This Moment To Be Free

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.

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.

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.

“i am not my body, i’m not my mind, immortal soul am i” — is a version of the mantra a jnana yogi, one who uses reason to reach non-attachment, might repeat – i am having this experience, but I am not this experience…

whatever pain or discomfort i may be feeling at this moment is the result of my own actions, and reactions – call it karma – as i learn and grow and expand and as my heart is tenderized. sometimes the hand of god opens our chests and takes our hearts in hand and gently, or less gently touches…massages…or even pounds…open heart surgery to get us to wake up, be alive, live…

because otherwise, i am just a detached spirit who feels nothing — how else to learn to feel? how else to wake up with an open heart? Spirit needs to live on this planet embodied and mortal in order to learn compassion – for self and for others…

we do not start off compassionate – we are not angels or saints – this is a myth – we are brutal immortals who need to pass through the fire of mother earth’s gravitational and elemental orbit, to live among other embodied souls and partake in the confusion and chaos and pain – the uncertainty and mystery – the forgetting of our immortality and the smallness and vulnerability of our little lives…in order to struggle through, to sip the air and bathe in the waters and absorb the light and smell the dark clean soil and eat the food and become grateful for whatever we may be given to sustain us…we need this in order to become creatures of love…

vulnerable creatures of heart and of love…and not cold, unfeeling spirits…

so here we are passing through the tunnel from birth to death – we are not this experience but this experience changes us – hopefully for the better – hopefully in favor of love and of becoming more open and more full of heart and of light…

as my friend S. wrote of this journey toward and through awakening: “the important part is to have trust deep down.  know in your heart that it’s a process, and trust whatever forces are in this universe that things will work out”.

om shanti, om peace

namaste.

Last week was a holiday in the Hindu calender for the god Shiva – the Destroyer. This Shiva holy day is about transformation. Yesterday my yoga teacher mentioned this and noted that transition can feel like destruction. Indeed.

I am thinking of the tower card in the tarot, and the death card which traditionally does not mean actual death, but change.  I am again shifting and changing and it does feel like destruction, like a tower falling. One thing Shiva destroys is bad habits. Good, I need that…in general though, the transformation seems to be just happening.

Transformation physically, emotionally, spiritually, in relationships…just happening right now and i am hoping to end right side up, which ever side is right.

I am thinking of the word shiva – in the Jewish tradition there is a transitional time of seven days after the death of a close loved one. This time is called shiva – you sit shiva – sit for seven days in mourning, on uncomfortable chairs, your clothing torn (you rip a piece of clothing to signify mourning), and friends come visit – you are never alone during shiva, during this transition time around death.

So whether it is a feeling of death during a time of transition, or a marking of the transition around a time of death — a Hindu god, or a Jewish  custom — Shiva or shiva — is a very powerful experience and I feel as though I am sitting shiva during this time for whatever is dying off in and around me during this time of Shiva.

Om shanti, om peace.

i have not written in two months – needed to just be and do and not yet to comment on it all…

i am having a difficult moment right now, because i love my life so dearly and am feeling pleasure and expansion and grace and gratitude and…again, the humanity, the imperfection…

my greatest fear is, having begun to build, having found a home – all this will be taken away from me — worse, that somehow i will do something or act in some way or say something  that will cause all that i love to disappear…

i speak in yoga class of the peace within. i tell my students, or those who come to my class to hear the wisdom of the swami as it passes through me…i say “feel the peace within. this is your true nature, your true nature is peace. this place of peace is a place you can come home to at any time – your true home, waiting within – welcoming and warm – and you can dwell in this place of peace at any time, no matter what else is going on in your life at that time”. I say this, and i mean it when i say it – but right now, i am not living in it.

i need to find out, once and for all, what it is to dwell in the place of peace – unafraid and at home in the world – because i know that i am not my body or my mind, or my surroundings – but that i am a spirit. that i do not need to continue to be attached to the external form of my experience – although i love dearly and with all my heart the external form of my experience right now – that it is – so much = an expression of myself and what i desire….

and if deep down what i truly desire, and what is truly right for me, is what god desires — than so be it. But i register my desire, dear father, dear mother of all things, dear physical manifestation of reality — let me stay and experience all the beauty i have around me and for which i am so grateful and i am truly sorry if i have taken your name in vain. i apologize and will strive never to do this again.

with all my heart, i thank you for being allowed to continue to unfold as a being of light and love upon this planet.

i thank you for all the opportunities you give me to grow and learn, and for teaching me how to be grateful.

grant me the serenity to accept what i cannot change, the courage to change the things i can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

om shanti, om peace,

amen

On Wednesday, I was practice-teaching a fellow classmate. I taught her for an hour (well-received by her) and as i was walking out to go to class, I met an older gentleman in the staircase – looked at his shoes and then his face, and he looked at me and asked “are you teaching now?” I was startled and said “no, i am not a teacher – yet – why?”and he replied “your energy – it felt like you were a teacher”.

So now I have gotten “you are a healer” from people, plural, over the past few months and just now that I have teacher energy in the staircase of the yoga institute.

And meanwhile, I am also feeling an amping up of discomfort as the year, and my teacher training program near an end…i need to build something professionally, but what? and how? and with what money? and would anyone come? and the concern that I am being incredibly hubristic to think I know enough yet to teach anyone… and i also have been feeling that my life is a string of wasted opportunities and I want to end that trend…and what about writing a book? would anyone want to read any of this? etc.

So there are two voices — the encouragement I am receiving from outside me, and at times from inside me — the joy I feel in my growing personal practice and slowly growing strength, the enjoyment of beautifully written words, the desire to teach and the ideas I have about the population I feel would be my students…and the other voice, the voice of fear…

I do not actually believe that there is either love or fear — I believe there is fear when opening to love — always have felt this… fear when opening to a path of love…and the closer I come to moving in this place, to moving toward expressing myself int he world in a real way – who I really am – to taking the risk to go “out there” and be me and be exposed for what I do not yet know and seen also for what I do know and can do — the more the past rages from within me and the future looms full of fearful questions — better to stay in bed but then I have dreams about the same subjects…

breathe.

breathe.

I can only try to stay in the now, connected to being in my body, doing what i enjoy, love and need…

and keep breathing. and see what comes next.

peace.

I’m struggling with two parts of myself — the one who looks toward the future and gets really scared and the one who can sit with the present and enjoy the unfolding — maybe three parts, because there is also the part of me that looks at the past and gets angry…so between the fear and the anger is a place of exploration and love and enjoyment and it is hard for me to let go and start really living in and going deeper into that place.

When I was meditating this morning, I heard my Self, my Satguru suggest that I not try to know what I will do next, but rather fully embrace what I am doing now — the teacher training course and all that goes with it. I will try – this would be entirely new for me — i was raised sucking at the tit of this culture that always asks — so, what are you doing — and then precedes to discuss that and evaluate it and rip it apart to find why it might be hard, and might not work and is competitive and so forth…”oh, you are studying to teach yoga? my friend does that – she is exhausted from traveling around all day and it is hard for her to make money” or “I do not understand what you are doing – how does this relate to your graduate degree” or “what will I do next? how am I going to do this next thing?” etc. etc.

Meanwhile, I am wearing myself out with fear about an imagined future, and I am not sinking deeply and luxuriously into my practice now…

I can feel how the planning and worrying and wondering and projecting is leaching energy form me to use now — how I am not sinking into the present and enjoying it fully — why not go to class every day at least once or twice? I could – it is free since I am in teacher training and work there – free – I can revel to my heart’s content in all the yoga classes I want and…I don’t…because I am too tired and worn out from processing the past and worrying about the future –

So today I am making a sankalpa — a commitment — to let that processing and worry go for now — for now… and enjoy the moment I have created for myself –

I vow to sink deeply into the fertile soil of the now — I began this blog with the declaration that I would lie fallow for a season – and I did — and out of that fallow field grew this practice – and now it is time to reap the harvest! I do not need to  lie fallow any more, and I do not need to plant next year’s crops yet — now I can let go and go deeper into this teacher training experience – and my job now is to stay in the now, to stay focused and go deeper and squish my toes in the mud of it all and let myself grow roots and fruits and harvest those fruits and eat them with juice dripping down my chin.

amen. svaha.

I was thinking the other day as I walked through the subway that this, now, is the closest I have yet come to the ideal life I want to be living. I just need to add earning more money into this equation…and to continue building on this foundation, enjoying this life…

Here’s what i love: I deeply enjoy, and am gratified by sharing from my own experience that using food and yoga and natural remedies can be very good ways of healing and… and also, when inspired, I love writing…

writing…all the beautiful words, the poetic fountain of verbiage that resides in my brain and is somehow connected with my hands and my heart…

and service in a sacred context — connecting with people who need help and giving them what i have, sharing my experience and what i have discovered… and feeling that moment of connection, seeing and feeling the other light up when what i say or suggest connects with something in them that says – this is true, this could help – and then the love and light that shines there for a moment feels so good…

…and how will I make money? I am making some now doing this beloved work at the apothecary… i want to grow this seed…acquire some greater solidity of knowledge and authority…how will i make more money?…I do not know… if I can spend minimal amounts of money to get myself into a place of earning my living by advising and counseling around body and food and so forth, and i were earning my living doing a thing or things i enjoy…then that would be nice…

please god, ganesh, the mother of everything, lakshmi, and whoever else…my grandparents and my guardian angels…please help me out, inspire me…help me know the next step to income with integrity, joy and usefulness.

“Give what you have. To someone else it may be better than you dare to think.” – Longfellow

om shanti,amen

…being authentic, real, is being and expressing who i really am and not living life as a copy according to images shaped by acceptability and tradition and expectation…or by money…it is knowing my own strengths and building and expanding upon and from these strengths, yet accepting and honoring my weaknesses…it is finding my place in this material world, my own space to plant myself and grow and thrive in harmony with others and also being able to protect my integrity and boundaries from the influence and expectations, pressures and images of external forces — being able to sort out what is of other humans and of their judgments, images and expectations…and what is mine…finding the original core of me and sincerely expressing from that essential place…well, that’s a lot…finding balance, my center, my strong points and feeling into what is real and genuine and sincere and what is just programming, imprinting from this life and maybe even past lives…

…taking what is mine and leaving the rest behind…leaving it behind, because it is not mine…

…not mine…so in the middle of my life (or what I hope is still just the middle), not in crisis and from a foundation of relative peace and some security (although that word has connotations I do not like), I am exploring what I need, what is real for me, what I can do now to spend the remaining time I have here on earth in a way that is authentic to who I am…a peaceful, easeful, useful life where my heart can shine and I can express myself from a real place…

…where I do not have to fight, but can take in and filter out…breathing as I move…taking in what life throws at me or gently gives me or abundantly showers upon me…breathe it all in like I breathe in air…let what nourishes me fill me and feed me…let what I do not need, what is not helpful or nourishing or healthy leave…breath it out…and in the same way as I breath out the old air, the toxins, from my body I can allow that which is toxic and unnecessary on all levels to depart from me…from my life, from my energy field…release it and let it go…back to where it is authentic for that energy itself to be…

…allow the glue which is holding imprinting and that which is not real…to dissolve…allow the stuck images to loosen from their moorings within me and sail away…off into the stream of life, and away back to where they came from, back to where and to whom they belong…

…as I breath in, oh god, oh beautiful life…let me take in what is nourishing and light-filled for me, acknowledging that what this is may be different for different people and may change for me as time goes on and I learn and grow even more…but let me be able to take in all my experience and keep only what feels good to me, integrate with and into myself what feels right for me to accept and have be with me and in me…

…and as I breath out, oh blessed mother, oh beautiful world…let me let go of what I do not need with me…of what does not belong to me and what does not serve me…let me not carry with me what is not authentic to me…let me not express words which are not truly my words…let me not think thoughts which are not truly my thoughts…let me not harbor as my flesh food which does not nourish me…let me shed the unreal as if it were air I breath out and let me become real with the air I take in…

…with each breath and each cycle of breath may I become stronger and more real and more genuine so that finally each cell in my body will be filled with your light and vibrate only with the realness of the essence of who I really am, and who I came here originally to be

…and may I find a away to express myself, authentically, here on earth…may I enter fully into the stream — the flowing river of your light…and may my livelihood be real and may there be a use for me…

as I breath in, I take in all, as I breath out I keep what I truly need and can use…

as I breath in I accept all of my experience as valuable and real and needed

…and as I breath out let me move on…