What do you do to make your time on the mat special?
At the very least, you create a space you will practice within: you lay down a mat. You may also light a candle, play music, or scent the room with incense or essential oils. You may begin by settling your body into a particular posture, bringing to mind an intention, chanting a mantra, or starting ujjayi breathing.
Some combination of these elements helps set your yoga practice apart from the rest of the day. These sensory cues and actions allow us to let go of the concerns we've been carrying for hours, weeks, years...and focus on what's right here and now. And that's a lot, but that's not all that these things do. They also remind us that what is happening right here and now, and what we are about to do, is special. Sacred.
So today note the ways you have of centering yourself and initiating your yoga practice. The yogis have handed us a cornucopia of methods for noticing the present moment and realizing how special, how precious it is. Carry that through your entire practice: this down dog--the 24, 297th down dog I have done--is unique and divine. This little shoulder twinge that makes me modify my twists--that too is precious--just as is this feeling of relief and expansive joy that I feel in this chest opener.
Now here's the tricky part: How do we leave our mat, leave the yoga class, and initiate yet another chapter of special and sacred, when we have to do mundane repetitive things like drive home, fold clothes, wait in line, pay bills, attend a meeting? How do we internally light a candle to remind ourselves to continue to realize what is sacred in each and every mundane moment of our lives?
Because that's what the yogis tell us, through the years. There is no real separation of sacred/not sacred. Our perception that some things are sacred and others are profane, ordinary, taboo, or boring is...just not accurate. It's useful, sometimes, to remind ourselves of how sacred things CAN be, even in our limited current perception...but it's not accurate. It's just useful for jump-starting our awareness of how incredibly special everything is.
What reminds YOU? How do you keep the sacred in sight when the mundane overwhelms?
05 October 2011
11 May 2011
Steady Foundation and Core
Do you feel like you have enough? Do you feel safe?
Chances are, if you are an American, it is difficult to answer a wholehearted and simple YES right now.
And yet, most of us are safer and more prosperous than about 90 percent of the world's people.
It's all relative. If we gauge our security and material status by comparing ourselves to neighbors or television images, we can wind up feeling pretty deficient and anxious.
If, on the other hand, we get our own space in order, making sure that we have nutritious food to eat and a comfortable place to rest, then we can extend ourselves to the more important business of loving and liking and serving others around us. Instead of comparing ourselves to them.
How do we stay happy with the basics, avoiding the temptation to want all the new things available as they dance on screens and jump at us from pages? The yogis said it again and again: turn inward to notice what is most important. Pay attention to what is happening inside, and then when you extend your awareness to others, you get a clearer picture and can think, speak, and act more effectively.
The grasping, coveting, insecurity, anxiety, whatever you call it, will be lessened when you notice the riches that lie within. Even a little bit at a time!
In your yoga practice this week, develop your internal awareness to establish sense of what is already there--it is so much!--inside of you. Some practices that can help:
--Start with trataka, candle gazing. Light a small candle and place it in front of you, preferably just below eye level and without a draft to make it flicker. Sit. Rest your eyes on the flame. Avoid blinking. When the eyes jerk away from the flame, gently bring them back. When you must blink, do so slowly and consciously, and rest the eyes on the dot of light behind the eyelids. Do this for 5-10 minutes before your pranayama (conscious breathing) and asana (posture) practice. Repeat before savasana (final resting posture).
--During asana, do many standing postures and focus on your foundation. Establish a firm footing at the beginning of each standing posture, rooting down through each "corner" of your foot. (Think of each foot as having four corners: inner and outer heel, inner and outer ball. The toes are then free to relax or lift up; no need to grip.) Engage your leg muscles, consciously firing up the areas you use the least.
--Lift your pelvic floor continuously throughout your yoga practice. Make this a focus at the beginning of each breath: Inhale, lift PF. Exhale, lift PF. Inhale, lift...you get the idea. If you don't know what your PF is, try squeezing all the sphincters you would squeeze if you needed a rest stop and you just saw a sign that said None for 40 Miles. Just make sure you are not squeezing the buttocks or inner thighs--just the space between your tailbone (in the back) and your pubic bone (in the front).
That's still a little too much surface area, really, but it's a good start. Over time you can work on relaxing the urinary and anal sphincters and just lifting the space between. Now do this with every breath you take in your yoga practice except savasana (and other reclining restoratives). Plus while you're stuck at red lights. And standing in lines. And whenever else you remember.
Not so tight that you are making a face or turning coal to diamond. Just enough to support your internal organs. These are sometimes known as Kegel exercises, but in yoga we are going for a more subtle action. It is always the start of any safe core work, so that the PF muscles are toned instead of weakened when the abdominals are engaged.
This is the start of mula bandha, the root lock, a physical practice that is intertwined with our sense of safety and security and material prosperity, the issues seated at what the yogis called muladhara chakra, the area at the base of the spine. (One recurring experience that convinces me of this: every time I go shopping for clothes or home goods, I suddenly have to go to the bathroom, regardless of time of day. Even internet shopping! Muladhara chakra activated. Sorry if that's TMI, but it is convincing correlation for me.)
Let me know how it goes!
Chances are, if you are an American, it is difficult to answer a wholehearted and simple YES right now.
And yet, most of us are safer and more prosperous than about 90 percent of the world's people.
It's all relative. If we gauge our security and material status by comparing ourselves to neighbors or television images, we can wind up feeling pretty deficient and anxious.
If, on the other hand, we get our own space in order, making sure that we have nutritious food to eat and a comfortable place to rest, then we can extend ourselves to the more important business of loving and liking and serving others around us. Instead of comparing ourselves to them.
How do we stay happy with the basics, avoiding the temptation to want all the new things available as they dance on screens and jump at us from pages? The yogis said it again and again: turn inward to notice what is most important. Pay attention to what is happening inside, and then when you extend your awareness to others, you get a clearer picture and can think, speak, and act more effectively.
The grasping, coveting, insecurity, anxiety, whatever you call it, will be lessened when you notice the riches that lie within. Even a little bit at a time!
In your yoga practice this week, develop your internal awareness to establish sense of what is already there--it is so much!--inside of you. Some practices that can help:
--Start with trataka, candle gazing. Light a small candle and place it in front of you, preferably just below eye level and without a draft to make it flicker. Sit. Rest your eyes on the flame. Avoid blinking. When the eyes jerk away from the flame, gently bring them back. When you must blink, do so slowly and consciously, and rest the eyes on the dot of light behind the eyelids. Do this for 5-10 minutes before your pranayama (conscious breathing) and asana (posture) practice. Repeat before savasana (final resting posture).
--During asana, do many standing postures and focus on your foundation. Establish a firm footing at the beginning of each standing posture, rooting down through each "corner" of your foot. (Think of each foot as having four corners: inner and outer heel, inner and outer ball. The toes are then free to relax or lift up; no need to grip.) Engage your leg muscles, consciously firing up the areas you use the least.
--Lift your pelvic floor continuously throughout your yoga practice. Make this a focus at the beginning of each breath: Inhale, lift PF. Exhale, lift PF. Inhale, lift...you get the idea. If you don't know what your PF is, try squeezing all the sphincters you would squeeze if you needed a rest stop and you just saw a sign that said None for 40 Miles. Just make sure you are not squeezing the buttocks or inner thighs--just the space between your tailbone (in the back) and your pubic bone (in the front).
That's still a little too much surface area, really, but it's a good start. Over time you can work on relaxing the urinary and anal sphincters and just lifting the space between. Now do this with every breath you take in your yoga practice except savasana (and other reclining restoratives). Plus while you're stuck at red lights. And standing in lines. And whenever else you remember.
Not so tight that you are making a face or turning coal to diamond. Just enough to support your internal organs. These are sometimes known as Kegel exercises, but in yoga we are going for a more subtle action. It is always the start of any safe core work, so that the PF muscles are toned instead of weakened when the abdominals are engaged.
This is the start of mula bandha, the root lock, a physical practice that is intertwined with our sense of safety and security and material prosperity, the issues seated at what the yogis called muladhara chakra, the area at the base of the spine. (One recurring experience that convinces me of this: every time I go shopping for clothes or home goods, I suddenly have to go to the bathroom, regardless of time of day. Even internet shopping! Muladhara chakra activated. Sorry if that's TMI, but it is convincing correlation for me.)
Let me know how it goes!
31 March 2011
Another Good Map for Our Territory
I was all set to teach a class about turning expectations into intentions last night, and then someone asked about chakras.
Now, chakras are a topic that can easily veer into Sweeping Generalization territory. They are really just another abstract model, a kind of map or picture of the actual territory of our bodies and minds.
Western culture has many such models already: Freud's id, ego, and superego, and the work that builds from him in psychology; Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in sociology; the endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, muscular, nervous, etc. systems of physiology. All very useful for analyzing, as long as we don't lose sight of the fact that these are just MODELS. Just approximations of how things really are, for instance, how you can't really separate what the heart does from what the lungs do.
Chakras are another useful model, as long as we don't get stuck on actually finding wheels of energy spinning along our spine. Why add them to our conceptual toolbag for understanding ourselves at all, though, if we already have all these other ways of thinking about the body and mind?
The chakra model offers us a way to understand the material of the body--its physiological systems and anatomical parts--as intricately interwoven with our emotional, rational, psychological, spiritual (whatever word you wish to use) issues. And there's not a whole lot in western models that does that (thank you, Descartes, et al).
So over the next few blog entries and classes we'll explore this yogic model and see if it's useful for setting intentions, without clinging to expectations. Because, after all, that's the pitfall of any model, western or eastern: forgetting that it is the map, not the territory.
Now, chakras are a topic that can easily veer into Sweeping Generalization territory. They are really just another abstract model, a kind of map or picture of the actual territory of our bodies and minds.
Western culture has many such models already: Freud's id, ego, and superego, and the work that builds from him in psychology; Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in sociology; the endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, muscular, nervous, etc. systems of physiology. All very useful for analyzing, as long as we don't lose sight of the fact that these are just MODELS. Just approximations of how things really are, for instance, how you can't really separate what the heart does from what the lungs do.
Chakras are another useful model, as long as we don't get stuck on actually finding wheels of energy spinning along our spine. Why add them to our conceptual toolbag for understanding ourselves at all, though, if we already have all these other ways of thinking about the body and mind?
The chakra model offers us a way to understand the material of the body--its physiological systems and anatomical parts--as intricately interwoven with our emotional, rational, psychological, spiritual (whatever word you wish to use) issues. And there's not a whole lot in western models that does that (thank you, Descartes, et al).
So over the next few blog entries and classes we'll explore this yogic model and see if it's useful for setting intentions, without clinging to expectations. Because, after all, that's the pitfall of any model, western or eastern: forgetting that it is the map, not the territory.
19 January 2011
Some yoga classes have you exploring and reveling in what your body can do, right here and now. Fun! Others reveal to you what you cannot yet do, which can be motivating or discouraging. Yet others wake you up to what you should no longer do, shaking you by the shoulders to release unhelpful habits. A bit sobering, those.
Still others expose what you might do differently, simply to avoid always relying on those parts of you already strong and letting the weak parts get a free ride. These are exhilarating, to find out you have options! And to find out before you get injured, or overworked, or further imbalanced, that's a gift.
And these revelations and awakenings are sometimes even more relevant for your mind, not just your body, in yoga class as elsewhere.
So if you prefer one of these experiences over another, and keep going back to the same type of yoga class, it may be time to make room for the others. Fun has its place...and sometimes it is what we most need. But there are other kinds of joy in the tougher explorations. Time to explore!
Still others expose what you might do differently, simply to avoid always relying on those parts of you already strong and letting the weak parts get a free ride. These are exhilarating, to find out you have options! And to find out before you get injured, or overworked, or further imbalanced, that's a gift.
And these revelations and awakenings are sometimes even more relevant for your mind, not just your body, in yoga class as elsewhere.
So if you prefer one of these experiences over another, and keep going back to the same type of yoga class, it may be time to make room for the others. Fun has its place...and sometimes it is what we most need. But there are other kinds of joy in the tougher explorations. Time to explore!
03 January 2011
Regardless of our other resolutions and intentions for this year, let's form one small and doable and potentially life-changing one:
Every day for the next three weeks, wake up and do ten minutes of sun salutations before anything else.
Make them the same sun salutations every day for these three weeks (then you can change them if you like).
Wake up to ten minutes of music, set a timer, or just estimate it.
No excuses. You don't need contact lenses or yoga clothes or even (gasp!) a mat. Just get yourself breathing deeply and moving mindfully, even if it feels sloppy.
It doesn't matter if you plan to take class that day. Still do it.
Let me know how it goes!
Every day for the next three weeks, wake up and do ten minutes of sun salutations before anything else.
Make them the same sun salutations every day for these three weeks (then you can change them if you like).
Wake up to ten minutes of music, set a timer, or just estimate it.
No excuses. You don't need contact lenses or yoga clothes or even (gasp!) a mat. Just get yourself breathing deeply and moving mindfully, even if it feels sloppy.
It doesn't matter if you plan to take class that day. Still do it.
Let me know how it goes!
19 December 2010
Yaded (rhymes with "jaded")
A few months ago, I saw a man in a construction-logoed pick-up truck stopped at a red light in my village. His arm dangled out the driver's side window, and from his hand waved a long string of what I was pretty sure were mala beads. He looked like he was actively engaged in japa yoga--the repetition of mantra with mala beads, working each bead with the fingers as the mantra is repeated 108 times.
This was not an Indian construction worker; it was a older white guy. I was astonished and pleased to see an act of devotion being performed in an everyday locale, and by an unlikely demographic. How wonderful to have some evidence that any unlikely driver passing through might be repeating the name of the divine or counting blessings or giving thanks as s/he waits at the stoplight!
As I drove on, though, the suspicious part of my mind took over... it DID seem a little ostentatious, hanging the beads out the window like that...perhaps he WANTED someone to see his mala beads. Perhaps he was really just trying to pick up yoga chicks!
Well, yes. Maybe. Maybe not. Once you've been practicing yoga in America for some time, you realize you will find a good amount of ordinary humanity in each yoga community, just as you find it in yourself. It is easy to hold yogis--students, teachers, dabblers--in some higher regard, and then become jaded and disillusioned when they do not all turn out to be already enlightened. Or even just already teaching exactly the way you want them to.
Maybe the hardest thing we are confronting right now as a loosely interwoven aggregate of yoga communities in America is the sense that we each have the "right" way to teach/practice yoga. This sense is supported by the late-capitalist imperative to emphasize what makes each school or style of yoga unique, and for each teacher to "brand" him- or herself in a distinct way. The sheer number of teachers in most places provides each of us with an incredible array of CHOICES in how to practice yoga, which is wonderful--there is a method for everyone, right where there are, right now. Gentle, vigorous, therapeutic, chatty, spartan, juicy, intellectual, emotional, filled with metaphor, anatomically precise, visually demonstrated, verbally cued, set to a soundtrack, basking in silence, prop-heavy, prop-free, paced quickly, paced slowly...you name it.
Find a teacher who can teach you as you are, right now--it may take many trial classes to find him or her! And then, once you are well established in your practice, branch out, try the ones that are maybe SO NOT RIGHT FOR YOU, because they will sometimes teach you even more.
And here's the hard part, for me, at least: let go of needing to evaluate why they are so not right for you. Let go of wanting to warn people away from them (unless you feel you need to give a gentle warning because you fear for people's safety in those classes....see, I told you it was hard for me). Let go of yoga-jadedness...the way we think we can tell so much about a person just from observing him or her from the outside. How s/he will teach, what his or her intentions are, what style of yoga s/he prefers. Why the mala beads are hanging out in full view.
This intention is for the next time we each take class: Assume the best about each person you encounter. Assume they have the highest intentions towards you and everyone else around you. The teacher, the students, the fly on the wall.
I'll be right there with you. Go, mala man, go!
This was not an Indian construction worker; it was a older white guy. I was astonished and pleased to see an act of devotion being performed in an everyday locale, and by an unlikely demographic. How wonderful to have some evidence that any unlikely driver passing through might be repeating the name of the divine or counting blessings or giving thanks as s/he waits at the stoplight!
As I drove on, though, the suspicious part of my mind took over... it DID seem a little ostentatious, hanging the beads out the window like that...perhaps he WANTED someone to see his mala beads. Perhaps he was really just trying to pick up yoga chicks!
Well, yes. Maybe. Maybe not. Once you've been practicing yoga in America for some time, you realize you will find a good amount of ordinary humanity in each yoga community, just as you find it in yourself. It is easy to hold yogis--students, teachers, dabblers--in some higher regard, and then become jaded and disillusioned when they do not all turn out to be already enlightened. Or even just already teaching exactly the way you want them to.
Maybe the hardest thing we are confronting right now as a loosely interwoven aggregate of yoga communities in America is the sense that we each have the "right" way to teach/practice yoga. This sense is supported by the late-capitalist imperative to emphasize what makes each school or style of yoga unique, and for each teacher to "brand" him- or herself in a distinct way. The sheer number of teachers in most places provides each of us with an incredible array of CHOICES in how to practice yoga, which is wonderful--there is a method for everyone, right where there are, right now. Gentle, vigorous, therapeutic, chatty, spartan, juicy, intellectual, emotional, filled with metaphor, anatomically precise, visually demonstrated, verbally cued, set to a soundtrack, basking in silence, prop-heavy, prop-free, paced quickly, paced slowly...you name it.
Find a teacher who can teach you as you are, right now--it may take many trial classes to find him or her! And then, once you are well established in your practice, branch out, try the ones that are maybe SO NOT RIGHT FOR YOU, because they will sometimes teach you even more.
And here's the hard part, for me, at least: let go of needing to evaluate why they are so not right for you. Let go of wanting to warn people away from them (unless you feel you need to give a gentle warning because you fear for people's safety in those classes....see, I told you it was hard for me). Let go of yoga-jadedness...the way we think we can tell so much about a person just from observing him or her from the outside. How s/he will teach, what his or her intentions are, what style of yoga s/he prefers. Why the mala beads are hanging out in full view.
This intention is for the next time we each take class: Assume the best about each person you encounter. Assume they have the highest intentions towards you and everyone else around you. The teacher, the students, the fly on the wall.
I'll be right there with you. Go, mala man, go!
01 November 2010
untying the knot
"...the ego is the confusion or the knotting together that occurs between pure consciousness...and the content of consciousness."
Richard Freeman reminds us that pure consciousness is like the open blue sky, and the content of it (thoughts and feelings) is like clouds moving across that sky.
"In our minds knots are created when we confuse pure consciousness with the products of our mind, and this confusion is the source of the ego, which within the yogic tradition is considered to be an imaginary sense of our separation from the fabric of the universe."
"We have to practice in such a way that we allow insight into the union of the body and mind, the inhale and the exhale, the twist and the countertwist, so that we experience our own merging into what we naturally perceive as our background--all that we see as separate from ourselves...our practice becomes a constant offering of the sacred knot of the ego back into its own root."
In your practice today, offer the knot of your ego back into what we think of as the background, the open blue sky, pure consciousness. Let go of the products of consciousness as they arise--thoughts, feelings, sensations--knowing that those are not separate from that pure consciousness that we all share. Watch how the borders of each thought, each movement, each feeling, are porous--one morphs right into the next. And watch for the space between, that openness that when we take time to notice it, can be so refreshing.
Richard Freeman reminds us that pure consciousness is like the open blue sky, and the content of it (thoughts and feelings) is like clouds moving across that sky.
"In our minds knots are created when we confuse pure consciousness with the products of our mind, and this confusion is the source of the ego, which within the yogic tradition is considered to be an imaginary sense of our separation from the fabric of the universe."
"We have to practice in such a way that we allow insight into the union of the body and mind, the inhale and the exhale, the twist and the countertwist, so that we experience our own merging into what we naturally perceive as our background--all that we see as separate from ourselves...our practice becomes a constant offering of the sacred knot of the ego back into its own root."
In your practice today, offer the knot of your ego back into what we think of as the background, the open blue sky, pure consciousness. Let go of the products of consciousness as they arise--thoughts, feelings, sensations--knowing that those are not separate from that pure consciousness that we all share. Watch how the borders of each thought, each movement, each feeling, are porous--one morphs right into the next. And watch for the space between, that openness that when we take time to notice it, can be so refreshing.
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