Cutting Through Doom

I woke up very early this morning with a sense of doom. Life is always a bit weird, but right now it’s downright bizarre—I can’t seem to calibrate, or make sense of what’s going on. Nothing was really wrong this morning, but all felt strange: the weather in New York was like summer around Christmas. The Presidential debates are incredibly unsettling. The media is feeding us fear. I’m missing my mom, I’m missing our kids. Life seems so fragile. Where is the tether in times like this?

Poor Rodney, to wake up to me having a hard time catching my breath.

Finally, I got up and started planning my Tuesday morning class. I picked up my favorite Pema Chodron book, When Things Fall Apart, looking for a spiritual teaching for my class. This is what I opened up to:

“When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart? The next time you get a chance, experiment with this.”

If we can become quiet, quite often a message or a guide will appear in a way that seems more than coincidental. Thank you, Pema, for being my guide on so many days when I have felt helpless. I hope this passage can help those who may be having mixed emotions at this time of year. Relax and use whatever comes as an opportunity. Beautiful, sage advice.

Balance

When I was six years old, I loved the balance beam. I felt so proud of myself, and brave, when I walked across without falling. One summer, my dad made me a balance beam out of 2 x 4s. I got a ton of splinters that summer, and quite a few bruises, but by August, I was joyfully skipping rope up and down the length of the beam.

For most of us, balancing around center is a fickle and fleeting experience. But the quiet steadiness found when we do balance around center is sublime. As a physical skill, balance diminishes as we age, and yet is increasingly important as we get older. Luckily, due to the brilliance of the human body, the ability to balance can be improved with practice!

When we practice balancing postures, we gain a visceral understanding of the fact that balance is not a fixed point. Rather we wander in and around center, and then we fall. Sometimes we fall quietly and lightly; other times we collapse in a heap on the floor. At the moment, the cycle of falling out of center and then finding center again is most interesting to me.

I like things (a.k.a. my life!) to be steady, even, and tempered, so that the emotional feeling of balance is never too far away. I imagine that many of us of us feel that way. Thankfully, life doesn’t cooperate with such safe, and sometimes lifeless, plans. For example, I had a baby in August. So I am now the mother of a five year old and a four month old. Needless to say, I’ve lost my habituated sense of center.

So day after day, now, I recalibrate and begin anew, the delicate dance of navigating equilibrium. I’ve heard “center” described as the place from which we can fall in all directions, and that is ringing true for me lately. Sometimes I am literally balancing the baby on one arm while playing with her older brother. Other times I am quietly wandering the depths of my heart, in search of the place from which I can love fully in all directions.

Snapshot From the Map of Love

Son #1 left for a new college last week. Today I’m on the Cross Sound Ferry issuing Son #2 back to school in Maine, where he will complete his senior year of high school (without incident or infraction, pass Spanish, and fully partake in the gifts and opportunities this educational experience has to offer).* Little does he know that every time I look at him, I map his freckles. I’m cool: He doesn’t know that instead of really listening to how he’s going to spend all his money on truck parts, I’m swimming in his translucence.

Son #1’s departure wasn’t as smooth. I got caught in the anxiety trap, lost sleep, and clutched too hard. After the first few texts from him at his new school, I knew he had forgiven me. More importantly, he’d found a good place to land and learn. I have him in my vision (clear, bright, happy, healthy: thriving).*

“Worrying is praying for what you don’t want,” someone said. How did it take 50+ years to hear that? With the prospect of an empty nest, I take a day off, surprise my husband with the gift of my time, my presence.

Ocean swimming was glorious this summer. For me, there’s an edge to it. How far out can I go before I start calculating the distance between me and the bottom, and what might be lurking there? Can I let the liquid-crystal water hold me, or do I race for shore, heart pounding?

I think of another quote: “Let go and let God.” This is so much better than “Let go and let your anxious mind wreck havoc on everything you care about. ” When I catch myself there, it’s “Inhale, exhale, pause.”

So it’s September. We return to the work of our lives. Letting go and letting God, letting love, letting breath, meeting challenges, letting life.

*Manifestation practice. What else can a mother do?!

Kāmabandha, Bound to Love

With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, most of us here in the West will be reminded of Cupid, whose name comes from the Latin cupido, “desire, love.” One dictionary suggests this word is “perhaps” cognate with the Sanskrit kupyati, “bubbles up, becomes agitated,” which I suspect some of us have experienced once or twice in our lives under certain circumstances with certain people. Another dictionary traces this word even farther back, to the Indo-European root kwep, a not especially poetic sounding word—all you need is kwep? Can’t buy me kwep? Kwep me tender?—that means “to smoke, cook, be agitated emotionally,” once again relational conditions at least a few of us may be able to identify with.

Cupid carries two different kinds of arrows, one very sharp and gold-tipped, the other made of lead and blunt. When struck with the first, we bid adieu to sanity and devote every hour of our waking lives to making the biggest fool in the world—think Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber—look perfectly rational and intelligent. When struck with the other we react completely oppositely and inexplicably, at least to the other person, turn tail and run.

Since this is a yoga newsletter, we’ll turn our attention to India, which has its own version of Cupid, a randy young fellow by the name of Kāma. As with so many Sanskrit words, we have to be careful with the spelling: with a long second, kam (pronounced kuh-MA), it means “beauty, radiance;” with a long first (pronounced KA-muh), it means “desire, longing, wish.” As we might expect there are lots of words that are compounded of kāma: if I’m bound to love, I’m kāmabandha; if I’m lustful, I’m kāmabhik ma; and if I’m following my own desires unreservedly, I’m kāmacara.

Kāma himself is said to be the first creation of the Absolute at the dawning of the world. In the famous Vedic song of creation (10.129), we read that at the outset “all that existed then was void and formless,” after which “rose Desire (kāma) … the primal seed and germ of Spirit.” This seems to indicate that within each of us then at the very essence of our being is Desire, but not the everyday worldly desire to, just to pull an example out of my hat, date Kate Upton (or whoever you’d like to fill in here), but the original intent of Desire with a capital D, which is to know ourselves as we truly are and so be truly happy.

Kāma of course has a family. His wife’s name is Rati, “pleasure,” his younger brother is Krodha, “anger,” and his daughter is Trisha, “thirst.” Sounds like that might be an interesting Thanksgiving dinner get-together. We might expect him nowadays to drive a very flashy, expensive car, but traditionally his ride is a parrot, said to be the wisest of birds—Polly want a kwep-er?—or a peacock, which represents impatient desire. Like Cupid, K ma has a bow, his is made of sugar cane, its string a line of buzzing bees, his arrows are made of lust-inspiring flowers. Oddly enough, for we might expect just the reverse, K ma is worshiped by the yogis, because it’s only he who can free the mind of desire. I guess it’s good to know, as Alain Danielou writes in the Gods of India, that it’s not “pleasure but desire” that binds us all to suffering and blocks our way to liberation. He quotes from an obscure Upanishad: “He (and let’s add “she”) who hankers after pleasure with a view of enjoying it becomes addicted to desire. The sage partakes of sensual pleasures as they occur, with a detached mind, and does not become addicted to desire.”

Like most Indian deities, Kāma has a host of names; just a few are: Ishma, “spring,” Mada, “passion,” Smara, “remembering love.” He’s also known as Abhirupa, the “beautiful,” Dipaka, the “inflamer,” Kantu, the “happy,” and naturally Samantaka, the “destroyer of peace.” His special celebration, which we might compare with Valentine’s Day, is called Madanasava, the Festival of the God of Love, which is described as a pretty raucous affair, in which the castes mingle freely, kings and beggars alike, singing and dancing and engaging in behavior we’ll not describe in a family newsletter.

A few month ago, while researching another article, I had occasion to look up the word prana, familiar enough to most yogis, meaning “breath of life, respiration, spirit, vitality.” As I plowed my way through the complicated definition I ran across this beautiful phrase which I give to you to share with someone special on Valentine’s Day: tvam me pranah (pronounced, more or less: twam me pra-nuh-hah), which means, “To me you are as dear as life.”

And a poem that I penned especially for Rod and Colleen:

Will you be my Valentine?
If you will my Heart will shine
If you will my Brain will glow
I’ll light up from head to toe.
And oh my Lungs will sing and shout
My Liver angel wings will sprout
My Kidneys too will celebrate
Say you will, don’t make me wait.
My Stomach out its joy will pour
Oh how would it just you adore
You my wildest dreams surpass
Right down into my Pancreas.
When other lovers get the sack
Only Hearts in pieces crack.
But if you me won’t make your bloke
All my insides will be broke.
My Thyroids they will turn to gruel
However could you be so cruel?!
My Pituitary will be crushed
And look, poor Spleen, all chopped and mushed.
So once again, please don’t decline:
Will you be my Valentine?
Oh so happy would I be
In every vein and artery.

We are excited to announce that Richard Rosen will be teaching two workshops at Yoga Shanti this February: Asana as a Preparation for Pranayama in Sag Harbor on Valentines Day, February 14th, and Forgotten Hatha in New York City on Sunday, February 15th.

True Independence: Freedom to Feel

I danced Shiva Rea-style alone in my dark bedroom last night. Sshh, don’t tell anyone.

I barely told myself.

Dance, poetry, music…yoga—each of these experiences affords us entry into that special, magical kingdom within, from which we are otherwise barred entry, barraged and embedded as we are in schedules, plans, strategies. By their grace we regain a kind of Eden missing from ordinary life. The poetry, the music, the yoga—All summons that Eden forward. We exit relative reality and bask however briefly in the divine extravagance of pure feeling, unencumbered by duality.

Yoga fails when self-consciousness enters the room. Fretting at all over “what others may think” renders the holy dance dead in the water, and yoga then doesn’t happen for us; there is no joy, and yoga continues its sad descent into empty Indian calisthenics with nifty side effects like longer hamstrings and a calm brow. Yoga and its offerings devolve to mere stress management, and another sage rolls over in an ancient grave.

We are entreated over and over to “be present.” But we can’t be present and think at the same time. Impossible! We are only ever thinking thoughts about the past, whether a lifetime ago, a year ago, or three seconds ago; or thinking thoughts about the future, whether a lifetime ahead, a year ahead, or three seconds ahead. Go ahead and try to think about something that isn’t one of those things. Thinking about what I just wrote is thinking about the past.

Reality, otherwise known as What Is, lives in neither the past nor the future. EVER. As real as our thoughts feel, they separate us from What Is. Funny, isn’t it? We have been trained to think of thinking as being super aware, when more often it’s the opposite. Thinking gets you in touch with other thoughts that mate furiously and have more thoughts. They don’t believe in birth control. It feels like an ant colony up in there, doesn’t it?

The yogis knew this a long time ago. The English word “mind” (as in yours) comes from the Sanskrit “mana,” which means “to measure.” That’s because to think is to measure; it is to separate and divide one thing from another like Chinese from French, or raincoat from down parka, or red from blue. Helpful if you’re allergic to French and its snowing and you’d like to vote Democratic, but beyond that, not helpful for the yogini.

That’s why we who teach yoga are always asking you to stay with the breath. The breath is one thing you can count on as occurring in the present moment and only in the present moment. To disappear inside of it is to merge in the present moment. Very paradoxical. Yoga can place you in direct relationship with your IS. The senses come alive like water hitting desert and they alone key us into what IS rather than what is a thought in your head that shuffles around year after year taking up space and making you wonder if Bellevue has a spare bed on the 6th floor.

There’s a lot working against you, making it damn hard to follow the advice of the teacher telling you again and again to “be present.” You’ve got the NSA peeking in your underwear drawers and cameras on every corner recording as you walk the dog, fight with your lover, sob in 7/11, and determine which carrot to buy for dinner. Add the proliferation of social media and the idea of always being “on,” lest someone upload you chowing down at Tutti mid-pasta bite, and we are all occasionally turned into strange creatures made of appearance and scrim, wish, and fib.

We have been trained not to feel…anything. By “feelings” I don’t mean your emotions. I have no advice about them. They are in a league of their own, as you and your team of shrinks well know. Here we mean the feelings of the body. It’s scary. To feel is to be vulnerable. You’re only allowed to feel things in the bedroom or in a paid stranger’s small, candlelit den, replete with Enya, warm oil, and massage certificates on a dim wall. Much easier to think your way through a yoga class. But we all know how that works out in the bedroom. It’s the same on your mat. To be present is to be available for what’s going down.

Only the strong can tolerate being vulnerable. When you start to feel the subtle, shimmering, ever-arising and disappearing, tactile somatic glimmerings of the body, life avails herself to you in an entirely different way, and the whole fake Western pioneer town of your life begins to fall down. You see for the first time that there is nothing at all behind the façade of cowboys and saloons and dusty horses. Connection is not a thought. Joy is not a thought. Compassion is not a thought. All are an experience, a feeling.

No longer are you asunder from Everything Else. No longer are you twiddling your thumbs on the sidelines of nature, that green thing out the window. Rather, you step fully and completely into the ever-present NOW, and that book you read half of by Eckhart Tolle begins to make dramatic and compelling sense, and you don’t need anyone anymore to tell you up from down, right from wrong, yes from no, because you are now IN IN IN. And for a glorious moment, all truth and wisdom is yours.

God isn’t an entity to worship but an experience to have. It’s a funny thing when the founders of religions are allowed to experience ecstasy, but their adherents aren’t.

Quit that.

Love,

Kelly

Role Models

I went to visit one of my dearest friends in the hospital the other day. (We met the day I moved to NYC. I taught him yoga, and he taught me New York.) We spent the afternoon reminiscing about our friendship and the ways that our lives have changed since we met. He saw the exhaustion in my eyes and said, “Joyce, in the last year you’ve become a wife, a mother, a new business owner—an adult. That’s a lot for one year.”

I’d gone to the hospital to see my friend, and I left feeling seen.

In yoga, we often ask the question, “Who am I?” I’ve always thought that we were supposed to use this question to break free from the roles that we play every day—to go deeper than “I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a sister. I am a business owner.” Honestly, I’ve always considered any one of these roles as somewhat superficial. However, it felt so profound to be seen by my old friend, that I’ve begun to re-examine the question, “Who am I?”

The roles that we play in our lives are deep, and much bigger than who we are as individuals. In fact, these roles are often deeply ingrained in the fabric of our society. To be in a particular role in your family or company—can help you manage your time and life effectively.

But back to the question, “Who am I?” What if we want to break free of a traditional role? What if we want to evolve that role? What if we want to live with two or three roles that are actually at odds with one another? Well, then I suppose you have a pretty dynamic life to lead. And what better place to practice the dynamics of finding balance and counterbalance of opposing forces than on the yoga mat?

What I have found particularly important about having a daily yoga practice is that no matter what else changes in my life, the fact that I have a practice can remain constant. No matter where I am in the world, no matter how much or how little time I have, no matter what other people around me are doing, I can still practice yoga every day. And without fail, having a daily practice means I feel more patient, centered, and genuine in all the other roles I am juggling. I hope to see you on the mat soon.