Summer Reading for Yogis

I don’t have room for one more yoga book in my bookshelf, really. But I’m going to squeeze in one this summer that is so yoga-perfect I can’t resist. It’s not really a yoga book and yet everything tells me it will inform my yoga. The book, My Stroke of Insight, is by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

When Oprah’s talk show had its fire-work finale of best life lessons over 25 years, I was there, glued to the tube. I love life-lessons. She shared certain bon mots like: “When you know better, you do better,” thanks to her mentor, author Maya Angelou. But the one that hit me most was this:

“You are responsible for the energy you bring into this space,” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Oprah made the phrase into a sign to hang in her home and office. I immediately followed suit.

Bolte Taylor had a stroke at 37, and her five senses were shut down, but another sense kicked in. One that detects people’s energy. She could tell which nurses, doctors and aids were truly tuned in to her when they were caring for her, and which were merely going through the paces. When she regained her other senses, she retained her clearly awakened sixth sense. We are all energy — yes, we’ve heard it. But this convinced me that it really does matter what energy you bring into the world.

Tags: Jill Bolte Taylor, Maya Angelou, Oprah, stroke, yoga

Pounce Like a Dog

What is life-giving and what is life-draining? Dogs know this is the ultimate litmus test for what you should be doing and not doing day to day. Nothing fun going on in the yard? Dig up the neighbor’s.

What is and isn’t life giving will be very different depending on the person. Today, I have been perusing Henry Emmons’ wonderful first book, The Chemistry of Joy, and recognizing that I am an Ayuvedic type that needs to vary routine within a structure. With no structure, I wonder around without my head, feet floating somewhere higher than ground level. Too much structure and I grow weary, heavy, lethargic, bored. That always embarrasses me because my father said, “I am never bored,” as a challenge for me to get off my duff.

Of course, he was right. And wrong. He doesn’t get the sloggy doggy feeling nothing is going on in your yard or mine so I might as well sleep all day when the sky is grey well into May. You see, thanks to Emmons, I recognize that today I have a kapha imbalance. Love labels. Makes me joyfully validated. Kaphas can be the happy babies of our lives when all is well. They are earthy and round, content to play and babble. But when you’re too kapha, you sink like a stone. Most of my friends are too vatta, so they probably don’t experience that. Too vatta and your head is always flying off, feet never grounded.

Space is Life
Sometimes feeling off balance is just the signal you need to make change. So today I created space in my life by releasing a big obligation that wasn’t “life-giving” anymore. Now I’m excited about this space I’ve created. What will fill it? I have the opportunity to leave it open and explore. Only when the content rings my bell will I answer. The space itself is thrilling right now.

What is life-draining and life-giving for you? What could go away to make space for something new? Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater; perhaps say bye-bye to something small – a dirty sink, that chair that is bad for your back. Or maybe it’s time for that big barking change. Let me know what happens! How did it change your outlook on life? Maybe there’s room to grow where before there was none.

Tags: Henry Emmons

Flies swarming like, deer?

Got fruit flies? I have been trapping them in the kitchen and releasing them into the wild. I was feeling very Gandhi about this. Very virtuous. Love the earth. Peace to all critters. Then late last night my husband called to tell me he bagged an 8-point buck. He didn’t say bagged. That’s for effect. But he was beaming over the phone. And I was trying to contain my, well, confliction.

Now the third Yama in yoga is nonstealing or “asteya,” and the beautiful writer/yogini Deborah Adele tells us that though many of us may not steal from the grocery store or dollar store, we can steal someone’s joy, so I didn’t want to do that about the successful buck hunt. No, not after all the “ahimsa” (nonviolence) effort earlier in the day. I hardly needed to jostle my yogi state by stealing someone’s joy. I felt-flat footed. What to say?

I know there are too many deer out there this year. And WAAAAYY too may fruit flies in my kitchen. I mean, if there were that many deer in my kitchen I might not be so ahimsa about it all, trapping and releasing them into the yard where they’d be squashing my newly planted garden bulbs and eating leaves – the few left. But deer are lovely, furry friends, and they don’t lay invisible eggs on my fruit. I might instigate my trap-and-release program if I could just get them to jump into those little bowls of rotten fruit covered with cellophane-poked holes.

I don’t know how the fruit fly is ranked as a reincarnated creature, and how much credit I get for the 11 or so I released, and the 1,011 still banqueting on weird things like my toothpaste. One piece of fish for dinner?

I feel so bad that I may have stolen my husband’s joy, but he didn’t even react to my clever fruit fly trap-and-release program when I proudly proclaimed it (thus stealing his joy over the buck) on the phone. So, OK, NOW I think I know why I am upset. He is double to blame for lack of support of his yogi wifey. Hmmm. Which Yama is that one, do you suppose? Blame.

It truly has got to be easier to pass through the eye of a needle.

Let it Slide, Let it Sliiiide . . .

Do you ever feel like you’ve told people one too many times, “Sure, I’d love to do that!” and then completely dropped the ball? Or promised yourself you’d call a friend just to connect, and then let it slide?

Little promises like these that I’ve made to myself have grown like the dust bunnies under my bed. They’re mostly unseen and not hazardous to my health, but they give me this creepy feeling that “Oooo, creatures are living down under.”

Does it matter?

Unfortunately, yes.  For me, the truth is, I’m not always showing up the way I want to in life. So, to remedy the situation I created my new favorite list: Balls Dropped. Things like paying bills DO NOT go on this list. This list is for the things that don’t NEED to get done any time soon. Or ever.  But, ahhh, they feel so good to do. Get the broom and clear out the bunnies. It’s an amazingly feeling.

Here’s part of my current Balls Dropped list (edited to reduce public shame):

-       Organize a field trip of fellow yogis to take an Anusara yoga class in the cities, which I offered to do last summer.

-       Write brochure for a friend I’d offered to help with her marketing.

-       Edit my father-in-law’s memoir, which again, I offered to do and let slide.

-       Take FREE training seminar at the Mac store and learn to use this fancy new computer I use like a word processor.

-       Save my documents to an external hard drive so I don’t lose them forever in a thunderstorm.

-       Buy ingredients so I can bake my husband his favorite German chocolate birthday cake in November.

Already I’ve ticked off four items that were once on this list, and it made me happy. Dizzy spinning happy. MUCH happier than paying the bills or buying the groceries or finishing a work project. Doing any one tells me I can contribute to others’ lives. And I can improve my own. Take yourself out of the mundane, and do one motivating, contributing, enjoyable, TOTALLY expendable thing today.

August Inside is OK

It is hard not to feel guilty spending a beautiful weekend day indoors. But today I did just that. I chose not to join my husband at the lake sailing, and instead read, listened to Garrison Keillor and cooked some healthful and some less healthful foods for the coming week.

This sounds more like a fall day, but it is early August. I am trying to shake the “shoulds” and do what feels right. That calls on all I know about myself and a yogic lifestyle, which does not mean obligating myself to yoga (I skipped this a.m.) or binding myself too strongly to even those “shoulds” that are considered healthy. We can obsess about yoga, eating well, learning, progressing at work, or any number of things. And the fact is, that’s not intelligent, either. The intelligent thing to do is to stop.

My days have been stressful of late – of my own making. I have been trying to create new things in my life but it seems things are only trudging along. Am I going in a positive direction? Will something come of my toiling. As Julie Andrews sang as Maria Van Trapp, “I must have done something good,” because it’s starting to pay off.

But my toiling has made me think over the last months, how do you use your yoga when you’re under stress? Down or depressed? Anxious or confused? Yoga is about preparing you to lead the rest of your life. It is not an end in itself. And it provides so many tools – mediation to help us calm down, breathing techniques to help us focus and get clear, asana (physical practice) to release endorphins, reduce anxiety and, again, bring clarity. Chanting, which I’ve only done a little of lately, is also uplifting.

Think about it for yourself. How can you use your yoga to enhance your life without making yoga an end in itself? Can you take a 5- to 10-minute breathing break when your mind is confused or tired? Can you do just a few asanas to release physical tension, letting the good energy flow? Can you simply stop and observe what is going on inside so that you can move forward with clarity?

Yoga is meant to direct you toward what you need to be content. The fact that it also gives us a wonderful community of friends and a place like Heartwork in Northfield where we can relax and let go, is equally wonderful. It can prevent tensions from building. And it can be a tool to move through difficult places. I urge you to try to use it daily, in many small ways, throughout your life, in and outside the studio. And notice the power you have.

Yoga Freedom

“This is your practice,” utters the yoga teacher from the front of the class. And while half of your brain says, “Oh, what a relief! I can collapse into child’s pose,” the other half wants to keep up with the rest of the class, wants to do the poses the way the teacher can, or wants to earn an atta-boy from said teacher, who you believe will really probably only give one if you do perform the postures as she’s “proposing” you do.

In truth, freedom of choice is fundamental to the practice of yoga, as it was to the founders of this country. In the U.S. we celebrate our freedom on the 4^th of July without really thinking about it. The other days of the year we have struggled to define freedom for 234 years. But practitioners of yoga have us beat. They’ve been at it for thousands of years.

Freedom in the typical contemporary yoga class can mean various things. It can mean the freedom we find through wellness. Yoga asana (posture) practices can free us from aches and allow us to move freely so that our bodies are a help and not a hindrance in experiencing life.

It can mean the freedom to experience your practice on your mat without noticing the defined triceps you covet poking out of a cute Lulelemon wrap-top next to you.

A higher level of freedom comes from the ability to be present and experience life from moment to moment. When our minds are on the task at hand and not wondering what’s for dinner, we have the freedom to make clear choices, rather than acting by rote as our limbic brains are trained to do. This ability to use our minds above the brain stem to choose how we will be in the world is honed through meditation and breathwork (pranayama) and also by a meditative physical practice that calms us and trains our minds on the immediate need to, say, cross one leg over another while lifting the spine, or stay in a balance posture while maintaining a steady flow of breath — challenges that sound simple in two-dimensional, black and white prose, but are far from it in high def, 3-D.

Unfortunately the words, “This is your practice?” typically go in one ear and out another. As a teacher of yoga, I challenge you to actually take up the gauntlet and either “choose” to do each pose as proposed by the teacher because it is your desire to follow that suggestion, or actually stop to think before entering the posture and decide what would be best for you at this moment.

Is today the day your body would revel in triangle by stretching the groins and hearing the hams gasp just a little as your teacher says, “See if you can deepen into the posture?” Or is today a day to hang out comfortably with the bottom hand leaning on your shinbone instead of reaching to the outside of the foot? Yes, it seems defiant, doesn’t it. Even wrong. But after you practice acting as you please in class just once, you will be free. A good teacher might even give you that longed-for atta-boy when she sees a satisfied smile on your lips as you truly enjoy your practice. You will be able to walk into any class in any city in the world and get what you want from it. Because, after all, “It’s your practice.”

Tags: freedom, Independence, practice, Uncategorized, yoga

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