Yoga Sutra Conversations I.35: "By regular inquiry into the role of the senses we can reduce mental distortions."

What is the relationship between our senses and our minds? Whether this is a bottom up or top down system differentiates millenia of philosophers. One thing is for sure, though, the more we take in, the more we must digest, and the excess becomes mental fat. The “vrttis” – vacillations – aren’t of themselves mental fat, but any unprocessed intake gets stored – whether its Twinkies (do they still make those any more?) or Desperate Housewives, cross words or imaginary what-ifs we call “worry.”

Sensation - sight, sound, touch, taste, smell – the information we bring in from our embodied existence, makes up our being & life as much as the greens in our salad or the tofu on our forks. By using time on the mat to simplify and observe our sensations, we get to know ourselves better. We can recognize patterns in how we relate to this information, and even the systems we use to buffer it.

One key when observing the role of the senses in my life is to note the double edged sword that is recursive consciousness. Recursive consciousness is this ability we have to have “second order mental events.” Mental events can be thoughts, ideas, concepts, feelings, emotions, whole stories even, or just attitudes towards first order senses, thoughts, emotions. Our ability to be aware of the fact that we are aware of something is precisely what gives us the option to be present. It’s also what gives us the option to “space out” or worry or plan or… do whatever we do that is not being present.

We can event have eleventh order thoughts! Thoughts about thoughts about feelings about what-ifs about imaginations about …. you get the idea. The point where the thought or feeling has grabbed you by the intestines and you’re off to the story-telling races with the what-ifs and not-that!’s, that’s the stickiness that I’ve learned from listening to Pema Chodron is called shenpa. My husband & I love this word: it’s so economical. Rather than getting caught up in the stories when one asks the other “what’s up?” or “where you at?”, we just say, “oh! I was having some shenpa!” It’s fantastic to break up the story and bring us back to the present.

What does this have to do with the role of the senses? One of the ways you can break shenpa – or unconsciously having thoughts about thoughts about… also called “living in your head” – is to come to the nitty gritty of our senses. What am I feeling right now? Seeing? Smelling? Hearing? Tasting? Feeling?

You may have heard the word “Pratyahara” in yoga class at some point. Pratyahara – or sense-withdrawal – is one of the eight limbs, or components, of yoga . Sometimes the best way to investigate is to simplify. Short of a sensory deprivation tank – which is way cool if you ever have the chance – intentional withdrawal from sensation can be a great way to investigate how we relate to sensations. There are many ways to go about this, from simply turning off the TV or radio, to going to a quiet place like the woods or a chapel or a yoga room, to more specific withdrawals. Brahmari Pranayam is one way of experiencing pratyhara: you fill your consciousness with the vibration of your own breathing even as you close off your years, eyes, mouth and to some extent your nose. Meditation after Brahmari, or Bumble Bee Breath, can increase your sense of clarity.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this paragraph from Sri Swami Sachidananda’s Commentary, because I think it’s sweet and true:

“One example is to concentrate on the tip of the nose. Do not strain or you will cause a headache. Do not actually stare at the nose; it’s as if you are looking at it. Keep the mind on that. If the mind is really one-pointed, after some time you will experience an extraordinary smell. You may even look around to see if there is any flower or perfume nearby. If that experience comes, it is a proof that you have made the mind one-pointed. It will give you confidence. But in itself, it will not help you to reach the goal. It’s just a test, that’s all. Don’t make concentrating on the nose and getting nice smells your goal.”  ~SriSwami Satchidananda, Commentary on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Yoga Sutra Conversations I.34: "The practice of breathing exercises involving extended exhalation might be helpful." ~T.K.V. Desikachar, tr.

I recently dowloaded and listened to a meditation course that was recorded during a retreat with the Buddhist Nun Pema Chodron, and I’m taking it again. She is endlessly kind and unflinchingly firm, difficult qualities to simultaneously embody. When I meditate, I’m also deeply aware that I’m trying to embody qualities that don’t always go together in my everyday life.

Chodron is quite clear that meditation is training. Just like marathoners or weight lifters, meditators are training. Instead of watching TV and training to be consumers,  cushion sitting geeks train for mindfulness. I like to think of her as coach, because just like my track running days, I now wonder when I’m in doubt “What would PC say?” instead of “Would Coach Bode approve?” Unlike my errant highschool days, however, I’ve internalized a number of PC’s ways of describing and relating, so I’m more likely to heed the advice.

I used to wonder how much you could usefully say about meditation. I mean, it’s watching, right? So, um, watch. But of course the purpose of this observation is to become familiar with all the tricks you will use to squirm out from under the scope. And to become kind with the squirmee, because if you can’t be kind to you, it won’t be sincere with anyone else. And in this way, we might, with some luck, learn compassion. So instruction is endlessly helpful when it helps us catch ourselves before we’ve run too far amock.

And one of PC’s standbys is to direct us to our outbreath. The instruction is to follow the breath, of course. But sometimes, the simple must be simplified, and for those times, Be Breathing Out. Two parts to notice: first, it’s not describe or control or think about breathing out. And second, it’s the exhalation.

Now there seems to be some magic about breathing out. The Yoga Sutras are delightfully practical in giving us options for enlightenment: try this, & if not that, try this, and see how that works. The empirical nature of the Yoga Experiment is one of the reasons it works. It looks like self-improvement, so it appeals to the ego. But once you’re there, you realize that there is here and here is really the only place to be, so Be.

Now why would breathing out be so magical? Proper exhalation is necessary to maintain the acid-base balance in the body, it’s the first line of defense, in fact. Exhalation has long been recognized an equivalent of letting go: witness, the sigh. Is there any more potent signal of surrender, whether welcome or overdue?

And let’s not neglect the fact that what we’re dealing with are obstacles to self-knowledge. So often when frustrated with an obstacle of any kind, we push – emotionally, figuratively or literally. The last sutra gave us ways of meeting many things that look like “Others” in our daily lives – the virtuous and unvirtuous, the happy and unhappy. Here we are told that if discipline fails, it’s ok to just let go. Let the reins drop a moment. Exhale. Sigh. Release.

Sure, there’s more to advanced pranayama and practices of Kumbacha, or retention. But as Sri Satchidananda points out, Patanjali isn’t writing a Pranayam Manual. It’s an enlightenment manual. How to allow yourself to be yourself in your day-in-day-out. Why you should care and why if you care you will train. And why, if you put in just a little bit of effort, your motivation will grow in ways you didn’t earlier forsee.

Sometimes all it takes is one sigh, and sometimes, it takes exhaling over and over again, feeling it, being it. It depends on what you’re up to. But if you train in the over and over on the cushion or on the mat, you’ll be far more likely to remember to exhale when it really counts, just before those words you can’t take back spring from your mouth. Just one break, one gap, one pause between breaths, and obstacles can lessen or disappear.

Jenni on this Sutra: …”Bouanchaud writes that traditionally the exhalation and suspending breath after exhalation symbolizes humility and sacrifice. … to let go into the exhalation, and experiencing the rich filled emptiness afterwards – humbling in the best of ways. And “I” don’t have to do it – if “I” wait long enough it gets done through me “…

& Kate on this Sutra:…” Since mind was the problem, her solution was to give the mind something else to play with. Instead of attending to the sensations in my chest, she advised me to pay attention to the sensations of breath in my nose, the coolness of the inhale past the septum and the warm humidity of an outward breath on the upper lip.“…

Yoga Sutra Conversations I.33: "By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward happiness, compassion toward suffering, delight toward virtue, and equanimity toward vice, thoughts become purified, and the obstacles to self-knowledge are lessened."

“This week’s sutra ought to be emblazoned in all public places.” ~Dharmayoga

“I’ve been given the power to delegate and so I do. I delegate: reading the newspaper to my boyfriend, big bosoms to some of my girlfriends, eating sugar to my kids, enjoying hunting to the hunters and giving the kids a cat to my ex. (at his house).
What I get out of this practice, is SERENITY. If I really believe we are all one – than I truly can enjoy soo many things.
~Jenni

If there was any doubt that yoga is more than what happens on the mat, here’s the antidote. The first time I heard this quoted,  I wrote it down and soon thereafter was digging in the Sutra like it was a life raft.

Sounds so simple: be friendly to happy folk, compassionate toward unhappy, take joy in good action and try not to get to het up about the bad stuff. Yoga is about the path, the everyday, every breath, every moment, what am I getting so excited about, where’d all my energy go, what’s it all about and how do I figure it out path.

Simple is not easy, though. I wrote this on the clipboard I carry everywhere at work and when I felt my heart skip or my dander rise, I’d look at it. So much of behaviour is reactive and what this Sutra asks us to do is choose how we respond. Don’t react, respond, and do that with consideration… for your own peace.

One of the things I admire about the translation above from Mukunda Stiles is that where other translators state these responses will bring us peace or quiet mind, he states they reduce obstacles to self-knowledge. In Sanskrit, the claim is “Citta prasadanam” which has overtones both of purification and calmness  regarding the mind. “Lessening obatacles to self-knowledge” reminds us we are discussing the path that leads to yoga, which happens in the mind that isn’t identified with its disturbances. We can, little by little, step away from all our identifications, the things we act like matter even when we would say they don’t if asked point-blank, but we react to them as if they were everything, and so make them into our world.

Peace comes from self-knowledge. In such a state we are transparent to the truth of our own being. How to reach this state? Start taking the veils off the dancer: the obstacles to self-knowledge must fall. But like any drunken reveller, when the veils start to ripple and fly we want to get caught up in them: Ooooo, look at how they catch the light! look at how they ruffle over the surface! smell how they catch the heady scent! We forget that the veils aren’t what they cover over, or we tire of the effort steady abiding, and we settle for the ruffle and sparkle, running off in the direction of the wind.

In this sutra we are aksed to tend to our own responses to our worlds and in return, the world to which we respond will reveal itself as different than we’ve previously experienced. Not sure changing the world can be so simple? Try it. Practice your equanimity when buffetted with derision or insult. Practice being undefended and friendly when you are around happiness. Practice being undefended at all. Undefended and compassionate in the presence of Sadness? How do you keep your heart open and your boundaries clear? Yoga is a razor’s edge and you walk it with your heart. When you truly open your heart in experience, the world you experience transforms, and so do you.

Where to start? In your next human interaction, your next breath. Heck, have you practiced compassion and undefendedness with your own precious self? Be friendly toward your own happiness, befriend and cultivate it. Have equanimity when you catch yourself in bad behaviour – no self-derision, no guilt. Steadiness, abiding breath and choice, whether in line or Ardha Chandrasana, these are the things that build our practice.

Yoga Sutra Conversations 1:32 "In order to prevent these obstacles from arising, you should habituate yourself to meditation upon a single principle."

So far in the Sutras we have been told that conscious awareness, or awareness of Being in the present moment,  is the key to yoga, or as I’m choosing to term it for this conversation: listening. The obstacles that precipitate during the process of yoga are things that scatter the mind and lead to suffering. We encounter suffering as the obstacles transmute.

One way to steady the mind is to repeat the sound of “Aum“, and Patanjali has told us that this actually makes the obstacles disappear. But there are two handles we can use to turn the mind: obstacles present as a result of former states of consciousness, and obstacles we create with our current state of consciousness.

Pema Chodron in one of her stunningly loving & peircing dharma talks (I can’t remember which or I’d tell you… it might be “Getting Unstuck”) refers to this process with the metaphor of a potter’s wheel. The turning of the wheel creates the pottery, and the turning is perpetuated by the motion of the potter. There is an inherent momentum which drives the wheel, but we can choose to kick it every so often to keep it going.

The obstacles, or causes of suffering, are a consequence of the container we form on the wheel. As long as the wheel, our mind, turns the container is being created. Some call this process karma. You can also call it ego. It has an inherent momentum, actions and reactions that grow from what it is, which in turn is a result of what we have done and been. We can mold it by kicking the wheel to keep it turning. Even if we’ve taken our hands off the clay – “Look ma! No hands!” – if we keep kicking the wheel we’re unwittingly creating our container. And unwitting doesn’t mean un-responsible. It just means we’re not paying attention.

So how do we keep from kicking the wheel, from encouraging the momentum of our habits? How do we keep from building onto our container? And how do we abide its dissolution when we still our minds? First, by remembering we are not any of our things, roles, thoughts or conditions. And we can support that present moment consciousness, in which we know we are not this or that, through meditation on a single principle. Is that the same as repetition on the sound of “Aum” or concentration on the breath? That all depends.

On the path, we don’t just awaken all at once, stop our vices, extricate ourselves from our histories, cease desiring all that we’ve built our facades around. Our hopes, dreams, pleasures and pains transmute. We don’t simply become non-attached from the whole world in a moment. In fact, I’d be mighty suspect of someone who claimed to do so. I don’t know about you, but there’s a very fine distinction in my life between attachment and joyful duty. In fact, I’d say I’m attached to my most joyful duties, my husband, my dogs, my practice and my patients. I’m downright in love with them. But that’s another post.

For now, it’s enough to say that as we ponder and navigate the meaning of non-attachment, of how not to muddy the river after the distractions have precipitated during a given days’ practice, steadiness is a virtue. Given that all objects arise from the same source, it doesn’t ultimately matter which you choose. What matters is the steadiness and clarity of your focus upon it.

Which is not to say that any and every image, feeling or idea is equivalent. Some objects aren’t conducive to steady concentration. Some objects foster the depression, frustration and dissipation we looked at in the previous sutra. So, for instance, focusing on being frustrated wouldn’t be particularly helpful. However, becoming aware of where you feel that in your body, what sensations arise for you in a moment you feel as frustration, that might be a practice that returns you to your present moment awareness. Or chanting “Aum”, or “One”, or picturing a waterfall or praying in your tradition… the possibilities are endless, but not unbounded.

In the end, I’m reminded of one of Kerouac’s “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose“: #5 Something that you feel will find its own form.

Abiding

The Dude abides.  ~The Big Lebowski

“Son, I’m goin’ all the way, ’cause I wanna see how it ends.” ~Brother Meadows, quoted on NPR’s “All Things Considered”

Lately I’m thinking a lot about obstacles, steadiness and presence. The Yoga Sutra Conversations with Kate & Jenni have afforded me this opportunity, and the timing, for me, is particularly poignant. Today the United States of America will Inaugurate our 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama. 

The well of emotion tapped by this uber-symbolic event has geologic depth and age. American news is rife with recounting of prejudice, division and outdated beliefs that sound as old fashioned as stone wheels, but are younger than, well… me, and Obama, and a great many of the world citizens who shed a tear in this moment.

Those stories are uniquely American in that they are the particular growing pains of our democracy, with villians defined by our national pantheon and heroes with roots in the same. But they are not ours alone, because the division, opposition and otherness they have as themes are part of human consciousness and lives. The very ability to name, to reason and build an identity assume the need for distinction, and once lines are drawn we are free to use them for multitude purposes. And universally, every culture, every time, every class has at times used them in pain.

At bottom, what the Sutras speak to is our ability to abide. To abide is to love, is to remain, is to watch, is to bind, is to be in it for the long story, is to stay, is to witness, is to weather the storm, sit in the sun, drink in the rain and so grow to the sun and through the clouds. To abide is to be whole, to be steady, to be clear. Our ability to abide depends upon that which underlies the distinctions, that which can be distinguished but remains whole.

The obstacles and distractions which lead to suffering are the current topics of the Sutras we are discussing, but the reason to wonder & care about them is to learn to abide. One abides by the side of a river, one abides mistreatment, one abides sickness and health, one abides in the light of love. The abiding bridges all, and what it brooks, it brooks because there is something bigger, more important, and maybe, in the end, as Brother Meadows alluded, just something more interesting.

What allows us to abide is that which is bigger than us all. For the Civil Rights activists it may  have been their faith, and for many it was the Law. For a particular person on a particular day, what they did to stand up to or simply outlast mistreatment may have been fueled by Love, for family, for life, for dignity or even for their foe.

The techniques outlined in the Yoga Sutras are ways of abiding, of fostering our consciousness of and unity with that which encompasses all suffering. Sometimes just knowing there is a “Bigger” is enough.

And sometimes we need proof. We need to feel the connection. And symbolic but real moments such as the inauguration of the first African-American President of the United States is both: A reality that was beyond possibility so very few years ago. This is history because it is evidence of what abides. Abide on.

Yoga Sutra Intro..

Since we’re joining a conversation in progress, I thought I’d give you a cheap and dirty blow by blow of what’s been covered so far, like the beginning of a TV show. Patanjali begins Chapter 1 – or Samadhi Pada (on Being Absorbed in Spirit) - with the formulaic “Hatha Yoga Nusasanam”: Now yoga instruction. (btw: if you ever want to hear or learn the chanting of the Sutras, I recommend Sonja Nelson’s 4 CD set, guarunteed to plant the seeds in your soul).

I use Mukunda Stile’s translation because I like the gentleness and power of his poetry, but I reference four others: Sri Swami Satchindananda (his commentary bores through the distractions of my vascillating mind), Charles Johnston (very dualistic, but often a brilliant turn of phrase), Desikachar (because he’s Desikachar, mais non?!), Georg Feuerstein (see prior + historical interreference).

So, Now Yoga Instruction. Which I often think of re-arranged as “Yoga Instruction leads us to Now.” As in “The Now”, the ever present but never changing moment of consciousness. The very next sentence (or sutra: they’re arranged as sutras, or threads – aphorisms such as Wittgenstein and the Old Testament have used) tells us that yoga happens in the mind that listens, or Yoga Citta Vrtti Nirodaha: “Yoga is experienced in the mind which has ceased to identify itself with its vacillating waves of perception.” Whoa. Yeah. But this is a montage for under the opening credits, so we’ll move on.

When the mind settles, the Self is revealed as the ever-present witness. The way to settle the mind is through practice and non-attachment. Knowledge is required because it guides what & how we practice and reminds us why attachment is distraction: the things we usually desire and go after are not the same as what we think we’ll get from them. If we actually pursue what we want our lives to embody, we might not go after some things that we like, but we will create something that encompasses them all the same.

One of the very practical things about the Sutras is that it introduces on level ground many methods of listening, or yoga. If you are depressed or distracted or sick or lethargic, Patanjali has a list of things you could try or consider. Such a plan is very modern, I think, acknowledging the diversity of our histories, places and conditions – even over the course of our own lives, let alone across people and countries.  (Fade out to opening scene for this episode: Relief of Suffering, not just for Buddhas any more….)

Yoga Sutra Conversations with Jenni & Kate

Picking up in the middle is the fate of all humanity. We always wake up, when we awaken, in the midst of a life, a breath, a sentence and the trick (which is the opposite of a trick) is to continue being awakened for whatever we find. Well, I’ve been blessed to awaken to a conversation among yoga teachers on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a foundational text for yoga practice in which Patanjali gives instruction and advice primarily on preparing your character & your mind for the transformation that yoga brings about. He wrote sometime between 2 centuries before the common era (200 BC or BCE) and 2 centuries after (AD OR CE).

The only thing he has to say about physical postures is that Yoga pose is steady and sweet, which is sometimes translated as comfortable. Like the Buddha, to whom he is sometimes compared, he emphasized the importance of preparing ourselves through reflection on our everyday life & actions & gave really practical suggestions and encouragement on how to sweep away the obstacles to clarity, discipline & enlightenment. He even tells us that we can change the world in contemplating our own heart’s true light… but more on that in a later post

Please meet Jenni & Kate, if you haven’t already. You’ll be glad you made their acquaintances Kate is a yoga teacher in the ViniYoga tradition who teaches and practices in New Brunswick, Canada. We also share our careers & histories in Emergency Services – she dispatches for Emergency Services in her area. Jenni is also a ViniYoga teacher who practices and teaches in Denmark. Every weekend we’ll each post a reflection on the Sutra, working our way through all four books. I’m excited & priviledged to part of this beautiful experiment!

Roam the Hub of All Sacred Places….

“The light which shines above this heaven, above all the worlds, above everything, in the highest worlds not excelled by any other worlds, that’s the same light  which is in you.” ~Chhandogya Upanishad

What if all the thinking, all the words, ideas aren’t our minds? What if they’re the covering over our minds? Don’t get me wrong – they’re great tools. But what’s overseeing the job site? They’re not the tools you’ll need if you’re looking for your true self or for a steady place to stand.

Science tells us our minds are decentralized in the body. Yoga helps us settle into our heart, where wisdom and intelligence reside. Of course when we talk about heart in yoga, we’re not just talking about the juicy pumping muscle to the left of center in our ribcages. There are a lot of bits housed around there – chemoreceptors, baraoreceptors, lungs, thymus, arteries, lymph nodes, spine, circulating blood and air, esophagus, diaphragm. When we bring our attention to this area, when we just feel what comes up, we are contacting the heart of yoga. Our yoga.

Bringing ease to the muscles and joints around this area can be the beginning or development of this process. This is where many of us Western Yogis start, with asana. Maybe a little breathing practice. Then we might start calling that pranayama. Maybe we meditate for stress reduction. Somewhere along the way we realize these pesky emotions are less pesky, the aches are less achey, the mind is less muddled.

“The heart is the resting place of the pranas, the senses and the mind. It’s your true self, which is identified with intelligence and which finds repose in the space within your heart.” ~Nikhilananada’s Intro to The Principal Upanishads

So then we explore pratyahara – sense withdrawal. But then, where do the senses go? Niky above, says to the space within your heart, your true self. Makes some sense – it’s quieter there than the head or stomach. The feelings come up, but maybe we’re in a place where we can uncouple them enough from the words and judgments to just let them be a bit.

Now we’re practicing saucha in our hearts. Saucha – cleanliness, purity. We don’t often think of it in regard to our hearts, but after we’ve gotten glimpses of the Love that lives there, it makes sense not to store our crap on the porch. If we keep the windows clean maybe it will shine more brightly. The Sanskrit word for this place – Anahata – can be translated “unstruck”. “The space within your heart  is omnipresent and unchanging.” (~Chhandogya Upanishad ) Always with us, always available for us to touch and feel is a place that is unstruck by the blows of life, unmoved by the compliments and criticisms, the lost jobs and the awards. It is always what it is. We are always who we are. Sometimes we just cover it up with judgments, which are really old experiences in new clothes. Film on our windows.

Maybe this is the impetus to poke our noses into the pesky ethical side of yoga.  But if you’ve been cleaning your windows all by yourself, and someone gives you a step ladder and an extension for your sponge, you’ll be pretty glad to pay attention. And they’re pretty simple, deceptively so. Love, Truth, Conserve your energy, Be quiet, Be fierce, Stay Open, Be present, Learn you’re not in control, Study your experience, Respect Others’ Boundaries. But Wow! try to practice ‘em all at once! That’ll give any college Ethics Professor a run for her money.

So you keep coming back to the place of quiet stillness to which your mat has become the doorway. “The heart is the hub of all sacred places; go there and roam.” ~Bhagavan Nityananda 

RPP

 Rhythm, Persistence, Patience.

That pretty much sums up my favorite of Patanjali’s yoga Sutras: II.47

“Yoga pose is mastered

by relaxation of effort,

lessening the tendency

for restless breathing,

and promoting an identification

of oneself as living

within

the infinite breath of life.”

     ~tr. Stiles

Ah, the infinite breath of life!

Imagination

When transgressions hinder, the weight of the imagination should be thrown on the other side.

Yoga Sutras

So much I find fascinating about this. I believe it’s a translation of II.33 and the translator Rolf Gates lists in his biblio is one Charles Johnston who lived (or at least published) in Albuquerque, NM in 1912. The translation seems to me to have a distinctly modern slant, though perhaps Johnston had been studying Kant’s schematism.

Part of what I like is that any time we engage the imagination on purpose, we’re de facto dropping certain assumptions and judgment algorithms from our field of consideration. Obviously, we want to keep certain minimum ones on the filter going to action, but the process even helps us to properly consider those.

Imagination is also the place (acc to the aforementioned Kant, and greatly oversimplified) where impressions from our embodied senses and the categories we are capable of using to organize them are synthesized. So to throw the weight of the imagination “on the other side” of our challenge really opens up a whole new world.

Kant was on to the same thing Yogic Philosophy addresses by noting that the world is “nothing” without “us” (interpreters, perhaps.) Certainly we like to think that it’s “there” regardless of the existence of animal interpreters such as ourselves. But, there is no “there” there without a “here” and without self-referential subjectivity (yes, that’s us) there’s no “here”, thus no “there” there.

Why does this matter in my journal? Isn’t this a lot of logical round-n-round, just the sort I left Academia to get outside? Well, first of all a certain amount of this is good exercise for imagination. But most of all, the quote turned out to be quite important for what I called my procrastination journey yesterday.

So, bad things happen to people, and something rather horrible happened to me a year and a half ago. I was out of the country and for all sorts of reasons kept it to myself for months. Until I realized (yes, another “dur” moment) that whether I wanted it to or not it was still affecting me and – more importantly to me at the time – my relationship with my then fiancee, now husband.

So, when really awful things happen, it usually happens that it takes calender pages to sort out the aftermath. More if you try to ignore the original fact, which I did.

So, we started our day yesterday tending to some of that. It left me raw but also lighter. So what did I do? Yes, you may have guessed it… I’m not an overachiever. I’m an excellent avoider.

So, I made lists in my mind (always the first sign my thinking’s going awry) and within hours felt lost and without any space or meaning. Yeah, that sucks. So I made my plan: grocery, eat, brush dog, yoga. Grocery & eat: check.  Pet Hank: break down. Ahhhhh! progress. She realizes she’s raw, she releases and recognizes. She is learning! (Thanks, Hank.)

She makes an appointment at the local massage school for a massage (lovely). She does yoga (feels great). She teaches (such wonderful people at class!).

Back to home with strong, wonderful, attentive, tender Hubby.  Some cobwebs cleared. Imagination was indeed the way out. Some Tapas, some Saucha, some Satya, then trust and process (Ishvara Pranidanani). Ahhhhhhhh.