1 pose, 1 breath: What yoga practice looks like in times of hardship

Hip Replacements rock on (Photo credit: Jerry W. Lewis)

Practice is just that. It’s not perfect, and often not pretty. It’s the opposite of a photo-shoot and exactly the same as showing up.

To be a practice, as opposed to a hobby, pastime or performance, the activity has to be undertaken by one person with enough regularity to create continuity over time, which is the only way to witness deep transformation. Regularity of this magnitude, nearly daily – shooting for daily – hoped for daily, means you will practice through hardship.

Practice is not about belief or knowledge. It is not about religion or virtue. It is about the essence of being human: being present; showing up. You might believe that this regularity will pay off in some way, and your knowledge will certainly grow. But practice is just about the rhythm, regularity, witness, same thing different day; same day, different thing-ness of consciousness.

When you practice, you show up during the hard times. This morning, I had the “best” practice I have in over a year. In that year I’ve two surgeries, one a hip replacement, a cross-country move, two dear friends die and a career change. The hip replacement wasn’t from lack of practice, healthy living or “proper” yoga. In fact, years of yoga and healthy diet extended the life of my natural hip 13 years beyond when doctors told me I’d need a replacement, due to the birth defect. But I’ve had many “yogis” suggest how I could “correct” my practice.

In Practice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here’s what I know about today’s practice: I had more ease, more flow and more outward grace than I’ve been blessed with in a bloody long while. It felt GREAT. And it may not have been as valuable as all the halting, minimalist, do-what’s-possible practices in the year leading up. During those times, my asana practice was often restorative, sometimes a single pose. My meditation was frequently while lying down, and for at least three months after the surgery, always laying down and not infrequently ending in zzzzzzzzzzz… Not exactly zendo worthy, but not not practice.

While we were moving, I always had my yoga mat with me, but it was just a tease, a Manduka hope, a promise and an expression of longing more than doing. The yoga I managed was at truck stops while stretching our three dogs (one dying) or in the two foot space at the foot of the hotel room bed.

While and after our dogs died, one agonizingly and messily, one so quickly I’d have missed it if I hadn’t seen so many people die and knew the sound, a heaviness surrounded my heart that reached out to my fingernails and prevented a proud, warrior like stance. There were many aborted practices, begun with every intent of wringing the sadness out, and dissolving into tears. There was crying in fierce pose (see what that does to your diaphragm!) and child’s pose (oddly, even harder).

But without the mostly showing up, occasional giving in and constant consciousness of whether-I-did-whether-I-didn’t and how it effected the state of my mind-body, today’s practice could not have happened. And today’s practice doesn’t matter. Not in and of itself. It matters because it’s part that year, of all the years and of what will be to come. The ease matters because it’s a palpable sigh of relief, and those are to be appreciated when they arrive. It matters that I showed up, but not how difficult or “advanced” my postures were. I propose that Warrior I with total presence is a more advanced posture during some times than any “Series IV” practice ever dreamt.

When your yoga class is part of your practice, each and every breath takes on new and different meaning. There will be advances, set-backs, goals met and goals changed. All of which will pale in comparison  to the feeling of showing up for yourself, because you no longer know how not to.

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How about yoga for… your body, right now?

yoga under sakura (Photo credit: soulfish)

There’s yoga for your back , for your core, for your mind and for your Zen.

How about yoga for… you? Right now?

Sure you might have tight shoulders, hips, aching back or just want a good twist. But I’ll bet dollars to Down Dogs that once you do your first shoulder roll or forward wall hang, Sun Salutation or Fierce Pose, your body will know where it wants to go next, even without anyone telling your brain where to take it next.

Don’t get me wrong – teachers and classes are enlightening, edifying, fun, soul soothing and yummy. (I hope so, I am one However, I think we have this practice thing all twisted up: the core of practice shouldn’t be with a teacher in a studio or even all planned out in advance. Just like piano, t’ai ch’i and meditation, you get the most out of the practice you undertake yourself. You. Getting up, rolling out the mat and having a little audience  with the teacher inside.

Your bodily sensation, together with your breath and your longing are the words of your inner teacher. Follow what you feel, watch the breath, take care of your breath and don’t follow mere thought or planning or even “what feels good” (though there will be some of that, don’t you fret!) Follow your longing.

You’ll have to get quiet to feel and to hear it. It might tell you to do fluffy propped restorative poses when you’d planned for a strenuous Vinyasa sesh, or the other way around. Follow it. Continually checking in: what next?

You can follow your bodily sensation to some extent in the context of a class – make modifications for your tight this or overly flexible that. But you can’t necessarily bust out your Hanumanasana in the midst of Surya Namaskar unless you want some crazyeyeasana.

That’s all as it should be. Classes are for exploring an idea and a n energy with a group, which requires a modicum of discipline and and conformity. But your personal practice, the one in your space,  led by your body, this is where you get to explore long and short holds, different combos, allow sensation to guide the next move and the breath to seduce the mind into shutting up on its own accord.

Keep going to classes, workshops, online offerings, Zendos, Salutathons. They rock. They’re fun. They feed your soul. Just don’t subject your precious heart to a mono-diet of group classes or teacher led asana. Roll out your mat. Have a home-grown appetizer, a self-made snack or a do-it-yourself dessert. You deserve it.

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Changing practice

Mine zip up the sides so I can keep ‘em tied. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As I write this, I’m sitting on my balance ball in my yoga room/office next to my hula hoop in BDUs, combat boots and a yoga top. There’s a pair of trauma shears in my pocket and a carpuject device, all just in case I’m called in, and a blue tooth in my ear to take that call if it comes. Right now, I’m writing. If I’m called in, I’ll be medic-ing. I’ve come to think of all my identities as verbs so they don’t feel so heavy.

I’ve also begun the process of negotiating those identities. Being a Paramedic was once a dream so intense it burned the grad student right out of me. No longer a dream, Paramedic-ing is one of my awesome realities, all of which inspire in me gape-mouthed breathless devotion at my good fortune and the amazing opportunities put in my path. And the larger reality is this: for the first time in my life I have more awesome than I can do justice to.

I used to work hard to quit stuff because it sucked – cigarettes, coffee (I’ve stopped stopping that), snarkiness (always a struggle, cause it’s just so fun), late nights, drinking too much, that kind of stuff. And in the process I learned that working hard against things usually keeps them in my life (does it work that way for you, too?) That it was a matter of choosing away from them, not against them that helped them fade into the fuzziness and golden light of good stories. The difference is to choose something awesomer than you think the old thing will feel if you do it right now, just one more time, because it looks so shiny and sexy and real.

Now I find that I have so many amazing choices for how to spend my days that I constantly feel like “not enough.”  I’d tell you I don’t understand people who complain of boredom, but really that’s just another way of bragging about busy-ness <yawn> and I’m choosing away from busy-ness. I am too busy, but I’m not going to tell you about it when I call to ask you to do something for me – because I know you probably are, too. Or remember having been, and know it’s a choice. And I do understand boredom. It’s the feeling I get when I don’t want to do what’s in front of me (Is it that way for you, as well?). And I also understand choices.

So I’ve realized that for the past several years I’ve been choosing away from Paramedicine, but not because it sucks, but because there is so much to do, to tell, to love and to give. I love what I do when I go out in uniform and go places with my partner that someone in a room somewhere else tells us to go just because some other person called and asked for help. I love walking into a 26A that turns out to be 10D (fill “ho-hum” in the first slot and “do something now” in the latter), I love listening to people’s stories about why they need help, and I love finding the kernel of what I can actually help with in their story. I love sirens (when I’m working, not when I’m not) and opposing traffic and getting a nasal tube and chest darts and trans-cutaneous pacing and chasing your life faster than overlapping pathologies can. I love a good trauma because it lets me and people I work and train with do what we train to do, and when we’re good all at once, it’s most certain access to flow, to presence and to grace.

But (you knew there was one, right?) I’m realizing how much I love the life that I’ve woken up to realize I’ve  created: one of writing and coaching and teaching that creates quiet and flow and grace without sirens and chasing lives. And last year, while we lived in Silicon Valley for the hubs’ career and I took a break, I realized the UN-think-able: I can live without them. Yeah, I’ll just let that settle in, ’cause it took a while for me, too. I. Can. Live. … Without sirens and do-it-now.

CRazY. “Crazy!” I tell you! And here I have been, trying to craft a calendar, a schedule, a mind, a life that let’s me encompass the whole big, badass mess of my identities and activities. Tuesday will be my day on the streets; Mondays I’ll tend to accounts and licenses and the paperwork of business; Wednesdays I’ll work on the book and the launch; Thursdays and Fridays I’ll write for other awesome people because they treat me awesome and give me lovely things to do. Oh, and pay me pretty nicely. I’ll be sure to take weekends off to re-charge the ol’ creative battery and tend to that crazily amazing hubs and our groove, and to practice yoga and meditation every day (I’ll just slip it in between the this and the that), hike a lot (gotta enjoy the new hip) and enjoy the hot springs I longed for like a 13-year-old boy longs for real experience all last year when we were in Hippy Disneyland.

And Danielle LaPorte is right: Balance doesn’t exist. I wasn’t balanced when I was learning to be a Paramedic and holding onto it isn’t balancing me - it’s tipping me right over. Of all the -ings I’m embracing, it contributes the least to the life I’m creating. One of these things no longer fits with the other things. Not because other people don’t see how elegantly they go together (they did for oh-so-long), but because the life that feeds the -ings is no longer aligned with everything it takes to do that thing: the continuing education, the getting into and out of uniform (Hint: it’s more than putting on and taking off clothes), the never knowing when a shift will really end or how many nights I’ll dream of that man, that woman, the old couple saying goodbye, or the baby not crying when he should be. [I once knew a medic who said he didn't do that (remember, get moved by). He wasn't a very good person.]

So this morning I rose extra early to get my practice in before I went on call, just in case. Today’s my last day on duty, on call, on the hook, in the bus, my last day “just in case.” From now on, my life is not “just in case.” My life is for the burning fire of creativity and words and serving in another, a different, a new way. I’m choosing away from “just in case” and toward definitely here. I’m choosing away from “fitting it in” toward placing it carefully. I’m letting something awesome go so I can grab the awesome right in front of me with both arms. My practice is changing. I’ll tell you how it goes.

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The key to home practice: Desire before Duty

Image by Darwin Bell via Flickr

Committing to home practice is such a transformational step that it’s very easily turned into a goal, an item on the to-do list, a get-through-to-get-done: in short, a duty.

And setting aside the time on your calendar or to-do list can be an effective method for keeping this promise to yourself. But how to maintain the practice mind and not slip into goal seeking?

Here’s what I mean: One morning you set your alarm a little early – 20 or 30 minutes to start – and feel triumphant because you kept this promise to yourself. And the practice, short though it was, transformed your day and was filled with moments of sunlight and inspiration. Three weeks later, the alarm rings again, you find yourself on the same mat with the sunlight streaming in, but can’t keep from pushing yourself through the poses you’re working, measuring your progress from yesterday, and none too flatteringly. What a way to start the day!

What happened to that first morning’s lightness and joy in the practice? What happened to that blinding insight from the Bhagavad Gita, something about releasing the fruits of action, putting your heart in but non-attachment to outcomes?

If the “goal” is to meet yourself on your mat every morning, you’ve satisfied “duty” by arriving. Before you do anything, ask yourself one question: “What do I really want?” Maybe it’s more sleep. Fine, take legs up the wall, or yoga nidra. Maybe you’re feeling a backbend. Cool, warm up with some gentle heart openers like sphinx and cobra. Or maybe you need a good laugh or cry. Nice, that’s pranayam.

You might even find that when you follow it, your desire changes, transforms into something that supercedes goal, need and thought.

You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your DESTINY. ~Upanishads

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Twistin' the night away…. 3 rules for Revolved Poses

 

Image by creepyhalloweenimages via Flickr

 

Revolved Poses are my favorite core strengthening poses because they build flexibility at the same time as strength, and because they work the entire core, not just “the yabs.”  Keep yourself healthy for many more twists to come by following these three rules:

1. Stabilize your pelvis by drawing your hips toward one another: I know, my class today collectively got their Scooby faces on for this one. They’ve grown used to me giving the instruction to press their sitting bones or upper legs apart, but drawing together? Eyebrows go up,  spines come out of poses, lips purse. No problem: same muscles as pressing the legs apart, but draw together. Draw pelvic floor up…. yes, this is the beginning of Mula Bhanda.
2. Inhale, lengthen the spine by lifting the ribcage up equally from the pelvis,
3. Exhale, begin to turn from deep in the belly. Drawing your core muscles closer to center, draw one side back and draw the other closer to mid-line. (Find your mid-line by drawing all your muscles close to center on each of 7 successive outbreaths.) After you’ve turned in your belly, begin to use internal – not external, like pressing away -  shoulder strength to turn through the thoracic spine, and only then turn your head.

Revolved poses are regenerative alone, and can be used to counter-pose both back and forward bends. Great for digestion and releasing low back and hips, they make for a great night’s sleep. Move slowly and with deep respect for your whole body and your intuition, and you’ll be twistin’ the night away.

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Facing the Monkey: take the banana or hug the monkey?

Image via Wikipedia

Rarely do I teach a “contained” yoga class, so the transition I’ve witnessed this week has never been so clear as it is now. These people inspire me. Many have never practiced yoga, and some have been wildly sedentary. Every one of them who attends is transforming radically. And that means that every one has faced monkey mind and decided, “Do I take the banana and run, or hug the monkey and invite him to practice with me?”

By “contained” I mean a class lasting a certain amount of time with a plan. Currently, I’m teaching a class for Presbyterian Health Plan in an exciting experiment: 12 weeks, 2 hour and a half classes a week, vital signs and stress scale monitored before and after the first, 13th and 23rd classes (we’re taking Thanksgiving Day off). Participants signed a contract committing to attend from beginning to end with no more than 3 misses and participate in the vital sign and stress scale monitoring. For this, they receive classes and a mat free, where they work, and the Health Plan pays me. The syllabus is below.

Last week were classes 5 and 6, “Forward Folding: The Turn Inward.” Before the sixth class – so only 5 classes under our belts – six different people came up to me at separate times with stories of lost pain and found calm that bring tears to my eyes even now. At this same juncture, nearly an equal number dropped out. What gives?

Even the people who dropped out had stories of transformation. So why quit now? The reasons given overwhelmingly had to do with family commitments, but the trends and the timing make me wonder if there isn’t something deeper going on.

During my first morning practice yesterday, I was churning and turning in preparation for next weeks’ “Twist” classes, and you would not believe the endless clumps of unrelated and mostly unimportant detritus my mind heaved up. But occasionally there would be an “important” bit and I’d catch myself about to run off and “take care of it” before taking a deep breath and recommitting to the pose.

And it occurred to me: this is probably what the students are experiencing, too. Probably not the first class, or the third, but maybe by the fifth they’ve had the experience of both Sivasana Bliss  as well as the monkey mind taunting them, something like this: “Really, 3 hours a week? How important are your hamstrings when you haven’t returned that book or done the shopping for little Lisa’s party this weekend? Aren’t you special, having  your special yoga class, what makes you so special?” And so on. At least that’s what my monkey sounds like. Annoying little primate.

When we engage something new and potentially transformative, the first decision is to begin, and this requires a certain activation energy, curiosity, and acknowledgment of a need.  The next decision is to continue and requires balancing the original need being met by the activity against other needs and the ability to regard them all dispassionately. This second decision probably happens for most of us after the first one has been made repeatedly, because those prior attempts are how we build up the space in our minds to make the second decision.

So I’ll count even the dropped students as successes, though they won’t add to our “experimental” results. Each one of them has built up their stock of experience in choosing health and transformation, and learned something more about their own responses to stress and quiet. Here’s to the monkey dance! When we’re full of bananas, we each learn to hug our monkeys.

Yoga of Alignment: The poses

1.  Principles of alignment: standing poses

2.  Back bends & heart opening

3.  Forward Folds: the turn inward

4.  The Twist: churning the pot

5.  Breath & Bandhas de-mystified

6.  Core: where it is, what it is & how to work it

7.  Downward Dog: Transitional pose

8.  Arm balances: from plank to taking flight

9.  Sun salutations: putting it all together

10.       Vinyasa: finding the flow

11.       Finishing poses: shoulder stand & full wheel

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Equanimity

Image by ~C4Chaos via Flickr

Just completed a fabulous mini-home-retreat. Usually I design and create these for myself, but I’ve found a meditation teacher who has honed the content and delivery to a “T”…. or maybe “M” for mindfulness. Shinzen Young‘s basic mindfulness home retreats feature his program of methods for mindfulness and are awe inspiringly powerful.

One of my “aha” moments during the four hour combination of didactic instruction, interaction, and sitting meditation made communal by the use of the internet (I use Skype to connect, quite happily) was Shinzen answering a question after the first technique was practiced. “Equanimity” is one of those words you’ll hear as often as “cool” in yoga and meditation circles, so hearing Shinzen apply his scalpel like mind and bring the discussion back to the definition is always refreshing. One of the many things I appreciate in his teaching is that he is truly a philosopher in the Socratic sense: philosophy is a practice as well as a system of interrelated definitions supporting clear thinking.

He reminded us that equanimity is the skill of allowing images, thoughts, feelings or sensations to arise “without push or pull,” without moving toward or away from them, without craving or aversion. Equanimity is what we exhibit when we allow these experiences to arise and pass away without our interference – perhaps without even our explicit notice.

And he asserted, if I understood properly, that this is our psyche’s healing mechanism. The intuitive appeal of this theory has me looking into his deeper philosophy, but for now all I can say is that it makes sense to me and resonates with my experience. I had an image of the desert plateaus and canyon floors I spend so much time traversing. After a good rain, an infrequent phenomenon to be sure, bits of the past surface with as much ease as spring water seeping through cracks, to be worn away and converted to light and heat by the wind and the desert sun. What a blissful new way for me to relate to sitting.

How do you define equanimity?

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When you hold your breath…. The 3 causes and 1 Solution

Image by cristyndc via Flickr

You may not realize you were holding your breath until you let it go. And in that great whoosh of exhalation you have an amazing opportunity: what was going on in your internal environment leading to that impressive subversion of sustaining rhythms?

Breath holding, as the sign says, can be detrimental, though perhaps not often deadly. Because of the interruption of normal exchange of nurturing and toxic gasses, you’re retaining the very stuff your body so wisely was prepared to let go. More importantly, you can’t receive the next breath. Mind rides breath, so you remain stuck in that moment, unable to move forward because like the monkey with a peanut in his fist, you can’t get your hand out of the jar.

Whether you’re on your mat or in traffic with that near miss, or in a meeting  – “Yeah, those words just came out of his mouth…” – the moment when you let your breath go, give yourself the gift of wondering what that was all about. I’ll wager a week of yoga class that in every case it’s a reaction to one of three things: novelty, fright or exertion.

Novelty: ever been taken by surprise, even a pleasant surprise? A room full of unexpected people, a man on one knee with a diamond ring or an unexpected visit from a friend: any of these can trigger a rapid, rushing intake of air with a potent pause.

Fear: the unexpected discharge of a gun; a rapid, unexpected motion when you are either very relaxed or very wary; watching the car in front of you spin out of control all can trigger a frozen or elongated moment and the breath can become hostage to the halting motion of time.

Exertion: You didn’t wait for help to move that massive walnut bureau, and so it’s no surprise when you’re over matched and noticed the squealing grunt of strain. And in some forms of exercise, such as kettlebells and boxing, breath holding is a technique – but accompanied by specific and intentional exhalation. This kind of breath holding creates an internally stabilizing pressure in the center of the torso which is then converted to force with a rapid and full exhalation. The key is intentionality.

Solution: Awareness and Intent The next time you find yourself holding your breath, treat yourself and your breath gently, kindly release and exhale fully and completely. Wonder: was I scared, surprised or exerting?  Bring your awareness and intent to the moment, ask yourself the question, and then just listen. You’re extra lucky if you have a chance to practice this on the mat, because you have a great chance to notice and loosen a pattern, referred to in yogic circles as samskara. Samskara are the ant hills of repeatedly going around a place of resistance, rather than investigating and remaining with the resistance itself.  Noticing breath holding is one way down the center of hill to find the source of the resistance, the source of the work around, and clear an open path for moving forward, letting go of the residue of prior experience and becoming present for all that this moment holds.

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Hub & Spoke Meditation Link

This powerful meditation demonstrates and cultivates your second order reflexive awareness, or awareness of awareness. Dr. Dan Siegel leads us to pay attention to the “rim” of awareness by following spokes of sensation, thinking, feeling and connection to others, each in turn. Finally, you “turn the spokes back on the hub” and rest in your meditative center, the hub of consciousness.

The link above will take you to a recording of a talk containing a guided meditation (about 12-13 minutes in) given by Dr. Siegel at Upaya Zen Center just last month. You can listen to the whole series of 9 talks based on his new book MindSight, or simply enjoy this simple guided meditation. Here are some quotes from Dr. Siegel about the power of attention.

“The close paying of attention turns on parts of the brain that make synaptic change happen.”

“Mind is the embodied, relational regulatory process of the flow of energy and information.”

“We know from research that the way you develop your awareness changes the health of your body… changes your relational health… and cultivates mental health.”

“How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the brain.”

“Well-being emerges when we create connections our lives.”

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In praise of Sun Salutations

It took me about 3 years to finally feel comfortable doing Sun Salutations.  I would squint and puzzle and squish my face through the series a few times and then plop back into the hot springs. I’d struggle with synchronizing my breath and figuring out whether I should breathe in or out as I stepped back and how long I should stay in Downward Facing Dog.

Then it “clicked” for me one morning, and it became my new addiction. What a remarkable feeling, bending forward and backward, upside down and right side up.

Then I learned the drshti for each pose, and how to jump back, and then I found the bandhas through the glorious repetition and flow. When I learned that there were mantram for each of the “stations” in the cycle, I was over the moon! There’s no part of my mind or body that this wonderful series doesn’t wring and wash out, and leave better than before.

Whether you put a plank before or after your dog, throw your warrior in for “B” versus “A”, go slow or fast, the beauty of the series is that once engaged, the flow will teach you where and how to go, will lead your breath in the right direction and your mind into peaceful water. The series can be fast or slow, exercise or meditation – or both, few or many, sinewy or rigorous – infinitely modifiable, portable and indescribably subtle.

My favorite place for Sun salutations is on a particular mesa overlooking the hoodoos outside Chaco Canyon, with my YogaPaws on and no one else in sight – and out there you can see a long, long way.  That’s just about tied with the plateau above Angel Peak  behind the Orwellian sounding “Land Farm”  – another story.

The YogaPaws turn a good core workout into an amazing experience of solid, centered energy and reveal how much work the yoga mat regularly does in yoga poses. It’s a revelation.

So now you know where I’m off to for the next for week or so. There’s another post queued up, and it’s a good one – a link to my new favorite meditation. I’ve gotta go get me some Sun Salutations right now – then you’ll find me somewhere lost among the hoodoos. No phone, no computer, no talking. Just walking, yoga and land. Ahhhhhh.

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