Get a grip. Then let go of it.

"If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have even more peace." (Achaan Chah)

Where do you feel yourself holding on, maybe even gripping tight? I feel it in my hip flexors--the fronts of my hips-- and in my lower back. Maybe you feel it in your jaw, or in your shoulders, or in your pelvic floor. Maybe you feel it most in your mind, holding on to a goal or an idea of how things 'should' be.

Chah is speaking in the Buddhist tradition, but the yogis have their own way of saying the same thing. They claim that the best way to catch a monkey in the jungle is to simply put out a jar of treats with a narrow neck. When the monkey finds it, he will thrust his open hand into the jar, grasp the treats, and try to pull his fist out. The narrow neck will prevent him from extricating himself. He will try like anything to free himself with his fist grasping the prize, and remain stuck no matter how hard he tries...because he is unwilling to let go.

I don't know if this is true of real monkeys; the yogis are talking about the monkey mind. And there the story holds true, at least in my experience.

In your practice today, watch for what you're grasping, gripping, holding. Maybe you notice a relationship between what you're mentally grasping and someplace you are physically tightening--but that's not necessary. Just noticing either the mental OR the physical holding gives us an entry point for letting go of it. That's the beauty of raja and hatha yoga.

Notice the tightening. If it's physical, you can even exaggerate it to really make it conscious and volitional (this is the PNF or "resistance" method I teach sometimes, for those of you who have learned it). If it's mental, do that, too! Focus on it, let it really percolate up.

Then let it go.

Top down or bottom up

Next time you have a chance, read some of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (Bihar School of Yoga translation has the best commentary). Or read a book by Georg Feuerstein to get a sense of earlier hatha yoga techniques and the influence of tantra on yoga and Buddhism.

In the wake of the Yoga Journal controversy about their ads, it's good to remember the fuller picture of yoga practices. It is, after all, a practice that focuses on the bodily practices so that the student can realize nonduality; that is, really GET the way that the body is not separate from the mind, nor from other bodies, nor from other material things.

I am all for a discussion of why YJ needs to reconsider their editorial (both text and image) emphasis on asana and why the relationship between editorial and advertising sales is increasingly twisted in most magazines, including YJ.

But to say that Kathryn Budig's photographs in Toesox ads are just more "naked women" and say they are not "about the celebration of the beauty of the human body or the beauty of the poses" seems misguided to me. The photos show a woman in motion who is strong and focused, not waifish or pouting or staring blankly or any of the typical "I am a sexual object" indicators.

And if we consider the many techniques of hatha yoga, we find many that are far more salacious and eyebrow-raising than naked asana practice. For instance, there's going into a river to draw the water up into one's anus, hold it there, and then expel it. There's having ritualized sex. There's meditating on corpses in a burial ground.

There are lots of practices, especially the ones from the "left-handed" tantric schools, that encourage the practitioner to shake herself out of ordinary consciousness by doing something forbidden, exotic, unusual. It can help to wake us up.

AND there are many others that encourage the student to shake herself out of ordinary consciousness by doing the mundane and ordinary. That is, by practicing the same thing OVER and OVER again. And finding the freshness in it even though it is, on the face of it, very familiar.

You may remember this argument from the movie My Dinner with Andre.

I think the two approaches work beautifully together. A yoga practice of asana (moving and holding postures) and pranayama (breathing consciously) and pratyahara (turning senses inward) and dhyana (concentrating) can do BOTH.

Sometimes I take a class and it blows my mind. The teacher gets me to do things I'd never think I could do. I move and breathe steadily until I let go of everything but just this breath, just this moment. I am alert and calm and totally focused. They usually have to exhaust me and get me right to the edge for this to happen. They have to remind me of my true Self, which is bigger than the little one I usually identify with, and threatens to dissolve little-self.

Other times my practice is so familiar I can feel myself starting to get bored and I have to work to make what is so familiar fresh. I have to make an effort to notice what is different about this easy inhale from the last one, this Warrior B from yesterday's. This is another way to wake up.

So in today's practice, your intention might be to make way for either of these to occur...either the huge unusual event that shifts your perspective suddenly, or the gradual changes that take place when we apply ourselves to a regular, ordinary practice and notice what happens over time.

Top down or bottom up? I'll meet you in that middle path.

Liberté, équanimité, fraternité!

Tonight in class I'll be teaching a lot of twisting, sidebending, and inverting postures. So I've been thinking about what we need to do to get into each of those positions.

It's pretty basic: to enter any yoga posture safely, we need to find a neutral posture and even breath first.

But NEUTRAL is not the same thing as HABITUAL. Our habitual posture and breathing is often far from neutral.

This is where ujjayi samavrtti pranayama and bandhas come in. They help us create a steady breath with equal-length inhalations and exhalations, plus find neutral pelvis and a long, tall spine, as we begin each movement.

Then we can twist safely. We can sidebend without crunching. We can invert without compression.

It's tempting to think that we can wring ourselves into position with muscle and force, and once we get there start to breathe fully again and maybe "fix" the areas we've tensed up...but it will always feel better when we remember to work the equanimity in our breath and the neutral spine with space between the vertebrae FIRST.

In our everyday lives, we can find equanimity before putting ourselves in positions that could cause strain. We find "neutral" so that we can enter a difficult situation and still breathe...so that we can emerge from a place of constriction even stronger, even more spacious than before. As the systems of the body--respiratory, skeletal, muscular, circulatory, etc.--find a calm, steady state, so can the mind.

So, as many teachers have pointed out: Find the Tadasana (Mountain) in every posture. Even breathing, neutral pelvis, tall spine. In today's practice, focus on that FIRST, before any movement to twist, side bend, invert, back bend, or forward bend. So what if you don't grab your toe or wrist or get into some extreme new variation of a posture? Explore equanimity--it might be the most extreme thing you do today!

The Real Thing

Seen the big NYT Magazine article on Anusara yoga this weekend?

One of the main themes was whether American schools of yoga are "authentic" or not. This article focused on the founder of Anusara, John Friend, and how he trained with yoga masters like BKS Iyengar and then broke away to form his own "brand" of yoga, which has become extremely popular in America.

I think the writer did a fair job of explaining in a few words what Anusara classes emphasize that makes them distinct from other major American styles.

She also quoted John Friend in ways that make him seem spectacularly grandiose, and she consistently framed the story as one of yoga as a business--a very big business.

My experience with Friend is limited to a large workshop, which he taught as an advanced Anusara vinyasa flow, making his way around the 100+ students and giving individual adjustments aplenty along with his assistants. It was a great class, as are so many of the Anusara classes and workshops I attend, with teachers like Shalini Latour, Irena Miller, Marni Task, Ami Hirschstein, Betsey Downing, Geri Bleier, and Todd Norian. I highly recommend all of them, and I take their classes whenever I can.

Of course, I've also wound up in some classes with Anusara-trained or -inspired teachers who use the Anusara terms as shortcuts to say something that is never made clear, and the classes wind up feeling hollow and filled with jargon. That can happen with any style.

(I've come to think that really, there are much bigger differences among yoga teachers than among yoga styles. If you're looking for a teacher who teaches like your favorite yoga teacher does, then you need to look far and wide, because taking classes in the same tradition, school or style of yoga won't always get you there. There's a LOT of divergence within one style of yoga!)

But I digress. Generally, American media report upon 1) health claims and/or documented benefits of doing yoga and 2) the commercialization of yoga in America (unusual fusions of yoga and other activities, how masses of people have quit their jobs to become yoga teachers, how many people do yoga now, how some yoga teachers have become "brands" of their own, how some teachers have tried to copyright their yoga posture sequences, etc.).

I don't blame journalists for avoiding experiential stories. How do you put into words what the regular practice of yoga feels like or how it affects the rest of your life? As soon as you do, you sound like an infomercial for Yoga, Inc., and you know you haven't even done justice to what it actually is/does! It doesn't make for a neutral and unbiased story.

My point, which I am slowly coming around to, is this: Discussions of authenticity vs. commercialization are interesting. For yoga, for music (did my favorite band "sell out"?), for the feminist movement (remember "is it feminist to wear lipstick"?), for lots of things.

But eventually, we have to be our own Charlie Brown and just go for our own spindly Christmas tree, regardless of what metal and plastic offerings are around us, bright and shiny and winking their seductive lights.

Yes, we could buy the calfskin yoga mat bag or the diamond-encrusted OM pendant. (I'm not making those up.)

Or we can joke about those who do. Or bitch about how anyone could do that to yoga, make it so obviously and excessively about image or material possessions.

Either way, we each have to come back to the spindly Christmas tree of our own yoga practice. Sometimes it feels droopy and sad, sometimes it perks up and feels strong and green and full of life...particularly when we're surrounded by those who care.

Most of the time it just IS. And the doing of the practice allows us to feel how it IS.

WE are what make our yoga practice authentic. Whether we pay for a class, practice in the yard, wear fancy togs, or throw on a T-shirt. Whether we focus on re-aligning our spine, or flowing with the breath, or what the air feels like on our skin.

I'll admit it: I've once or twice gotten myself to the mat with an intention no higher than, "I need to do this so I'll look better in the mirror." Those have not been my most inspired practices. And if that had been my intention every day, my practice would have been empty; I probably wouldn't have stuck with it very long. It's essentially a way to pump up the ego, make it believe it is a freestanding unit of body/mind, separate from everything and everyone else. That intention, to improve the individual self, can wind up separating you from others. Luckily, the techniques of yoga are designed to get you to pay close enough attention that you realize that separation is an illusion, and your intentions change as a result of what you notice (not because you force yourself to change).

When my focus is some (small or large) part of the interconnectedness of all things, that is when the practice feels authentic. That is when my body sings with feeling as I move. That is when I end with a sense that everything will be okay; no, it already is okay, and I am a part of that. I can do the right thing, because I can see more clearly.

So wear your fanciest pants or leave your pajamas on...practice with someone from India or someone from America...enjoy the silence or play Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence"...just bring yourself and your highest intention today, and the practice will flow through you, and there will be no question that it is authentic.

You'll never know unless you...

ask.

When you practice today, let your intention be an inquiry into the state of things. There is so much we don't notice...so formulate a question about how things are in your body, or in your mind, or in your emotions, right now. Let that be your focus.

I've practiced with inquiries such as:

How do I feel when I encounter a new and difficult situation?
Where does my mind go when it gets bored?
What happens when I breathe deeper into my lower back?
How do I feel when I go about 70% into each posture, instead of 100%?

So ask the question today. And tell us how it goes!

Levity. Lightness. Levitation.

Lately I have been playing with different methods of transportation in my practice. Hovering my foot above the ground before I lunge, jumping, floating by piking my legs up, floating by curling my knees in...and, as a by-product of all this, sometimes plopping down unexpectedly.

I'm doing this not because it's going to lead me any faster to awakening than regular stepping and walking will. I do it because it's fun, and because I couldn't do it for most of two recent pregnancies, it's especially fun again now!

And that's been my simple intention for the last few practices: let it be fun.

I have a tendency to turn everything into work. I have an infant and a toddler now. It is sometimes fun. It is also a lot of work. The planning for, acquisition of, preparation of, and cleanup of every meal and beverage, and the resulting bodily outputs, takes up most of the day. Which is fine if you can do it without a two-year-old getting angry that you're not entertaining him at the same time. The rest of the time is filled with admonitions about what to do and what not to do, plus some questions and comments to try to educationally convey what the heck is going on around us.

Clearly, the best way to turn a surly two-year-old into a cooperative one in any situation where something must be done is to make it FUN.

Yes, piggyback rides and horsing around on the floor is out-and-out fun. But how do I let the "work" time with them be fun, too? That's what I am exploring in my yoga practice lately. How do I let the ordinary, repetitive, mundane activities of the day be light?

Whether I am paying bills, strapping a bored and resistant little boy into a car seat, or sitting at a desk trying to meet a deadline: If I had never done this before, how would this moment feel? If I didn't think I'd ever have the opportunity to do this, how would it feel to do it?

Sometimes we work therapeutically on the mat...sometimes gently...sometimes we're just there to have fun! Can that happen whether we are floating through the air, or resting in child (Balasana)? Trying a fancy new posture, or repeating an old standby?

Not sure how to say it...but I know it happens.

I used to scoff at heart metaphors. "Open your heart," I'd say. "What the **** does that mean?" Metaphors are supposed to explain something new by referring to something more familiar. So I'm supposed to know what my "heart" feels like in order to understand compassion and empathy for others? I can find my heart rate. Is that good enough?

I was pretty stuck in my mind. Still am. But I understand now what the metaphors are trying to convey, because I've felt a lot more there, literally, in the area of my heart. It's funny how certain emotions are felt as physical sensations pretty much all the way up along the central line of the body--some things we feel strongly in the gut, others in the heart area, some in the throat, others in the head. Deep emotions sometimes, but rarely, manifest in the arms and legs.

Yoga explains this by using the model of chakras. Now, I emphasize that this is a MODEL, a way of describing, not a concrete representation of reality, because I don't believe that chakras are "things" that we can find along the spine, as they are often pictured. Rather, the model of the chakras provides a useful way to talk about how certain emotional, physical, and psychological issues are so often bound up together in ourselves and in others.

And this is something I have felt in my own body, and heard from students about, too. A woman recently told me about her mother's death a decade ago. She said that whenever she wanted to hold back tears during that time, say, at work, she'd tighten her left hip flexor. That would bury the emotion so she could avoid expressing her grief at that moment.

Of course, that grief did not disappear--it became tension in the front of her hip that she then had to work out, physically and/or emotionally. She had the awareness to watch it happen and know what to do. Lots of our emotions get stored as physical tension when we bottle them up.

In my own case, I have noticed how when I am anxious or worried, my left lower back tightens. Even with little things--I can feel it tighten as I pour windshield wiper fluid into my car and get concerned about spilling it. (So I wonder how much is happening there when I'm worried about how my son's speech is developing!)

And almost all of us can feel our shoulders hunch--forward and up--when we brace ourselves for bad news, stressful events, cold wintry days, driving in poor visibility...all kinds of situations in which we try to protect ourselves from what's happening. We're closing ourselves off, defensively.

Western psychology doesn't yet have a well-developed way to deal with that interconnection of thought, emotion, and physical sensation. But yoga does. More importantly, yoga offers the practices that allow us to EXPLORE those connections on our own and notice them for ourselves.

So stop reading and do your practice. Today, focus on opening your heart area. Literally. Do this:
--Where you are right now, draw your shoulderblades toward your spine and toward your tailbone. As you do this, feel the top of your upper arm bone move securely into the shoulder socket and back towards the wall behind you.
--Notice how this makes you feel. Proud? Open to what happens next? Vulnerable? Something totally different?
--Now make sure you haven't overarched your lower back as you did this. If you feel your low back get tense or your tailbone jutting out behind you, then draw your lowest front ribs in toward your spine and lift your lowest back ribs up a little. Let your tailbone descend toward the floor as you lift your front hip points by engaging your lower abdomen. Can you maintain the open heart as you do this?
--Breathe fully into your torso. Collarbones and upper back; ribcage front, sides, and back; and navel and lower back. Notice which areas "give."

See if you can do this for the next 15 minutes where you are right now...at a desk, lying in bed, waiting in a line with your iPhone, whatever. If you lose some part of this alignment, re-establish it.

Then when you get to your mat, begin each movement with the steps outlined above. This will seat the arm bones properly in the shoulder and stretch the pectoralis muscles. It will strengthen the rhomboids, middle trapezius, latissimus, and serratus muscles. It will strengthen your transversus (deep) and rectus (superficial) abdominal muscles and teach them to engage lightly for good posture all the time. It will help maintain normal spinal curves instead of reinforcing the excessive thoracic curve ('widow's hump') that develops from hunching those shoulders forward and up....

And it may even open your heart.