I was at a yoga studio to deepen my study of Qigong with Deborah Davis and had just completed a short weekend workshop with her focusing on healing Qigong for women. This Chinese energy practice, associated with the energy meridians used in acupuncture, is also about creating space: in joints, muscles, organs, spine, heart, and mind. In principle, where there is openness, energy can flow and healing occurs.

In my yoga classes for August I have repeated the intention to create space and allow for possibilities. Each of us has different needs for space, yet everyone seems to relate to this concept. Chronic illnesses or pain trap us in our physical sensations. When we experience strong emotions we may feel stuck in time. From asthma to anger management, slow spacious breaths and movements help us explore our bodies and minds and to release our judgments. More rapid, repetitive activity energizes us to act. Combining space with energy invites us to flow from our inner wisdom. As we notice that our sensations, emotions, and thoughts shift and begin to view them with some distance, we learn that we are more than the sum of our discomfort and fears.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the warrior Arjuna completes his full conversation of spiritual education with the embodied god, Krishna, in the instant before a great battle against his cousins. The present moment seems stretched out and the warrior’s despair shifts to confidence. Arjuna is ready to follow his duty, sacred path, or dharma after this spacious moment.

Meanwhile, I have taken my a break from blogging to practice a new qigong form, return to the Gita for inspiration, and to integrate my experiences before sharing them. This gift of time has helped me give form to my thoughts. This intrigues me as the sequence moves back and forth between stillness and activity. As I imagine one would do before any energy form, it begins with a simple stance with the hands on the low belly, taking inventory of one’s current level of energy and inviting prana, qi or life force into the energy center that resides there, called the hara in yoga or dantien in qigong. As the form continues, the alternation of holding stances with gentle repetitive movements both concentrates my attention, building stamina, strength, balance, and energy, and then serves to spread that energy around and within my body, creating flow and a sense of well being. The final posture is a releasing pose to let go of any physical, emotional, or mental energy that I don’t need.

At this early stage of practice, my experience of the postures and my own energy is constantly shifting. I’ve tried holding the balancing postures outside in the moonlight, listening to the early, and gazing at the trees and sky, and been surprised by how unstable I am. First thing in the morning, after watering the container pots, moss, herb, and step-able gardens, my balance is steady and sure. Today is hot and muggy, so I practiced in an air conditioned room where I felt stable, but the flow was less nourishing. The qigong vsualization of a ball of energy like a beach ball inspired the photo above.

Time to rest and renew. The weather isn’t calling me to be active and I have an unexpected break in my schedule. Yes! Where can you create space in your body, mind, or schedule? What arises?

May you observe your true, compassionate and eternal self!

When I walked outside this morning I was struck by how beautiful and dangerous the ice appeared on the trees and on my walking paths and driveway, the glassy surfaces causing my emotions to slip back and forth from delight to fear. Our daily life is a constant tug of war between pleasure and distaste. How do we maintain equanimity with reality? The word awesome denotes this ambiguity. When we are struck with awe, we are witnessing or feeling something overwhelmingly powerful and find ourselves in a conflicting state of admiration and anxiety. Nature often awes us – with majestic mountains, crashing waves, starlit skies – and today with sheets of ice. We are thrilled, yet feel humbled.

Arjuna, the warrior hero of the Bhagavad Gita, demands to see his charioteer, Krishna, in his full divine splendor and is awed by his wonderful and terrible form. Arjuna is both happy and afraid as he views his teacher and friend, yet Krishna urges him to be calm and returns to his gentle four-armed form. When we remain calm we can walk across the ice, whereas if we are tense and awkward we slip. Let us relax this winter season, admiring the cold, the snow, and the ice. Enjoy the cold clear night skies and the sculptured snow banks. Be grateful for the snow removal equipment and operators that work through the night to clear our streets and parking lots. Balance delight and caution with compassion. Slow down, breathe, and the snow will melt!

Where were you when you first learned of the attacks of 9/11? What did you do next? Did you call friends or family to find out if they were OK? As the days and weeks past, did you exchange stories with acquaintances and friends? For many of us, simply talking about the tragedy helped us process the loss. Tales of bravery and selflessness helped to balance the inhumanity of the suicide attacks. The more we shared our stories, the more connected we felt.

Unfortunately our culture doesn’t seem as comfortable with the tales of warriors. There seems to be a split between those that sacrifice for their nation and those of us that stay home. How can we bridge that divide? When I first volunteered I had to go to the hospital for my PPD test and to fill out forms. The hospital is the size of a small town, in a parallel universe alongside. Many of the clients down the hill from the hospital complex, live nearby for easy access to medical treatment and housing opportunities. Coming from a Shoreline community where there is no evident military presence, I was shocked by this large community devoted to the rehabilitation of our armed forces. In addition to helping individual veterans through the practice of yoga mindfulness and relaxation, I began to see the importance of acting as a witness to this hidden community of patriots.

PTSD leaves its mark on generations and the sooner we recognize this stress pervading our globe and deal with it mindfully, perhaps the more humanely we can welcome our current warriors home and the more carefully we will consider entering armed conflicts in the future.

Veterans and mental-health experts shared their perspectives and research on post-traumatic stress disorder, resilience, and the human experience of war in a heart warming and heart breaking 4 person panel. One of the presenters is a national expert on war-related mental health issues who was deployed to Iraq in 2004 to improve combat stress care. His book, Once a Warrior Always a Warrior, Hoge incorporates the personal stories of veterans to describe PTSD, Combat Stress, and mTBI and to suggest pathways to navigate the journey home. Reading down the first page of the table of contents, a majority of topics could be headers in a mindfulness text: Become more aware of your reactions ; Learn to accept your reactions without judgment or anger; Improve physical conditioning and relax muscle tension; Improve sleep; Learn to pay attention to your physiological reactions and anxiety level; Learn to pay attention to your feelings and emotions; Create space between your reactions to stressful events and behaviors; Learn to monitor and eliminate “should” and related words or phrases; Notice your breathing; Improve your focus and attention through meditation and mindfulness.

A former veteran himself and a Peer Specialist where I teach yoga, was also a member of the panel. He has become a touchstone for me to make sure that my services are as helpful as possible to my students. His most helpful reminder is that the more I learn about PTSD, the easier it is to assume I know what is going on for a student. Stop right there! Listen! Each veteran knows their own concerns better than I ever will! Each person has personal priorities and goals and tuning in to their needs is the only way to proceed. One gentleman needs to get a license and access to a car so he can visit his mother, another wants to sleep more peacefully, and so on.

Yoga can help rewire our brains and counteract the floods of cortisol that put a well trained warrior on permanent alert. Anger is a useful emotion in battle and we train our soldiers to cultivate their righteous wrath. This isn’t as useful in daily civilian life and mindfulness training can make us more aware of when the emotion arises, how it feels (and injures our physical bodies), and give us time and mental space to choose how to react to it. The adrenaline rush of saving one’s comrades from danger every day makes civilian life pale in worthiness. The pettiness of civilian complaints may seem absurd, while the sense of danger, or arousal at loud noises, in crowds, or in traffic may be heightened. Individuals have multiple ways of coping with this transition, retraining themselves for civilian existence. Some fill their days with multiple jobs and obligations to recreate the sense of worthiness they may have felt over seas. Others self medicate with alcohol or drugs (effective in the short run, but obviously not a healthy solution).

My role, however, is to see beyond these stereotypes to the individuals in my classes. Letting go of the clinical descriptions liberates me to help my students view their own issues with more clarity and to find creative coping skills. They usually know what helps them, if I take the time to listen. Sometimes a safe place to be quiet and listen to their own soft, knowing voice is what is most needed. My role is to provide safety and compassion. The warrior has the intelligence and self knowledge to make a mentally sound transition to civilian life once his or her difficulty is acknowledged and accepted. It’s not easy and no one should have to go it alone, but I’m sure it is possible.

One of the most striking emotions veterans, and I believe civilians as well, suffer in the aftermath of conflict is survivor’s guilt. Combat soldiers regret they couldn’t have done more to protect their peers. Veterans in support roles feel shame that they weren’t in harm’s way. I spoke to a Vietnam volunteer who was sent over to join a ship. When he arrived, the ship was instructed to bring the men back to the US. The volunteer felt guilty that he was sailing away from harm with a boatload of drafted men that had risked their lives.

The enthusiastic yoga students above just completed their chair yoga session, an independent living facility. She is more likely to attend the class if I accompany her, so I have been able to enjoy and learn from instructor yoga. She has tailored her class beautifully around her students’ interests and memories. To provide a focus each week she brings in a tangible item: a vase of yellow flowers or a bowl of red raspberries, for example. The class has a conversation about the item to center and then begin to breathe and move together. YInyasa flows include rowing their boats, leaning back in recliners, squeezing lemons between their shoulder blades, and marching to Yankee Doodle Dandy. There are lots of smiles and we really move, adding ties and light weights for additional stability and strength. Thank you Karen for sharing your ideas so freely with me! Some of her ideas have seeped into my classes…

After nine months of teaching chair yoga I have finally created a default lesson plan as well. My students are eager to learn a consistent series of postures so they can practice more easily on their own. I know I will keep bringing in a variety of readings and music and tinker with the centering and breathing practices. As I continue to experiment with props and postures the asanas will evolve. I’m always curious to see what arises in the moment, and I hope my students appreciate a few surprises.

We have be focusing on using our senses as tools to bring our attention back to the present moment. In the lesson plan below I recommend two meditations. In the first, a visual meditation, we rub our hands together until we feel warmth and energy in our palms and fingers and then cover our eyes. The objective is to soothe and still the eyes, gazing through the darkness at an imaginary point in the far distance. Fixing our gaze often stills the wanderings of our minds as well. Do you unconsciously tense up when you focus? Relax all the muscles of your face, especially all the muscles around your eyes, cheeks, and jaw. After a few breaths we close our eyes and remove our hands, adjusting to the light behind our lids before blinking our eyes open.

Chanting A-O-U-M, the second meditation, focuses our senses of touch and hearing on the healing vibrations of the sacred Sanskrit syllable, OM. The vowel “a” vibrates in the back of our throat and the rear portions of our brain. “O” and “u” vibrate further forward across the upper palate of our mouths and up into more regions of our brains. “M” buzzes our lips and into our cerebrum, the thinking portion of brains. Chant in a relaxed manner, listening to the OM resonating in your head without straining either to make the sound or to listen to the sound. This isn’t singing. Let go of judgment! Can you feel the vibrations sweeping across your scull, relaxing your mind?

All chanting serves as a pranayama as well. With each long exhalation, we empty our lungs of stale air. The deep inhalation between repetitions replenishes our oxygen supply and energy. Long, smooth exhalations also soothe the nervous system, inviting our bodies to heal and function properly. Relaxation practices bring our hormonal, digestive, circulatory, and immune systems back into balance.

Once in a while a gentle, relaxing posture flow is very restorative, even if you normally prefer a more vigorous practice.. Regularly teaching chair yoga has helped me recognize the benefits of short sensory meditations and simple, repetitive movements on my own nervous system.