The Brightness of Day
It has felt like an especially long week where I have felt guilty for my inattention to the present, especially to people, and feeling like my emotions are right up near the surface is very challenging to me. It can be very difficult for me to be alright with needing people, with needing support.
I am far more comfortable giving support and strength to someone than I am at receiving it. I try to be mindful that my opening up to receiving creates space for another person to practice giving, but it is still very challenging for me. I often feel like I am imposing on someone else when I am not capable of being strong and giving all the time so it makes it even more difficult to ask for support and care, even when I really need it.
One place that helps me practice are the times when my yoga students tell me the appreciate something I've taught them. It is still actually uncomfortable, receiving praise, but since it is a result of something I've done it feels easier to work with than accepting support. What it makes me realize at times, like today, is how accepting praise gratefully and gracefully offers me support in my life as well.
Today's all-levels class at Dishman posed several challenges. My body ached this morning and really didn't want to have to leave the cozy comfort of the flat. When I did arrive to Dishman one of my regular students revealed his newly broken right wrist, left elbow, pulled right hamstring, and a scrape the size of a poker chip on the left knee! I inquired if he was certain he should be there, but he assured me he wanted to be there. Everyone else arrived to reveal they felt cold, tired and "curmudgeonly". A newer student arrived who is very new to yoga asana and isn't really in is body yet, so it is extra work to help him into correct alignment. What a mix!
Looking around at all of them I announced we'd do some gentle stretches to open the legs and back, some twists to wring all that cold energy out, and we'd do a lot more breath work, Pranayama. Everyone seemed fine with that and I led them through some basic seated asana, a twist, then we sat doing Viloma breathing for a while before some time for meditation.
During this time I decided to practice in an area that's not the most comfortable for me -- guided visualization. I don't do well with visualizations or counting when I meditate. Any mental activity related to cognitive thought sets me off and I think, think, think, think, think! Nothing but monkey mind, a whole roomful of monkeys analyzing, computing, theorizing. Because of this I focus my attention on my diaphragm and the movement of breathing there.
With this bias I know that I most often teach mindful breathing, of following the breath into the body. During this time I will remind my students to just be aware of a thought arising, notice it, "Hey, there I am thinking again." and let it go, return to the sensation of breath. Sometimes I add the suggestion from Thich Nhat Hahn to mindfully label the breaths. I'll suggest that the mind's activity merely identify, "This is me breathing a long, deep breath in. This is me breathing a long, deep breath out. This is me breathing a short breath in. This is me breathing a short breath out."
I admit I'm biased so today I decided to add a visualization in there, one that Joy's taught us and I've heard before elsewhere. I suggested to everyone that they imagine their minds as a deep, blue, clear, still lake. Whenever a thought came up, just see it as a bubble rising to the surface of the lake and popping there. Watch the ripples from that arising thought move towards shore, how they get further and further apart until the lake surface is calm, still again.
We then moved through three different asana to awaken and strengthen the core abdominal muscles. With that heat and awareness built I seated everyone again to do Kabalabhati. I was pleased that this time I was able to stay more focused on what I'd be teaching next -- the first time I tried teaching this I was energized but distracted! Everyone came up into Bridge pose to lengthen out the muscles of the abdomen after working so hard. A few half salutes to shake out the body, Tree pose, ending with their choice of Down Dog or half forward bend at the wall, a supine twist and savasana. During savasana I invited them to return to the visual of their mind as a lake.
It was probably the fewest poses I've taught in a class that wasn't designated as a 'restorative' class, but no one seemed to mind at all. Afterward people commented on feeling very good, stiffness wrung out a bit, and the mental cobwebs clear. The student with the injuries especially said it had felt very good to him. He noted that people had asked him in surprise about his coming to yoga, having injured himself on Monday, but he said to me that he'd told them he knew that I'd be able to come up with something for him! Talk about my student having greater confidence in me than I do!
Another gift was from my student who is the most new to yoga and is still learning how to feel his body, be in his body. He said that he has a hard time with the breathing and meditation, but today's class focusing on those things really helped him a lot. He said the visualization of his mind as a still lake just rang true for him. That visualization, which doesn't work well at all for me, was an "Ah-ha!" moment for him. He suddenly understood and connected to the concept of watching his thoughts arise, not getting caught up in the thought, and letting the mind settle again. He left class telling me what good teacher I was, that my ability to teach him despite his confusion, stiffness, and distraction made him feel safe learning something very new and uncomfortable.
Wow. Talk about shining some pretty bright lights in my little corner of the world!
When my students tell me things like this I feel so deeply humbled by it. I've often said that I when I teach Hatha Yoga I feel like I am merely a conduit for the 5000+ plus years yoga has been practiced. I merely am the vehicle for a long lineage of teaching. A student recognizing me, the person teaching, for skillful instruction is such a precious affirmation of my ability to rise to the challenge each class presents. The idea that I personally help them to know compassion and comfort in their body, regardless of the ease or dis-ease in that body, is incredibly precious.
In honor of the brightness brought into my life by sharing Hatha Yoga with students I titled this entry after one of Alphonse Mucha's paintings, The Brightness of Day
Chanting and Breathing
I've haven't felt a lot of light these past several days. Consequentially I haven't felt like writing, working on any art I have in mind, knitting, or doing much of anything. My energy feels pretty low this week and I feel like I'm reached the overload point of things to work with in my life.
Last Sunday after teaching yoga at Dishman I went out to Corbett, out into the thick of the windstorm to my Mom's. They had no power and a tree and lines were down on the road to them, forcing a detour around the back. I saw a tree down over a house and other trees down all around, even one nearly on the road I was driving. The wind was howling at gusts between 60-70 mph. It would have been easy to imagine Dorothy flying past a window. It didn't occur to me until later, when someone exclaimed at my going out there in the middle of a windstorm, that I'd done anything that unusual.
When I got there I saw that Mom looked pale, scared and tired. I just listened to her for a while as we drank tea made with water heated on a kettle a top the wood stove. I opened the Christmas present she'd got for me. The whole time I felt tight inside, aware of all the muscles around my heart locking up, the coldness in my chest.
Finally I got Mom to settle in a chair and taught her some Pranayama. I could tell she was breathing in the top of her lungs only out of pain and fear. I coaxed her to take breaths that were as deep as possible, to learn to feel how the body moves when the breath moves into the whole lungs, just feeling the breath breathe the body.
I told her as far as any meditation goes, just to keep coming back to what the body felt like breathing. That's all she needed to try to do, that and to scan the body, finding the places that do not hurt as much. Like Hogen told me as a technique for sesshin, when my chronic pain gets really bad. What hurts is obvious, the noise of the hurt is so loud in the body & mind, find what doesn't hurt and take refuge there for a while. Feel the breath in the parts of the body that do not hurt. I told her to try this even it was only the top of her right ear that didn't hurt!
I taught Mom the most simple form of Nadi Sodhana (alternate nostril breathing), just a breath on each side. I was pleased to see doing this left her looking a little more clear in the eyes. Although I have great faith in Nadi Sodhana to restore calm and balance, some part of me was tensing against my Mom not really trying it, dismissing it as silly. She nearly did stop, not liking the feeling of breathing through one nostril that was a little congested. Much to my surprise she kept going for a while and said she did feel a little better afterward. I'm going to record this for her, I think she'll be more apt to practice if it is guided.
It was hard watching her. It felt like being a kid again, sitting waiting for her to be finished with chemo treatments. Feeling anxious and scared myself, watching all the other faces taut with fear around me. Trying to immerse myself into a book while I waited and waited, through so many appointments, until she would come out ill & frightened and we'd go home. At least I had something to do this time, teaching her to breathe and be still in her body, that is more than I've ever had when she's been sick.
This latest scare feels somehow larger and more frightening than ever before. I'm terribly aware of the ill-health Mom's experienced over the past year, how she isn't as strong. I'm trying not to actually call it cancer yet. Neither has been diagnosed, just suspicions... more tests are needed, results are inconclusive. I'm trying to hold onto that, to not react in fear to what is not yet certain. I'm finding it difficult not to tighten around the fear, to keep opening to what arises in the present.
Since last Sunday I've felt drained all week. It has felt dark to me and the momentary joy of Tuesday morning's inauguration has felt tarnished by the disappointment in Mayor Sam Adams for lying. Even worse than feeling disheartened by the lies I've felt great irritation with the media for whipping the whole thing into a frenzy that's a distraction from the real problems facing Portland. Work has been extremely frustrating all week. It just felt extra hard to generate much light at all, even for my own small corner. I've been sustained by the light others shining around me, for which I'm truly grateful.
Just this afternoon something, someone just reminded me about the light I offer. Just by my being open and receptive to the suffering of others, to being present to it. Just by offering to chant a persons name.
I maintain the list of names we chant during service with the Portland Sangha of the Zen Community of Oregon sits zazen together. Service contains a part called the Transfer of Merit. We recognize that we generate energy when we practice together and dedicate that merit to people who are ill, in distress, or who have recently died.
Most weeks I get names from people. Emails, people chatting with me at the Dharma Center. Whispers of Stage IV cancers, old age, failed business... Sometimes nothing other than a name, which list it belongs on (in distress or died). I set the list out on the table before and after zazen on Thursdays, so at times I merely see new names appear, handwritten on the page I bring each week.
This week, this afternoon in particular I've been able to tell people that I'd add a name to the Merit List. Even after performing this service for the Sangha for a year now I remain a little surprised at how so small a gesture means to people. A friend said to me she was so touched just by my offer of support for her fear for her father's health, just that I came forward at all. Another sent me a message to let me know how much it means to her and her friend to add a name to the list. A complete stranger, brought to me by way of to me by way of the Internet (friend of a friend of a friend...) emailed to ask me to chant for his brother who just died, how it was of comfort to him. It is merely my open offer to acknowledge the suffering of others that generates light.
Some days it doesn't feel like much, I think I forget how much this small thing can mean to someone suffering in grief, anxiety. It is merely the act of being open to the suffering of another person, not wishing it would go away fast and not getting too caught up in my own fears of potential, inevitable loss, just being present for their suffering and offering to formally acknowledge it.
Once a week I chant all of these names, there are other people who chant them during the rest of the week. I recite each name carefully and clearly into the silence of the zendo. Giving time to each name so everyone there can all hold the names of each person in mind. It is this small thing I can do, even when my own light feels very dim, just show up each week and say the names, even when it is tremendous effort to do so. Using my voice to make the container for the grief and worry we all carry with us.
Go Team Pranayama!
I received the most amazing, wonderful, absolutely cool compliment today from one of my yoga students today!
Z waited for me until after class got done and people finished asking follow up questions. She told me that over the break she had faced a very difficult, life changing decision. A decision that could have dire consequences if she followed her desire over what her heart told her. She said she'd been trying to meditate and wasn't really coming to a clear answer no matter how hard she sought one.
Finally, Z said, she thought to try a Pranayama technique I taught her in last session, Kumbhaka Antara. She said that she used this technique for some time as part of meditation and when she finished sitting her answer was there. Although it wasn't the answer she was hoping for, she needed to not follow what she wanted.
Within a week, she went on to tell me, things changed so dramatically that had she followed desire she would have very likely lost her home! She told me how very grateful she was for the Pranayama I had taught her, that it was now a very useful tool in her life, helping her a great deal.
I feel so touched and humbled when a student tells me yoga helps them in any way. Having a student tell me that a yoga practice I taught them literally saved their home is just stunning!
Grateful
Tonight in yoga class JW had questions for us. After reading a quote from Thich Naht Hahn noting the relationship between a rose and compost, asked each of us if that brought anything to mind. I said that there were lots of things going on right now in my life, things decaying and things blooming. I didn't want to elaborate but thought of how I'd been reflecting yesterday about the sadness of endings and how I also have these wonderful beginnings, this blooming in my life.
AM have nearly finished getting the paperwork together for the divorce. We are settling into the ways in which we are separate. In doing this there is the stickiness of acknowledging the disconnect that has been there, how deep it has grown we were just both not wanting to see it. It is akin to look at my childhood and facing how painful it had been. It is the compost of my life, the decay that I have set my roots in and grown.
During savasana JW asked anyone who felt comfortable to share what they were grateful for. I had offered that I was grateful for my practice. In my heart I expressed my gratitude for CK for the flowering in my life she has brought. I made sure to tell her afterwards, whispering it into her ear with a kiss as we put away the props.
About Savasana
Tonight the wind outside howls down 9th Avenue, buffeting the sides of the flat and providing ample opportunity to appreciate the roar of the heater. How that noise means I'm warm and safe inside. The flat is cozy and I've just had a very tasty dinner. I'm enjoying sitting with CK, she's working on ideas for the new website for ZCO and I'm writing.
Got back to a yoga class at Prananda tonight. It felt gentle while still getting deeply into some areas. I'm still feeling the shoulder strain, especially in the left one I injured last spring. As frustrating as it is (which is to say as impatient as I feel), I know I need to keep being very gentle with them. I found myself going into adhomukha svanasana (downward facing dog) a lot between other poses, just feeling the relief of stretching my body and releasing the headache that had showed up during work.
Joy threw out a joke about a homework assignment at the end of class, to write a poem called "Sweet Savasana". I may have one in mind. It called to mind for me when Hogen asked me why it is called "Corpse Pose".
I had told him that a corpse is heavy, returning to the earth. There is no longer any tension whatsoever, all of the little anxieties hidden in the muscles are released. A corpse has no worry, no fear, no shame, no anger...
As the Heart Sutra states, "No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of sight, no realm of mind consciousness."
Just the body returning to the earth. We mindfully end practice this way, releasing the body from the effort of asana and returning to the breath. That breath, that is the sweetness of savasana. For we lay with the complete release and emptiness of a corpse, yet each expiration of the breath continues to be followed by another inhalation.
Silence of Practice
Finally went back to a class at Pranada tonight! It has been so long and I've felt disconnected from my yoga practice. I've been finding it interesting to note that I felt a really deep quiet practicing zazen alone, especially when I was snowed in at the flat with Atari and CK down in Sacramento. I really found myself appreciating deep quiet of those days.
Not so much with my asana practice. There is something so vital about being in a class, some synergy that happens when teacher and students come together for a class. Most of the time going to a class leaves me feeling clear and grounded in a way that practice at home doesn't quite get to. I do get to the silence, the quiet of home asana practice, but it is the energy that comes from sharing practice that I miss the most.
I still struggle with feeling nervous in my Zen community. It really has been just over a year that I started to share myself with my Sangha and only in the past handful of months that I've really started to feel like I can really open up. Sangha is the most difficult of the Three Treasures for me. I think is why silent zazen felt like such a deeply, richly silent space when I was alone.
That a shared practice of asana is a comfortable space reminds me that I will not always feel so nervous with my Sangha. It is just taking longer to get to that point of comfort. Maybe it is the deeper physicality of asana practice that leaves me more comfortable there. That the space for laughter, tears and groans to arise freely and release. I'm also nearly 2 and a half years further into my Hatha practice. Slow progress, but steady, just like asana.
A Welcome Return
My Tuesday has been a welcome return to routine. Got up early, sat zazen then had a shower and headed downtown. Talked to people worked on projects, ate lunch with CK and this evening one of the yoga classes I teach started up again. Although there were parts of it where I was feeling resistance to settling into the less-than-exciting, just wanting to be entertained, it was good to get back to even that familiar irritation. Nice to have rainy, chilly Portland back as well!
Class tonight featured one returning student who's been coming for a while, two people who've never studied yoga before, and one drop-in student who's taken a few classes here-and-there. The Tuesday class has favored toward the small side for a few sessions now. I've wondered if the 5:45PM start time keeps people away. I suspect we might be able to do a 6-7:15 class if it was very punctual about ending to accommodate the 7:30 Pilates class taught in the same room. I know one of my returning students didn't plan to start coming regularly again until spring, not sure about the other two who've been regulars.
With all the new people and a very stiff returning student, along with my still babying my shoulders, it was a fairly easy class. Spent some time in breathing, just introducing the practice of a deep, complete, yogic breath before moving through deep postures to open the hips and shoulders. Ended with garudasana (eagle) and virabhdrasana II (warrior 2).
I'm feeling a bit stiff, noticing how my legs and hips are feeling after the effort. I made sure to ice my shoulder even though I didn't use it too much. Trying to be mindful of Iris' advice after working on it to not use it too much and let the strain heal.
Some Yoga in the Pearl
Had a great yoga class tonight at Yoga Pearl. I had planned to take a class this evening at Near East Yoga, inviting people to join me for the introductory Ashtanga class there. However after physical therapy last night my therapist asked that I not undo all her hard work by doing that. "One too many chaturunga!" she said.
I'd taken a class at Yoga Tree in the Mission in San Francisco that was Yin/Vinyasa and had been intrigued by the very deep holding of poses that was the Yin side of things. Since I need to take classes in 8 different styles, one of my choosing, I thought a Yin class would be perfect. Besides, I eat at Blossoming Lotus all the time and have been interested in trying out a class at the very hip Yoga Pearl!
The class was taught by Uma Kleppinger and I enjoyed it a whole lot. The class started in virasana to begin, as part of beginning for meditation. We then moved through baddha konasana, then to setu bandha sarvangasana (chatush padasana per Iyengar) with a block under the sacrum. Then resting a moment flat before coming up into a very modified matsyasana with a block under the shoulder blades and another supporting the head. Supported paschimottanasana and upavista konasana. Double-pigeon, and ending with a little more seated meditation.
I found it very much like zazen in many ways. Unlike other practices in Yin you are supposed to let the body relax into the pose. Not push through the balls of the feet, lengthen the spine, any of the things I'm used to. Just let the body sink into the pose, stay with the body and the breath. Then staying with each pose as the mind resisted being there, wanting to come out, wanting to be told to inhale and come up.
With some of the ideas I've had about workshops in the spring I'm very interested in this style. Even more so than the Ashtanga class I really see myself wanting to learn more about Yin and how to incorporate this deep practice into my teaching.
Shared Practice
My hips ache from mostly sitting for six hours today at teacher training. I can easily see how people train for 500, 800 hours. Even the over 200 hours I'm doing means some things are done quickly. Part of an afternoon to discuss the limbs of yoga when each limb could easily be taught in over 6 hours apiece.
My Picture in a Zine
My article came out today in the Sangha newsletter, Ink on the Cat. It seemed a little strange to me to see myself there, printed, in black & white, looking out from something I could hold in my hands. I'm not sure if I've ever had my photograph next to something I wrote. When I think about it, the only time my photograph has been printed is in things like year books. Once or twice in small, local papers when I was a kid participating in a school or civic event.
In high school and college I had things I wrote show up in the school papers or literary zines. Mostly poetry, I wrote so much poetry throughout my teens and twenties. I moved onto just having a website and putting up my own poetry there when I was in my twenties. The poetry seemed to just stop showing up, years ago. It feels strange sometimes to not have poetry swimming around my head all the time. Once in a while something occurs to me, just in a flash and mostly whole. Haiku shows up in those flashes.
At times it feels like the PTSD burned through that language. When the anxiety caused by it is at a peak it feels like I am entirely cut off from any ability to think coherently, much less communicate. Being able to get any words out is a physical fight. In finally naming what left me feeling like I was broken and trying to work on it, the words no longer arrive in the spare beauty of poetry.
And yet on all sides I am being encouraged to write. My Zen teachers and community, my Hatha yoga teacher, my loved-ones, and co-workers. Tell the story of my weight loss, my realizations about myself as I study yoga, coming to a place of peace. All of is why I write a blog, trying to come up with some practice that would help me figure out how to tell whatever story decides to come up.
I feel a little at a loss as to where to start. Really all of those stories are the whole story. The free-fall of personality I experienced, was because of my weight loss. That loss of my carefully constructed personae that I defined as me left behind the stark reality of my PTSD. Peeling back the layers of the trauma leads me inexorably back to my childhood. The way out of all of these things has been the yoga and Zen practice.
I feel a sick fear at my Mother finding out what I've written and still managing to punish, humiliate, or at the very least make me feel guilty for embarrassing the family. There's a voice that says that I should wait until she is dead to write about her. I guess I feel like I don't know how to write this story because I'm still living it and most of the time lately I feel like I have no voice of accomplishment to speak from.
Yet here is my picture, printed in the newsletter next to my words. Someone from the Sangha has already emailed a compliment to me on my words, adding their voice to both CK and AM's.