Browse Month by August 2015
General

A different story

How does our Yoga practice make us feel better when we are blue? At both the Center and the Prison I was forced to ask this question this week. In my last post I wrote about while in this I will focus on bereavement in the prison. Both situations address universal spiritual/emotional issues, so I hope you will reflect on how they might apply to your life and share the practices that have helped you with this on-line community. I would be deeply grateful to read your comments and suggestions.

On Tuesday I knew something was up when I saw tears in the eyes of one of my students as we were assembling to be clicked through the locked doorway between their unit and the community room where we have our class. Another student seemed to understand her grief and was tearing up as well. I have to admit, pride reared its ugly head, and I was impressed that one of my students was willing to come to yoga at all when there was a problem, rather than hiding out in her room. I have heard so many excuses for not coming to class! I should not congratulate myself in this instance, however, as this poised inmate has been using every program and opportunity the prison offers to grow and develop her own inner strength as well as to mentor those who reach out to her.

I’ll call her K. With difficulty, K confided that her most beloved brother was killed in a car accident the previous evening. What was I to do?

I babbled the appropriate platitudes as I considered how I needed to adapt my plan of grooving Sun Salutations and some of their variations. Perfect! What could be better for churning strong emotions through the body and digesting them? When my mind is agitated I’ve found that a vigorous practice demands all my attention and gives me an emotional break. Tapas, the fire or discipline of practice, does seem to burn away emotional confusion.

I couldn’t resist centering with a Loving Kindness meditation in which we began by holding her brother or someone we cared deeply for in our minds. I asked K if Sun Salutations appealed to her and with her approval we began to churn through gentle Swan Dives and Squats followed by more vigorous Sun Salutations. Some of my less athletic students had to take breaks during the vinyasa flows, but I sensed that they were content to watch K and to silently encourage her to keep moving through her sadness. I hope they felt that the class would accommodate them when or if the need arises.

After Sivasana, K stayed after class with another sympathetic friend to speak calmly about her brother and her extended family. Although unmarried and childless, K is a devoted sister and aunt. Her family lives out of state and the prison gauges the inmates with its long distance phone rates, $32.00 for 13 minutes, further isolating the women from family support. Her brother used to drive three hours to spend one hour with his sister and then to drive home almost every other week, sacrificing precious time with his spouse and two daughters. None the less, K spoke gratefully of the community she has forged at York, a circle of women within which she feels safe and nurtured.

I am honored to bare witness to the emotional needs and strengths of the women. Sometimes they feel invisible and I believe that by writing about the healthy manner in which some of them are nurturing themselves, building trust and community, I can enable their lights to shine outside the prison walls.

Yoga practice

Realigning practice

My latest airplane read was Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thalerr & Prof. Cass R. Sunstein. They point out that our choices are greatly influenced by their context or what they call choice architecture. (I promise this will come around to yoga.) When we choose a flavor of ice cream on a hot summer night we are pretty good at selecting a flavor we like without assistance. When we can sample an unusual one, our taste buds give us instant feedback to make our choice even easier. Choosing a new car, a health plan, or a retirement strategy is more difficult. We may not be as well informed and the feedback is slower. How about deciding to diet or practice yoga? There are so many choices to be made and inertia is incredibly strong. It is very difficult to change our habits when the results accrue slowly. Can choices be designed so we are more likely to behave in ways that benefit us?

Nudge introduced me to the concept of default settings as an aid in decision making. When I lose electricity at home, my digital clocks (on the microwave, the stove, my alarm clock) all blink 12:00 when the power resumes. The manufacturers set 12:00 as the default setting, but they could have picked anything. Some cars have a default setting that causes the car to beep if you turn off the key and leave the lights on, or they buzz if you don’t latch your seatbelt. These are examples of conscious choice architecture. I am grateful that my computer is full of default settings, yet I have the freedom to change them as I become more technologically savvy.

I’ve noticed that many popular yoga styles emphasize a particular routine. The flow acts as a default setting. Once a student rolls out his or her mat, he or she doesn’t have to make more choices. The student just plows through the routine as time permits. In my role as a teacher I want to broaden my students experience of yoga. I don’t believe in a magic sequence that is ideal for all bodies at all times. None the less, in my own practice I find I recycle familiar sequences and then flow into variations and explorations. Many yogis use the Sun Salutation as both a physical and mental preparation for their practice. As I center, it is easier to overcome my early morning lethargy if I only have to make one decision, “Table Warm-up” for example, and can then continue through an entire familiar flow without having to make another choice. Once I am moving, my body leads me into further warm-ups, postures, pranayama and meditation as time permits. Even though I just got out of bed, I end with a few slow breaths lying in Sivasana to integrate the benefits of my practice. In hotels in Italy, I could always fit in a standing series and a quick Sivasana before breakfast. Lubricating my joints before biking in Puglia, walking the streets of Milan, or flying home felt essential.

For the month of June I have chosen to work on teaching the same warm-ups each week to my different classes. The women on the minimum security side are learning the 8 Brocades, while my longer term students are creating flows from the Sun Salutation. Meanwhile, the veterans are learning a fixed seated posture routine, some seated on mats on the floor and others in wheelchairs or arm chairs. My goal is for my students to learn a default routine to nudge them to practice without my guidance, eventually grooving the behavior until yoga becomes an integral part of their lifestyles.

The readings I have selected for this theme both relate to practice. When your practice slips, begin again without judgment. You are always welcome. And know that the benefits of yoga are not a matter of faith, they are a matter of practice!

Self care

Spring and life

The bud stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;…

Excerpt from Saint Francis and the Sow, by Galway Kinnell

As the shrubs bloom outside, it is the perfect time of year to recall that we all blossom. We all need water and sunlight, or encouragement and recognition. Taking the time to attend to ourselves and others actually helps us grow emotionally and physically. Recent brain science demonstrates that we can build new neural connections through yoga asana and meditation as these activities demand focus, attention, and compassion. According to studies published in the June 2010 Yoga Journal, areas of our brain exhibit more involvement in skills we practice, so try practicing a little self blessing:

Self Blessing Lesson Plan

I caught a spring cold and found the energy shower and face massage very soothing and draining for my sinuses. It was a challenge to motivate myself to practice, but reviewing restorative postures and meditations allowed me to be creative and self-nurturing. I begin each practice by reminding myself that I always feel better after I’ve reconnected with my breath, and my physical and emotional bodies. – And it’s true! I almost didn’t teach today, but I’m so glad I showed up.

Next week I’ll be biking in Italy, volcanoes willing. Look for photos and commentary in about ten days….

General

Recovering effectively

Instead of a physical practice as I allowed my bruises to subside and my arm to re-knit, the study of guided my musings. Lorin Roche’s new translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra seems to sum up many of my own meditation experiences – and probably yours too. I am intrigued by the play of experience and study. One of my students at the veterans center asked why I hadn’t taught about this concept sooner as it made him more interested in our meditations. But how can one comprehend witness consciousness if one hasn’t noticed one’s Self watching one’s self? In my own practice the experience was recognizable before I was given a label for it, but then the concept enriched my observation. So often in yoga I am not teaching, I am reminding people of what they already know and am offering confirmation for a practice that already feels natural.

We all have moments when we are absorbed completely: appreciating the scent of a lilac, in awe of the stars, or mesmerized by sea gulls and the splash of waves. Who is noticing our absorption? Our Self? When I want to overwhelm my senses with beauty I stroll through Gardens where I took the picture above. The ancient radiance sutras, framed as a conversation of the god and goddess within us, begin by turning our attention to this very breath we are breathing right now and then add teachings referring to the energy moving up our spines and throughout all our senses, expanding and awakening us to luminous reality. The tantra meditation practices are direct and practical. Just as Patanjali wrote that our postures should be steady and held with ease, so I sense in these tantric lessons that our meditation should be focused yet relaxed and pleasurable. It is not the duration of meditation that is critical, in fact Roche recommends no more than twenty minutes twice daily as a formal practice, but the recognition of the possibility of awakening in any moment.

The classic novel seems to be written as a stream of consciousness (although it is brilliantly crafted). From the opening pages I feel swept away by the flood of sights, sounds, emotions, and memories that inhabit her mind during the course of a single day. It is as though I am the non-judgmental witness, observing her meditation, which of course she never labels as such. I can identify with the whole jumble – from flowers to first loves to mental associations with airplanes. I don’t know what Woolf knew about meditation, but she didn’t need to have formally studied the practice to have experienced many facets of the mind. These two classic works, one from the Indian oral tradition and one from twentieth century England, invite me to play with descriptions of experiential practices and a flow of experience as I read a bit of one and then some of the other. Both enriched my own interactions with my surroundings and my thoughts throughout the week.

What are you reading now? Can you relate some aspect of it to your yoga practice? Please click on the heading of this post (if you are on the Home Page) to open to a page where you can comment and suggest future readings to me. When you read multiple books at the same time to you notice interesting ways in which they overlap?