This Moment To Be Free

I am coming to the end of a long few months. A wonderful, full and rich few months, and challenging.

And  here I am home in the middle of the day, resting and reflecting.

Clearly, I felt that I needed to preface my declaration that I am at rest with a caveat: yes, I am resting but…I have been working hard.

I could also have confided that I have been sick, and that I did things like shop for cat food and for lunch things for my husband. That I taught earlier, and commuted back and forth. That I tried to do some work on my new blog/website, but I need help with it so I let it go until later, but then I will work!

Rest, in our society is…suspect. It connotes laziness, which in a puritan society is close to criminal. You had better have a darn good reason and have earned it and have a plan to do some thing productive very soon.

But in yoga, rest is integral. In fact the word Hatha, as in Hatha Yoga means sun (ha) and moon (tha) and describes the two energies that make yoga — the union of mind with body, of Soul with self — happen. When we practice yoga we begin with centering and resting – coming into our bodies, getting in touch with our selves, and then move into energetic practice and then, rest again and breathe. Then practice some more, then rest. We find a balance. When teaching, we tell our students that rest is as important as action because it is during rest that we give our bodies the opportunity to integrate the benefits of the asanas (postures).

So I am resting. I am re-creating. It is beautiful outside my window — the winter sun setting and bare trees sillouetted against the purpley-grey sky. It is quiet and peaceful here in my room where I am writing. I am grateful for this afternoon of peace, this open-ended, quiet, spacious time. My heart expands to meet the openness and stillness.  I will continue to expand into rest.  I will be — with an open heart and with joy — at peace with resting. And, in deep gratitude for this moment of freedom, I say…let it be so.

Svaha, amen.

i have been thinking/feeling often lately about breathing – that we need air more than anything else, and though we love to possess all of what we need and want, we can never own the air we breathe, never control it (other than organizing our breathing through pranyama) and are not in charge of when god/the universe says “time’s up” and cuts us off our supply. so powerful, so humbling, and it has been blowing my mind a bit…

…that we are all literally on “life support” being fed by the Mother – that the flow of air we breath is much like the umbilical cord that connects us to our mothers in utero and then we come out into the world and are connected all our lives to our planetary Mother (and in fact, to each other) by the air we breathe…and i wonder whether, then, we are always connected to the Mother this way somehow, even after death — maybe to the Universe as Mother through some spiritual/energetic umbilicus of light? and i felt the fight in me that struggles with this connection, this dependence, and with the Earth herself as Mother…and also waves of gratitude and love toward Her.

Being more embodied is what my friend R. calls it…There is so much “negative press” for “bigger bodies” – health, beauty, etc. – but I want to bring forward what the positives are.

For me, it’s a feeling of calm and peace in my body because my nervous system is well insulated – the good, solid feeling of being more embodied – and how that contributes to my yoga practice by allowing me to feel the peace and flow of the poses with great strength and solidity – especially when I can embrace certain adaptations and a restorative practice, and also understand limits that weight brings, like needing to adapt for pressure on joints – knees and wrists in particular.

And, I need to be honest, real, open about my continuing struggle – that I LOVE how I feel as a soul living embodied in a spacious, capacious, warm, cushiony home – satisfied and calm for the first time since babyhood, childhood – but that I still have moments of struggle with the outside/the images of wanting to be the magazine cover model yogini – with the internalized dis-satisfaction that led me to starve myself in younger days – because adoring that image is so pervasive in our culture.

Part of my path, my dharma, is to find my peace with that image and my own struggle around it, and place more value on how I feel inside than on how I look outside (or how I think I look or should look).

I am coming to realize that this is emblematic/symbolic of my whole path as a woman on this planet – to EMBODY, and go deep, and express and live from deep within – like seeds coming up from deep the earth  to become trees – to bear fruit – to spiritually feed others as a teacher/yoga therapist/therapuetic practitioner.

We are not our bodies, but we live in our bodies and as round, voluptuous women we can honor our bodies as the most comfortable home for our Selves.

om shanti, om peace.

I have not written in awhile, I have been busy, and not having any poetic revelations that need to be written down.

Just missed the act of writing here though, not even being read or connecting through the blogsphere, but a profound experience of my evolution and self expression.

So glad I did this – so glad R. suggested it.

Now I will be making a website with my writing on it also, and artwork and yoga offerings.

om shanti

peace

daya

I recently saw a greeting card that said, “If you are not living at the edge, you are taking up too much space”. I feel, no need to live on the edge – but important to visit, and sometimes dwell.

If we were relaxed all the time we would be dead, we need to feel the stress response sometimes. But most of the time, for our well-being, we need to be peaceful, mellow and laid back.

So, the middle ground. The only way I have found so far to feel balanced is to go to the edge, but be peaceful and mellow there as much as possible – through breathing, stretching, eating good food, spending time with family, friends and with the man I love, learning wonderful new things, giving what I can however I can as I follow my path unfolding. And enjoying all this pleasure.

Enjoying pleasure – not running from it.

A counselor recently asked me “how much pleasure can you stand?”

I don’t know yet.

om shanti, om peace.

In the month or so since I last wrote, I suffered (or benefitted from?) an injury to my back – not serious, a pulled muscle or group of muscles – I am not sure exactly what it was, but I do know that the right side of my lower back hurt so much that I could not move without pain, and my sacral area felt bruised. I can trace this injury to the week prior in which I took 3 upper level yoga classes, one of which was a 3 hour class, as well as a couple of level 1 classes, and I went further and pushed myself harder than usual. I also taught, including a rigorous class when my back was already hurting.

I can trace that bruised sacrum feeling to one class (went too far in cobra), and  the hip/butt muscle pain to another (went too far in pigeon pose). And my overall energy that week was one of “I will be the kind of highly physical yogi I admire – I will reach higher levels – I am not working hard enough at this – I can and will push myself and rise to higher levels!” In other words, I approached that week from a place of ego: while I was having a good time flying high and going far, and the yoga felt really good at the time, it was all about my images of the kind of yogi I wished I could be, the tricks I wished I could do with my body and the desire, also, to impress myself and others. And the result was pain, as well as having to miss teaching a couple of classes.

But the result was also a time of enforced slowing down – of feeling for a few days while I was bedridden so much emotion and energy held in my back and butt, and feeling the experiences that led to all this held energy flowing back to me as the back of my body released – so, a great preparation for my upcoming training in Phoenix Rising yoga therapy.

Also, I felt gratitude for being able to move again – how wondrous just to be able to swing myself up to a sitting position and rise gracefully onto my two feet after a week of not having that ability. And, I have been doing some reading – discovering more about the illiopsoas, quadratus lumborum and erector spinae – all core muscles that are deep inside the body and whose alignment and well-being effect every function in the body — especially true in the case of the psoas. There is so much to learn – now, I feel a bit overwhelmed as I recognize a deep need for me to learn much much more about anatomy and physiology than just what I know from one anatomy class during teacher training.

But the most challenging lesson I have learned from this experience  is the need for me to develop a deeper relationship with (my) Body – I put “my” in parentheses because I do not really feel it is mine – it is under the aegis of me, of the Spirit that inhabits it, which I call “me”, but I am less sure now that it is “mine”. It is a gift and a great place to live, and I am not sure I have been taking as good care of it as I need to…hence, injury and pain. So, I have been listening to this body I live in, and I have been teaching students to listen to their bodies, that their bodies are their own best teachers – and I have been taking care of this body in a pretty good way – but I know now that I need to take this all a step further – deeper.

What does it mean to come into relationship with Body?In my experience, close relationships, deep ones, are hard – they take time, they are rife with misunderstanding and mis-communication. There is the journey through blame and guilt and wanting to just give up that both parties must be willing to encounter and wade through. It is more than just listening – it is being with and loving the Other.

So all that – a relationship – with this Body…I do not know…sometimes I do not love my body – I wish for another one – more athletic, less sensitive, thinner, faster. I feel impatient, I feel tied-down. I do not want to move at Body-speed, I want to go fast as my mind goes so I can achieve an image, a vision, a look or feel that I wish to impose upon this body. I do not always want to go at a pace that feels to me to be slow, and listen and cultivate and allow body’s truth to emerge. Other times I am grateful and feel wonderful and centered and strong. I feel a nice happy hum inside me as I live in this body when it is a happy animal. Mostly I feel happy and body feels happy when I really go inside, and inhabit and hear and respond and take the time to find the right pace for that moment – sometimes it is faster, sometimes slower – sometimes more movement is called for, sometimes less…

Really inhabiting the Body, though -  what would that feel like? Look like? Be like? Following and listening so closely that I would cease to cause it injury – cease to go too far with it, not take it places it was not ready to go…a yoga teacher friend I spoke with this weekend, who also had experienced a back injury recently, said simply that some things the body is just not ready to do.  Another yoga teacher who has been doing this for over 20 years shared that injury is just part of the process of being a yoga teacher – that body will realign and shift and in the process I will feel pain and be sidelined, and over time I and my body will come to know the scope and boundaries within which we best function together…

I feel all of a sudden like a pushy lover – do this for me, so that for me, go further so I go where I want and feel so good…and my body is the one saying I don’t feel ready to go there with you yet…and I, like some teenage boys I used to know reply “but I want to go there!”. Well, I can’t and I need to find ways to trust that when Body is ready, she will go – if it is the right thing to do.  But I also know that at times i will push too hard and go too far – and then I will discover that I need to pull back. And at times i won’t go far enough and need to push a little harder. It is not possible to know now how this relationship will play out, especially as body ages – but I know that I want a deep relationship with this Body and it is my intention to cultivate it.

Now that I am feeling better and not in much pain, I will try to really listen and inhabit and feel into Body and her needs and what she is ready to do…and I will work on not pushing her past her limits. Maybe that means I will not get to do some of the fancier yoga that I admire when other bodies do it, and maybe one day, years from now, I will do some of those things…and I know this will mean confronting images of what I should be able to do and how I should look, and feel and act and do and be…

But I know now, because I feel it, that the decision is not just up to my yearning, aspiring Spirit – it is equally up to my earth-bound, human, mortal Body.

om shanti.

We live in a culture that does not value rest, so people do not rest enough. I am not sure that we even really know how to rest. We know how to pause and we know how to check-out. We subscribe to the American work-hard and play-hard ethic – even in our power yoga classes.

I am an Integral Yoga teacher who gives a bi-weekly deep relaxation (yoga nidra) class and I have also been assisting in the restorative yoga class in addition to teaching a regular weekly hatha 1 class. I feel pretty connected to the “tha” part of hatha yoga – the yin, moon, passive, resting – the traditionally female. I teach the importance and equal value of the resting and meditative poses to my students. Yet, when I listen to my body and just truly rest, even I sometimes feel guilty that I “should be doing something” — as if restoring one’s energy is not doing something vital.

My intention in studying therapeutic yoga is to learn more deeply about the value of restorative practice – of Body’s structure and need for rest and support – and to become more adept in supporting others in their restorative practice. I would like to more deeply know and be an advocate for Body, for rest, for regeneration and restoration – I would like to practice loving kindness with my own body and learn how to give yoga as a restorative, therapeutic, healing tool in service to others who need it.

I would like to be a voice in support of Body in a body-conscious but often not body-loving or body-accepting world. These are my intentions and interests going in to the experience – I am sure these will expand and I will be inspired in ways of which I am not yet aware! My first student, and client is myself!

om shanti, om peace!

I have been studying and learning about Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy – a bridge between body and soul –  a modality I am planning to learn and practice..and as part of my exploration, I took a session with a practitioner. I emerged from the session — a combination of hatha yoga, meditation and Rogerian therapy, that also reminds me of thai yoga therapy and shamanic style dream journeying — with the message from my inner self, the great teacher within, that “I can function in time”.

I am not yet at peace with time…I struggle with leaving enough time to get places. Some days I expand so much into empty space/time that I can spend a whole day just day-dreaming and emailing and computer surfing and not getting things done, and then other days I can be in the flow and efficient and move through space and time like a force of nature, accomplishing everything I want to, and feeling time is my friend.

I am lately feeling the discomfort and crawl of time spent healing – i have a knee injury and need to find time to do an hour or so of relatively boring physical therapy exercises each morning…some days I make the process into a beautiful meditation by counting “om one, om two…” as I go through the movements and other days it is a chore to get myself to do what I need to do to help my body heal. Some days I feel physically better and love the process and feel that the injury (knee cap slightly dislocated, not a serious thing, not a deep-level injury, but just enough to give pain and slow down my yoga practice) is a gift because it gives me understanding and compassion I can use to empathize with my students and later that I will be able to use with therapy clients…other times I just feel pain and cannot do the asanas I want to do and I feel time is too slow and despair of healing in time (for what?) and feel I am getting old.

So what does it mean to receive the message from inside me that “I can function in time”? For my Heart it means, “do not despair – in time, I will function just as You desire and I will soar as my Heart’s Desire  wishes and yearns to do…there will be time, there is enough time, I can function in time”. For my Body it means “don’t worry – I can function within the boundaries of time – and that means I can be with Body at the level that Body lives in — Body lives in Time — Body eats, sleeps, walks, works, eliminates, rests, and heals from illness and injury within Time and in physical, real-time Space — and there is no rushing or changing or manipulating that — only helping Body to Be and to heal in its own way, in its own time”. For my Spirit it means “I can function in Time, even though Spirit itself has no conception of what Time is…Spirit is timeless and although “I” am not timeless when I am embodied as I am now, there is a part of me that is connected to Great Spirit and in Time I can know this and feel it and live from that place”.

Meanwhile I can work on accepting all parts of me, including the artistic and creative Soul who needs to spend some time just sitting and seemingly doing nothing, seemingly “wasting time” while incubating things like this to write about…and the part that just needs to sit with the cats, and the part that can zip around town teaching and studying and getting things done with a smile on my face, and the part that can clean the house and shop and cook the meals and enjoy physical work, and the part that Witnesses it all and is grateful for the opportunity to just be here on Earth struggling and feeling love and joy and fear and anger and happiness and sadness and knowing and not-knowing…

None of this is possible without Time…I could not be having these experiences, unfolding out of myself and into my Self if it were not for being in this mortal Body and operating within the laws of physics and gravity…but there is also the magical Quantum level that I am just learning about…the time that is all times at once, and no times never, and in which time there can be multiple possible and probable outcomes…that is the Dream Time into which I will more and more expand and fly…and into which, one day, if I am blessed, I will find a way to help other people journey and serve the Light by giving my support as they, in time, heal themselves.

Om shanti, om peace.

Our love will form a bridge between our own hearts and god’s Heart within ourselves. The Heart of the universe resides in our hearts just as night follows day Our Heart beats, and our hearts beat and we breathe to the beat of  the Cosmic Heart – our breathing is to the pulse of the Heartbeat of the One, the All.

The many breathe, the many beat, the many pulse in time, in rhythm to the beat of the distant Heart Drum. Come closer. We, unknowing, beat here in the fading cusp of Darkness, pulse here as the Light dawns. Born from the ashes of our own hearts’ burning in the sacred alchemical fires that, like water, wash us all clean.

i teach yoga because i love yoga, and one of the reasons i love yoga is the neverending flow of experience and learning that comes with this practice on so many levels.

this past week i have been reflecting on the seemingly contradictory aspects of a yoga class – that of sangha, or community and soul, the individual as her own best teacher.

when people come to practice yoga together, a sangha, a spiritual community, is created – even if it is for only a short time each week, when we practice this beautiful and ancient art together we are a community. it is for this reason that teachers ask our students to chant om together at the beginning and end of class, and to all move in the same direction, or to lie with their heads facing in the same direction – to my understanding, this facilitates the energy of the sangha to join more completely in unison.

however, there is another equally powerful aspect of practice where we learn that our bodies, our own souls are our own best teachers and that the teacher herself is only a guide through the practice. in integral yoga, especially, we are taught to take what works and leave the rest  – that what the teacher says is always and only a suggestion and guide – and i love this freedom and honoring of the individual and her own needs at all times.

so in the end, we as teachers say what we feel and know will support the sangha and at the same time we honor each  individual’s choices within that structure…i teach knowing that everything i say is a way of guiding students in their own personal practice — i teach from my heart to serve each individual and to serve the sangha, the community spirit of each class. Each student must do what is right for her and each teacher must strive to create the most peaceful and joyful sangha possible.

om shanti, om peace.