't over indulge because unless you're a psychotherapist, mostly other people's dreams are truly mundane and boring.

It started out that I was walking through a poor neighborhood and it had snowed and frozen and there were all of these squirrels and other small animals frozen in the snow. There were no people, no signs of life anywhere. As I continued to walk it got sunnier and sunnier and people started to come out of their houses and dig out the snow and the animals started coming to life and cats started coming out and chasing the squirrels. (My cat does that all the time.) Eventually all the snow melted and it was dry and it wasn't cold. I reached a house that was run down, but seemed familiar. I went in through the back door. I seemed I had been walking down the alley behind all of these houses. Do I entered the back door of this house and it was instantly familiar to me, but it didn't seem to be where I lived. I walked through the house and out on to the front porch and I saw a copy of my favorite book, but I don't remember what it was, I just knew that it was my most beloved book. And there were all of these people who were happy that I had gotten there, but they didn't rush to greet me, they just went on doing what they were doing. Some were talking, some were playing cards or something. There was incense burning. And I remember it was this enormous screened in porch kind of run down, but very comfortable.

I looked out side and there was this endless landscape of just a green field as far as the eye could see. I opened the door to leave the porch to try to go home and I ended up right back inside the porch. I looked out and saw the same landscape and I said to myself aha! this is where I belong. Inside is the same as outside. It wasn't that I couldn't get to the outside, it was that I didn't need to. In my dream I had this overwhelming sense of understanding everything about inside and outside and how we are all part of the whole and I sort of lingered in that space for a while even though I realized that I was dreaming at this point, but it was very comforting.

Peace

Eat, shop, practice

For a long time now I've had issues with headaches and this strange cranial neuralgia, similar to trigeminal neuralgia, but it's not in the right place, so the doctors won't call it that. Whatever. They've tried every medicine under the sun, taken me off of them (sometimes painfully) and now my latest venture has been to an alternative medicine doctor, and, not that I don't believe that diet can and does influence your health, however, this MD put me on a diet of steamed white rice, broccoli and tomatoes. If I wasn't a vegetarian, the tomatoes would be replaced by lamb - gross. Plus about 10 or so supplements 4 times a day. When I was in the office, I thought, "this is o.k., I can do this for a week and then I'll add some fruit." I went to the yoga studio and was talking to a couple of the teachers and told them about this doctor and they seemed a little skeptical.

Now, you have to understand, I am a one woman supporter of the pharmaceutical companies. If I could do anything to change that I am willing to try. Well, the yoga studio wasn't having classes because there was a broken water main, so I came home to practice primary series. I got through sun salutations and bent down to grab my toes for padangustasana and just sat down and started to cry. I just felt completely overwhelmed. What more could I do? It seemed the next doctor would propose a lobotomy, or blood letting or something like drilling a hole in my head to release the pressure. Finally I composed myself and meditated for a long time and Tim made me some steamed rice, broccoli and tomatoes which I gagged on and almost choked on the broccoli.

The next day I took rice to work. And after work I went to led primary and felt weak, but not horrible. That night I think I quit the diet, deciding it was insane. The MD had given me another list of foods if this was "too much." The next day I ate canteloupe and went shopping and spent gobs of money, more than I've ever spent at once and practice pranayama, yin and primary series and taught a private lesson. Maybe I could live on shopping and yoga :) and a little fruit and water. I guess I just didn't realize how truly attached I am to food. I never thought I was until it was taken away just like that. Perhaps we can never know how attached we truly are to things until they're taken away. We can always talk about non-attachment and say "oh I have these things, but I don't need them, I'm not attached to them, I know they're not ME." But how do we really and truly know these things? I ate the rice and broccoli tonight and it wasn't as bad - especially when I cooked it.

The importance of being steady

I went for 2 days after a wonderful workshop with Bhavani Maki. Today at work I had no energy, no ambition. I felt completely detached from work. I realized that I haven't gone for that long without practicing for that long in a while. I had no idea how important my practice was to my body and mind. Maybe not more important than breathing or drinking, but almost more important than eating (to a point - I'm not anorexic). My practice tonight was in that zone where you're not even thinking, the body just takes over with the breath and they move together. It completely refreshed me, renewed me. Thank heavens for the practice. Namaste.

Catching up

Soooooooo.......

A friend of mine pointed out that I haven't updated my blog for about a million years. (Oh yeah, that's something about me, I love to exaggerate.) My excuses were that I had been finishing my teacher training (yoga of course) and then when that was done we found out that we had to teach 8 classes and 2 private sessions plus complete a 100 question test by September 9th. I had planned on beginning a 100 hour mentorship with one of the Ashtanga teachers at our studio and found that I had to complete all of this before I can go on. The rest of the students have a year. So this past week I actually got 4 of my classes done. One of them was teaching a Primary series class to a bunch of the teachers from our studio. Talk about nerve wracking. While I was trying to meditate and center myself before class the hatha class that was in the other room comes banging in with chairs and all these props that they had to put away in the room where we were practicing. The good and gracious yogi in me helped them, but the bad yogi in me said why are you distracting my quiet centering time - you would freak if I did that to you! But I mad the bad yogi be silent and soon the good yogi took over as the students began to filter into the room.

Let's say I made the best of it. I gave some adjustments, I got the sequence correct, got a lot of the sanskrit correct, but counting to 5 at the same pace for 2 hours is much harder than I thought, especially when you are nervous. I got a lot of support and positive feed back from everyone in the class except for my current and future mentor who had to rush off and I haven't heard from since. I'm trying desperately not to be attached to whatever he has to say or thought about the practice, but part of me feels like if he were compassionate he would know that I care what he says more than anyone else. I couldn't make it to class yesterday or today because I had food poisoning and I called him once (or twice) and e-mailed him and asked him to call or e-mail me. I've gotten feedback from everyone else in the class.

It's funny. Last Friday I was having a really hard time in class. I was angry or something and in samokonasana I just put my head down on my towel and started to cry a little bit. I got it together and was able to go on and even felt a little better. I sort of wanted to do drop backs, but for some reason the teacher didn't seem to feel I was there that day. In fact after back bends he had me sit in virasana. I thought he meant supta and he said, no, just virasana and gave me a block to sit on. I told him that I could do it without the block and he asked if it hurt and I said yes and he said then use the block. He said - everyone knows that you're very good at creating more pain for yourself. You don't have to prove that. And I felt like he was being very compassionate and understanding and I started to get tears in my eyes and I just wanted him to walk away so I didn't say anything else.

But having gotten half of my classes taught feels like a huge load has been lifted. I have a couple of possibilities for my private sessions and at least 3 more classes lined up, more likely 4, so I should be good to go. I did learn that I know more than I think I know in some areas and less in others which isn't so odd. A lot of people told me that I seemed "natural" which I suppose is a complement - it sounded nice. And then the food poisoning or whatever. I cannot eat greasy, complex foods anymore. I kind of like that. It means that all of this Ashtanga work of purifying my body has done something. Speaking of which - I'm off to get an Acai smoothie with my hubby. Yummmmmmmmm.

Nothing to hold on to

I've been feeling a bit betrayed by my body usually. I had gotten to a point where if I asked it to do something I could pretty much feel the muscles that I needed to engage in order to make that happen. Not that I'm an advanced practitioner, but I was starting to feel a little bit more ease in the primary series - like I might get my feet over my head in Bhujapidasana soon, or stand up from back bend. These things seemed within reach. Which might be the problem - I reached.

I had that one really bad practice and I backed off and did yin for several days. It seemed like all of my Ashtanga muscle memory went out the door of the studio. No air in my jump backs, my back bends are flat and my old hamstring attachment feels like it's on fire. Today I was trying to practice without pain in my hamstring and I was struggling to even grab my foot in forward bends. The day before I had been next to this new woman who had hamstrings of noodles and thank god I had read about egolessness right before class because if I hadn't kept telling myself to put my ego aside I would have run crying from the room.

Today my teacher told me that it was o.k. to lean into the pain a little bit. Sort of mindfully go into it, rather than grip and tense up and try to get around it. I tried it tonight for a short while and completely understood what he was saying and I was able to to let go in some places and work with the pain so that it was more discomfort than "OH MY GOD THIS KILLS!" Besides today was the full moon so I think that got into my head that I shouldn't be practicing and I was just there to be there.

Tomorrow, I'm leaving my ego at the door and doing my full practice. Peeling away the layers like an onion to find true consciousness. Mindfully approaching the practice so that it can nourish my body and my mind. But not gripping or grasping, not reaching or trying to attain. That does truly cause all of my suffering and if I can't learn to do yoga without learning those lessons then I might as well not do it at all. That is how important it is to lose the ego and just breathe.

Getting Ready for Class/Finding the Way

When is the full moon? I thought it was yesterday, but then someone told me it was tomorrow. I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh "Understanding Our Mind" and everything he says seems to validate how I feel about the path I am on. Then I was going to send a friend a stupid e-mail and I had to delete it because it would have been in violation of the 8 rules or whatever (help me I'm a newbie at being a Buddhist.) But it felt GOOD! I was practicing right speech and at the time I deleted the e-mail I just knew that it could be hurtful, or at the very least casually cruel - spiteful. And in the middle of writing it, my dad logged on and accepted my invitation to g-mail so that we could chat. And even though my dad has this thing where he is the only person in the world sometimes that can make me cry, I also love him very much. And when we started chatting that was when I deleted the e-mail. And the passage that I had been reading was about being careful who we surround ourselves with which has been a big topic with me lately. More on that later. Thanks for getting on g-mail dad.

The Emerald City

So how many lifetimes does it take us to learn the lesson of boddicitta? To become enlightened like the Buddha and to be relieved from the endless cycle of death and rebirth, to be released from samsara? None can say. It only took Dorothy one lifetime to realize that all she had to do was to click the heels of her ruby red slippers and she would be granted her greatest wish - to go back to Kansas. That being her greatest wish can be the subject of a different debate. But how many times, how many self-inflicted injuries will it take me before I begin to listen to and trust my body? None can say? No, I think I have to start learning this lesson here and now.
Before I came to yoga I ran. I ran marathons and half marathons. I ran thousands and thousands of miles, not particularly fast, but fast enough that I would have qualified for the Boston Marathon in my next marathon - that being my goal - my dream. Running long distance was more than just exercise for me. It was meditation. I got in the zone. I got my body in alignment, arms and legs pumping in rhythm and my neck loose so that my mom said she could always see my ponytail bobbing distinctively down the road.
I had my share of aches and pains, but nothing major; shin splints were corrected by orthotics. An IT band injury was fixed by a little rest and some stretching and ice. Then one day I noticed a bump on my left tibia. I was slightly painful, but not that bad. Not as bad as you would think a stress fracture would feel. I worked in a physical therapy clinic at the time and I asked one of the therapists what the bump could be and they said they didn't know but that I should definitely have it x-rayed. I made an appointment, but then canceled it because I convinced myself that it went away (oh my goodness, ever heard of denial?). I ran a half-marathon in April of 2004 and after that it hurt everytime I tried to run. That deep bony ache that finally I listened to that told me something was most definitely wrong. They diagnosed a non-union stress fracture on x-ray, which is somewhat uncommon, and recommended that I see a surgeon who said that the only way to really fix it was to insert a metal rod into my tibia after drilling out the bone marrow. After that I would be able to return to running. So I agreed. I wanted to get to the Emerald City of Boston even if it meant I had to submit my body to a very painful medical process.
In the meantime I found yoga. I friend dragged me to an advanced vinyasa class at a new studio in our neighborhood. I'm sure I looked a fool, but it didn't matter. At the time I wasn't even allowed to walk for exercise. I was allowed to swim, but there were always college kids making out in the lanes. I could bike, but I would break down and cry whenever I was on the path that had been the training grounds for those marathons. So... yoga. I never would have thought in a million years. And I approached it like a runner. Pushing through the hard parts like going uphill. Straining when my body was tired. After I had the surgery it quickly became apparent that running was not the same - and if it wasn't going to be the same, I didn't want to do it anymore and by that time I loved yoga.
But maybe I loved it for the wrong reasons. I loved it because someday I wanted to be able to do the splits, or do handstand in the middle of the room, or put both feet behind my head. Always a goal, always a hardness, always pushing. Until my aunt died and I pushed way, way, way too hard to get through Primary Series in Mysore class one day. The teacher kept telling me not to push it, that I would only hurt myself, but I wouldn't listen. I had to kill that witch and take her broom to the wizard. The next day I woke up and I couldn't sit up. I had to roll over and find a way to get out of bed. It was the day of the funeral. Everything hurt. After the funeral and wake I went to a restorative class, and it was almost as if the teacher had told me to put on my ruby slippers and click my heels three times and I would be home.
The next morning I woke up feeling considerably better. I realized that I had been exacerbating a hamstring attachment injury for a year because I refused to rest or really even back off - always trying to go further - that's how you go 26.2. So when a friend came over to practice Primary Series, I did yin and felt wonderful and didn't wish for a second that I was sweating and jumping back and through. And today I woke up feeling even better and knowing that I have to heal this hamstring attachment as well, not just work through it, but really heal it.
My teacher recently told me that she can still see a hardness in my practice; pushing through poses that she doesn't like. I have been trying to overcome that for at least a year, maybe longer. I feel like sometimes you have to push or pull a little. But after that Monday class, I realize that I was still running through my practice and a lot of the poses are uphill! Now I must be ready to listen, to soften, to stop running.
And I do get to go to Boston - The Emerald City - to see one of my favorite yoga instructors, Bhavani Maki, whom I met while on vacation in Hawaii. Who could have known?
Namaste

We Are Family

When a family member dies it brings out the best and the worst in the rest of the family. Saturday, July 20th, my aunt died. It was very peaceful and all of our family was there. I had never actually witnessed someone die before. I was quite awestruck.
She had been quite mean to me in the couple of months up to her death. She had blamed me for ruining Christmas because I wanted to have a Christmas brunch since a lot of my family was traveling to Germany in the afternoon and she didn't want to get up early. She disowned me for trying to get her to see a doctor when her leg was all swollen. She'd hung the phone up on me countless times if I didn't give her the answer she wanted right away. She rejected my offer to quit my job and take care of her full time and then when she died she left everything to my brother and my grandfather.
When she died I was crushed. I remembered all of the good times from when I was a little kid and I would spend weekends at her house. How she took in unwanted animals and even children. But then gradually I remembered how mean she'd been to me over the past year, how she'd rejected me. Then my dad told me that my grandfather had told him not to expect a dime when he died; he wasn't getting anything. In all of this I felt a horrible lack of compassion. I was losing compassion for my family, I felt that they didn't have compassion for me or each other.
Meanwhile my yoga practice is like a yoyo. Sunday, the day after she died I connected with all of my bhandas and I was flying. My only problem was backbends. This old injury came back - literally right in the middle of my upper back where you really need to open and it prevents any sort of liberating movement in the upper back whatsoever. I managed to work it out a little bit without pushing. Then Monday morning mysore; I felt like I was made out of bricks or wood. Nothing wanted to move and I kept trying in hopes that it would open up. Nothing. I felt like I was doing battle with my body and I couldn't give in or I would have just ended up lying on the floor. I would have been better off. I should have found some compassion for myself, but instead I struggled to find the poses.
Later I struggled to find compassion for my imperfect family. No families are perfect. No one is perfect. But I felt like their blatant lack of compassion was making it that much more difficult for me to find compassion for them. And that' s when I realized I had to stop struggling and just let the compassion be there. Because the compassion is there, whether I feel it or not, it's just about letting go of the resistance and walking the right path.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

So I mentioned to a friend that my practice has felt heavy lately and she said that "maybe heaviness in your practice correlates to the weight you're carrying for other people...I realize you're on this path of service and compassion but it isn't necessary to carry other people's suffering...no matter how much you love them." I really felt like she hit the nail on the head with that one. I've felt like I have to bridge the gap between my aunts atheism and my grandparents concern for her soul and my parents' lack of concern for the issue at all. I feel like everyone loves her and wants to help her and wants what is best, but that somehow compassion - what goes beyond love and makes you willing to do whatever it takes - is somehow being lost. In order to bring compassion to another person, you must first feel it for yourself and I think we are all getting lost in the suffering.
As heavy as I felt I actually slept through mysore this morning. I had done a lot of heavy duty quad stretching last night, so perhaps it had something to do with that, but neither my alarm, nor two dogs, nor my husband could budge me at 5 a.m which is odd. But maybe it was meant to be, because I got the message about carrying other people's suffering this afternoon. So I went to a led class. The teacher had been a friend of mine with whom I'd had a pretty major falling out and I thought "here is an opportunity to show up with no expectations, no agenda, just a willingness to practice and an open heart." The practice was wonderful. She adjusted me a few time, not excessively. I could feel things I had worked on in mysore coming together, feel little shifts and things starting to open in very subtle ways. I felt very light and at ease for the first time in a while. Thank you for the advice my friend.

Tonglen for Aunt Donna

Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum
Om mani padme hum

I inhale your hot dark suffering and exhale cool, clean compassion.
I rub your bald head and cover you with the blanket.
I remind you how you took me to see The Wiz.
I love you.

Loving-Kindness Meditation

Last night in teacher training meditation I experienced a true release so profound and so lovely that it has to be chalked up there with those moments when you find ease in a pose that you have always struggled with, or when you are finally able to bind in Marichyasana D or Bhadda Padmasana.

I love teacher training meditation. It is on Friday's after a long week and we always start just with a basic sitting meditation 25, 30, 35 minutes. I always feel refreshed and relaxed afterwards. This week I had to do my "book report" as did another student and we both picked books by Pema Chodron. I had told her which book that I had chosen so that she didn't choose the same book. The other student's presentation was much more lighthearted, whereas mine was much more serious which was interesting to note. No judgement, just an observation. Then we began the guided meditations.

The first was a walking meditation with was interesting and enjoyable enough. Not what I might choose for my own meditative style, but well executed and different. The second was sort of moving through different yoga poses in a meditative style, something I might do myself. Finally we came back to the person who had done the other Pema Chodron book report. She offered up a meditative technique taught in the book, as I was going to do (Tonglen meditation is taught in "When Things Fall Apart.") Apparently in her book there was a teaching of a loving-kindness meditation.

It began with a seated meditation and asked us to close our eyes and offer loving-kindness to ourselves. Then it asked us to imagine a person of whom we are very fond - I immediately imagined my husband- and to offer them loving-kindness. Immediately my hands came into the heart mudra and I began to cry - not out loud, but tears were streaming down my face. Then she asked us to imagine a friend and offer them loving-kindness. I imagined a nice, good friend and that settled me down a little bit. Then she asked us to imagine some random person whom we had met during the day. I imagined someone I had spoke with on the phone. That was actually the hardest, as I just felt neutral, like, "o.k., I can offer you loving-kindness and believe in your basic goodness, but eh." Then she asked us to imagine a person with whom we have been having difficulty. I knew just who would pop into my head and there that person was. And we were asked to offer loving-kindness to that person and I felt almost the same overwhelming feeling of loving-kindness that I had felt take over me as when I had imagined Tim, as though my heart had wanted to release all of those negative emotions, but hadn't known how.

Afterwards I was speechless and overwhelmed. I had not been prepared for the level of feelings that I would experience. I know that I am capable of love and of loving-kindness, but I didn't expect it to completely overtake me like it did. How can I take these feelings that are apparently lying below the surface and "water those seeds" so that they grow into more and more compassion?

I need an easy friend

So sometimes people create drama and you have to wonder - am I prolonging this drama or am I just caught in the middle? Right now all I can feel is compassion. I can't feel anger or disappointment or anything else. If I feel a little fear I stay there with it. It really does work. It dissolves and opens and becomes more and more compassion. We are all scared. Unless we are truly enlightened then we want to protect our fragile egos. I love the Pema Chodron quote that says "The kinds of lessons that are learned in practice have nothing to do with bravery, they have to do with having the courage to die, to courage to die eternally." And then the Thicht Naht Hanh quote that says "Suffering is not enough." Meaning we must also find joy, compassion, pure happiness. How do we open ourselves to these two seemingly different, yet similar pairs of thoughts? How do we become an easy friend.

I've been told that I can be a difficult person to deal with. Being stuck inside my own ego, I can't see it. I see myself trying to be a good person, I see myself going overboard a little bit. I see my sarcasm at times, some cynicism. I see a harshness that needs to be tempered by compassion. I see a person who works with cancer patients every day and wants to cry for every last one of them. I often practice Tonglen for all of my patients, for my friends and family who I feel might be needing it. I see someone who has much to learn on this road and who isn't afraid to try, to fall, to admit a mistake and get back up again. I see someone who needs the help of friends.

Today is our nation's Independence Day. I've also been told - not by the people who say that I am difficult, that I need to learn to trust my own intuition. That I need to go inside myself, meditate, withdraw. That's not in my nature, but it speaks to the truth of my heart right now. Go inside, reserve your energy for those who need it. Widen the circle of compassion. Bring the mind back home. It all gets lost and scattered in the hall of mirrors that is our modern society. We do indeed have to be careful to stay on the right path.

Silencio

So today was my 12 hours of silence. I woke up at 6 with no alarm which is very odd for me and saw that it was time to start. Tim was still in bed. Since we couldn't speak to each other, I moved over toward him and laid my head on his shoulder. Eventually he got up to take a shower - he was going up to his parents' house in Dover, Ohio to do some target shooting (ahimsa). I listened to him shower and fought the urge to fall back asleep and the urge to turn on the Saturday morning t.v. I listened to the animals breathing their sleep noises. Moving around to reposition themselves as I did. I propped myself up in bed and looked out the back window out into the ravine that is at it's most lush green right now. That occupied a good deal of time. Eventually Tim went out to Panera. I had told him the night before that if I had to be silent all day that I wanted a cinnamon roll and some coffee to start the day. He's so sweet - he brought it to me in bed with the admonishment that I not get any sugary crumbs in bed. No problem - Lily cleaned all of those up.

After he left I propped up a bunch of pillows to do pranayama exercise. I have started my day like this before and I always feel invigorated. I just started with some deep breathing (I've got all day here) and then did my favorite exercise which is 15:10:5 breathing and then return to breathing so that you hardly feel like you are breathing at all. It's really wonderful.

My feet hit the floor at 9:30. What a leisurely wake up routine! My first priority was to brush the dogs because they have just been shedding and shedding. They are not used to coming when I whistle so that was a challenge and I usually tell them "good girl" and "stay" quite a bit. But we used non-verbal communication. I think they understood what was going on. The only problem was that our new next door neighbor came home and she wanted to say hello, but all I could do was wave. I felt so bad that I wrote her a note and took it over and dropped it in her letter box.

Then I came in and did my first of many meditations for the day. I meditated so much that by the end of the day I could just immediately come to it and quiet my mind. I did have one strange meditation where I kept hearing this voice with an odd accent was talking to me telling me that I was one and that I was part of the one. It was quite interesting. For a lot of the afternoon the dogs and I did what we might do on a normal Saturday which was chill out on the couch, except for surfing for some bad movie to watch I looked out the French doors at the ravine (there tend to be lots of mosquitoes and since I knew I was going to practice more I didn't want to put on mosquito repellent.)

I went back to my yoga room and did a super duper long yin practice. I couldn't decide if I was going to do primary. Well, after yin I did a 40 minute meditation. By this time, my mind was completely silent.

After that I felt so open, my mind at rest, I figured I had to do a little of the primary series, even though today is my typical day of rest. So I did a very modified version, but I found it very easy to let go. It was a completely different practice from my normal practice in a led class or even mysore. I didn't strive for anything, except to let go completely and to stay completely with the breath. At the end I did another short meditation before savasana.

After practice I coaxed the dogs outside and grabbed a San Pelligrino and lit every single citronella candle out on the back deck. The dogs ran around and did their little fighting show for me and I sat and admired the trees with the sun going down behind them. I noticed it wasn't very bright, sort of dim. Finally a bug or crawled down my shirt and I decided it was time for a shower. I got dressed and started doing laundry since it was technically past my 12 hours. I figured even in a monastery they do chores. As I was gathering the laundry together Tim came home. I started shouting "Tim, Tim, Tim." I told him about my day and he told me about his and then I turned on the computer to blog about my day of silence. Namaste

The Path

Is there a right path or a wrong path? I ask this question because someone recently told me that I am on the wrong path and it deeply disturbed me. I have been working hard to let it go, but the person who made this particular comment has been very close to me and I have gone through a great deal of change lately. All, I thought, to get on the right path. It was just one of those things that someone says and it gets under your skin like a splinter of glass. I guess I have to trust that my body/mind will eventually reject it and heal itself.

Today laughter was the best medicine. I talked over Skype with my friend who is studying at AYRI in Mysore. She is having such a great experience it is really inspiring me to try to start working toward getting to India myself. But we ended up just laughing for almost two hours. Thank heavens for some of this technology! Skype is free - I can't imagine how much a phone call like that would have cost. And it was so much better than e-mail - just to hear her voice and hear how happy she is. And things get lost in translation over e-mail a lot. Misread and misunderstood. There's no substitute for talking to a live person, unless she was actually here, or preferably I there. Anyway, it was very inspiring and fun and she was full of fun stories and she made me laugh and cry and count my blessings that I have at least one true friend in the world even if she is half a world away.

Then my husband and I traveled a couple of hours away to attend a graduation party for the daughter of one of his college friends' daughters. She's actually his step daughter, very beautiful and full of hope and promise. We got to see a lot of friends that we only see a couple times a year, but that we are very close to. They are all so easy to get along with. No hidden agendas or fragile egos that I might damage with one wrong word. Again we laughed a lot and had serious conversations about life and death and changing jobs and marriage and then laughed some more. And made plans to see each other before too long.

As we were riding home I told Tim that the afternoon had been the perfect medicine for my soul. As we drove home I read two chapters from Understanding the Mind by TNH. It was absolutely profound. Then I put it down as he recommends not reading too much at once. So I held my husband's hand and enjoyed the scenic Ohio farm and woodlands. How they blended and fell away, divided by a small river or stream. The colors of the fields, deep green, surrounded by yellow grasses and purple wildflowers. And lovely dark woods with deer on the edges tentatively coming out to eat at dusk. And I just let myself enjoy this scenery that I have seen tens, maybe hundreds of times, but it was if I was seeing it through new eyes - and I was.

Letting Go Fights Back

So I had been dreading this workshop on the anatomy of the belly forever because my first experience with the instructor had been less than positive, I'll just say. But that was at the beginning of our yoga teacher training and now we are nearing the end. Did I think to myself "Well I'll put that experience in the past and go in with fresh eyes and ears and heart and open myself to new possibilities." Let's just say I tried and tried, but honestly I could not. I was dreading and dreading too much. I thought this teacher was full of baloney and half-baked and goofy and I had to acknowledge that I still had those feelings or I would be lying to myself. I wanted to put them aside, but the stubborn holder on in me would not let them go.
So Saturday morning Tim and I tried to find the studio, which is in our neighborhood, but has no outward sign, just the address, which we hadn't written down, so we drove up and down the street looking for someone in teacher training until we found someone. I also had convinced myself that the studio would be icky and uncomfortable. It was quite the opposite. It was clean and large and had nice, new low pile carpeting, plenty of props, two bathrooms, very spacious. It was about the opposite of what I expected, so I immediately felt comfortable when I walked in and unrolled my mat. For some reason that feeling of comfort just gave me over to the whole experience and I let go of all my past resistences to this teacher and my mistrust of her, dislike of her, my feelings that she didn't know anything about yoga - especially my kind of yoga, Ashtanga yoga. In fact I realized that she was saying a lot of the same things that she had said in the first workshop, but I was hearing them in a completely different way. Something in me had woken up, opened up, my perception, my awareness, whatever you choose to call it was no longer threatened by other people's agendas. I can have my own feelings, I can own them and not be attached to them, they can come and go and other people can do the same - or not. But I am ultimately responsible for how I perceive and accept information and I don't have to judge - it can just be, there, in the world, with or without my interaction.
We did some asanas and I had decided to give myself over to this new feeling of trust and letting go and it felt amazing. I went farther and farther in every pose. I felt new sensations throughout my whole body. I let go of any resistance I was asked to, that I was aware of, that I possible could. I went home Saturday night. Since we'd been working on the belly area I wasn't that hungry and I'd also developed a migraine the size of Texas from a storm that blew through. So I didn't eat much and just laid on the couch and read and watched t.v. Sunday morning I woke up and I couldn't move. My back had gone into complete spasm.
Ultimately I did make it out of bed and into the shower and took some ibuprofen. That all helped. I felt much better when I got to the studio. I confessed to my back pain and was told that was good because it meant that the muscles were releasing. We did more asana and I worked with the guidelines that we'd been given the day before. I let go and let go and let go some more. I surprised myself with the amount of letting go I could do when I brought my attention to it. It felt amazing. When we broke for lunch I was exhausted, so I drank my energy juice and had my carrots and Clif bar and then went back to the studio to read. Eventually I fell asleep so soundly that I was drooling on my mat. After a while I woke up and sat up to see if I could work any of the kinks out and the instructor came over and rubbed my back to bring the blood back into it. She said it felt more pliable already.
After lunch we had a review session. I finally found a comfortable position laying over a rolled up blanket in the fetal position. But I was still accepting, still open. Am I crazy? I don't know. That night I called my mentor, teacher, massage therapist and asked if he was available Monday (today) and described what had happened. He said it sounded like a chiropractic adjustment. Interesting - he said, I thought. He said no practice until he saw me, which he wouldn't have to tell me now, though I may have tried. I am going to attempt to sit for meditation. Like I told one of my other friends, it might not be the way that I choose to practice, because I know there are other people who have gotten similar results without this kind of pain, but I'm glad that I let myself go there and experience it.

A good start

I'm starting to feel like I just might get this yoga thing. Relax, breathe, let go. People have asked me how I feel about getting to the end of my teacher training, but I feel like the real work is just beginning! I have been practice teaching different people - my guinea pigs I call them and it's been going really well. I feel much more confident than I thought I would. Like, wow, all that stuff we've been doing for 8 or 9 months has really sunk in. I'm starting to realized things about my practice on my own, just little things, but things are clicking in there. Then in mysore I've gotten a lot of instruction to allow the breathing in my ribcage open and lengthen my spine.
Most importantly I feel that I am living the practice off of my mat. I feel love spreading not just for my fellow yogis, but for everyone I come across. I am doing so much reading about yoga and Buddhism and just feeling the connections and the interconnectedness. I am loving a quote from Thicht Naht Hahn's book Buddha Mind, Buddha Body that says "You are always with yourself. And you always have the capacity for happiness."

Open your heart, Open your mind

Thursday I had the queen of bad days, not the worst day in the world, but a pretty stressful day. On top of that I was supposed to wait until the last minute to see if my friend was coming over for her Ashtanga lesson. I don't really do well with waiting until the last minute types of deals. So I called her and left two messages and said that I felt that I needed to take the time to do my own practice and I really felt the need to be in Donna's class. Whenever I feel stressed and anxious I always want to go to Donna's class - like it is a safe haven, no matter how challenging it can be. We ended up doing a lot of backbends and doing partner drop backs and when I left I had the feeling that it was exactly what I had needed - to open up my heart and to let go all of the stress and tension of the day.
Friday was a late afternoon hot and sweaty Ashtanga class. I practiced next to Amanda. We practiced at a good pace and the flow was excellent. The flow was excellent and the heat made me feel very flexible and loose. Tom qued us at the beginning to relax our shoulders and neck and he only had to correct me once. It was a good practice.
Saturday I came to the studio and observed Tom's and Donna's vinyasa classes. After Tom's class I chatted with a couple of the students. One who had been injured I told her that she was looking good as she came back. Another student who maybe struggles with her yogic "identity" I told her that she had a beautiful practice and that I could tell that she was present in all of her poses and I told her that she might want to think about taking the teacher training. She beamed when I told her this and I was glad that I had taken the time to give her some encouragement. I snuck into Donna's class a little late and watched a bunch of my peers both from teacher training and Ashtanga. They started working into my favorite pose which I think is called Golukasana. When Donna asked if anyone had ever come into it from headstand no one had, so she asked if I would demonstrate even though I wasn't warmed up. So I went up to her mat and she talked me through it and I did an adequate job. Then I was observing and Rita asked if I would help her. She got tired and another girl asked if I would help her. At one point I ended up demonstrating a headstand on the hardwood floor, which I had seen other teachers do. It was so fun.
After class I ran into Donna behind the studio and she asked me how I had managed how to become so relaxed and happy and easy going and I said I really didn't know. I attributed it to working with Bhuddism and practicing and just trying to do the work. I'm looking forward to whatever the future holds.

Living in the Moment

This past Sunday I had a very difficult practice. I was so excited to get to class and then when I got there it was as it something inside me had hardened and I couldn't let go no matter how hard I tried or how hard I tried not to try. It was extremely frustrating. It wasn't that my poses weren't in good alignment, but they were all "hard." My perfectionism just holding on tight and not letting go. Somehow I attributed it either to the flow class where we worked so much on alignment the day before, or to the fact that I had woken up that morning with a migraine. Headaches tend to bring out my most extreme traits, one of which is not being a relaxed and groovy person, in general - I try.
Monday I had intended on going to a late primary series, but I fell asleep and it was impossible for Tim to wake me up. I have been on Keppra for my headaches and neuralgia and I have severe fatigue and sometimes depression associated with it. Since I had gotten so much extra sleep I was able to get up and go to mysore practice the next morning. I had plenty of energy and had a great practice. I had forgotten how much I loved getting up and practicing first thing in the morning. I don't have the day's "baggage" rumbling around in my head, making me hard inside.
Wednesday I went to my favorite led class. I feel that I am back on the right path. I still struggled with some internal issues regarding being judgemental toward another student. I definitely struggled to put that one down. Especially since he was making me a little uncomfortable by constantly staring at me through the whole class. Let it go, breathe, drishti. Live in the moment of the breath and the pose. Live in the moment of compassion that you feel for yourself, for those around you and for those who need it most.

Let it Flow

I am sooooo terrible about getting up on Saturday mornings. I can get up almost any time any other day, but Saturday is like my sacred day of sleep. I was supposed to go to TGs class to observe which I really needed since I don't feel very confident about sequencing in a vinyasa class. And I always enjoy observing that class as well and sometimes helping out. But, I honestly overslept, like turned the alarm clock off, next time I woke up class would have been starting. Well at least I got up in time to go to the class that I was supposed to go take. It's the one vinyasa flow class that I take during the week and I take it because it is taught by the director of our teacher training program.
Today when I walked in I guess I was a little grouchy - probably left overs from my migraine yesterday. The studio was freezing and one of the older students had positioned herself right by an open window. We always have this same struggle on Saturday mornings over the temperature because there is quite a difference in age range and abilities in the students that chose to come to the class. Well, I just quietly went to the other side of the room because we sort of have a tacit agreement that one side can be windows open and one side can be windows shut. It takes all of my patience and non-judgementalness to let go of this issue because I really want it warm in the room and feel like everyone would be better off if the room was warm. And I've gotten so upset that I've left class because I felt the room was to cold for me to practice, but I realized that was only hurting me.
It's so different going from an Ashtanga class to a vinyasa flow class, especially by this teacher. She works very slowly and deliberately and deeply. I don't know if it was the temperature of the room or the pace of the class, but I couldn't really get any good tapas going. We started out with very slow sun salutations and then I think we went directly to the wall to work on handstands in different variations. So again, while my arms were quite tired I didn't have that movement with the breath that creates the tapas that burns away the impurities in the body. I think that must be the difference between between this slow, yet deep and difficult vinyasa and a primary series class.

One step forward, one step back

Last night my friend Min came over so that I could help guide her through the Primary Series. Since I am going through teacher training I was ecstatic at the chance to practice on someone who already had some knowledge of yoga, and even of the Primary Series. She just doesn't remember the exact sequencing. I discovered, as did she, that she has a lovely practice and that she needs to build some overall strength. I did some gentle corrections and tried to work with her on her chaturanga which was her weakest pose, understandably. I found that I have a "voice" as a teacher that is a little stern, but very playful. As she started to get tired we stopped doing as many of the vinyasas and started just looking at the poses, but we made it through them all, except for setu bhandasana, since I knew she had neck problems -- we just did bridge pose. And like my other favorite teachers I insisted that she try to lift between every pose, even though she couldn't get off the ground -- she will someday, and that's the only way. Even though it was just the two of us we ended with three Oms. It felt like the right thing to do. And while she was in savasana I gave her blessings and tried to create a nice calm space where she could relax and I could almost feel when she finally went inward.

Then this morning I woke up with the worlds worst migraine. I'd been doing really well this week and was soooo happy. And I was so happy after my first "teaching" experience. Min was glowing when she left and kept coming back to give me hugs. It was the last thing I expected. So I guess I have to give myself rest, permission to rest which is hard for me. I just finished reading Pema Chodren's When Things Fall Apart. I started reading it partly because I developed this condition which is a cranial neuralgia where it feels as though someone is shooting me behind the ear with a cattle prod every once in a while and I never know when it's coming. It just called to me, but I didn't read it until the doctors overmedicated me with painkillers and my yoga teacher stepped in and told me what I already knew which was that I needed to get off of all those painkillers. So I came up with the plan with the doctors that kept me out of the hospital and came off of a lot of painkillers in two weeks. I started reading Pema then, because at that point I really did feel like things were falling apart. Even though according to the doctors I wasn't mentally or emotionally addicted to the pills, I definitely depended on them to keep the pain away. When I started reading Pema I realized I don't need to fear the pain or run away from it. It just is and I can be with it and breathe. Most of the time. Her lesson is mostly that we shouldn't try to get ground beneath our feet because it's just an illusion and it will just disappear anyway. A hard lesson for me to learn.

First Post

Well, here it is, my first blog. Do I have nothing better to do than to share my thoughts with semi-random strangers? Well, I would like to share my thoughts on yoga with the Ashtanga community. My struggles, the lessons that I've learned and the wonderful experiences that I've had while coming to my mat day after day like so many others to share in this transformative practice. Every day going deeper, every day feeling that this is where I belong even though I have placed so many obstacles for myself along the way. Having been a marathon runner who never once did even the most cursory of stretching, I came to my first yoga class with hamstrings of steel. Shortly thereafter I had an actual steel rod rammed into my tibia due to a non-union stress fracture from running those marathons (and probably not stretching.) And after my first yoga class I was in love, even though I was tight and shook in every pose because I pushed sooooo hard (that's what you do when you run!) So I pushed and pushed until finally some brave teacher finally told me that wasn't the way to do yoga. And I began to learn.