Waves: Expansion Contraction and all that Is

"Peter left the boat and walked on the water to Jesus. But when Peter saw the wind and the waves he became afraid and began to sink ..."

Matt 14:29

 
       This morning my seated meditation practice was simple, oh so simple. On the inhale as I witnessed the expansion of my body I simply applied the mantra "expand" and on the exhale as I sunk back into my flesh the mantra "contract" was my anchor. And so it went, I would inhale expand into my heart and feel my hearts energy begin to slip beyond the boundaries of flesh, I would contract feeling the power of my belly. So much power in the belly that it would burst upward into my mouth relaxing the jaw and perhaps increasing my potential for lovely words. The breath became a rhythmic wave both shooting me beyond my body and anchoring me firmly back in the body. my breath reminding me that there are only two places we can find God: inside of ourselves and outside of ourselves. And we must explore both. Indeed the "kingdom of God is within us". But to remain centered in our internal experience can be a breeding ground for narcissism and delusion. And indeed paradoxically we "find" God by developing a servants heart and that heart can only grow in relationship to serving others. But again if we remain others centered we can quickly become depleted and have nothing to give. We must take refuge inside ourselves.  And so we breath and we ride the wave of breath. And we go in and find that indeed the Spirit of God is in our hearts and our bellies and our toes and our fingers. And we go out and we find the eyes of God in every face we see. Sometimes the faces shine back brightly gladdening our hearts and sometimes the glances sting and hurt our hearts, but we mustn't stop looking. The human soul does not want to fixed it wants to be seen. Can you see the Divine in your neighbor? If you cant see Divinity in yourself it will be harder to see in others. And so we go back inside again and again.

     My seated practiced was sandwiched with the reading in Matthew about Peter walking on the waves. At first with eyes on Jesus he did the seemingly impossible, but quickly he turned his eyes to the waves and began to sink. A relational metaphor I adore is that God is an ocean and we are a wave. To be "closer" to God we must simply relax into the ocean. However there are waves that are smooth and rhythmic and lull us into this relaxation and choppy fast waves that crest into anxiety and separation and duality. These dangerous waves tend to take shape in our minds. We cannot help which thoughts arise but we very much can help which thoughts we surf. Allowing thoughts of the future to swell in our minds takes us away from the internal wave of respiration and spirit and into the dark waters. And so again and again we must return to the breath and perhaps a mantra. Each journey is unique but a unifying factor is that a mind running amuck makes for rough seas filled with dangerous hooks. Present moment mindfulness and compassion make for smoother seas and surfable waves.

     The longer I investigate spirituality the simpler it becomes. Religion is a great place to start, but beware lest you stop there. Religion is exclusive, Jesus is inclusive. We all ultimately share the same breath. The exhale of the Buddha will become your inhale. The sigh of Christ will become your gasp. And so we breath. And on the inhale perhaps you feel the expansion of your heart and mind. perhaps you take a moment to go beyond your self and remember that you are not the center of the Universe. And on the exhale you settle back into your self and realize you are indeed home. And we keep riding the wave of breath so the tsunami of life doesn't wash us away. Peace to you on the journey.

The Human Equation

     It is perhaps simplistic to break the human experience down to a neat three part equation of body, mind and spirit. We are, in truth, infinitely layered and complex. I have always been drawn to trios however and looking at "the human animal" thru a three part lens has served me best. Any one of these parts could be a lifetimes study of their own. After over two decades of working with peoples physical bodies I have picked up a lot about how form and function move us through the dance of life
On one level the body is pretty simply composed of flesh and bone and seems like a pretty manageable topic. On another level we are more empty space than not, we have not one straight line to be found anywhere in any part of our structure. We are a magical swirling whirling river of life in which the only truth to be found is constant change. This I can live with.
    
     The second part of my human equation, the mind,  is similarly dual in being simple and simultaneously complex. Simple are the thoughts that pop into our head stealing most of our moments by projecting us into the past or future. I say simple because on this level our thoughts are automatic and just a function of out neural pathways and electricity. Even the new trendy field of neuroplasticity is pretty graspable if you understand the more you use a pathway the stronger it gets and that a combination of being watchful of your brain and interrupting old patterns and using repetition to sow new patters transforms the actual physical structure of our brain along with our thoughts. Pretty awesome, huh? Keep in mind simple and easy are not synonymous. Because up to this point I have really been discussing the brain. but what about the "mind" the thinker, the consciousness? Yes, that topic I can only stammer in awe and hope to one day begin to begin to begin to grasp.  The brain though, again with the river, our brain is like a system of interconnected waterways that get dredged and shifted by our thoughts both intentional and automatic. This I can work with.

     The third part of our equation is to me the richest and deepest river of all. Our spirit is that deepest part of us which is always reaching for the sunlight, for growth and connection. Regardless of beliefs about the Divine Mystery we all have spirits that need nurturing and tending. I have never addressed this part of myself as anything but a theist and from a very young age I had a strong sense of being surrounded by a loving energy and for this I am eternally and profoundly grateful. But for spiritual seekers who are atheist this does not change the need for spiritual nourishment. We can ignore no part of our self. I was raised  without religion to a Jewish Mother and a Father from an Episcopal background and while I know that raising a child with tradition and reverence can be an amazing gift my gift was that I had to forge my own way. I had to decide not only what to believe but who to believe and how to believe and it is an ongoing and joyful exploration in which I have felt myself residing in a river of love for sometime now. And while I am a strong theist paradoxically I also do not believe that you need to be a theist to swim in this Divine river of spirit. Here is what my explorations have uncovered. Our two root human emotions of love and fear seem to be the drivers of our spirit. The first, love, manifests in expansion, inclusion, softening and relaxing. The second, fear, manifests in tightening boundary, exclusion, clenching and hardening. These are of course hardly complete lists of the manifestations of fear and love, but you get the idea. So to feed my spirit I watch my body and mind for expansion or contraction. When I find my mind closing and my jaw clenching I know I have strayed from my optimum path. Now as a theist I do think the ultimate goal of spiritual growth is the merge my small spirit with the Bigger One. But, for an atheist perhaps nature or music or the present moment works for you. The point is to get beyond ourselves into loving service of Something Bigger.

     Almost thirty years ago as an idea of Divinity took root in my psyche the closest image I could conjure up of Divinity was God as a river. These decades of exploration have shaped and molded and shifted my ideas about God but to this day I can come up with no better analogy than a river. Our fluid flexible bodies and our shape shifting brains dancing in the currents of a Mighty River as we float or struggle side by side. our nature is both quite simple and again complexly ineffable, but this I believe.The more we gracefully float and the less we fight the currents the further along the river we go.  It has been said that the man who wishes to understand the universe must be in equal parts, scientist, philosopher and theologian. And perhaps this is true, or maybe what we really need to do to remove the veils of ignorance is just go sit by a river.

Two Questions

     The Joy of the Lord is My Strength

Neh 8:10

     I know the way to build a blog is to be regular in posting, but writing is something that I enjoy and I will not force myself to do it. Words whether spoken or written have the power of life and death in them and our words must flow from a place of love and gratitude for them to have the power to shift us positively. So, that was a round about explanation/apology for my month long silence, but it really is better to say nothing at all than to just put words out there for the sake of a blog, or being avoiding silence.There is a popular saying that it is better for a man to keep his mouth shut and be though a fool than to open it and prove that he is a fool.
    
     The path of the spiritual seeker and wanna be mystic can be fraught with twists and turns that distract or divert our attention from the moment and from love.  This is simply part of being human to turn our necks and check out accidents or to spend too long watching cute kittens on YouTube. We are made to transcend and live miraculous lives in the spirit that is true but on the way we must make peace with the parts of us that are fleshy and hungry and sometimes downright dirty. Trying to suppress our humanity can lead to complete breakdowns and into addictions and neurosis. It really is best to embrace our darkness and coexist with it as we cultivate our light. We all need help and tools to guide us along the way to light and love. We need friends to tell us we are being whacked. We need words to guide us and we need consequences to teach us. Lately I have been heavily relying on two questions to be spotlights shining on the path ahead. The first "What is my next loving act?" has guided me both to embrace my light and also to embrace my darkness. let me explain.
 
     Every life is about balance. You know at some point in her life Mother Teresa did something unkind and at some point Hitler did something nice. We are all naughty and we are all nice, just how it is. Again trying to suppress our darkness only reinforces and strengthens it. So sometimes when I ask myself "what is the next loving act?" the answer is to meditate or pray or do yoga and sometimes the answer is to allow myself that martini or kitty video. The question I have been asking myself is not "what is the next spirit building act, or what is the next 'good' act" But rather "what is the next LOVING act?" and in that question I take into account that sometimes it is loving to forget myself and do an act of service for someone else. Sometimes the loving act is to feed my highest self and perhaps just be really present while doing my chores. But every once in awhile the loving act truly is to allow my humanity. To remember that on one hand we are gold and at the same time we are dust. and before the dust settles there may be a mess. Love the mess, it is a part of you.

     The second question I have been using to guide my actions is "Am I doing this resentfully?" What we do is  less consequential than how we do it. The quality of our energy is everything. it is better to sit and do nothing joyfully than it is to do acts of service with resentment. When we do stuff resentfully thoughts like "I should" and "there's no one else to do this" often alert us to an underlying resentment. Resentment is an insidious energy that drains us and everyone around us and it is better to leave chores undone than to fill your home with resentment. It is better to leave a blog untended than to resentfully write something because you "should". It is better to leave a sink full of dishes than it is to simmer in resentment as you wash them. We have two things we must master to grow. Our attention and our presence. The first question "what is the next loving act?" tells us where to place our attention. The second question "Am I doing this resentfully?" will cue us in to the quality of our presence. This blog was my next loving act and done without a stitch of resentment and I hope in my thoughts you find your questions and keep reaching for the light. Happy Holidays fellow seekers.

Just Do This

Very little grows on a jagged rock. Crumble and become ground so wildflowers will come up where you are. you have been stony for too long.

Rumi

    
     Whether or not you have a child you can probably picture how a toddler will repeatedly chant "mom mom mom mom" when it wants your attention and usually the minute the desired attention is received the child relaxes just a bit. Your body is a lot like this chanting toddler in that it really does want your attention. When our necks get tight or our low back spasms perhaps we can consider that this may be your body yelling "mom mom mom mom ." and just perhaps instead of numbing or ignoring we can listen for a moment to the wisdom of our body. It has a lot to say.

      This morning I got to work with a fairly new client for the third time and from the first session I could tell that intellectually she trusted me, but her body did not. When a body has been abused or repeatedly bullied it often adopts a posture of self protection that may include a surface tension, a hard alertness, a clenched jaw, sometimes clenched fists and buttocks, this is body is protecting against an expected blow. And so often the blows are body receives are not from another person. So the first few times I worked with this person we just did really gentle stuff and while I prioritized paying super close attention to her body I also gave her some cues to apply compassionate awareness to her body as well. Today was the first time her body trusted me and it was an amazing moment of softening and exhaling. I wanted to share this story not to brag about what a great therapist I am, but because this scenario is way too common these days because our bodies don't trust us. We have been bullying them  I don't mean you have been hitting yourself, it is more subtle, Making your body hunch over a computer for hours without standing is a kind of bullying. Working out until you throw up is another.
  
      And with the "just do it" culture, the "kicking my own ass" mentality and the "suck it up" messages we give to our bodies why should they trust us? Would you trust a bully? And why is it that we can be so gentle and compassionate with others but when it comes to our own bodies we turn a deaf ear? It is time to stop all the self bullying that has bloomed under the umbrella of busyness and excessive work. The challenge is that we do live in an excessively loud world and our bodies voice is very much a whisper. Often we don't listen to our body until it just stops, either by passing out or sustaining injury. And then only sometimes do we listen but mostly we try to alleviate the symptoms. Well, this habit of self bullying and turning a deaf ear to our body is a learned pattern and any learned pattern can be unlearned. It is not a quick or easy journey but would you rather the alternative, bullying your body all the way to the grave? I know this is strong language, but like people who speak up for abused animals, I feel the call to speak up for your body. it deserves better.

     So, where to start? A good place is just by sitting perhaps for 3-5 minutes a day and observing your bodies sensations. Pretty soon you will discover that you are a sea of ever shifting sensation and that your aches and pains are not solid or permanent. This raising of awareness itself helps to soften your body, but the attention you pay to the body must contain both the elements of friendliness and curiosity. When we are curious and friendly towards our body it senses that awareness and relaxes. Perhaps you could take it a step further and begin to notice how emotion affects your body. What energetic and muscular sensations accompany joy or sadness, anger or fear? Have you ever noticed that when you get close to someone you trust your shoulders soften and when we are suspicious of someone our chest tightens? Our body had a thousand messages for us, but they are quiet and we have to listen. The more you listen the more wisdom you will glean and the more effectively you will abide in yourself. Your soul is not encased in a vehicle to be run but rather in a soft, warm, smart animal that deserves our loving attention. So, where to start is by sitting quietly and listening and when to start is today. Won't you join me on this journey home? How does your body feel in this moment? You are not alone in this body disassociation and you are not alone on the journey home.

Coming Home: A Body Story

    

A Spiritual Journey

and the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles

no matter how long

but only by a spiritual journey,

a journey of one inch

very arduous and humbling and joyful

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet

and learn to be at home

Wendell Berry

     I suppose to appreciate where I am I should share where I come from. Where I am now is that I have become a consciously loving occupant of my body listening to it and tending to it with utmost care. This is not where the journey began. In my late teens and early 20's I assaulted my body on almost every front. I was a bulimic with a low point of forcing myself to throw up seven grilled cheese sandwiches I had just binged on. I was a drug user who experimented with almost ALL of the drugs available. I did not honor my body sexually but was pretty promiscuous and finally I got into a violent relationship which culminated with me in the emergency room with a broken face. The slight scar over my left eyebrow is a constant reminder that I had abandoned my body on every front. I technically lived in my body but in no way did I have a relationship with it. My body mind relationship consisted of my mind alternating between numbing out and self bullying.
Today when I think of where I was and where I am I feel it in my body. I feel the compassionate warming in my chest, the relieved relaxing of my shoulders the calm slowing of my breath. I have come home and there are not sufficient words to convey how grateful I am to live in my body now. I  make more choices that nurture and grow my body rather than continually bombarding it with expressions of self loathing. But this has been and still is a long and winding road ...

     My body/mind/spirit healing journey began with a deep spiritual longing that led me to believe in and have relationship with God. This part of the journey needed to grow for about 10 years before the spirit led me to the breath and mind. As a massage therapist spending seven or eight hours a day in silence I knew I needed to find a positive mental focus or I would lose my mind. So I started linking mantra to breath as I worked. For a long time the breath was just linked to quieting the mind, but then one awesome day I began to notice how the breath moved the body. So my first introduction to my body was really just watching it breath. Around this time a wise woman noticed how much I loved my dog and asked me if I would consider applying the same compassion I had for my pet to my body. Those few words were pivotal and powerful.  After a few years of watching my breath it was clearly time to "find" my physical body and I was led to begin with the feet. Finding your feet is so important in so many ways, but I will mention just two. First when you find your feet it grounds you to the earth making you feel a little more solid and resolute and courageous and second when you find your feet you find your present moment. You become present in the here and now. I mean who thinks of their feet in terms of past or future? And it is in an awake present moment that growth occurs.

     I really want to  flesh this out but I want to cover a lot of ground in one page! So, then my foot awareness led me to the realization that I clenched my glutes all the time. It took a few years for them to relax but when they did my low back quit yelling at me. Simultaneously with the "glutes journey" I learned to find my core and began to trust the inner wisdom that lives there. Then my body led me to my jaw. When you unclench your jaw you often quit holding on to so much anger this in turn led me to notice my throat was constricted. This part was a little funny, I thought at first a constricted throat meant I wasn't speaking my truth, but really the truth was I was a lousy listener and once I learned to use my ears my throat softened.

     My journey continued as I spent some time contemplating how many times we are instructed in scripture to not be "stiff necked" and as I learned to relax my neck I noticed a funny correlation with my knees unlocking  Relaxed knee joints are crucial for whole body health, but in body mind language locked knees are a sign of stubbornness and as I unlocked them I became more emotionally flexible. Then my once broken face got my attention. As I learned the relationship that the nervous system has with the facial muscles I began to really apply myself to relaxing my expression and as my brow and cheeks softened anxiety began to leave. When your face is relaxed your body is not a friendly home for anxious thoughts. My spirit has led me to God and to the belief that if you really love God you have to love people and be a light to them. Well, turns out being a light to people begins with upturned lips and a relaxed face. The next steps in my journey are pretty current and on going. I am learning to cooperate with my nervous system. The nervous system is controlled mostly by our breath and our thoughts so a good access point to nervous system control is to cultivate a smooth long even breath. Also it is helpful to notice the effects different thoughts have on your body. Some thoughts harden us and some thoughts soften us. Focus on the softening obviously.
As I learn nervous system regulation I am simultaneously learning to observe the flow of prana in my body. If you vigorously rub your palms together and feel the heat you generated that is prana. But this life force acts much more subtly than that in every cell in our body and as you learn what nourishes your prana and what drains it you learn to live more responsibly in your body.

     This journey is on going and not linear. At times I feel awakened and transformed and other times I think I am back near square one and just want to stuff something in my mouth. But the regard I have for my body has bloomed into a love that will no longer allow numbing.  TKV Desikachar  says, "The West is a bodyless culture" and sadly so many of my numb massage clients and my decades of disassociation support this observation. But it doesn't have to stay this way. As a matter of fact it cannot stay this way. It is time for us to come home. To learn to live in our bodies is certainly the beginning of personal healing and perhaps a road to corporately healing a hurting land. This is why I shared this journey, so that perhaps today you will look down and discover your feet and begin your journey home  Peace on the path....

But Company Doesn't Love Misery

    

"Do not grieve for the JOY of the Lord is your strength"

Nehemiah 8:10

     Misery is both a defensive shield and an offensive sword. When we wrap ourselves in misery  people who love us both jump to relieve our misery and also refrain from asking us to take on more of lifes unpleasant tasks. Using misery in this way is a sneaky and treacherous activity for so many reasons. But before we explore that side of the misery equation, let's expand on what I mean by misery. You don't have to be a downtrodden English orphan in a Dickensian tale to be miserable,  You can just be applying judgment to peoples actions and not be satisfied with their actions and that is miserable. You can be holding on to strong opinions about "how things should be" and feeling victimized because things aren't going your way and that is miserable. You can have an inflated sense of self that tells you you're entitled to "more" and when that more doesn't come you are miserable. You can be making yourself sick so no one expects much of you and that is miserable. You can be addicted to something numbing in an attempt to avoid pain and that is miserable. On the same hand, you can be in a war torn famine and  disease filled land and NOT be miserable, how is this so? . Misery is really just the attachment to things "being the way we think they should be". A trivial example of this is the combination of three factors in my life, the first that my grandmother repeated the phrase "eat past 10, join dead men" so often it became etched in my mind as truth and the fact that my night owl husband likes to eat late and the third factor is that I like to eat with my husband. By releasing any of  my opinions to how it " should be" sooner I could have saved us both years of misery. But I didn't and now its blog material so not all is lost! But you see, I did not have to believe my grandmothers words if her statement were really true most of Europe would be dead of dinner by now. I did not have to eat with my husband every night I could have left a plate on warm for him. But instead I cloaked my face in misery, usually about 9:45pm, throwing in a few well timed sighs, so hubby would hop to and prepare to eat. Let me say now this was not a useful strategy. Instead of creating the fellowship of a shared meal I was creating a lot of indigestion.

     So, if misery is so powerful why not use it sometimes to prod someone to action? Well, first of all it has a short shelf life and your misery only encourages loving actions in others for so long and then as they become "immune" to your misery you are left alone and even more miserable. We all try to avoid miserable people after awhile and sadly loneliness exacerbates their self inflicted misery. Second, misery never travels alone, rather it brings it's companion emotions of victimhood, self righteousness, and  (the illusion of) control. The victimhood part of it where we hold the illusion that others are causing our misery is so disempowering. I was upset at dinner because I wanted to eat with hubby and at a certain hour. His night owl tendencies weren't the cause of my misery, but rather my attachment to my desires were. Equally dangerous to the disempowerment of victimhood is the hard shell of self righteousness which removes from us the ability to see others fully and make room for them to be a whole and complex person with us. And holding the illusion of control is tantamount to just living a lie. The truth that sets us free also tells us we are not in control.

     Once, we realize that other people really do not have the power to make us miserable but that it is an internal choice, it is important to not turn on ourselves. It is easy to try to compartmentalize our less desirable parts and try to eradicate or silence them. But the internal war this creates is the most miserable state of all. So, its important  know that the part of you that is causing your misery is probably doing so in a misguided attempt to keep you safe. That part of me really didn't want to die from a taco at 10:01PM!  Now it's time to love on that less evolved part of yourself but at the same time not let it be in charge of your actions. you love your toddler, she just doesn't get to run your life. Love it and hug it and put it in a corner of your mind while your inner WiseSelf takes charge. Using misery to try to control life is like punching yourself in the face to try to get someone to notice how pretty you are. They will notice pain and damage, but will they truly see your soul?  Misery is an offensive shield that cracks with only a few blows and a defensive sword that only nicks and annoys but does not cut deeply. It does not have the power to keep us safe and it does not have the power to change others. So maybe it's time to lay down our weapons of  judgment, opinions and control and free our hands to hold some of the deep joy that comes from living an "out of control life"... peace yogis

What is Yoga Asana and what is Cirque Du Solieil?

  Yoga is an internal practice, all else is a circus

Pattabhi Jois

     The year was 1994 when one of my massage clients asked about doing a little "yoghurt" with me. She said she needed to stretch. And although my yoga practice was still my own I was willing to show her what I knew because I knew enough to know that yoga wasn't a delicious dairy product. Hey, it was a beginning. Fast forward twenty years and I still know that yoga isn't yoghurt, but even with consistent study, practice and teaching of yoga it still seems a nebulous topic. The more you learn about yoga the more you know you don't know much. If you ask twenty yogis what yoga is you will get twenty answers. In the west it has taken on the form of pure exercise for many and that's ok. But yoga is such a deep topic I thought it might be helpful to flesh it out a bit. The word yoga means to yoke, as in to tie or tether together. Imagine two oxen plowing a field and the device on their shoulders keeping them in sync is the yoke. Only in yoga what we are yoking is body & mind. I think if you have 100 people there are 100 varations on this yoking, which is why I do a lot more privates and yoga therapy sessions these days because a one on one teaching is the only way to get specific for an individuals yoking. But let's get to the commonalities that we should all experience in practice. And for the sake of clarity when I say practice in this context I mean asana, or the physical practice. But let's also remember that of the 8 limbs of yoga asana is only one.

     So, what is the difference between asana and shape making anyways? First, for a position you are taking to be considered yoga asana both the spine and the breath must be unrestricted. So in a posture is it helpful to make micro movements of the spine in all six directions that it moves. (Forward fold, backbend, side bends, and twists). If your spinal movement is not accessible in all six directions then you should back off into a smaller version of the posture. Then check in with your breath. Remember we breath 360 degrees into our torso, not just into the front body. So for instance if you are in a side bend, check the side that is compressed to see if you can still breath there. If not, again back off to make it yoga by unrestricting the breath.

     Secondly for a shape to be considered asana we must balance the action of our muscles with the softening of our shape. We must find a right amount of effort with awareness of our foundation and a vibrant core, but equally important is that we find a certain amount of ease, or letting go. The ease is generally found in our perimeter, our jaw, our skin. It is not more important to apply effort than it is to find ease, but rather like wings of a bird we need them both to fly. So, find your Goldilocks posture: not too hard and not too soft.

     And, finally, yoga asana is defined by continually bringing the wandering mind back to the breath as it moves through our bodies. it is not defined by staying present which is nearly impossible, but by returning to presence again and again. In the body mind conversation that yoga is, breath is the middleman. So keep observing the breath and every time you notice your mind has wandered, congratulations you are back. It is best to just simply welcome yourself back.

     This most basic practice of yoga, checking in with your spine and breath and balancing your effort and ease and being present can be done on the mat, on the sofa, in the grocery store and in conversation. it is especially useful in uncomfortable conversations and situations. Take a few moments out to stealthily practice a little yoga in your off the mat life and see what happens. It may just make a yogi out of you yet.