Patience is My Practice – Sometimes

IMG_0697I’m not the most patient individual in the world.  Or universe.  I try.  It’s part of my practice.  But at my weakest moments, when life is too full and I feel overwhelmed by it all, I can be an impatient, humorless and cantankerous grouch.

Case in point:  a recent any interaction with a nationwide cable company that shall remain nameless (Comcast).  During the move in February my beloved NCLP – a man of seemingly infinite patience without a cantankerous bone in his body – offered to deal with installing wireless in the new condo.  As it happened, I was present when our technician arrived.  A lovely, intelligent and engaging gentleman, he had the wireless up and running in minutes.  As the technician was leaving I kindly asked begged him to take with him two cable boxes (who needs a television when there’s free Hulu?) and the modem that had just been replaced by its smaller and speedier cousin. He was sympathetic but could not help.  The equipment would stay with me.

A few days later, while standing in my storage unit determining how to stack the detritus of life from which I’ve yet to find the courage to part, it hit me.  Literally.  Looking back, my reaction to being bonked by a cable box was extreme.  But I can tell you it felt great.

After letting loose with a few expletives and without taking a moment to consider the ramifications of my actions I picked up the box, walked the few yards to the garbage dumpster behind the Chinese restaurant, and threw the damn thing away.

And now, two months later, my impetuousness has come back to bite me in the tuckus.  The cable company would like their box back.   They’ve been calling repeatedly and until today I’ve avoided admitting the pickle my lack of patience has created.  This morning I drove to the local Xfinity Emporium (ironically and with a healthy bit of snark I parked at the ATT shop next door).  I handed in the old modem.  I tried to return the new cable box but it was refused on the grounds that the box – all shiny silver and still shrink wrapped – is part of my bundle.  Don’t ask.  Finally, the customer service rep (who was desperate with allergies but really a very nice woman) asked about the missing cable box.

“I don’t know where it is.”

“You should really try to find it.”

“I think it got lost in the move.”

“You should really try to find it because you’re being charged for it.  Once you return it all that money will be credited to you.”

“I’m not going to find it.”  I couldn’t quite summon the courage to confess to Comcast how their box met its end.  “How much will I be charged?”

“One hundred sixty-two dollars.”

“Can I just pay for it now?”

“You should really try to find it.”

She seemed so nice.  So certain that surely the cable box was in a closet somewhere and not littering a landfill.  I just didn’t have the heart to tell her and so I thanked her and said goodbye.  I’m down one modem but there’s a cable box in the back of my car that I will not be throwing in a dumpster no matter how many times it falls on my head.  It’s going right back into my storage unit.

As for the money my impatience has cost me?  I have a bucket full of change that I’ll take over to the Coinstar machine at Mollie’s.  I was hoping to treat my NCLP to a nice dinner on California Avenue but I suspect there’re just enough quarters in that bucket to cover the cost of that poor cable box.

Patience is my practice, and there was a time in my life when I would have blamed the technician or the customer service rep before even considering that I am the one responsible for my actions and my reactions.  I’m grateful for that understanding.  I’m grateful that I can find humor in this latest adventure in Comcastland.  I’m even a bit grateful that it’s going to set me back one hundred and sixty-two dollars.  I’m not certain why.  

Maybe the next time I feel full and overwhelmed I’ll remember to step back and breathe.

 

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How Do We Know How to Teach?

CIMG0701There are yoga teachers who prepare for each moment of each class with intention and crystalline clarity. These are the teachers who write a script and a set list of poses. They’ve chosen a pranayama practice, cued a playlist on their iPad and have bookmarked a Pema Chodron quote.

Being prepared for the roomful of students we are about to teach is absolutely necessary and this type of teacher is, if anything, prepared. But is that truly being present for your students? Or is it the means to an entertaining end? I don’t know the answer to that question. Perhaps it depends on the collective intentions of the individuals in the studio – the expectations we have for the practice.

I’ve just stepped into my third decade of teaching and there are still times when my confidence takes a hit. Perhaps my attendance has temporarily faltered or a student unfamiliar with my teaching style offers criticism. No matter. Out of some misguided belief that all good yoga teachers create detailed lesson plans, I will find myself writing a set list of asanas. I’ll maintain this routine for a few weeks before realizing that I am not that teacher. It’s not how my asanas roll.

It has been my experience that teaching from a script inevitably results – for me – a less successful class. While this won’t be true for all teachers, my scripted classes lack connection and the seamless organic flow that I enjoy and believe are a necessary component of all good yoga practices.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not prepared.

While I have a set of intentions for each and every class I teach, it’s not until I arrive at the studio and can feel the energy of the room, the energy of my students and the energy contained within me as the teacher do I decide on the direction the class will take and the sequence of poses.

My decision is based on intuition and instinct. The trust I have in my teaching intuition took time to manifest and it is something that I now value and hold near to my heart.

I don’t believe it is something that can be taught. The qualities of intuition and instinct we develop are nurtured through our successes and our failures as teachers. And I’ve had plenty of both.

But – and as teachers we know this – intuition and instinct or the ability to create a great playlist are not the only qualities on which we should rely. As long as we teach we are also and always students. As long as we teach we are also and always beginners.

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Emotionally Bypassing Joy and Sorrow

Shadow Bridge IEach week I open and close my yoga classes with a reading.  I try to choose passages that have heart and meaning in my own life.  I hope that if the words I share touch my emotional center then they may have resonance for others.  It doesn’t matter to me where I find inspiration.  Over the past month I’ve read quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Martha Graham and Albert Einstein.  This past week, however, I was reading from The Pocket Pema Chödrön.  Each day last week, sometimes several times each day, I heard myself deliver Pema’s thoughts on our desire for certainty and happiness.  I heard myself, through Pema, encourage my students to touch the center of their pain and to be present with it.  In that way, rather than becoming weaker through our endless craving for security we might be opened.  We might find strength.

These are powerful ideas.  Not only does she want us to sit in our own discomfort, she wants us to sit with the suffering of the person to our right and to our left.  She wants us to take on all suffering so that we can learn to find a way to be at home in our own.  Pema wants us to be still in the suffering.

Yet I can’t help but believe that we must also be still in the joy of each moment.  I don’t know that it’s true we brush by suffering in order to find our happy.  What I see in my life is this:  I brush by everything (the joy and the sorrow) in order to tick one more “to do” off my daily list.  I wrap myself in a façade of good intentioned optimism that functions as an emotional bypass.  And so, while I fail to touch the center of my pain I also don’t touch the center of my joy.

This week I will hold space for both sorrow and joy. I will resolve to not rush by the sadness I feel for a friend’s suffering.  Instead I will notice how it feels in my breath and my body.  I will resolve to not rush by the joy I feel for life – for the birdsong outside my window or the sweet stubble of the nasturtiums seeds I planted that are just now beginning to break out of the soil.

There is suffering all around us.  But there is joy, too.  Take time for both.

 

 

 

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Who Is That Woman and What Has She Done to Mimm?

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CIMG0083I’m not feeling myself these days.  Wait.  That’s not entirely true.  I feel very much like myself when I’m in the studio practicing asana with a group of students.  That’s where I feel fully present.  In the moment.  At ease.  Loving and loved.

I’m very grateful, therefore, that in a few hours I’ll be in the studio teaching my facilitated Yin workshop, “Giving and Receiving.”  I’ve been looking forward to this workshop from the moment it was added to the Samyama schedule.

I am looking forward to it for all the right reasons.  It’s another opportunity to share the benefits of a quiet and soulful practice.  Plus partnered yin – an offshoot of traditional yin practice that asks two individuals to work as one – builds on a foundation of open trust.  Melting into the asana with your partner’s support explores ideas of control and release, surrender and outcome.

Meanwhile, outside of the studio, I have a stranglehold on control and outcome.  There’s little room for surrender and release.  I am preparing to move into my new home and have a clear image in my mind of how this should unfold.  But the image in my mind – the story I’m telling myself of how this should all happen – is not congruent with reality.  I’m surrounded by what I believe is chaos. My soft edges have begun to harden into corners.  I’ve lost my ability to roll.  I’ve lost my practice.

It doesn’t matter that the hurdles in front of me are joyful pursuits.  It doesn’t matter that the end-result, when the chaos around me clears and the dust settles, will be a home of my own.

I am desperate to be finished so that I can return to being the woman who remembers that this mad pursuit is like running a race with ghosts.  These walls that I call mine, this carpet, that furniture – these are all ghosts that will one day crumble to dust.  Yet I am desperate for the illusion of warmth and safety to wrap itself around me. I am desperate to wake each morning with the man I love snoring beside me. Desperate for a fresh cup of coffee and the latest Economist on a quiet Sunday.  I am desperate and I am in this race so that I can have the story I’ve told myself but there is no traction, my feet spin but I cannot move.

These cravings have filled the space once held by my practice.

Wanting to shape the future I see for myself is not a bad thing.  Locking in the trajectory of my future without accounting for all the variables that make life interesting is.  I want a home.  But if I’m ever to find it I need to surrender.  I need to loosen the grip I have on the outcome I see in my mind’s eye.  I need to soften my hard edges and learn to roll.

A Place Called Home

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January 19:

CIMG2014I suppose there is always the chance that something catastrophic will happen.  The seller might change her mind.  Or maybe the numbers won’t add up. But those possibilities are, at this point, remote at best.  It looks like escrow really is going to close in seven days.

I’ve never owned a home before and until I signed the first sheet of paper that initiated the home buying process I didn’t know it was something I wanted.  But my signature on that piece of paper delivered a powerful and unexpected wave of energy that was at once euphoric and grounded.  Some might feel that home ownership ties you to an impossible commitment.  I had the opposite reaction.  For the first time, I felt free.

Of course, that sense of autonomous freedom is tempered by the heavy burden of borrowing enough money to purchase a four-bedroom home in Des Moines, Iowa.  But the Below Market Rate program exists so that individuals like me have an opportunity to stay in the overpriced Bay Area.  Even if instead of a four-bedroom home what I’ve found is a perfectly located one-bedroom condo to call my own.

But the burden that follows debt is not the only weight I have to process. As I fill boxes to move and boxes to donate to charity, I am struggling with the weight of accumulation.  I’m asking myself if the gathering and release of too many belongings is indicative of a lost yoga practice.  How do I reconcile my yoga life and my worldly life?  Are the boundaries blurred or hard-edged?  Where do they overlap?  Or are these two lives really the same?

January 23rd:

Last week, I made an unsettling decision.  I set the intention to rid myself of ghosts.  Five years ago my move into this small studio apartment was an act of self-preservation.  Personal difficulties offered no alternative. I brought what little furniture I had and gathered what else I needed from gracious and generous friends.

But the pieces of furniture that I brought with me then now hold ghosts from that past.  I can’t bring those ghosts with me.  It’s time for a new beginning. And so the desk, the book cases, the chair and the fold-up-futon are being sent away to neighbors and strangers who won’t notice the memories tucked into the back of a drawer or molded into the crease of a seat cushion.

But I wonder if the willful release of these very functional pieces of furniture demonstrates a lack of fiscal responsibility and an all-consuming selfishness?  As a yogi should it not be part of my practice to mindfully detach from the troubling memories and emotional scars? What surrounds me is little more than an assemblage of particle board and veneers of inexpensive birch.  How can a desk hold the imprint of trauma? How can wood hold memory?  Yet the very glue that binds these pieces together also binds me tight against the energy of events that unfolded years ago.

January 24th:

It doesn’t matter if you move across an ocean, to another state or down the block.  Moving creates CIMG1757chaos.  It stirs up dust.  Surrounded by the boxes I began to pack when finding home was still only a hope, I’m reminded of the promise I made to myself to live simply.  I ask myself if, after everything that has happened since my return from Ireland, I deserve the happiness I’ve enjoyed over this past year.  The answer is easy.  Yes.  Of course I do.  We all deserve happiness and we all deserve a place to call home.  Even me.

And so, for now, this is my practice.  I will remain in the happiness of the present moment.  I will humbly remain mindful of the truth we call change.  With each breath I will be grateful that I am loved and that, as of January 26th, 2015, I have a place on this astounding planet that I can call my home.

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A New Practice

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To say it has been a busy few months is an understatement.

A friend asked the other day, “So, how do you feel now that it’s all over?”  She was referring to the conclusion of two years of study at Sofia University and the success of my final paper (which you can read here), my year-long adventure in yoga-therapy training at Niroga Institute, and the end of Samyama’s first 8-week teacher training program, The Dharma Path, where I had the honor of assisting John Berg in the teaching of asana and methodology.

“Are you excited?  Or is there a void?”

The possibility of there being a void in my life was something I hadn’t considered.  But Hillary’s question encouraged me to step back and assess how it felt to reach the end of this hectic and amazing chapter.  When I did, I realized there is indeed a gaping hole where writing assignments and reading texts and lesson preparations used to reside.  The undercurrent of urgency that roiled through my psyche has mellowed to a gentle ramble.  The fractal-esque symmetry of life’s repeating pattern of work, teach, study, sleep, work, teach, study, sleep has been disrupted.  Like a Jenga tower with one too many blocks pulled form its foundation, I’m teetering toward the unknown.  I’m restless.

And it’s unnerving.

It’s the faith I hold in the order of life that binds my fragile personal yoga practice together.  When my faith is challenged and order is disrupted, my practice is challenged, too.

The charge, however, is not how to keep my practice alive, it’s how to keep it moving forward.

The key, I think, is to accept this shift in my space/time continuum as a gift.  The end of school and the other recent commitments that took constant and attentive energy did not generate a gaping black hole.  Nor did they manifest a void in my life.  If anything, the end of these commitments created an opportunity for me to see my world and my personal practice with a new perspective.  I have a chance to re-tool my practice and to put the pieces of my life together in a new way.

And that’s what I intend to do.  To accept the gift of open space instead of searching for ways to see it filled.  Is it possible that this is what my personal practice was meant to be all along?  That I should allow my arms to open wide and that I should listen – really listen – to the sound of my breath and beating heart echoing in the space of a less busy life?

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