Yoga with Janet

It’s days like these… the past several days in NYC that have been brutally, record-breaking hot… that I am grateful for impermanence.  I don’t weather this kind of weather well.  Some people get bronzed and glow-y in summer heat.  I get pink and puffy.  It’s not pleasant.  And so I remind myself that we will not forever be stifled by the heat and swimming in puddles of our own perspiration.  In another six months, we’ll be chilled to the bone and shrouded in a blanket of dense gray clouds.  (I’ll be thankful for impermanence then, too.)

It is much easier, I think, to embrace and appreciate the concept of impermanence when we are in the midst of something unpleasant.  We can be comforted by the knowledge that this too shall pass.  But the rules of impermanence apply just the same when we are on vacation or enjoying a beautiful meal with a loved one.  Just because we deem it a pleasant experience doesn’t mean we can slow down time or keep the next wave of change from coming.

What we can do is soften our resistance.  Whether it’s resistance to the current circumstance that we wish would hurry up and be over already! Or resistance to something we enjoy coming to an end.  We can practice meeting these changes with a softening of the breath, a spaciousness of the mind, and perhaps a bit of curiosity about what the next moment will bring.

And as always,we are fortunate to have our yoga practice that allows us to do exactly that…practice.  In poses we love that we feel we could stay in all day, we can be mindful and open to where this pose can lead; whether it’s our own body speaking to us and determining what comes next, or the teacher’s instruction that guides us on.  Likewise, in poses that challenge us or are downright strenuous, perhaps we can steady the breath and stay present with the experience knowing that it is going to evolve.

Impermanence is easy to identify in the changing of the seasons, in the growing up of a child or a tree.  But impermanence manifests in subtle, sometimes imperceptible ways with the passing of every moment, the breathing of every breath.  If we can offer those moments our attention and wakefulness, perhaps we can meet impermanence with softness, spaciousness, and curiosity.  And a few extra ice cubes in the iced tea.

I went shopping with my partner for shoes the other day.  Neither of us wanted to linger long in the busy, loud shoe store located in one of our least favorite hang-outs (the mall!).  So, we did a quick scan of the store–quickly narrowing  it down to three pairs for him to try on.  In order to help the decision-making process along, I asked of one pair, “How do they feel?”  “They feel like shoes,” my wise guy replied.  We then embarked on a brief discussion on the topic of comfort.  Brief, because remember, we were still in the mall.  We didn’t want to extend our stay any more than we had to.

I had just received a massage the day before that had made me acutely aware of my muscle tightness.  It had also reminded me of how I have the power to let that go.  During my massage, I relaxed so deeply, I got the sensation that I was literally sinking in to the table.  I left my appointment in the same state of supreme relaxation I have experienced from acupuncture and really delicious naps.

I am not saying that every experience we have needs to be luxurious and relaxing, nor that if we are ever uncomfortable we are doing something wrong.  I am pausing to consider (and asking those I love to do so as well) whether there might be a more easeful, more comfortable alternative to the tight, unsupported way we’ve been muddling through.

Whether it’s the not-quite-comfortable shoes we stomp around in, the body ache we push ourselves to achieve every time we get on the mat, or the defenses-up attitude with which we approach our day… ponder this:  “Suffering that has not yet been experienced, can be prevented!” (The Buddha)  And suffering that has been experienced, need not continue if we are smart enough and flexible enough to make a change.  (JC)

A love note to the Universe

One of the five disciplines (niyamas), as codified by Patanjali  in the Yoga Sutras, is santosha which means contentment.

I have been doing my best to cultivate this lately; allowing myself, and encouraging my students, not to resist the urge to hibernate in these winter months.  We need to heed our bodies’ requests to slow down and rest.  That is the number one way to keep our immunities strong and to heal whatever ails us.

I recognize that sometimes what I call contentment can turn to complacency, which can then become laziness.  As with all practices of yoga, we strive to find a balance.  We can challenge ourselves  while recognizing that we don’t have to go to our edge every time we step on the mat.  We can strive for greater flexibility and increased strength without discounting a practice that consists of lying back on cushions in restorative fish pose for fifteen minutes.  (I highly recommend this, by the way.  See below for one delicious way to set it up.)

We must first take time to listen; to our bodies, our minds, and our moods.  Then determine what could best bring us into balance.  If we can do something about it, we should.  If we cannot, perhaps the best we can do is change our perspective.

Try saying to yourself, “In this moment everything is perfect.”  No grasping, no striving, no need to be, have, or do anything else.  Simply find your breath, and find the truth in this statement… In this moment everything is perfect.

Supported Fish Pose
Roll up a blanket about 4 inches thick.  Lie back with your shoulder blades on the blanket roll.  With your knees bent, press the soles of your feet into the floor in order to slide your shoulders off the blanket until just the bottom tips of your shoulder blades are touching the top edge of the blanket roll.  The roll should be right behind your heart, the tops of your shoulders on the floor. Press your feet into the floor to curl your tailbone up towards the sky, then return your lengthened low back onto the floor.  Extend your legs long.  Your arms can be extended in a T at shoulder height or stretch them up alongside your ears.  Cactus arms is my personal favorite–extend your arms in a T at shoulder height, then bend your elbows, backs of your hands on the floor.

Remain in the pose for up to 15 minutes.  Allow your breath to deepen into your expanding front body, while letting your back body drape over the blanket roll and drip towards the floor.  If it does not feel easeful, change it so it does.  It can be an intense backbend, but the benefit should come from lingering in the pose, not from enduring unnecessary intensity.

No human, nor any living thing, survives long under the eternal sky.
The most beautiful women, the most learned men,
even Mohammed, who heard Allah’s own voice,
all did wither and die.  All is temporary.
The sky outlives everything.  Even suffering.

-Bowa Johar, Balti poet
(excerpted from Three Cups of Tea)

There was a time when I would have found this passage quite depressing.  Life is fleeting and we’re all going to die.  Great.  Some uplifting poem.

Today, I take great comfort in this poetry.  We are a small part of a vast universe, and while our lives carry great import to ourselves and to those who love us, the eternal sky sees our trials and tribulations as part of the constant ebb and flow of existence; not as epic chapters in our biographies.

The peaks and valleys that, as one of my beloved college professors claimed indicate a life well-lived, may punctuate the chapters.  But there are long intervals (long on the human scale, anyway) that bring us down from our peaks and climb us up out of our valleys.  These moments of transition are where the real living occurs.  This is where we have the opportunity to practice fully inhabiting our lives and fully embracing the one constant in the world…change.

It is our resistance to change that creates suffering.   We grasp for what we want to have happen or what we want to possess, and we grip tightly to what we don’t want to lose.  In doing so, we create suffering for ourselves by denying the impermanence of our world.

Even in times of seeming sameness, changes are occurring; small changes within our bodies and shifts within our planet.  If we can remain awake and aware of this constant flux, we can soften a bit, loosen our grip and be comforted by the changes that take place.  When we arrive at a valley–encounter a difficult time in our lives–perhaps we can be present with compassion and grace knowing it will not last forever.  When we reach a peak, we can enjoy it with fervor knowing its preciousness.

In this transitional season–when most of us have turned back our clocks and the temperature, the light, the colors, the fragrance of the wind are all changing–we can notice how these changes manifest in us.  Are you encountering resistance?  Can you soften to the changes and ride the wave?  If you love this season, enjoy it without fretting about its impending end.  If you don’t prefer it, take comfort…this too shall pass.

September 21st is International Day of Peace.  Did you know that?  How great that the United Nations determined that we should have a day to encourage the practice of and conversations about peace!

Of course, I think it’s sort of like Mothers’ Day or Fathers’ Day.  We’ve got this one day set aside to really celebrate our loved ones and let them know we love them, but really we should be doing that every day.  Same thing with Peace Day.

Practice peace every day.  Especially in the small things…the tone of voice with which you speak to others and to yourself.  Notice whether your thoughts are tinged with aggression, and try to create peace there.  Peace of mind.  Peace with words.  Peace in action.  That’s the formula as I see it to get us on the road to a peaceful world.

Happy Peace Day, everybody.  Please make it a daily practice.

Students sometimes ask me why we rest at the end of our yoga practice. Why do we take savasana?  I tell them it’s to let the effects of their practice sink in.  After the efforts of a yoga practice, we need to balance it with the effortlessness of rest.  To allow the work of our bodies to cease so the work of our minds can expand to hold everything in our gentle, relaxed awareness.

It’s a good idea.  I believe in its virtues completely.  Yet it remains the most challenging part of my practice…and not only on the mat.

The other day I got together with a dear friend I hadn’t seen in a while, and she asked how my summer had been.  I furrowed my brow and puzzled over it.  How had it been?  It had been a blur.  Lots of fun things happened, I’d been busy with teaching, I did a little traveling, and yet I couldn’t clearly recall when the events had taken place or how they fit in the time line of my summer.  Then it hit me…!  I hadn’t taken savasana.  I’d had many beautiful experiences throughout my summer, both personally and professionally, and I had not taken time to rest in between.  I’d not given myself the opportunity to reflect on the experiences and thereby clarify their import and effect on my life.

I think I had taken the idea of being present a bit too far, thinking that I could only be present if I was doing something in each moment.  Of course, now I can see the ridiculousness of that.  How unyogic!  Reflection may take us into the past for a bit.  But without taking time for ruminating, and especially resting, the experiences we have, no matter how meaningful, simply blur into the next moment.

Perhaps we feel there are only a few special moments worth remembering in our lives.  That only the peaks and valleys really stand out.  As Pema Chodron reminds us, “It’s very helpful to realize that being here, sitting in meditation, doing simple everyday things…is actually all that we need to be fully awake, fully alive, fully human.”  (The Widsom of No Escape, Chodron 1991)  We don’t need peaks and valleys.  We just need to be awake for the life we are living.

So, rest up!

This article is worth a read.  (the whole article):

How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that’s dangerous.

Is our desire for new information insatiable?  It seems we can fool ourselves into thinking we are totally connected; that we have our finger on the pulse of what is going on in the world, while truly we have no idea what is going on outside the parameters of our computer screen or beyond our iPhone.  What kind of beings will we evolve into if our literal vision cannot expand more than a foot in front of our faces?  And what need will we have for figurative vision if all the answers to every question are just a finger tap away?

This doesn’t mean I’m going to swear off facebook or send my iPhone on a lengthy sabbatical.  (I’m not that strong.)  But I know I could do with a few more hours a day of technological detoxification.  More than just a glance out the window every now and then.  I need to go out into the world.  Let my eyes stretch up to the sky.  Let my mind stretch over landscapes and horizons that only exist in my imagination.  Just as we practice asanas in yoga to find a balance of strength and flexibility in the body, we can practice balancing our world savivness with a continuous exploration of personal experience in order to rewire our brains to human mode.

Lots of folks have sung about it…Jason Mraz (quoted above), Bob Marley, Bobby McFerrin…to name a few.  And yet what do we do?  We worry.  Once again, I found a poignant aphorism by Judith Hanson Lasater that touches on this very subject.  She says, “Worrying is a way to avoid what is so by thinking about what could be.”  It had never occurred to me that worrying could be a way to escape reality.  I had always thought of it as an unfortunate consequence of being an adult female and a Virgo!  I worry.  I plan for every possible scenario, or so I think.  And then the one possibility I didn’t plan for comes true, and I worry after the fact about my unpreparedness.  Ms. H. L. also says, “Planning ahead is both absolutely necessary and completely impossible…planning enables us to focus, but forcing the plan creates rigidity.”

Rigidity.  Not a great quality for a yoga teacher, I think.  It’s one of the reasons I practice, what has drawn me to yoga from the beginning…the cultivation of spaciousness and flexibility in the mind and in the body.  Letting things flow.  I have found myself practicing in a much more fluid manner lately and looking for more ways to follow my body’s lead.  There have even been a couple of dance breaks on my mat in the past few weeks!  (I highly recommend them.) My brain is busy enough.  Planning my next meal, my weekly agenda, my life’s path!  And simultaneously worrying about these plans from every possible angle.  When I can quiet it down, even if only for the duration of my yoga practice, for that time, I can be present and yes!…perhaps unprepared. What a treat! to just go with the flow.

Whether it’s Bobby McF’s, Bob M’s, or Mr. Mraz’s  advice that resonates with you, let it be your theme song.  See what happens.  “In your life you have some trouble.  But when you worry you make it double.  Don’t worry.  Be happy!”

suffering is optional.