Some time ago I wrote an entry about how nifty people are because we have this incredible ability to take a bad situation and find something of value there. But no attribute is purely one-sided and I've been thinking lately about the flip side of this one. Unfortunately, our use of pure grit and wishful thinking to just make things work out is sometimes too successful and we find ourselves trapped in a cell of our own design somewhere we really don't want to be. The energy we need to just make the best of things is often less than the energy we need to change for the better. So, like the good little animals we are, we make the choice that requires less of us, and in the process we do ourselves damage.
I recently had a cold that took a tediously long time to resolve. I kept working during that time and just slogged through the days. While I was very aware of the feeling of my body working its way through the virus, underlying that I had a strong sense of general well-being and health. And, although I kept working while sick (don't try this at home, kids!), my body just felt strong and vibrant and I didn't feel too stressed out about the work. This experience was in stark contrast to how I felt when I used to get sick at my last job, where my body felt badly used and every virus made me feel beaten down. I point out the difference because I wasn't really unhappy at my last job, and, if I hadn't injured myself badly at one point, I might still be there today. In a job that I drifted into without any particular direction, a job that physically exhausted me to the point where I changed my other habits to accommodate my exhaustion, a job that didn't speak to me or challenge me, a job doing something I frankly thought was a waste, a job where I would come back from one vacation only to begin the countdown to the next one. Why did I stay there so long? I could give you a hundred reasons, but they all boil down to: It's where I was and I needed to find a way not just to be comfortable with it, but also to incorporate it fully into my own story, to make peace with being there, to care about it.
What is difficult is that it always seems so clear in hindsight, that choice we ought to have made long ago. I had a yoga instructor who would occasionally raise his hands to the sky, "Seventeen years!!" he'd cry, referring to his 17 years as a celibate monk. "Why?" he'd ask. I am thinking of this now because I just had another birthday which was the occasion of looking at the joy that is my life today, the places I would like to go with my life in the future that I am working towards, and at the same time looking back and asking that same question. "Why? Why on earth did I waste so much time?"
Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're getting all yogic on me and thinking about how we have to live in the now, and our pasts are what created us, blah blah blah. Whatever. And all kidding aside, I get that. I do. (Mostly.) But I think where I'm going with this is, how do we make the time that we waste less? When we fall into that trap of making the best of things, how do we know when we're doing it right? And how do we know when we're just trying to make our story end a little better by editing it a little?
When I was a kid, I thought that every book was somehow sacred. If I began reading a book, in order to show respect to the author and his or her work and experience, I had to finish it. It didn't really matter if I liked it or thought it was good, my duty was clear. Finish the damn book. I was well into adulthood before I broke that habit. I think as we get older we get less tolerant of wasting time. Or at least of wasting time with something that isn't fun or of value.
Lately in order to help figure this out for myself I've been just beginning to use a new tool that came from an odd place. A few weeks ago I decided to take the test to become a certified group fitness instructor. The process I went through will have to be saved for another day's tale, but one little piece of the information jumped out and made its way into my psyche in a way that I don't think was intended. In creating an appropriate class we were taught to ask 5 questions about the exercises we choose. The first question is, "What is the purpose of this exercise?" At first I wasn't very interested in the question, or in any of the others for that matter. In yoga, as far as I'm concerned, the purpose of the exercise is just to get all the parts of ourselves focused in one place and time so that we can really pay attention carefully. For this class, we were talking about purposes that involved specific muscles and bones and heart rates and body fat percentage–it just wasn't all that interesting to me. But I kept finding the question resonating around my brain. "What is the purpose of this exercise?" And I realized that using that question might be a good way to begin weeding out those things that simply aren't functional in my life, but that I have been making the best of anyway. The second question: "Is it doing that effectively?" Huh. Well, that's actually a really good question. Because if it's not, then why am I here?
I don't have any kind of final wisdom on the matter. I am sure that 10 years from now there will still be things I look back on and think, "Why oh why did I waste that time?" But I think being more mindful of asking those questions at the outset and really paying attention to the answers might help make that wasted time less.
copyright 2009 J. Autumn Needles
Showing posts with label creating reality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creating reality. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Magic Carpet Ride
Well, that's the first thing that came to mind anyway when thinking about this particular topic. I have a feeling this post might be a little brief and free-wheeling...
So I was thinking about life. Now that's a shocker. But really, I was, and what I was thinking was that in some ways it's like taking a yoga class. No, no...stay with me here. What I was thinking is that you come to class and step on your mat and class begins and you really can't leave. I mean, well, obviously, you can, unless someone has locked you in, but the thing is, mostly people don't leave. There you are, on your mat and whatever happens, whatever comes, you just stay. And maybe you do all the poses as illustrated by the instructor, or maybe you make adaptations, or maybe you just say, "Not today, thanks!" and hang out in child's pose to wait out whatever's going on. Often the class will contain poses that are challenging in some way, either physically or emotionally (being bored counts as a challenge!), and there will be poses you don't like much, and poses you like a lot, and maybe there will be your very favorite pose ever and you're so happy to be able to do it! The point is you're there for all of it; you have your reactions, whatever they are, but you're still there on your mat.
And it seems to me that we're born, and then we're just here, and a bunch of stuff happens and we react to it, and we adapt to it, sometimes we flow with it, sometimes we fight it, and sometimes we sit it out, but we're still there in the room on the mat. All of that other stuff is just stuff happening-inside, outside, all around-but our presence in the room is unchanging, until the class is over. We are responsible for whatever we do on the mat, but we can let go of everything else. The mat, the floor, the earth beneath us, the air in the room or in the outdoors, the breath of the other people there with us, it all contains us and supports us so we don't have to do that part. And we have no control over what poses the teacher will teach, or what the other students may do, so we don't have to worry about that either. And we've shown up already by being born, so really we just have to ride, and leave when it's over.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
So I was thinking about life. Now that's a shocker. But really, I was, and what I was thinking was that in some ways it's like taking a yoga class. No, no...stay with me here. What I was thinking is that you come to class and step on your mat and class begins and you really can't leave. I mean, well, obviously, you can, unless someone has locked you in, but the thing is, mostly people don't leave. There you are, on your mat and whatever happens, whatever comes, you just stay. And maybe you do all the poses as illustrated by the instructor, or maybe you make adaptations, or maybe you just say, "Not today, thanks!" and hang out in child's pose to wait out whatever's going on. Often the class will contain poses that are challenging in some way, either physically or emotionally (being bored counts as a challenge!), and there will be poses you don't like much, and poses you like a lot, and maybe there will be your very favorite pose ever and you're so happy to be able to do it! The point is you're there for all of it; you have your reactions, whatever they are, but you're still there on your mat.
And it seems to me that we're born, and then we're just here, and a bunch of stuff happens and we react to it, and we adapt to it, sometimes we flow with it, sometimes we fight it, and sometimes we sit it out, but we're still there in the room on the mat. All of that other stuff is just stuff happening-inside, outside, all around-but our presence in the room is unchanging, until the class is over. We are responsible for whatever we do on the mat, but we can let go of everything else. The mat, the floor, the earth beneath us, the air in the room or in the outdoors, the breath of the other people there with us, it all contains us and supports us so we don't have to do that part. And we have no control over what poses the teacher will teach, or what the other students may do, so we don't have to worry about that either. And we've shown up already by being born, so really we just have to ride, and leave when it's over.
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
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Letting go, Starting over
This weekend I was putting the finishing touches on a gift for the young son of a close friend who died about a year and a half ago. I thought my grieving for her was pretty much done, but, as I worked, I found myself weeping. And since I was hormonal and thus prone to excess, I allowed my grief to extend out and encompass EVERYONE I've ever lost. At first, I was focused on those I've lost to death, then I realized I was also grieving for people I've lost in other ways but who are still around, still breathing and living their lives, some of them in fairly close proximity to me. Letting go is clearly something I need to work on right now.
In recent months Buddha's Five Remembrances have been popping up in various ways for me, and after this weekend I thought, well, maybe I need to take a look at those. The Five Remembrances are basically: 1)Getting old is my nature and can't be escaped, 2)Getting sick is my nature and can't be escaped, 3)Dying is my nature and can't be escaped, 4)Change and loss in those I love and care for is the nature of things and can't be escaped, and 5)I have only my actions to stand on. So this morning I meditated on that for a while before moving on to my lovingkindness meditation. And the words of a teacher came to me in meditation, "If you find your mind wandering, bring it back lovingly and know that this is the heart of meditation–the practice of letting go and starting over."
I've heard that a hundred times (maybe more but my mind was wandering at the time so I don't remember) but this was the first time I really heard it, and realized that yoga and meditation are actually a way of consciously practicing being alive. Of course, we ARE being alive in every moment, but by rehearsing for it, we can get better at doing it in real life. In every breath we let go of the old air and start over with a new breath. With every step we let go of the earth beneath us and reach through the unknown to find it again.
It's almost impossible to stay that focused for very long on such tiny endings and beginnings, but we have them on a grander scale as well. From pre-school to my last year of high school, I attended 8 different schools and learned a lot about letting go and starting over, and got pretty good at it. My track record isn't so great when it comes to letting go of people and relationships; once you're in my life I want you there FOREVER. Sort of like the Hotel California... In running my own business, I've discovered that I have to be very nimble on my feet to be ready to let go of something that isn't working and start over with something else. My partner and I had one summer when we got to experience lots of letting go when raw sewage spewed over everything in our basement; suddenly, the question of whether to let something go became a lot clearer. Practice, practice, practice...
The other thing that I realized is that you can't have much of a gap between letting go and starting over in meditation. When your mind wanders, you bring it back. If you spend time beating yourself up over wandering, guess what? You're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. If you start thinking about why your mind wandered in the first place, you're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. If you start thinking about how much better you're going to be at this tomorrow, you're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. Now this can sound like some kind of crazy-making version of hell, but the miracle part of this process is realizing that you actually have an infinite number of chances to start over. Nothing you've done before and nothing you're going to do later takes that away from you. Those opportunities are always there and they never go away. In life as in meditation. You know how to let go and start over; you've done it already so many times, if you're breathing, you're an expert. Every moment is your opportunity to do it again.
So, when I think of my dead friend, I breathe in, I breathe out, I miss her, I remember her, I let her go and I start over with my living in the next moment.
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
In recent months Buddha's Five Remembrances have been popping up in various ways for me, and after this weekend I thought, well, maybe I need to take a look at those. The Five Remembrances are basically: 1)Getting old is my nature and can't be escaped, 2)Getting sick is my nature and can't be escaped, 3)Dying is my nature and can't be escaped, 4)Change and loss in those I love and care for is the nature of things and can't be escaped, and 5)I have only my actions to stand on. So this morning I meditated on that for a while before moving on to my lovingkindness meditation. And the words of a teacher came to me in meditation, "If you find your mind wandering, bring it back lovingly and know that this is the heart of meditation–the practice of letting go and starting over."
I've heard that a hundred times (maybe more but my mind was wandering at the time so I don't remember) but this was the first time I really heard it, and realized that yoga and meditation are actually a way of consciously practicing being alive. Of course, we ARE being alive in every moment, but by rehearsing for it, we can get better at doing it in real life. In every breath we let go of the old air and start over with a new breath. With every step we let go of the earth beneath us and reach through the unknown to find it again.
It's almost impossible to stay that focused for very long on such tiny endings and beginnings, but we have them on a grander scale as well. From pre-school to my last year of high school, I attended 8 different schools and learned a lot about letting go and starting over, and got pretty good at it. My track record isn't so great when it comes to letting go of people and relationships; once you're in my life I want you there FOREVER. Sort of like the Hotel California... In running my own business, I've discovered that I have to be very nimble on my feet to be ready to let go of something that isn't working and start over with something else. My partner and I had one summer when we got to experience lots of letting go when raw sewage spewed over everything in our basement; suddenly, the question of whether to let something go became a lot clearer. Practice, practice, practice...
The other thing that I realized is that you can't have much of a gap between letting go and starting over in meditation. When your mind wanders, you bring it back. If you spend time beating yourself up over wandering, guess what? You're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. If you start thinking about why your mind wandered in the first place, you're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. If you start thinking about how much better you're going to be at this tomorrow, you're wandering again and you have to bring it back and start over. Now this can sound like some kind of crazy-making version of hell, but the miracle part of this process is realizing that you actually have an infinite number of chances to start over. Nothing you've done before and nothing you're going to do later takes that away from you. Those opportunities are always there and they never go away. In life as in meditation. You know how to let go and start over; you've done it already so many times, if you're breathing, you're an expert. Every moment is your opportunity to do it again.
So, when I think of my dead friend, I breathe in, I breathe out, I miss her, I remember her, I let her go and I start over with my living in the next moment.
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Power Yoga
"Can you add some more challenging poses into the class?" This was a request from one of my private classes, a mixed level group that met for an hour weekly, with a primary goal of stretching and restoration after a busy work day.
Now, this is always an interesting question for me for many reasons, but what I've been focused on this week is, what makes a challenging pose? Obviously (or maybe not?) we're talking about yoga poses here. And I guess what I find so interesting about the question is that we all think we know what that means–after all, how else do you determine if you're in yoga level 1, 2, or 3? And how else would I know what they were asking for?–but is it really possible to answer that question in a general way?
On a purely physical level, most people are predisposed, either by body type and natural talents or by other activities they do, to ease in some poses and challenge in others in a way that can't be generalized. On a different level, many people find savasana, corpse pose, challenging because they find it hard to be still, relax and let go of their thoughts.
But there's also something else going on here. Nowhere is it more true than in a yoga class that you are creating your own experience and then observing yourself in that experience. It can be argued that that's really the whole point of yoga. You are giving yourself something to do which engages you completely–body, mind, emotions, breath and energy–in order to allow your inner witness to observe the truth of your being. So, if a class isn't challenging, what does that actually mean? Are you engaging everything you can in each pose? Do you want something physically difficult given to you so that the work of the pose quiets your mind? What would you need to give yourself permission to challenge yourself? Does the challenge need to come from outside yourself?
There's also a question of how you approach the pose. If Tadasana, the mountain, is just like standing at the bus stop thinking about what you'll have for lunch then it won't engage you. However, there are thousands of potential focal points in Tadasana if you look for them. This is true for every pose...including standing at the bus stop!
Some poses will awaken an emotional response unrelated to the physical difficulty of the pose. A pose which feels restful and soothing to one person, will feel stressful and difficult to another. A challenging pose can feel frustrating or hilarious depending on what it awakens in you. For me, Pigeon used to be a horribly stressful pose even though I knew many people who found it deeply relaxing. On the other hand, I can't even come close to Tortoise, but I've often used it as a focus pose for my practice because it's entertaining for me to struggle with it. In one situation, the struggle is stressful; in the other, the struggle is funny–the only real difference is how I'm perceiving it.
Maybe a challenging practice would be to do only easy poses, but do them fully. Or maybe it would be to do only difficult poses, but release attachment to outcome. Maybe it would be to dare to come into class and do only Savasana for the whole class, while everyone around you is bending and twisting. Maybe it would be to just breathe.
In my dream, this is what Power Yoga would be. Not a fast-paced aerobic workout, but a place to claim and explore your own power, and your own experience to create exactly as you need it to be.
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
Now, this is always an interesting question for me for many reasons, but what I've been focused on this week is, what makes a challenging pose? Obviously (or maybe not?) we're talking about yoga poses here. And I guess what I find so interesting about the question is that we all think we know what that means–after all, how else do you determine if you're in yoga level 1, 2, or 3? And how else would I know what they were asking for?–but is it really possible to answer that question in a general way?
On a purely physical level, most people are predisposed, either by body type and natural talents or by other activities they do, to ease in some poses and challenge in others in a way that can't be generalized. On a different level, many people find savasana, corpse pose, challenging because they find it hard to be still, relax and let go of their thoughts.
But there's also something else going on here. Nowhere is it more true than in a yoga class that you are creating your own experience and then observing yourself in that experience. It can be argued that that's really the whole point of yoga. You are giving yourself something to do which engages you completely–body, mind, emotions, breath and energy–in order to allow your inner witness to observe the truth of your being. So, if a class isn't challenging, what does that actually mean? Are you engaging everything you can in each pose? Do you want something physically difficult given to you so that the work of the pose quiets your mind? What would you need to give yourself permission to challenge yourself? Does the challenge need to come from outside yourself?
There's also a question of how you approach the pose. If Tadasana, the mountain, is just like standing at the bus stop thinking about what you'll have for lunch then it won't engage you. However, there are thousands of potential focal points in Tadasana if you look for them. This is true for every pose...including standing at the bus stop!
Some poses will awaken an emotional response unrelated to the physical difficulty of the pose. A pose which feels restful and soothing to one person, will feel stressful and difficult to another. A challenging pose can feel frustrating or hilarious depending on what it awakens in you. For me, Pigeon used to be a horribly stressful pose even though I knew many people who found it deeply relaxing. On the other hand, I can't even come close to Tortoise, but I've often used it as a focus pose for my practice because it's entertaining for me to struggle with it. In one situation, the struggle is stressful; in the other, the struggle is funny–the only real difference is how I'm perceiving it.
Maybe a challenging practice would be to do only easy poses, but do them fully. Or maybe it would be to do only difficult poses, but release attachment to outcome. Maybe it would be to dare to come into class and do only Savasana for the whole class, while everyone around you is bending and twisting. Maybe it would be to just breathe.
In my dream, this is what Power Yoga would be. Not a fast-paced aerobic workout, but a place to claim and explore your own power, and your own experience to create exactly as you need it to be.
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Surrender Dorothy!
I've been thinking a lot about surrender lately. Surrender seems to be a recurring theme in my life. And, after all, getting lost does involve surrendering to the unknown and I've had lots of experience at that.
But lately what's been popping up for me in my life is the idea of creating your own reality through intention and positive thinking. It's showing up everywhere, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of it. I do believe in it to a certain extent and I'll probably even write a little on that possibility at a later date. But what about the possibility of surrendering to the reality that's already out there? What would it be like to just ride that wave?
In yoga there exists the idea of flowing evenly back and forth between will and surrender. You approach each moment intentionally, then you surrender to what the moment brings. And part of that philosophy is that will and intention are not actually goal-oriented which is a challenging idea for a lot of us.
A new friend was recently talking about how she feels when she reaches a certain state of bliss on her mountain bike. She talked about getting into that groove where she no longer thinks or calculates, she has no connection to past or future; she is simply riding in the moment, responding perfectly to each event which appears in her moment simply by being present with it.
I've had experience with that feeling she's describing. It's almost a feeling of the personality submerging into a larger field. I've often described myself as a chameleon because there are times that I feel like a field of potential energy shifting to take the form that is required of me. I have been asked if this makes me somehow less myself, or if it makes me a fake or a liar somehow. But what I feel when this happens is that it is the most perfect expression of what I truly am. You've heard the saying "We are spiritual beings having a human experience"? Well, I think maybe what we are is an energy field having a physical experience. And that, as in physics, our own observation of ourselves is creating the physical experience that we have; in other words, the moment we observe ourselves we drop from a state of potential, of possibility, of probability into a state of actuality.
Oh crap. There we are right back at creating our own reality. But...are we willful or are we willing in our approach? If we observe with attachment or judgment we've already limited our possibilities. But if we surrender as we observe, what might we be allowed to see without the limits of human thought?
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
But lately what's been popping up for me in my life is the idea of creating your own reality through intention and positive thinking. It's showing up everywhere, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of it. I do believe in it to a certain extent and I'll probably even write a little on that possibility at a later date. But what about the possibility of surrendering to the reality that's already out there? What would it be like to just ride that wave?
In yoga there exists the idea of flowing evenly back and forth between will and surrender. You approach each moment intentionally, then you surrender to what the moment brings. And part of that philosophy is that will and intention are not actually goal-oriented which is a challenging idea for a lot of us.
A new friend was recently talking about how she feels when she reaches a certain state of bliss on her mountain bike. She talked about getting into that groove where she no longer thinks or calculates, she has no connection to past or future; she is simply riding in the moment, responding perfectly to each event which appears in her moment simply by being present with it.
I've had experience with that feeling she's describing. It's almost a feeling of the personality submerging into a larger field. I've often described myself as a chameleon because there are times that I feel like a field of potential energy shifting to take the form that is required of me. I have been asked if this makes me somehow less myself, or if it makes me a fake or a liar somehow. But what I feel when this happens is that it is the most perfect expression of what I truly am. You've heard the saying "We are spiritual beings having a human experience"? Well, I think maybe what we are is an energy field having a physical experience. And that, as in physics, our own observation of ourselves is creating the physical experience that we have; in other words, the moment we observe ourselves we drop from a state of potential, of possibility, of probability into a state of actuality.
Oh crap. There we are right back at creating our own reality. But...are we willful or are we willing in our approach? If we observe with attachment or judgment we've already limited our possibilities. But if we surrender as we observe, what might we be allowed to see without the limits of human thought?
copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
