(Cross-posted to another blog, Spicy Confessions from an Alluring Yoga Temptress. You can probably expect a certain amount of overlap, silence and/or chaos for a while, while I try to get all my blogs in a row. So to speak. Bear with me. I'm sure it'll all be worth it.)
I just tried (and failed) to read Sex at Dawn by C. Ryan and C. Jetha. Back to the library it went! I failed not because I thought it was wrong or badly written, but because frankly I just lost interest. The question of how humans are programmed is just not all that interesting to me beyond a certain level, especially when I see so many sub-groups with agendas around the research. Sexual orientation is a choice? Choose differently! Sexual orientation is genetic? How about a pill or surgery to change it! Humans are born to be monogamous–look at the evidence! Whoops, change that; we’re actually born to be sexual sharers, creating social cohesion through sexual favors.
The research is important, yes, because understanding is a useful thing. But ultimately we’ve got these brains to contend with, these brains that actually allow us to think about and observe ourselves, and make choices beyond our biology. So it’s not that the research itself is a bad idea but what we often get up to with it, which is to make rules about right and wrong. We also have the bad habit of picking and choosing the pieces of the research that work for us, and leaving the rest of it out. So, for example, maybe I read Sex at Dawn and I love the fact that it looks like multiple relationships of both affection and sexuality are the thing for humans (Yay, I'm right! I win!), but frankly I’m not so hot about the idea that we might be better off sharing our sexuality with everyone in our social group, as well as sharing the child care (Oh, let's just forget about that part, shall we?). If I want to back up my own behavior, I’m going to have to be cautious in my reading. Ultimately though what I'm really interested in is choice, and I want to make my choices based on what I think is important.
Want to be monogamous? That’s fabulous! Who cares that humans aren’t built that way? It’s a great way to direct and focus your energy, and minimize your risks of sexually transmitted diseases. Is it challenging? Awesome! Disciplined effort is a great practice and a useful skill in all kinds of ways.
Want to have multiple relationships? Terrific! Living outside the social norms gives you permission to experiment and gives you perspective, and empathy, for the outsider. Do you struggle with it sometimes? Awesome! What a great way to confront your inner demons by sharing with others.
Want to lie or cheat in your relationships? Oh, not so fast! Want to make rules about everyone else’s behavior because they’re all doing it wrong? Whoa there! In a lot of ways I think that life is a big experiment where we are both the scientist and the subject, and how amazing is that that we get to play around with all these big ideas in this fascinating body we have! Really, that's what yoga is in a nutshell! But pulling other people in as puppets in our little play? Or trying to shore up our beliefs out of fear? That’s just not playing fair.
Yes, do the research. Yes, think about it. But ultimately we all have to figure out what truths we’re going to live by, in order to do well by ourselves and others.
copyright 2011 J. Autumn Needles
Showing posts with label choice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label choice. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Making Up My Mind
You know how it feels when there’s that one yoga pose that feels like it’s so close you can taste it, but you just can’t quite make it there? Maybe it’s a difficult pose that you’ve had as your goal for years, working up to it but never quite managing it completely. Or maybe it’s a pose you do every day in class, watching everyone else flop into it effortlessly while you continue to struggle. It just doesn’t seem fair, either that you’ve worked so hard for so long without making it to that final pose, or that a pose that seems like the most basic pose in the world just won’t work for you.
It’s easy to get fixated on the things that don’t come easily, that everyone else seems to do well, and then feel like a failure. When I talk with students I try not to use language that indicates one variation of a pose as being better than another, or harder than another, or more advanced than another. I don’t ever want people to feel like they’ve failed at anything, or that they are somehow less than anyone else, or that they can’t access the experience of yoga if they can’t get into a particular pose. But I suppose it is human nature to want what we don’t have and to believe that somehow there are landmarks we are supposed to achieve at certain times or fall behind the pack.
Recently I was having sex with someone and, as part of our play, he tried to insert his whole hand into me. Not shoving it in, but working me up to it gradually. However, when he reached the level of the last set of knuckles, I tensed up. I could feel my body working against him, trying to keep him out, and I finally had to say “enough, I can’t do it.”
I felt frustrated, but I also knew my body had had enough and simply wasn’t going to cooperate. The frustration comes because over and over I have reached the point of almost being able to take in a whole hand. And then right when I can feel that it’s close, and that one more push will do it, I just…can’t. I just can’t. This is something I have wanted to do, first just as curiosity, more recently with desire and intention. I have begun to believe that I am missing out on something and I want very much to experience it. I try not to let my desire get in the way of my connection with my partner, or in the way of the fun we have together. After our date I wrote him an email and in it I said, “I want this, but it’s like my body hasn’t completely made up its mind about it.”
When I wrote that I realized immediately the truth of it. My body hasn’t made up its mind. I have, but my body hasn’t, and my body definitely gets a vote on this decision. With that realization, something relaxed inside. This isn’t about me trying and failing, which is how I had been feeling. It’s that my body hasn’t fully committed to the idea.
I also immediately realized that I could use the same insight to think about yoga poses that feel out of reach. When there are poses I can’t do, it’s not that I have failed at them. My body simply hasn’t made up its mind to do it. All I can really do is keep my desire focused but playful, without force, and continue to keep my body in preparation for what I want to do with it. In the meantime, I can enjoy the things I am able to do, the things my body has made up its mind to do, and know that the final decision is not entirely up to me.
When I talk with my students I try to use the same type of verbiage, saying things like, “If your body doesn’t like this…” or “Check with your knee to see how it feels about this,” or “Your lower back gets the veto on this one.” My reasoning for using that language is that I don’t want my students thinking things like, “I can’t,” or feeling like they’ve failed somehow. If we can talk about the body as having its own intelligence, then we can be participants in more of a committee decision about the things we do or don’t do.
There are some pitfalls to thinking this way though. Frequently we manage to separate from the body only to make it into an enemy, somehow out to get us, or into a stupid imbecile, incapable of doing anything right. If instead we can imagine being part of a team tasked with accomplishing something we can simply see each piece of the team as having individual strengths and weaknesses. The accomplishment will need all of us working together, and if one isn’t ready, then we simply can’t go forward.
There are a couple of other key ideas around working toward these goals. One is to remember to have fun on the way there. My example of having sex is true for this. So I couldn’t get someone’s hand inside me—so what? I was having an incredible time with him and it would be idiotic for me to decide the entire experience was a failure due to that one thing. Same thing in a yoga class; no one can get through an entire class without doing anything well. I’ve never seen a student without strengths in various areas. I recently read a quote from a yoga student who had struggled with obesity but in yoga class was able to recognize “the magnificence of the body” which I thought was a lovely way to think about it. “The magnificence of the body.” Even the things a body can keep doing to sustain life and health when treated badly is miraculous; how much more so as part of a healthy well-oiled team.
If you can find a place to have fun or enjoy your situation, even around the places that are hard, even better. I recently read a lovely book about a guy’s yoga experience called Stretch by Neal Pollack. At one point he quotes Swami Sivananda: “There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore, acquire contentment.” And it seems to me this is still true. If you’ve ever achieved something you’ve wanted, has that made you stop wanting anything else? Craving and desire are part of the human condition. Frankly it seems to me that without them, we might as well follow the example of one of my relatives and just sit on the couch, smoke and do crossword puzzles until we dry up and die. We need desire to get us moving, but once we’re moving we need to figure out how to enjoy the movement without the goal. Because for one thing there’s always another goal out there. And for another thing, the achieving of the goal is a split second and then it’s gone. When my students get frustrated because they can’t touch their toes in a forward bend, I tell them, there’s nothing down on their toes except maybe dirt. The actual touching of the toes isn’t special enough to skip what it takes to get there correctly with good form.
Later in the book, the author quotes one of his teachers as saying, “Blessed are the stiff. The flexible are cursed. People are very disappointed when they get their chin to their shin. It’s all still breath and the spaces in between. There’s nothing else.” If we can get interested enough in the movement without the goal, treat our bodies like treasured allies that protect and defend us as we protect and defend them, and remember that goals only lead to other goals, then maybe we can have fun, loosen up and surprise ourselves by getting down to those toes after all.
copyright 2010 J. Autumn Needles
It’s easy to get fixated on the things that don’t come easily, that everyone else seems to do well, and then feel like a failure. When I talk with students I try not to use language that indicates one variation of a pose as being better than another, or harder than another, or more advanced than another. I don’t ever want people to feel like they’ve failed at anything, or that they are somehow less than anyone else, or that they can’t access the experience of yoga if they can’t get into a particular pose. But I suppose it is human nature to want what we don’t have and to believe that somehow there are landmarks we are supposed to achieve at certain times or fall behind the pack.
Recently I was having sex with someone and, as part of our play, he tried to insert his whole hand into me. Not shoving it in, but working me up to it gradually. However, when he reached the level of the last set of knuckles, I tensed up. I could feel my body working against him, trying to keep him out, and I finally had to say “enough, I can’t do it.”
I felt frustrated, but I also knew my body had had enough and simply wasn’t going to cooperate. The frustration comes because over and over I have reached the point of almost being able to take in a whole hand. And then right when I can feel that it’s close, and that one more push will do it, I just…can’t. I just can’t. This is something I have wanted to do, first just as curiosity, more recently with desire and intention. I have begun to believe that I am missing out on something and I want very much to experience it. I try not to let my desire get in the way of my connection with my partner, or in the way of the fun we have together. After our date I wrote him an email and in it I said, “I want this, but it’s like my body hasn’t completely made up its mind about it.”
When I wrote that I realized immediately the truth of it. My body hasn’t made up its mind. I have, but my body hasn’t, and my body definitely gets a vote on this decision. With that realization, something relaxed inside. This isn’t about me trying and failing, which is how I had been feeling. It’s that my body hasn’t fully committed to the idea.
I also immediately realized that I could use the same insight to think about yoga poses that feel out of reach. When there are poses I can’t do, it’s not that I have failed at them. My body simply hasn’t made up its mind to do it. All I can really do is keep my desire focused but playful, without force, and continue to keep my body in preparation for what I want to do with it. In the meantime, I can enjoy the things I am able to do, the things my body has made up its mind to do, and know that the final decision is not entirely up to me.
When I talk with my students I try to use the same type of verbiage, saying things like, “If your body doesn’t like this…” or “Check with your knee to see how it feels about this,” or “Your lower back gets the veto on this one.” My reasoning for using that language is that I don’t want my students thinking things like, “I can’t,” or feeling like they’ve failed somehow. If we can talk about the body as having its own intelligence, then we can be participants in more of a committee decision about the things we do or don’t do.
There are some pitfalls to thinking this way though. Frequently we manage to separate from the body only to make it into an enemy, somehow out to get us, or into a stupid imbecile, incapable of doing anything right. If instead we can imagine being part of a team tasked with accomplishing something we can simply see each piece of the team as having individual strengths and weaknesses. The accomplishment will need all of us working together, and if one isn’t ready, then we simply can’t go forward.
There are a couple of other key ideas around working toward these goals. One is to remember to have fun on the way there. My example of having sex is true for this. So I couldn’t get someone’s hand inside me—so what? I was having an incredible time with him and it would be idiotic for me to decide the entire experience was a failure due to that one thing. Same thing in a yoga class; no one can get through an entire class without doing anything well. I’ve never seen a student without strengths in various areas. I recently read a quote from a yoga student who had struggled with obesity but in yoga class was able to recognize “the magnificence of the body” which I thought was a lovely way to think about it. “The magnificence of the body.” Even the things a body can keep doing to sustain life and health when treated badly is miraculous; how much more so as part of a healthy well-oiled team.
If you can find a place to have fun or enjoy your situation, even around the places that are hard, even better. I recently read a lovely book about a guy’s yoga experience called Stretch by Neal Pollack. At one point he quotes Swami Sivananda: “There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore, acquire contentment.” And it seems to me this is still true. If you’ve ever achieved something you’ve wanted, has that made you stop wanting anything else? Craving and desire are part of the human condition. Frankly it seems to me that without them, we might as well follow the example of one of my relatives and just sit on the couch, smoke and do crossword puzzles until we dry up and die. We need desire to get us moving, but once we’re moving we need to figure out how to enjoy the movement without the goal. Because for one thing there’s always another goal out there. And for another thing, the achieving of the goal is a split second and then it’s gone. When my students get frustrated because they can’t touch their toes in a forward bend, I tell them, there’s nothing down on their toes except maybe dirt. The actual touching of the toes isn’t special enough to skip what it takes to get there correctly with good form.
Later in the book, the author quotes one of his teachers as saying, “Blessed are the stiff. The flexible are cursed. People are very disappointed when they get their chin to their shin. It’s all still breath and the spaces in between. There’s nothing else.” If we can get interested enough in the movement without the goal, treat our bodies like treasured allies that protect and defend us as we protect and defend them, and remember that goals only lead to other goals, then maybe we can have fun, loosen up and surprise ourselves by getting down to those toes after all.
copyright 2010 J. Autumn Needles
Monday, September 28, 2009
Packing the 10 Essentials
My last blog entry got me thinking, so if the warmth of hospitality is one of the essential human elements I'd like to have for my own and take with me on the trip, what are the other nine, to continue the metaphor? I'm not sure (and you know I'll be trying to figure it out), but I have some thoughts about my next desired element on the list.
When I was a child I was smart but not kind; as a result, I valued intelligence over kindness, probably because I wanted to be loved for what I was. As an adult, I am still smart, but I hope I have acquired kindness, so now I value kindness over intelligence, perhaps still because I want to be loved for what I have become. I am still the child I was; I can see the same traits I was born with in myself today. But I want to know that I can grow layers, get larger, be better, move outwards.
In reading another woman's recent blog entry describing the bumbling and arrogant attempts by a man to impress her, I could hear and understand her angry and disgusted perspective on the story even as beneath it I could hear another possible variation, one where a lonely man in his attempt to connect with a beautiful and desirable young woman blows himself up, makes himself more than what he is. If you hear that story, you have to wonder (I have to wonder) is this such a terrible thing, worthy of disdain? What I always come back to is that the only thing I can possibly learn from observing someone else's behavior and actions doesn't have anything to do with them and their motivations and inner life, but rather with myself and my own choices. Who do I want to be? And I believe I want to be someone who gives people the benefit of the doubt. And even if someone is really and truly a complete and irredeemable asshole, what does that actually have to do with me and my life, except for me to know that I don't want to be one? I don't know that person's story, but if I want to give myself some room to move in my own story I need to allow it for him as well.
I have spent a lot of time and energy in my life making pronouncements for myself, that then become my rules to live by. I am this, I am not that, I like this, I don't like that. I have decided that in my personal practice I will try this: Instead of saying "I do not like cucumbers," to say instead, "Any time I have tried them, I have not liked cucumbers." This does not necessarily indicate a willingness on my part to go forth from now on eating cucumbers and loving them. However, I realize that I frequently don't leave myself any room around the edges of these pronouncements about myself to, I don't know, move a little. My method is completely appropriate for a science lab: I have observed this behavior/preference/whatever in response to this stimulus in the past and therefore can predict it happening again in the future. It sounds reasonable. But I know from my own experience that I have learned and changed–my behavior, my preferences, my interests, my desires.
I suspect cucumbers will not make an appearance on my table, but who knows what may?
copyright 2009 J. Autumn Needles
When I was a child I was smart but not kind; as a result, I valued intelligence over kindness, probably because I wanted to be loved for what I was. As an adult, I am still smart, but I hope I have acquired kindness, so now I value kindness over intelligence, perhaps still because I want to be loved for what I have become. I am still the child I was; I can see the same traits I was born with in myself today. But I want to know that I can grow layers, get larger, be better, move outwards.
In reading another woman's recent blog entry describing the bumbling and arrogant attempts by a man to impress her, I could hear and understand her angry and disgusted perspective on the story even as beneath it I could hear another possible variation, one where a lonely man in his attempt to connect with a beautiful and desirable young woman blows himself up, makes himself more than what he is. If you hear that story, you have to wonder (I have to wonder) is this such a terrible thing, worthy of disdain? What I always come back to is that the only thing I can possibly learn from observing someone else's behavior and actions doesn't have anything to do with them and their motivations and inner life, but rather with myself and my own choices. Who do I want to be? And I believe I want to be someone who gives people the benefit of the doubt. And even if someone is really and truly a complete and irredeemable asshole, what does that actually have to do with me and my life, except for me to know that I don't want to be one? I don't know that person's story, but if I want to give myself some room to move in my own story I need to allow it for him as well.
I have spent a lot of time and energy in my life making pronouncements for myself, that then become my rules to live by. I am this, I am not that, I like this, I don't like that. I have decided that in my personal practice I will try this: Instead of saying "I do not like cucumbers," to say instead, "Any time I have tried them, I have not liked cucumbers." This does not necessarily indicate a willingness on my part to go forth from now on eating cucumbers and loving them. However, I realize that I frequently don't leave myself any room around the edges of these pronouncements about myself to, I don't know, move a little. My method is completely appropriate for a science lab: I have observed this behavior/preference/whatever in response to this stimulus in the past and therefore can predict it happening again in the future. It sounds reasonable. But I know from my own experience that I have learned and changed–my behavior, my preferences, my interests, my desires.
I suspect cucumbers will not make an appearance on my table, but who knows what may?
copyright 2009 J. Autumn Needles
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Santosha, or Why the hell won't it stop snowing?
I had all these great plans about how my surgery and recovery were going to work out. I would teach all the way up until the morning before, wrap up all my other tasks, get lots of love and energy from friends. I knew who would be with me before and after, and I imagined my recovery in loving detail: Myself, maybe slightly uncomfortable and with limited mobility but handling it gracefully and coming back remarkably quickly to my old self; unlimited time to connect with the people I loved with no obligations; and of course I had the post-surgery list of mostly gentle tasks which I would take on, one by one, no rush but completing them easily. Ease was really the word I would have used pre-surgery to describe what I had planned for myself, and I saw myself wafting through these two weeks like a gentle breeze. Kind of makes you want to run right out and have some surgery yourself, doesn't it?
The reality came with the snow. I had not been imagining my surgery in loving detail; in fact, I felt anxious about it, and so I had the opportunity to sit with that for a while. (Don't you just love how many opportunities we have in life for growth and learning?) I realized after a while that my anxiety stemmed not from a fear of death, which is what I had assumed, but from a fear of pain, a fear of being afraid, a fear of the changes that might come all unexpected and unplanned. So really it was a fear of life I guess. And then it started snowing.
I would love to say that the snow messed everything up, but the truth is that the snow messed with my head. My fears became more specifically focused: My surgery would be delayed (it wasn't), we'd be trapped at the hospital (we weren't), I wouldn't be able to fulfill my pre-surgery obligations (I did), etc. The surgery went as planned and I went home and slept. And it kept snowing.
One of my fascinations with human beings is that we can hold so much contradiction, every noun (person, place or thing), every verb (action, doing, being) is surrounded by a complicated tangle of beliefs and emotions. (Remember diagramming sentences and teasing out those snarls of adverbs and adjectives, phrases and clauses, into tidy pruned branches?) But unlike the sentences in a novel, human beings are stories telling themselves while being told and everything keeps changing.
When I worked in sexual assault, people would often ask, "Isn't that really depressing?" The truth is that while it gives you an odd lens through which to view the world, it also gave me an opportunity for which I was truly grateful. Over and over again I got to be with people who had had this horrible thing happen to them (noun and verb), and accompany them on their journey to create something around it. The interesting thing is that people mostly create beauty.
After my surgery, my primary partner went back to work, my secondary sweetie went back to her town two hours away, and it kept snowing. My post-surgery plans were completely destroyed by the snow and I was trapped at home alone. And in my desire to create something beautiful out of something difficult, I settled in to enjoy the snow. Because I am a good yogini, I chanted and meditated and sent healing energy to myself. I completed all of the tasks on my list, I worked on my upcoming workshops and finished the essay I was working on. I had nothing but sympathy for the friends and loved ones who were themselves trapped by the weather while trying to figure out their own plans for getting to and from work and the upcoming holidays. I knitted them all sweaters. I painted the house, re-organized my files, backed up everything on the computer.
Ha! Okay, actually what I did while realizing that my plans had been changed for me, and that I needed to adapt, was to throw a big fit and get angry at everyone and sulk. And since I can't manipulate the snow, I threw everything I had into manipulating the people in my life into DOING WHAT I WANT THEM TO DO ANYWAY, DAMMIT!
Oh look! It's...another opportunity! I am generally very aware of when I am being manipulative. It usually has to do with being slightly dishonest about what I am feeling in the moment. And it's all about teasing out that tangle around my noun/verb and picking out what I choose to display. The day before yesterday I was having my tantrum, feeling forgotten by my friends, full of loneliness and self-pity and the unfairness of it all. By yesterday morning I was in recovery mode, figuring out what to do next and how to take care of myself. By afternoon I had had my first visitor and was content. My partner was home from work and I was enjoying her company. I had my first outing post-surgery. What I was feeling during those 24 hours was all sorts of things; what I was thinking during those 24 hours covered a huge territory. So what would I pick out of that mess to tell you, had you asked me how I was?
I have a perverse fascination with the social networking sites. Many of them have that feature where you can put in what you're doing right now and how you feel about it. I notice about myself that I often don't want to tell people what I'm feeling right now in that feature. I observe what I feel, but then I think about it. Am I feeling private? Do I want sympathy? Do I want laughter? And frequently I am holding on to the past, displaying for people what I DID feel, rather than what I DO feel, because I want them to respond to that.
It snowed again this morning. My partner is back to work and I am back to being trapped alone at home. But a shift has happened. I recently finished reading My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. As a neuroanatomist who has suffered a stroke and recovered, she has an interesting way of thinking about that process. In the book she talks about the choices we make to run specific brain circuitry. She makes the point that very little of what happens there is out of our control (90 seconds worth per reaction, according to her) and that the rest of it is ours to determine. And she talks about choosing to run the circuitry for joy, rather than that for fear or pain or anger, because it's a better way to live. When I read that, I immediately thought, hey, she's talking about yoga! In yoga we talk about the fact that we already live in bliss and that we can access it at any time. We talk about the patterns of our minds and how we tend to run the same patterns over and over again, and that becomes our practice, to establish and run different patterns by choice. One pattern that we can choose to run is santosha, contentment or making peace with what is.
It is tempting to imagine that santosha looks like that paragraph up there of what I would have liked my response to have been to my situation. If only I were a better person, not so petty and mean and manipulative. Last night I had a reminder of what I think santosha actually looks like when I talked with a friend on the phone. I was so happy to hear from her, and, when I heard her sincere sorrow and sympathy for my situation, something in me relaxed. She talked about the snow and how simply getting to and from work day in and day out has taken every scrap of energy she has, and how upset she is at all her plans for the holidays going awry, but then she went on, "This is going to sound weird, Autumn, but yesterday as I was struggling with driving to work, completely exhausted, I was just so in awe. I mean, I could barely keep my eyes on the road. Everything was just so beautiful."
It isn't that the bad things don't happen. It isn't that we somehow erase them from our consciousness. As I shift from what I wanted this time to be into what it is, I feel, I feel, I feel–I feel hamstrung and helpless in the face of the weather; even as I look for a change in the weather report, I feel so grateful that I don't need to get anywhere right now. I feel frustrated that the concerned attention from friends I wanted will become coffee dates to catch up on the news; even as I feel cheated by fate, I feel glad to recognize that my normal routine will return. I feel anxious to return my body to where it was and worried about teaching again; even as I mope about everything I can't do, I feel pleased and powerful at my ability to return to my practice, adapted to my current needs. I feel sad that I won't get to have my boyfriend come take care of me; even as I cling to the idea that it might still be possible, time is moving and when the snow melts I think I will be well enough not to want to lie around and be cared for. I mourn as I let go of the idea that this is an important connection I'm losing, but even in my disappointment, there is the new thought that maybe that won't be so bad; that in fact, I'm kind of tired of being in recovery and it might be nice not to be an invalid when I finally get to see him. I feel annoyed at friends who disappeared, and disappointed in myself for my small-mindedness. And I feel filled with wonder at how many people surprised me with their support, and I remind myself that sometimes love comes when you're looking the other way. I keep having this gleeful thought that I am really learning something right now, about how you just have to put out as much kindness and love and generosity as you possibly can to whomever is around you at the moment, and trust that while it may not come back from them specifically, it will come back. And the odd thing is that I recognize that this is something I really need to learn, that I need to understand, because it does not come easily to me, so I also feel grateful to have this opportunity brought to me. So even silly, limited, mean-spirited me, even I have made a beautiful bonsai out of the thing given me, the noun/verb not of my choosing.
I went to visit my friend Kellie in Ohio a month before her death. We both knew this would be the last visit. I sat on her bed and she told me she had been hoarding painkillers, just in case. But "I'm not ready yet," she said. She was paralyzed by this time from the armpits down, had been through two rounds of chemotherapy and many surgeries, and she lay in bed looking out one tiny window. The view from the window didn't look like anything special to me; I looked out and just saw the small tree put in for landscaping. Kellie looked past me through the window and her face opened like the sky. "It's still so good," she said. "You know? It's still so good." Let it snow, I guess. Santosha.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
The reality came with the snow. I had not been imagining my surgery in loving detail; in fact, I felt anxious about it, and so I had the opportunity to sit with that for a while. (Don't you just love how many opportunities we have in life for growth and learning?) I realized after a while that my anxiety stemmed not from a fear of death, which is what I had assumed, but from a fear of pain, a fear of being afraid, a fear of the changes that might come all unexpected and unplanned. So really it was a fear of life I guess. And then it started snowing.
I would love to say that the snow messed everything up, but the truth is that the snow messed with my head. My fears became more specifically focused: My surgery would be delayed (it wasn't), we'd be trapped at the hospital (we weren't), I wouldn't be able to fulfill my pre-surgery obligations (I did), etc. The surgery went as planned and I went home and slept. And it kept snowing.
One of my fascinations with human beings is that we can hold so much contradiction, every noun (person, place or thing), every verb (action, doing, being) is surrounded by a complicated tangle of beliefs and emotions. (Remember diagramming sentences and teasing out those snarls of adverbs and adjectives, phrases and clauses, into tidy pruned branches?) But unlike the sentences in a novel, human beings are stories telling themselves while being told and everything keeps changing.
When I worked in sexual assault, people would often ask, "Isn't that really depressing?" The truth is that while it gives you an odd lens through which to view the world, it also gave me an opportunity for which I was truly grateful. Over and over again I got to be with people who had had this horrible thing happen to them (noun and verb), and accompany them on their journey to create something around it. The interesting thing is that people mostly create beauty.
After my surgery, my primary partner went back to work, my secondary sweetie went back to her town two hours away, and it kept snowing. My post-surgery plans were completely destroyed by the snow and I was trapped at home alone. And in my desire to create something beautiful out of something difficult, I settled in to enjoy the snow. Because I am a good yogini, I chanted and meditated and sent healing energy to myself. I completed all of the tasks on my list, I worked on my upcoming workshops and finished the essay I was working on. I had nothing but sympathy for the friends and loved ones who were themselves trapped by the weather while trying to figure out their own plans for getting to and from work and the upcoming holidays. I knitted them all sweaters. I painted the house, re-organized my files, backed up everything on the computer.
Ha! Okay, actually what I did while realizing that my plans had been changed for me, and that I needed to adapt, was to throw a big fit and get angry at everyone and sulk. And since I can't manipulate the snow, I threw everything I had into manipulating the people in my life into DOING WHAT I WANT THEM TO DO ANYWAY, DAMMIT!
Oh look! It's...another opportunity! I am generally very aware of when I am being manipulative. It usually has to do with being slightly dishonest about what I am feeling in the moment. And it's all about teasing out that tangle around my noun/verb and picking out what I choose to display. The day before yesterday I was having my tantrum, feeling forgotten by my friends, full of loneliness and self-pity and the unfairness of it all. By yesterday morning I was in recovery mode, figuring out what to do next and how to take care of myself. By afternoon I had had my first visitor and was content. My partner was home from work and I was enjoying her company. I had my first outing post-surgery. What I was feeling during those 24 hours was all sorts of things; what I was thinking during those 24 hours covered a huge territory. So what would I pick out of that mess to tell you, had you asked me how I was?
I have a perverse fascination with the social networking sites. Many of them have that feature where you can put in what you're doing right now and how you feel about it. I notice about myself that I often don't want to tell people what I'm feeling right now in that feature. I observe what I feel, but then I think about it. Am I feeling private? Do I want sympathy? Do I want laughter? And frequently I am holding on to the past, displaying for people what I DID feel, rather than what I DO feel, because I want them to respond to that.
It snowed again this morning. My partner is back to work and I am back to being trapped alone at home. But a shift has happened. I recently finished reading My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. As a neuroanatomist who has suffered a stroke and recovered, she has an interesting way of thinking about that process. In the book she talks about the choices we make to run specific brain circuitry. She makes the point that very little of what happens there is out of our control (90 seconds worth per reaction, according to her) and that the rest of it is ours to determine. And she talks about choosing to run the circuitry for joy, rather than that for fear or pain or anger, because it's a better way to live. When I read that, I immediately thought, hey, she's talking about yoga! In yoga we talk about the fact that we already live in bliss and that we can access it at any time. We talk about the patterns of our minds and how we tend to run the same patterns over and over again, and that becomes our practice, to establish and run different patterns by choice. One pattern that we can choose to run is santosha, contentment or making peace with what is.
It is tempting to imagine that santosha looks like that paragraph up there of what I would have liked my response to have been to my situation. If only I were a better person, not so petty and mean and manipulative. Last night I had a reminder of what I think santosha actually looks like when I talked with a friend on the phone. I was so happy to hear from her, and, when I heard her sincere sorrow and sympathy for my situation, something in me relaxed. She talked about the snow and how simply getting to and from work day in and day out has taken every scrap of energy she has, and how upset she is at all her plans for the holidays going awry, but then she went on, "This is going to sound weird, Autumn, but yesterday as I was struggling with driving to work, completely exhausted, I was just so in awe. I mean, I could barely keep my eyes on the road. Everything was just so beautiful."
It isn't that the bad things don't happen. It isn't that we somehow erase them from our consciousness. As I shift from what I wanted this time to be into what it is, I feel, I feel, I feel–I feel hamstrung and helpless in the face of the weather; even as I look for a change in the weather report, I feel so grateful that I don't need to get anywhere right now. I feel frustrated that the concerned attention from friends I wanted will become coffee dates to catch up on the news; even as I feel cheated by fate, I feel glad to recognize that my normal routine will return. I feel anxious to return my body to where it was and worried about teaching again; even as I mope about everything I can't do, I feel pleased and powerful at my ability to return to my practice, adapted to my current needs. I feel sad that I won't get to have my boyfriend come take care of me; even as I cling to the idea that it might still be possible, time is moving and when the snow melts I think I will be well enough not to want to lie around and be cared for. I mourn as I let go of the idea that this is an important connection I'm losing, but even in my disappointment, there is the new thought that maybe that won't be so bad; that in fact, I'm kind of tired of being in recovery and it might be nice not to be an invalid when I finally get to see him. I feel annoyed at friends who disappeared, and disappointed in myself for my small-mindedness. And I feel filled with wonder at how many people surprised me with their support, and I remind myself that sometimes love comes when you're looking the other way. I keep having this gleeful thought that I am really learning something right now, about how you just have to put out as much kindness and love and generosity as you possibly can to whomever is around you at the moment, and trust that while it may not come back from them specifically, it will come back. And the odd thing is that I recognize that this is something I really need to learn, that I need to understand, because it does not come easily to me, so I also feel grateful to have this opportunity brought to me. So even silly, limited, mean-spirited me, even I have made a beautiful bonsai out of the thing given me, the noun/verb not of my choosing.
I went to visit my friend Kellie in Ohio a month before her death. We both knew this would be the last visit. I sat on her bed and she told me she had been hoarding painkillers, just in case. But "I'm not ready yet," she said. She was paralyzed by this time from the armpits down, had been through two rounds of chemotherapy and many surgeries, and she lay in bed looking out one tiny window. The view from the window didn't look like anything special to me; I looked out and just saw the small tree put in for landscaping. Kellie looked past me through the window and her face opened like the sky. "It's still so good," she said. "You know? It's still so good." Let it snow, I guess. Santosha.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
Monday, February 11, 2008
Hey, whose path is this anyway?
It occurred to me to wonder, as I wander on and off this path I'm on, getting lost and finding my way back, whose path is this really? And is it marked, or am I wandering around in a featureless space with little animator goggles on that are creating some kind of reality for me? Kind of like the 21st century version of Plato's cave?
What brought this up for me was a question from a yoga student: She felt that there's some kind of ideal out there for each pose, and isn't that what we're trying to reach? She has a dance background, like me, and comes from that concept of trying to get to that one exact perfectly correct and beautiful placement. I have a couple of issues with that: One is, it was exactly that kind of noble goal that brought me to an entirely unhealthy way of being in my body, treating it like a prisoner of war that was holding out on me, and two is, I think of yoga practice as kind of a special science experiment where objective curiosity and observation is crucial, and having too much goal in there skews the results.
So I was thinking about all this later, and thinking about how often we easily slip into wanting someone else's ideal life. Kind of like that ideal map of a pose, there's also an ideal map of a life out there somewhere and that's the one we want for ourselves. I remember talking with my neuroscience professor once either close to or right after graduation and feeling almost sick with envy. Her life just seemed so damn easy in so many ways because she had a very singular focus, and because of that focus her career path was laid out in a nicely marked straight line for her. She had never strayed from it and she was entirely happy. I, on the other hand, felt like I was scattered all over everything and every step I took was taking me down some kind of Dr. Seussian trail, in no particular direction at all.
Now, twenty years later I look back and there's still no straight line back there behind me, but I've had a really fun life. I love my life and I love my body–the way they are. They still both take me by surprise sometimes and I like that. Don't get me wrong–I still sometimes yearn for something more, something clear, something easy, something perfect. I do think there's probably an ideal out there for everything, something we're striving for, but I think it's unique to us individually. So there is no perfect essence of Triangle Pose; how could essence of Triangle ever take into consideration my own beauty, my own unique quality? There is only the perfect Triangle Pose for me today, right now, this second and it's the very pose I'm doing. And my path is uniquely my own, correct only for me, and I fill it the best way I can.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
What brought this up for me was a question from a yoga student: She felt that there's some kind of ideal out there for each pose, and isn't that what we're trying to reach? She has a dance background, like me, and comes from that concept of trying to get to that one exact perfectly correct and beautiful placement. I have a couple of issues with that: One is, it was exactly that kind of noble goal that brought me to an entirely unhealthy way of being in my body, treating it like a prisoner of war that was holding out on me, and two is, I think of yoga practice as kind of a special science experiment where objective curiosity and observation is crucial, and having too much goal in there skews the results.
So I was thinking about all this later, and thinking about how often we easily slip into wanting someone else's ideal life. Kind of like that ideal map of a pose, there's also an ideal map of a life out there somewhere and that's the one we want for ourselves. I remember talking with my neuroscience professor once either close to or right after graduation and feeling almost sick with envy. Her life just seemed so damn easy in so many ways because she had a very singular focus, and because of that focus her career path was laid out in a nicely marked straight line for her. She had never strayed from it and she was entirely happy. I, on the other hand, felt like I was scattered all over everything and every step I took was taking me down some kind of Dr. Seussian trail, in no particular direction at all.
Now, twenty years later I look back and there's still no straight line back there behind me, but I've had a really fun life. I love my life and I love my body–the way they are. They still both take me by surprise sometimes and I like that. Don't get me wrong–I still sometimes yearn for something more, something clear, something easy, something perfect. I do think there's probably an ideal out there for everything, something we're striving for, but I think it's unique to us individually. So there is no perfect essence of Triangle Pose; how could essence of Triangle ever take into consideration my own beauty, my own unique quality? There is only the perfect Triangle Pose for me today, right now, this second and it's the very pose I'm doing. And my path is uniquely my own, correct only for me, and I fill it the best way I can.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Stretching your Legs
The other day in one of my classes I got that inevitable question: "So, what exactly is the purpose of Downward-Facing Dog? What does it do?" Probably the best answer to the question is, beats me...what's it do for you? Not many students appreciate a teacher being smart ass, even when that answer is perfectly true.
I knew that wasn't the desired response though so I gave it my best, describing how Dog was at once a power pose, requiring strength throughout the body, that it focused attention on both arms and legs bearing weight, that it was an inversion, with the head lower than the heart, and a forward bend, and in a way a back bend as well, and that it worked to stretch the whole back of the body, and that it could serve as a point of reference during practice by returning to it again and again to observe any changes.
Mostly what she gathered from that is that it's good for stretching out the backs of the legs. Which it is. But actually if what you want to do is stretch your legs there are better, easier ways to do it. Dog gives you too much at once to think about for it to be the most effective leg stretcher out there.
What I actually think about Dog, and any other pose for that matter, is that it provides a context within which to view your own death. You can stretch your legs at any gym or any street corner before you begin your jog. But the secret of Dog is that stretching your legs doesn't really matter at all because we're all going to die. With or without tight hamstrings it's going to happen. Stretching your legs at a gym obscures the reality of your death. You can tell yourself that you're making healthier choices by stretching and therefore will live longer and therefore don't really need to think about death at all. Death is something that happens to other people.
Stretching your legs in a yoga class or practice though eventually will lead you to observe the reality of your own death. Because it draws you in to observe the reality of your physical existence with all of its possibilities and all its limitations; observing the tidal movement of the breath and recognizing that eventually the tide flows out for good. Why else would we practice Corpse Pose at the end of class except to practice for our future? We die at the end of every class, only to return again to breathing and movement, return to life and the opportunity to live the life we choose to live. We get to practice dying so that we can live fresh, because we don't get the opportunity to practice life. We choose and we move and we breathe...and we live. Maybe with loose hamstrings this time.
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
I knew that wasn't the desired response though so I gave it my best, describing how Dog was at once a power pose, requiring strength throughout the body, that it focused attention on both arms and legs bearing weight, that it was an inversion, with the head lower than the heart, and a forward bend, and in a way a back bend as well, and that it worked to stretch the whole back of the body, and that it could serve as a point of reference during practice by returning to it again and again to observe any changes.
Mostly what she gathered from that is that it's good for stretching out the backs of the legs. Which it is. But actually if what you want to do is stretch your legs there are better, easier ways to do it. Dog gives you too much at once to think about for it to be the most effective leg stretcher out there.
What I actually think about Dog, and any other pose for that matter, is that it provides a context within which to view your own death. You can stretch your legs at any gym or any street corner before you begin your jog. But the secret of Dog is that stretching your legs doesn't really matter at all because we're all going to die. With or without tight hamstrings it's going to happen. Stretching your legs at a gym obscures the reality of your death. You can tell yourself that you're making healthier choices by stretching and therefore will live longer and therefore don't really need to think about death at all. Death is something that happens to other people.
Stretching your legs in a yoga class or practice though eventually will lead you to observe the reality of your own death. Because it draws you in to observe the reality of your physical existence with all of its possibilities and all its limitations; observing the tidal movement of the breath and recognizing that eventually the tide flows out for good. Why else would we practice Corpse Pose at the end of class except to practice for our future? We die at the end of every class, only to return again to breathing and movement, return to life and the opportunity to live the life we choose to live. We get to practice dying so that we can live fresh, because we don't get the opportunity to practice life. We choose and we move and we breathe...and we live. Maybe with loose hamstrings this time.
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
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