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Why (and why not) practice yoga?

Inspired by the physical, physiological and mental benefits of the practice, first-time and veteran yogis alike, resolved to make a change, are filling yoga classes in the first few weeks of the new year.  Though I, too, practice in part for these blessings and am a huge proponent of the scientific research that continues to uncover more and more virtues of the practice, I have to say that I find this the hardest time of the year to teach.

Hand in hand with resolutions for the new year oftentimes comes a classroom climate of self-judgment, rigidity and impatience that I find difficult to teach to. It’s difficult because it triggers all the places in me, too, that want my yoga practice to “fix” my life and the world around me.

Adding to the trigger of the first week of January yoga crusade this year was also the saddening news about the shooting in Arizona and the politically and emotionally charged conversations in the media that have followed. That, on top of all the other despair-inducing news headlines that have followed us into the new year have me revisiting the question, “Why do we practice?”

First, I think it’s helpful to acknowledge that practicing yoga is not a balm or an escape from the realities of daily life. Though your mat can certainly be an oasis of calm and healing, if you’ve been practicing for any length of time you’ve probably already realized this isn’t always true. Some days your mat can feel just as stressful as a bad day at work, or just as emotional as a day with your extended family. In fact, I would posit that this is a good thing! The practice isn’t just physical and mental—it has a soulful dimension, too. And this dimension isn’t about running away from life, but about embracing life. Yoga’s spiritual potency resides in the compassionate confrontation and deep engagement with what is, the courageous encounter with the reality of the present moment—blissful or not.

On the other hand, it’s good to remember that yoga is also not about becoming so flexible that you can contort yourself into a way of being that doesn’t work for you, or to fit into smaller and smaller boxes in your world, or so that you can bend over backwards for other people. This is why there is a focus  on alignment in yoga classes—so that you can learn how to be more flexible AND in alignment with what is best for you. In this way, you become flexible in a way that allows for expansiveness and authenticity—you get to be more solidly YOU in the world.

Photo by Josh Seaman

Along those lines, the point of yoga isn’t to become so flexible that you never have to feel anything again. We’ve probably all at one point had a similar thought to: “If only my hamstrings weren’t this tight I wouldn’t have to feel this frustration every time I’m in a forward bend!” We secretly hope for the forward fold where our chest is plastered to our straightened legs without strain or stress. Though that is a lovely feeling, it doesn’t absolve anyone of having to feel strain or stress or discomfort or limitation ever again. Quite the contrary! When done consciously, all the poses—especially the challenging ones—help us to develop the capacity to feel more.  And again, this is a good thing! Life is full of discomfort and limitation, and it’s also full of joy and love and all sorts of good things. Numbing to one thing means we numb to everything. So as we practice feeling more, we can embrace our own vulnerability and strength, we can reveal our unique humanness and our vast spiritual self, and we can engage in the world from our own fullness.

And so though I practice yoga in part for the health of my body and mind, the main reason why I practice is because yoga offers me the opportunity for more consciousness, compassion and felt connection with my self and with Source.  In this, the frantic “fixing” mentality softens and I find the capacity to be more comfortable with the discomfort, uncertainty and heartbreak of life, personally and collectively. In this way, I feel that my time on my mat isn’t just for me; it’s in service to bringing more consciousness, compassion and felt connection to the collective—one breath and one asana at a time.

Why do you practice?
What is your practice in service to?

2011 01 13 Ruminations Comments (1) Permalink

The Problem with Self-Awareness

In this, the first week of the new year, I’ve been reflecting on the journey of self-discovery that has led me to who I am today. The joke that hit me the other morning as I was practicing was this: the problem with self-awareness is that the selves we become aware of aren’t necessarily what we had in mind.

I think I had this idea that as I peeled away layers of unconsciousness, triggers and the like that I would reveal the self that I want to be. Turns out that it actually just reveals the self that I am.

Ha! You think I would have figured that out before now! You mean this is who I am and what I believe and what I want? Interesting. Not what I had in mind.

And perhaps I should say selves, because there really are a whole slew of expressions of me. And this is something that surprises me, too. I thought self-awareness would lead to a unified and consistent Jay. Instead it looks like a lot of different parts of me constantly evolving and changing.

And there seems to be no end to it! Where’s the certainty?? God, how there is a part of me who wants a destination! Who wants to put myself into the box of a certain life-long career, partner, set of beliefs and home.

But that’s just a picture on the wall. Life isn’t that small and one-dimensional. Well, I suppose one could make it that way, but I know that for as much as part of me wants that, it would be way too boring–deadening–for me.

So I guess I’m saying yes to the vulnerability and uncertainty of my own inconsistency, and giving myself permission to show up in all the aspects of myself while I continue to grow and change. And with that (gulp), I suppose I’m giving the people around me permission to do the same, which seems even scarier. I’d like to believe that if I can’t have certainty in my own experience of myself, at least there’s static points and people for me to move around. But that’s just me trying to put everyone else in a pretty frame on the wall, too. And though that might feel safe, it’s not real and it doesn’t allow for authentic connection.

The only thing that isn’t transitory, if I can allow it, is my own opening to what is.  Which is a nice reminder that this whole business of self-awareness isn’t about fixing, but accepting, not about limiting, but expanding, and not about certainty but about opening to the vulnerability of uncertainty. Which is far riskier and more rich than anything I had in mind.

2011 01 07 Ruminations Comments (0) Permalink

5 Steps to a Wholehearted 2011

In taking the last day of the 2010 to reflect on where I am, I must admit I didn’t complete many of the goals I set this time last year. Not to say that this alternate destination doesn’t have its own blessings, but it’s not quite what I crafted last new years. As I look out on the new year and see the double-edged sword of possibility and uncertainty, I’m considered whether or not to set goals this year.

This last month I kept revisiting researcher Brene Brown’s TED Talk on living wholeheartedly. She talks about how having the courage to live from our hearts requires the willingness to embrace vulnerability; to be willing to invest in a relationship that might not work out, to wait patiently for results from a doctor, to take a risk that has no guarantees…

I am learning to be a wholehearted person, to appreciate vulnerability as beautiful and necessary.  I feel so deeply honored to be present for clients and students in some of their most vulnerable moments, and consider it one of the most beautiful things to share with another person. And yet, I still have a hard time being vulnerable myself.

Certainly as I’ve become capable of feeling more through my yoga practice and through my work with my own counselor, I have been willing to soften in situations I never thought possible before.  And as I’ve been willing to numb less and to feel more I’ve come to experience the blessing of vulnerability—the ability to feel my body and my heart, and thus to be connected to my own guidance.

But there’s definitely still numbing happening, and my personal favorite flavor of numbing that Brene Brown talks about is trying to make certain anything that is uncertain (which is pretty much everything).  Which brings me back to the discussion of new year’s goals…

Ahead of us lies the blank page of 2011. Yes, it’s exciting and hides unknown blessings and possibilities, but it’s also a whitewash of uncertainty. Tempted by the desire to know what’s next, we grab hold of possibilities and sketch them into goals so that we have something to hold onto.

Now I’m not saying that this is bad—it’s good to have desires and aspiration, to want to live with intention and to make your mark. But it’s important to know where those new year’s goals are coming from.

What I mean is this: sometimes our new year’s goals are reactions to our present situation. We get to the end of a year and aren’t where we wish we were financially, relationally, professionally, personally—and rather than just being present with ourselves in a vulnerable way with that, we make vows to use the new year to get as far away as possible from anything that’s presently uncomfortable. Thus, our goals are sourced from contraction and fear, “shoulds” masquerading as goals.

Now I’m not saying that you’ve done this, only owning that this is what I did last year. Having just gotten out of grad school and moved in with a partner this time last year, I set lots of goals that had an undertone of fear and a desire to create some sense of certainty in places that felt really vulnerable.

As I got into the year and life did what it does—suddenly offered new paths, closed doors that I thought would always be open, and generally did nothing that I would have expected—I was reminded that, like the poet David Whyte says, “What you can plan is too small for you to live.” Hence I got to the end of 2010 and thought, “Hmm, this doesn’t look like what I set out to do.” But that’s a good thing, because my plans were too small to stand up to the flow of life.

So is there a way to set goals and make plans that aren’t too small to live and that do allow for wholeheartedness? I think so: use your guidance to help you.

How?

1.  Do something that lets you feel deeply and brings you back to an experience of spaciousness and softness in your body—do yoga, take a warm bath, go for a walk, have a good cry (this last one is particularly good!).

2. Write down all the goals you’ve been thinking about for the new year.

3.  Read the goals one by one and then sit with what it feels like in your body. If you can read the goal and still feel spacious and soft, it’s a keeper.  If you read it and your body gets tight or contracted and you start thinking really hard, let it go.

4. Go back to the goals that were keepers and ask your guidance “What’s the next step?” Notice that you’re not needing to have the whole thing planned out, just the next step. If this next step is something that might have a deadline, sit with when that might be—remember, if it feels tight or rigid that’s your head telling you that you should have it done by a certain time.

5. Now that you have your list of goals, first steps, and possible deadlines set the intention to remember to check back in with guidance after each step you take. Rather than using your mind to figure out the rest of the steps to making your goal come to fruition, use your lovely, powerful mind to choose to find spaciousness again and ask your guidance, “What now?”

What’s cool about setting new year’s goals this way is that you’re not shrinking your possibilities by fleeing discomfort or by seeking the impossibility of certainty. Instead, in being willing to be with the vulnerability of following what your guidance says is important and being able to only see the next step, you’re saying yes to a big, vital, wholehearted 2011.

2011 01 01 Newsletters Comments (2) Permalink

Interview with Jay from Ombase May 2009

How did you get into yoga?

I got into yoga when I was in college. Someone dragged me along to the yoga club, which was this class on Wednesday evenings, and the first class I ever took felt like coming home. Primarily because I had been a competitive gymnast when I was a kid, and what I loved about gymnastics was really getting present to myself and being in my body and watching how it moves, but it was so abusive.

And this yoga class was like, come and explore your body and be in these shapes and let it be about loving yourself and let it be about feeling good. And then when we lay down in Savasana at the end I was sold. It was like, are you kidding me? We get to just lie here now and be?

So I kept going. This woman was the only yoga teacher in the town I lived in, and she taught four nights a week, and I went to every class every week for years. I was in.

What kind of yoga was it?

She was trained in Iyengar, but she called it “Iyengar with heart.” Because it was about the precision and the props and getting the alignment right, but really it was more from kind of how Todd teaches – get yourself supported so you can feel better. Not, this is the right way to do it and if you don’t do it this way you’re doing this wrong.

How did you start teaching?

I was going to every yoga class this woman taught and I was also at the time in college studying kinesiology (the study of human movement), so I had a lot of the foundational learning of anatomy and physiology and how the body moves. Since my teacher was the only teacher in town she had never had someone who could teach her classes if she was sick or went out of town. So it started by her saying, “I’m going to be out of town for three days, do you want to take my classes?”

We would meet at her house once a week and do a four-hour session one-on-one where she would teach me how to teach. I knew the poses already, but she would teach me how to teach them. I slowly started taking over for her when she needed a break. And eventually the college gave me my own classes, so I started teaching the faculty and students at the College of William and Mary.

I had actually been teaching for four years before I got a teacher’s training. And the only reason I got it was because I needed it. When we moved away from that town nobody cared that I had been teaching and that this woman had spent four years with me one-on-one teaching me how to teach, because I didn’t have a piece of paper. So I went and I got the piece of paper at that point.

It was great because by then I was pretty comfortable with teaching and with the poses that it was a very different program for me than I think for the other women. They were still focusing on learning the body and the poses and how to be in front of a group of people.

And for me, I got to use those nine months for really deepening my practice. I didn’t go with an ear to how to teach. I went with an ear to – wow – this is more information than my teacher gave me about the hugeness of yoga. She was really good at teaching me the poses, but this is where I started to learn the philosophy. So I used those nine months to really deeply study the philosophy and the spirituality behind it and come alive to that.

And then my teaching totally changed as a result of what was happening in my own practice. Because I started to practice differently, adding in more breathing and more sound, and now that I knew the poses so well, I started linking them together. So my own practice became Vinyasa. But I was still teaching, like, okay we’re going to do this pose and now we’re going to do this and use all these props and blocks…

Eventually it just became too painful a misalignment for me. I had to teach what I was doing. And it was the first time that it actually became my own, because I had been teaching what my teacher had been teaching. As my own practice at home changed, then I came to my classes really differently.

How would you describe your approach to teaching now? What do you want your students to get from them?

By its very nature, being a yoga class, I have to teach yoga poses to a certain extent, but what I’m really interested in my students getting is just coming back to themselves, whatever that means to them. If that means finding more love for themselves, or de-stressing their life, or having revelations, or if that just means feeling good for an hour. Because over time all of those things happen, but the essential quality is, I just want to facilitate people coming back home to themselves and coming to know who they are.

Come back to yourself and question everything and just explore, because the poses are just a lot of details that are meaningless to a certain extent on their own. The details are there for you to get interested, rather than for you to feel like you could come up with the right answer based on what they have to tell you.

What do you feel like you get from teaching your classes?

Support in everything that I’m learning. I think most teachers would say that they teach what they’re learning. So for me, the part of my work that I’m most grateful for is that if I can find the courage in myself to really be honest with what I need and what I’m learning, and then the courage to share that – whether or not I share the actual story, but the essence of what I’m learning – I get to create a learning environment in which people are exploring the very thing that I am trying to find in my life.

Whether or not we know it, we’re teaching each other all the time. Just setting a common intention in a group of people, magic happens. So I get to be the maker of my own medicine. Medicine happens when people are in there together with intention and I get to make my own dosage. It’s astonishing.

What would you say about your own yoga practice now?

My own practice has become much more Yin. I’m really enjoying resting into things for a long time and being a lot gentler on myself. I find with teaching ten classes a week my body doesn’t want to do Vinyasa. It’s tired, it wants to get down on the floor and have all sorts of cushy things and be supported and get long deep holds and sit in meditation. So that’s the growing edge of my teaching for me because my own practice is looking a lot different.

My main curiosity these days is how to move from a supported place and how not to resist the support that I do have. So my interest has been in going back to looking at poses that I didn’t even consider how they could have been supported in the first place and doing them again from this super-chill place. And maybe I’ll get interested in coming back into them from the more active place, but right now that’s not up for me.

Do you want to say something about your Yin Yoga and Sound Healing events at Om Base?

It came from an experience I had at an event where Tom was playing. I was lying there thinking, this is absolutely lovely, it’s just the most relaxed I’ve felt in terms of a vibration around me. Whether we’re aware of it or not, whenever we walk into any situation there’s always a vibration that meets us, and it’s not usually a healing one. It’s oftentimes really abrasive. So I was lying there thinking, I wish I could be doing this with yoga. So I asked him and he said yes.

The idea behind it is that in Yin yoga you can spend some time in really supported poses to let your body unwind. And in that unwinding process you’re naturally creating more space, and then that vibration has space to move into. As opposed to how we tend to be, which is guarded and shielded and held tightly in such a way that there’s not a lot of space. So the vibration can come but it doesn’t get absorbed, it bounces off a little bit more and sneaks its way in.

So one facilitates the other. The Yin facilitates receiving the vibration of the healing bowls and chimes and didgeridoo, and the vibrations facilitate the unwinding. What I’ve found for myself and for the people who come is that it’s a profound level of relaxation and truly healing. People have said it’s a lot more like getting a massage than it is like doing yoga. Because it’s a level you can’t do just by yoga, it needs that extra piece. Ultimately, there are really no words to describe it other than aaahhhh….

2010 12 07 Transcribed Interviews Comments (0) Permalink

Advent

Here we are on the first day of December. This morning as I was practicing I thought of how when I was a kid, today would have been the day that we would have hung the star on the advent calendar that our Grandma Kelly had made.

The advent calendar was the ultimate count down as a kid. My brother and I would take turns placing one hand-made felt ornament on the tree a day, knowing that when the last ornament went up (always the Santa) it would mean that the big day had finally arrived—presents!

How American, I know. Christmas in my family was decidedly not religious. But it was very joyful and sacred. For me it wasn’t just about receiving presents, but about giving them, and more importantly, about having everyone I loved in the same place at once sharing a common experience. Christmas seemed like the one time of year when everyone in my family was on the same page: it was palpable that we were all looking forward to the same day, that we were all caught up in the excitement of giving and receiving, and that we would spend one glorious day together exchanging presents, resting and rejoicing.  This was deeply nourishing and comforting to me. (It still is.)

And so I would make my way through December in a kind of a frantic impatience, a crazed longing for this future time and external circumstance that would deliver joy and happiness. As I practiced this morning, I realized I still do the same thing; I am impatiently and excitedly counting down the days until I get to go back to Virginia to be with my family.

But I also do this all year round in so many ways—this hanging of my hopes, like little felt ornaments, on some future event, some external circumstance, or some one else in my life.  As if the things I most want to receive depended upon someone else giving them to me at some point other than this moment.

For example, last week I had the realization that I am horrible at playing when I am by myself; a friend had cancelled our plans to hang out on my day off and I became incredibly grumpy. I remember thinking, “Great! Now I have to go another week until I can have fun!”  And in that moment I stopped. Wow, really?

Though I am an incredibly playful person, I tend to rely upon being around other people to allow this part of me to come out. Given to alone time, my inner German-grandmother voice says I should be working or doing something productive. And so that’s what I do, even though a part of me really, really wants to be playing.

We all have something that we’re not good at giving to ourselves so we seek out others to give it to us or bring it out in us. For me it’s playing, but for some of us it’s being productive. And for many of us it’s doing our practice—think of how much easier it is to go to a yoga class than to do your own practice at home!  No doubt having intentional time in the presence of others makes whatever is hard for us to do or receive on our own far easier, but it’s kind of disempowering, and leaves us in a state of waiting and hoping.

So how do you give yourself what you want? Well, you have to be willing to be with feelings that are uncomfortable. For example, if I want to give myself the afternoon off to play, I have to be willing to address the parts of me who think I’m being irresponsible, lazy and unproductive. Or if you want to be productive, you have to be willing to feel angry that you’re not able to be with your loved ones. Or if you want to practice yoga on your own, you have to be willing to feel that you don’t know what you’re doing—or whatever the particular discomfort is that is hiding out there under the surface of your conscious experience.

So it turns out this gifting yourself thing is all about presence. Though it’s a more complicated package than one you might find under the tree, it’s SO much more deeply satisfying!

Which makes me think again about the advent calendar. The word advent comes from the Latin word adventus which means ‘arrival.’ An advent calendar is used to count down the days until the arrival of a person, thing or event. And since my folks have the advent calendar and I won’t be able to participate in that tradition this year, I thought, why not make a new advent tradition for myself?

Instead of an advent calendar to count down to some external opportunity for the arrival of a day that to me means enjoying the presence of my family and the exchange of presents (and generally getting to play), I’ve decided to have an advent practice. My advent practice is going to be about taking a few minutes each day to mark my own arrival in the present moment of my life. In these moments I’ll sit with what I want—more play in my life!—and then be present with all the thoughts and feelings that come up in response to that desire.

Because the thing is, the things we want are often wrapped in a box of our own resistance, and unless we can address the resistance, we’re not going to be able to get to the feeling or experience that we do want for ourselves.

And though it’s more than ok to ask for what you want from yourself and others, the advent practice isn’t about being selfish and becoming consumed with getting something, the way the advent calendar and it’s count down to presents was for me as a kid. Taking the time to acknowledge what you want and getting to know your resistance to receiving it is about accepting responsibility for being more fully your self in this world. And when you’re more fully yourself, you can more fully be there for others in a way that is authentic and alive.

So what is it that you want that you’re not very good at giving to or doing for yourself? What would your advent practice look like?

2010 12 02 Newsletters Comments (0) Permalink

Restoring Sanity Through Admitting Fear

Happy Halloween!

At this moment kids all over the neighborhood are no doubt getting on their costumes and preparing to tromp around and get candy for dressing up like the things that scare them.

And as I sit down to write, it dawns on me that the theme of this week has been fear. Not just in relationship to Halloween, ghosts and such, but also the role of fear in mainstream media through Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert’s rally in D.C. yesterday, as well as in my sessions with clients and my own personal life.

The truth is, everyone is scared of something. Many things actually. And it’s these fears—or more aptly put, the resistance to facing these fears—that dictates our lives on a personal and collective level. We have this way of playing a sort of reverse Halloween all year long where we put pretty looking masks over our fears and hope that we’ll attract more treats than tricks as we walk through our lives. Putting on the mask doesn’t take our underlying fear away, but as we look around and no one else looks scared we tend to believe we are somehow the only person who is this scared, and we become even more determined not to show it.

It makes me wonder, what if we wore our fears as innocently as the kids out trick or treating tonight?

Here, let me try. Off the top of my head, this week I can think of being scared:

  • Of opening my heart to someone and having it broken.
  • That I won’t be liked because I didn’t do something that someone else wanted me to do.
  • That I’ll go bankrupt if I truly do what I want to do and not what seems to “make cents.”

That’s just to name a few–there were plenty more!

I know that I’m not the only one who has these fears, and yet it’s so ingrained in me to mask these fears that it feels vulnerable to put them out there. And that’s a big part of why we don’t share our fears in the first place: it feels vulnerable! But the thing is, whether we acknowledge it or not, the fear is still going to be there.

So the question isn’t, “Are you scared?” (Because if you’re really living your life on the leading edge of your potential you should be scared!) The question is, “What do you do with your fear?”

I propose two things:

1. Admit that you’re scared.

This could look like just pausing a moment to say inwardly to yourself, “Whoa, I’m scared.” It sounds kind of silly, but we put so much energy into trying to deny, push away and control our fears that we often can’t even admit it to ourselves when we are feeling scared.

This could also look like going one step further and telling someone else that you’re scared. In the first example from above of my own personal fears this week I said to another person, “I’m really scared that I’m going to have my heart broken.”

Whether you say it to yourself or to another person, admitting your fear allows you to:

2. Be with yourself in your fear.

I think we get this one confused a lot: it’s not about overcoming your fear or getting rid of it altogether (though that will eventually happen), it’s about not abandoning yourself when you do feel scared.

What we usually do when we sense that we’re scared is panic—we don’t want to feel scared! So we desperately try to manage and control and just get through until the triggering situation goes away.

But what if we don’t want the triggering situation to go away? For example, I might be scared of having my heart broken, but I still want a loving and intimate partnership.

Or what if the triggering situation will never go away? For example, other people having wants and expectations for me that don’t match what I want for myself. At some point I’m going to have to face that other people might not like me if I do what I want! Or else give my life over to other people to run…but that doesn’t sound so appealing.

So how do you stay with yourself when you’re scared so that you can move beyond the fear and get what you really want in your life? Well, as I said above, admitting to yourself or to another person that you’re scared is the first part.  The very act of that acknowledgment is an act of coming closer to your self rather than running away in panic. Think about seeing that part of yourself that is scared as a kid and the witness part of you as a grown up who can say, “I see you’re scared, and I just want to let you know that you’re not alone.”

Let me reiterate: it’s not about trying to make the fear go away, it’s about choosing not to go away from yourself when you’re scared. You’ll find that when you choose to stay present, your own presence provides a sense of calm and strength, a reminder that you’re supported and held–even as you’re scared. Your presence will also provide you with sound guidance for how to go forth and live into what you really want in your life despite your fear.

And the cool thing is, the natural consequence of being with yourself when you’re scared is that you’ll become less scared. Instead of staying in the realm of being paralyzed by perceived risks and tricks, you’ll be liberated by allowing yourself to be scared and to take the risk anyway—finding that when you choose not to mask your fear you actually do get treats!

What fears are you ready to admit to yourself?

The next time you feel yourself having fears triggered when in conversation with someone else, can you allow yourself to say that you’re scared so that you can stay true to yourself and to what you want to happen?

2010 11 01 Newsletters Comments (0) Permalink

Speaking from Experience

Usually writing these newsletters takes me about an hour; I sit down and what wants to come out just flows. But this month I sat down to write about speaking from personal experience, and a few days later I still can’t get more than a few coherent paragraphs written. And I’m starting out today all in a funk with my brain all tied in knots. Oh how I love the ironies of experiential learning!

First let me explain what I mean by speaking from personal experience. Essentially I mean speaking your truth, but it’s more than that—it’s speaking (or writing or  painting or expressing yourself in some way) from your own mental, emotional and physical experience in the moment. It’s about not crafting everything you’re going to say from your intellect, or sticking strictly to some script of what you think will make you sound smart or likable or whatever the desired effect of your brain is.

Did I mention it’s really freakin’ hard?

But why? Well, speaking from my own experience…

It’s hard because you actually have to be present to your experience to speak from it. That’s the first kicker. And I could go in to all the many, many reasons why it’s hard to be present in our culture that is so accustomed to operating from our brains only, but I’ll spare you this time.

Speaking from your own experience is also hard because it’s really vulnerable. Scripting our expressions or scheming our exchanges with others from our intellect keeps us feeling more safe. And I don’t mean to suggest that we’re scheming what we’re going to say in a malicious way, I mean that we do it in an unconscious way in an attempt to avoid being uncomfortable or feeling exposed.

Because when you speak from your own experience you are vulnerable. And that means that when someone else has a response to you from their own experience (which they will) you are inviting it without defense, regardless of whether it’s what you want to hear or not. And that’s hard.

Does this sound familiar? Take a moment and think about a situation in your life where, when you’re really present to what you’re feeling, you know it’s out of alignment with what you have (or haven’t) expressed in that situation. Maybe it’s with a boss or a family member or a friend. Imagine saying how you really feel. Kind of vulnerable, huh? Terrifying perhaps.

But before you start telling stories in your head about all the horrible things that might happen if you spoke from your experience in that situation, just take a moment and say out loud to yourself right now how you really feel about it. Aaaah. A little relief maybe? Even just speaking honestly from your own experience to yourself is healing.

It’s good to have ways like this to practice on your own where the stakes are low but the effects are still pretty high. For me, writing in my journal is one way, moving without a plan on my yoga mat or through dancing is another, and taking time to sit on my meditation cushion and let myself express my emotions to myself when I’m alone is another.

But like any practice, we do it so that we can apply it in real life. And real life is relational. Which means we have to learn to speak from our experience in the moment with other people. Gulp.

What I’m finding is that there’s ways to practice this in relationship, too, that aren’t just about having really difficult conversations. “Speaking” from our own experience isn’t just about speaking, but about expressing our self more openly and vulnerably, and about allowing for the full range of our own experience. Similar to how I practice this alone, I practice in relationship with other people through writing (like these newsletters and my blog), and through movement.

My dear friend Bob Czimbal and I get together every few weeks to move together in a unique combination of partner yoga, acro-yoga and contact improv dance that we have developed over time. A long-time dancer, yogi, and former yoga-teacher, Bob is someone with whom I feel safe to be vulnerable with in exploring unchoreographed movement.

Instead of having a plan or a set of moves we’re going to do, we just show up as we are, make a commitment to not lose physical contact with each other, and then let ourselves be guided from our own experience—which is inherently informed by and always in relationship to the other person’s experience as expressed through their movement.

This practice has been profound for me. Through our mutual trust, respect and presence I’ve learned how to do what I do on my yoga mat—tune in to what I’m feeling physically and emotionally and letting that guide my movement—with another person. Our dances at time can feel quite vulnerable and awkward. Sometimes we’re silly, sometimes aggressive. We often step on each other’s toes (or hands or stomachs) by accident, or lose our balance and come crashing down to the floor in a heap.

But we also at times surrender into such an effortless flow where we’re both present to ourselves and to each other and there is such an expansive sense of ease. Or we find ourselves in the most remarkable of shapes, or defying gravity in a way that we could have never imagined, much less choreographed. We’ll laugh and say, “How did we even get here?” And if we go back to try and find the same shape it never works the same way.

Through this practice I’m learning so much about how to express myself more fully in the dance of daily life—with friends, with co-workers, with family members. Yes, not sticking to my mind’s script or not having a whole scene with another person habitually choreographed makes for some awkwardness, as well as for more of a chance to metaphorically fall on my face. But what I’m finding is that this kind of falling hurts far less than the chronic feeling of restraining myself.

When I dare to actually express myself to another person in a way that isn’t anticipating how to control their next move, but is simply an expression of my truth in the moment, I have that same sense of expansiveness and flow that I find when I dance with Bob. And, like what happens in our dance, when I speak authentically with someone, allowing for the full expression of myself, the situation unfolds in ways that are beyond my mind’s ability to craft, and that often feel remarkable, surprising and refreshingly expansive. In fact, not letting my fears and defenses weigh me down and limit my expression of self kind of feels like defying gravity.

How can you/do you practice expressing yourself fully?

Do you remember a time when you spoke directly from your own experience to someone else? What did it feel like?

Where is there a situation in your life where you need to risk expressing yourself more authentically?

**For your entertainment (and with the intention of more fully–and vulnerably!–expressing myself) I’ve included some pictures of my dances with Bob (with his permission!) and a short clip to give you a sense of how it looks in motion…


2010 09 01 Newsletters Comments (5) Permalink

More isn’t always more

“When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands.”

A friend loaned me the book, The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist, from which I took the above quote.  It’s a great book that looks at our cultural and individual beliefs around scarcity and abundance when it comes to money.

This has always been a charged topic for me, as finances and money have historically been and continue to be stressful issues for me.  There’s something about the above quote, though, that hit a resonant chord for me. It brought a glimmer of a new perspective to my relationship with my finances in that I recognized in the quote an experience that I’m familiar with in yoga. To describe my own experience, I would modify the quote to read:

When you let go of trying to get in to a bigger, more elaborate pose, it frees up oceans of energy to experience the pose that you’re actually in. When you experience the pose that you’re actually in, you expand.

This comes from my experience over the last eight months or so of getting more and more interested in simple poses held for a long time, and in growing my sensitivity and awareness through that. In so doing, I have noticed HUGE shifts in my body—new awareness around fundamental elements of my posture, therapeutic releases of long-held muscular patterns and numb areas in my body, as well as a greater softening of heart, mind and spirit into my own experience of myself both on the mat and off.

It’s been interesting to see how I had gotten into the habit of thinking more is more. Well, I guess I always knew that more wasn’t necessarily better, but I didn’t know how to make less more, if you know what I mean. What I’m trying to say is that there’s an intrinsic level of expansive energy in doing (or even attempting) a really challenging pose in yoga, but finding that same level of expansion (though a different flavor of it) through a yin pose or geeky, proppy pose takes a whole different kind of approach.

To find strength and alignment and increased awareness in the more subtle poses takes surrender, humility, and curiosity. But it also takes anatomical know-how. The more I’ve gone back to my Iyengar roots through studying the intricacies of anatomy with my friend Ada Lusardi, the more the effects of my less flashy practice are expanding. And the cool thing is, when I do engage in a flashier pose, it’s SO much more satisfying and easeful because I can still feel the resonance of the details, and because I know I’m safe in the pose and not pushing past some edge.

So to bring it back to Lynne Twist’s quote about money, I don’t really know what it looks like or feels like yet to make a difference with what I have financially. But based on my experience on the mat over the last few months, I completely trust in the reality that making a difference with what I have will create expansion. I’m willing to bring the same attitude of surrender, humility and curiosity to this inquiry, and to seek out more knowledge and help from friends who have a better understanding of the “anatomy of money,” as it were.

And it’s cool to think of setting aside ideas of what you think you need and in stead making a difference with what you have in all different realms—not just on your yoga mat or with your money, but in your relationships, in your work, in your relationship with the natural world. Where could you be making a bigger difference with what you already have and inviting in more expansion?

2010 08 27 Ruminations Comments (0) Permalink

The risk to blossom

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~Anais Nin

I’m sure you’ve seen the above quote before, but it’s always worth reading it again. I love this quote not just because of the message, but because it’s so viscerally potent—we all know what the tightness of the bud feels like, and the contrast of the expansiveness of the bloom.

I’ve been feeling the tightness of the bud over the last few weeks. I’ve recognized ways in my work that I’ve been holding myself back, tightly bound because of fear—the fear that if I really step out I’ll fail—that people won’t like what I have to say, or worse, no one will even notice.  The thing is, I love my work as a yoga teacher and a counselor and I want nothing more than to share it with more people. I have all sorts of big ideas in my head about how to bloom—and even more excuses, it seems, for why not to!

It makes me think of the line from David Whyte’s poem, “The Sun”:

Photo by Joshua Seaman

..I look out
at everything
growing so wild
and faithfully beneath the sky and wonder
why we are the one
terrible part of creation
privileged
to refuse our own flowering.

I look at that line and I see the one key word: faithfully. In my opinion the “privilege” that keeps us from our own flowering is our mind. The mind is faithless. The mind is all about control, definitions, timelines, and shoulds; the mind thinks it knows just how, when and what we should bloom. Not only that, but our mind also thinks that if it doesn’t run the show, we will be blown into a thousand pieces if we risk blooming from our heart.

But only the heart has faith.  And only the heart is big enough to hold Mystery and allow us to engage in organic and passionate growth.  It’s easy to acknowledge this intellectually, but to actually live in the faith of your heart, means that you have to be willing to set down the defenses of the mind and be vulnerable—because the heart has no defenses of its own. And that’s the risk.

So I tried that this week: after weeks of complaining and worrying about all the manifestations of my smallness in my work, I finally came to that place where the risk to blossom felt less painful. I spent hours crafting a proposal that was straight from my heart (and that I also thought happened to be a brilliant idea!), and I sent it off to a personal contact at an organization that I highly admire letting them know why I think they should hire me. It was terrifying and wonderful to press the send button—like the pinnacle moment of a bloom!

Not three hours later I received an email back! And in the two lines of their response they conveyed why my idea wasn’t possible, but thank you anyway. Reading the two lines a second time, my mind quickly said, “Well that’s that,” and I got up from my desk to go wash my dishes from breakfast.

One dish in, I caught a glimpse of how much the bud had tightened back down in my chest. I turned off the water and walked over to my mat where I knew I’d have a better chance of getting past the defenses of my mind—because the truth was, I was heartbroken. How could they not see what I had to offer?  Why wouldn’t they even just agree to have a conversation with me? What’s wrong with me—why is it that every time I take the risk to bloom and really put myself out there I get shut down?

But even the questions were a defense pattern of my mind. Underneath the wanting to know the answer to the questions was simply the agonizing feeling of heart ache. And so I just sat there and felt it and cried. And when I did, the bud began to open again.

What I’m learning is this—that the term “shut down” is only something I do to myself.

Photo by Joshua Seaman

Sure, someone else might not want to hire me or believe in what I do—but I do! And I don’t have to be all small and pretend like I don’t, and go back in to hibernation again until I work up enough courage to assert to someone else my heart’s passion and vision.

But I do have to feel the heartbreak when it doesn’t work out, and trust that my heart breaking is not only, as I’ve experienced, making space for the capacity for more love, but also making space for the capacity for more Mystery.

I have faith that this didn’t work out because something else is meant to be and I just can’t see it from the limited perspective of my mind. More than that, though, I have faith that my blossoming isn’t contingent upon someone else’s recognition or defined by my mind’s expectations; my blossoming, like that of everything else in creation, just is if I allow it to be.

And the only way for me to allow my blossoming to be is to train my mind that the real privilege is to step out of the way so that I can feel my emotions. Because the heart doesn’t have defenses for a reason–it doesn’t need them. Nothing we feel can annihilate our heart–it can only blow it open.

To our wild and faithful growth!

And for more inspiration, visit my dear friend Josh Seaman’s website for more beautiful flower pictures.

2010 08 13 Ruminations Comments (2) Permalink

If you’ve been practicing yoga for a while, you’ve probably come to discover that it doesn’t make your life any less intense. In fact, practicing yoga increases your capacity to be present to what you’re experiencing, and thus you feel more. And since life throws you all kinds of experiences, feeling more doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the vision of peacefulness and balance you may have imagined yoga would create in your life.

But giving yourself permission to feel more does give you the ability to be more connected to the life that you are living, and to the people with whom you share your life—a prospect that is perhaps equally desirable as it is unsettling.  If you’re anything like me, there are people with whom you learned, perhaps many years ago, that it’s not safe to feel what you feel around them—they’ll make fun of you, they’ll ignore you, they’ll lash out at you or in some way hurt you when you’re most vulnerable.

My grandmother was one of these people for me. When I was a young girl we were quite close, as she would baby sit me while my mom slept during the day because she worked nights as a nurse. My grandma and I would play with puzzles, and read books. She taught me how to bake cookies and make her famous biscuits from scratch. But as I got older her patterns of being emotionally closed to people, especially the women in my family, started to appear, and I closed my heart to her. I became polite around her, but not open and loving. As a teenager I experienced first-hand her manipulation, her neediness, and her hurtful words, and I felt righteous in my protected emotional stance: “I will not soften and let myself be vulnerable around this woman. It isn’t safe.”

Three weeks ago she fell and broke her femur. The family knew this was a life-ending event for her, as she is a few months short of 90 and in poor health. I knew immediately that I needed to fly back east to be with her; I needed to break my defensive pattern with her before she died. After all these years of practicing yoga I felt like I might be able to do this—to stay open and undefended and allow myself to feel what I feel without anything about her, the situation or the past needing to be different.

However, for much of the time that I was back east helping my mom and aunt care for my grandmother who at this point was confused at best, and quite combative and agitated much of the time, I was aware of my feelings, but still pretty shut down. Though I was trying to stay present to what I was feeling, there was SO much feeling happening that I just couldn’t flow with all of it. Plus, I was there to be a caretaker, not to be care-taken—and since my grandma and my mom were both nurses, I know how to be a caretaker—and it generally looks like putting my feelings aside to just manage the situation. But by the morning of the day I was to leave, I was exhausted and hardened, and feeling like I had not gotten the healing that I had gone for.

When I went to say goodbye to my grandma, it was the first time all week that I was alone with her during a time when she was calm, conscious and recognized who I was. Aware that this was the last time I would see her I finally just let go and wept—I didn’t care if she ignored me or snapped at me to stop. To my amazement, she took my hands and pulled me onto her chest.  Without saying a word she stroked my hair and patted my back as I cried—something that neither one of us had allowed for since I was a child. I stayed crying on her chest long after she had fallen to sleep.

Never in a million years would I have imagined that my grandma and I would have shared a moment like that, but I do know there was such a profound healing for me, and I think for her, as we both met each other in the reality of the present moment and the fullness of our emotions, not trying to change or control anything.

I’m struck at how hardly any of us know how to do this: how to simply feel what we feel without trying to manage, contain or control the external situation or our internal response. Most of us did not come from families that modeled this, and we certainly don’t live in a culture that fosters it.  Like my grandma, we’re doing the best we can. And for as far as I’ve come in allowing for my own emotions, I’m humbled at how terrifying it is to feel sometimes, and how emotionally backed up I can get.

I completely understood when two of my clients said this week, “I feel like I can’t breathe!” Trying so desperately to control the triggering external circumstances in their lives and to resist their powerful emotional responses, they had reached a level of panic. It was as if they were wildly flailing in an ocean of their own emotion, not able to make it to the surface, and quickly running out of air.

But the point of conscious living isn’t to get to the surface. The point is to be able to relax under the surface of our experience.

The other evening a friend showed me video that he took while snorkeling in Hawaii. Following a giant sea turtle, schools of fish coming and going, you could hear the waves folding over on themselves and pushing up against the rocks above.  But underneath the water…aaaaahhhh…that sense of timelessness, weightlessness and pure presence. Even watching it on a computer my body relaxed.

It’s as if practices like yoga and other body-based modalities that increase our capacity to feel our physical and emotional body are metaphorically about learning how to snorkel: we learn how to exist on that thin plane between worlds. Having spent so much time trying to keep our heads above water, we now find that we have the resources to breathe and open ourselves to experiencing the marvels and mysteries of what’s below the surface.  And not merely as a spectator, but immersed, engaged and fully a part of the experience.

I invite you then, to take a moment and reflect upon an experience that you would not have been able to be truly present to if you had not been prepared by your practice—some event that was so huge for your heart and spirit, like falling in love, getting married, witnessing a birth or a death, seeing a long-held goal come to being, or letting go of something you deeply longed to happen that never will be. Feel gratitude for being fully present to yourself, to the others who were there and to the experience itself.

And I also invite you to continue giving what you’re feeling more space: start with your physical body and then what you feel on the emotional level will reveal itself to you. When it does, give yourself permission to feel what you feel.

As you make more space for what you feel, know that you are becoming your whole self.  And not just that, you are creating a new emotional inheritance for your family.

2010 08 02 Newsletters Comments (1) Permalink