Duty Bound

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Researching for a novel I was writing.

Eight months is a long time. It’s two hundred and forty days, give or take. That’s how long it has been since I abandoned my writing practice. My photography? I abandoned that when I packed up my darkroom and sold my printer in 1994. Then, and now, I had my reasons. Life was busy. Work was all consuming. It still is.

When does our sense of commitment to a job and to others supersede abandoning the touchstone that speaks to our heart? When did I trade my creative life for a life of duty?

My work as a yoga teacher and program director at Samyama Yoga Center brings a sense of immense personal accomplishment. My work with chronic pain patients, most recently as someone who offers training to yoga teachers new to working with this demographic, fills me with joy.

But along the way I’ve lost my balance. These activities – these wonderful things that bring food to my plate and keep a roof over my head – have become all consuming. So while I have enough creature comforts to keep me fed, clothed and sheltered my soul feels raw for the lacking.

I crave a wholesome life. I crave a life that supports my happily charging forth duty bound into the fray and a life that is blessed with the time to hold my emotional heart in my hands.

This dilemma is not unique to me and I am grateful that this simple idea of finding balance and that honoring my creative heart is my biggest problem. All in all, I am a very lucky woman.

Still, it feels good to be back.

Resolve and Forgiveness

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IMG_1521I was recently asked by the Palo Alto Weekly to write an article about setting New Year’s Resolutions.  I interviewed, via email and phone, several individuals who offered lovely insights.   I want to thank them:  Professional coach Linda Furness, personal trainer Steven Rice, chef Anna Rakoczy from Homemade, Dr. Rebecca Green from Peninsula Integrative Medicine,  Dr. Fred Luskin from Stanford University and Arda, author of the book The Seeker’s Manual. You can click here to see the final piece, which appeared online yesterday and will be in the print edition this Friday.

What the article has to say is important – we can set reasonable goals and make time for home cooking with delicious local ingredients.  We can move our bodies – often and in different ways. We can improve our energy and balance our emotions by spending more time in nature.  All these things will help us achieve the resolutions we set for our physical health and wellness.

The problem is, I write for the food section of the Palo Alto Weekly.  I’m very happy and very grateful to be able to do that.  But it means that my penchant for personal reflection has to be stymied.  And despite my master’s in the subject I have to curtail my instinct to add a transpersonal twist.  These boundaries, I’m certain you can imagine, has put me on a very steep learning curve.  My editors are infinitely patient with me as I study and slowly absorb the techniques required for this type of writing.  Having the facility for putting one word in front of another in a reasonably coherent manner is one thing.  Learning the techniques for thinking and composing as a journalist – while on the job – is another.

The thing is, what I really wanted to write about for the Weekly was forgiveness.  I wanted to answer the question, “How do we, when we slip or fail, forgive ourselves and glean what we are meant to learn from the experience?”  But the article was meant to be about food.  There was no room for forgiveness.

Thank goodness for blogs.  Here’s the rest of the story.

Dr. Fred Luskin, a professor at both Sofia University and Stanford University and author of several books about forgiveness, spoke with me by phone and offered these ideas.  His words landed in my heart like a blessing.  He said, “Making your goals physical or material will never make you happy.  It is not your physical body that determines the quality of your life.” And then he clarified,  “Of course we ARE physical – we need to take care of our bodies and to earn a living.  They are good things but not THE good thing.”

He suggested that if we are going to set a resolution it should be this: Choose to be kinder to yourself and to the people around you.  When there’s a choice, choose that. 

“Give thanks more,” he said, “Rather than demanding more give thanks to people – people are precious, they are impermanent and they are flawed.”

It seems simple but as the article was taking shape and moving away from what I wanted to communicate it was difficult to be grateful.  Difficult to give thanks.  But now that I’ve seen the finished piece on line and have had a chance to reflect I’m exceedingly thankful for the time everyone willingly offered.  I’m grateful for the editing, too, and grateful that I can choose to share Dr. Luskin’s and Arda’s important message on Practically Twisted.

Arda has a coaching and healing practice in Palo Alto.  I interviewed him via email.  Rather than write a summary of that interview, here is a lightly edited transcript:

Q: How do we forgive ourselves when we fail? 

A: We can only forgive ourselves when we understand why we fail. This is a dilemma. We see failure as a negative outcome. As a result, we bash ourselves for failing. Every time we [fall into a pattern of] self-criticism, it moves us away from forgiveness.  Instead, we can use failure as an opportunity to get to know our vulnerable side. When we learn more about who we are and why we do the things the way we do we can accept our failure and forgive ourselves.

For example, if we want to quit smoking, it’s not the act of quitting that will make us achieve our goal. We need to understand that, let’s say, smoking takes away our social anxiety (our vulnerability). Without understanding the underlying reasons of our social anxiety, it will be very difficult to quit smoking. Once we understand and accept the reasons behind our social anxiety, we will be ready to take steps towards quitting. 

Q: Is there a roadmap to self-compassion? 

A: Yes.  The first step is self-awareness. Since we perceive the world through our conditioned lenses, it is important to know how our internal programming, i.e. thought patterns, beliefs, values and fears, affect our perceptions.  Then, the second step is to identify how our life experiences have affected our internal programming. The main component here is to review how our past, i.e. situations and people, has made us who we are today.

With this deeper insight of our personality and our programming, the third and final step is to embrace our life experiences as they are. This opens our hearts to ourselves without judgment and blame and brings understanding and self-compassion.

Q: Is it better to not set goals and never fail, or to have those goals, slip along the way and then pick ourselves up and try again?

A: Setting goals is natural. When we believe that reaching a goal will save us from misery and suffering, the attachment it creates sets false expectations and disappointments.  Setting goals without attachment can only be done when we can connect with our values. As a result, we can focus on the process of achieving a certain goal, instead of viewing goals as end results.  Failing to reach a goal is a valuable experience and growth oriented action and not a reason to avoid goal setting.

And I, for one, am not shy about setting goals.  So here they are: 

In 2016 I’m going practice kindness.  I’m going to be kind to myself, to my partner Ben, to my co-workers.  I’ll even be kind to the guy who cuts me off when I’m driving down Alma Street.  In 2016 I’m going to grateful for every opportunity I have to be more of who I am and for all the opportunities I have to grow, to be humbled and to learn.  I’ll move more in 2016, too.  And I’ll cook nutritious meals at home with local ingredients (I’ve already dusted off the slow cooker for some hearty winter dishes…black eye-pea and kale stew anyone?). 

My biggest goal for 2016?  To be a better writer.  To think like a journalist when that’s what the job requires.  To not be a ‘lazy writer’ – simply throwing words together because I know I can.  To commit myself to the process and to what is being asked of me.

Wishing everyone a joyful, safe and loving New Year.

Vision, Clarity and Cataracts

A few hours after surgery.

A few hours after surgery.

For the twenty-four months that I was in graduate school I struggled to complete reading assignments. I labeled myself lazy. I was convinced I lacked discipline when it felt impossible to read more than three or four pages at a time.

The truth was I struggled to complete reading assignments because I was struggling to see.

Over twenty million Americans over the age of forty have cataracts and in 2015 approximately three million will have cataract surgery. I am one of those three million. Two weeks ago the vision in my left eye hovered around 20/400. Today my distance vision in the same eye is 20/20. In a few months I’ll have the cataract in my right eye removed. I hope for the same sparkling results.

It’s true. The world, through my left eye, sparkles. I’m shocked by the clarity and crisp edges, the color and the detail. How did I not know what I was missing?

I guess cataracts sneak up on us. The diminishing light isn’t noticed. It’s not until an ophthalmologist sees the clouding of the lens and says, “Oh! You have a cataract!” that we realize we’ve been missing out. We’ve not been able to see all that this beautiful world has to offer.

In that way, cataracts are a bit like habits we ignore until we can no longer notice the impact they have on our lives.

I have some habits, some cycles I go through, that diminish the quality of my life in the same way that pesky cataract diminished my vision. The patterns that I bump into again and again dull my spirit. They include disparaging thought loops and actions that I know are harmful. They include choices that do not support health and wellness and spoken words that weaken the positive energy I wish to carry into the studio classes I teach, my work with individual clients and the loving relationships I’m blessed to have in my life.

Becoming aware of the patterns that make it difficult to live our best and brightest life and then taking action to bring about a return to clarity reminds us that we all hold a vision in our hearts.

This simple procedure to repair my broken vision has led me to ask myself once again, “How do I want to walk through this life?”

For now, at least, I can see that walk a little more clearly.

 

 

 

I’d Like to Thank the Academy….

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IMG_1802I’m inclined to play it all humble.  To hide my light under a bushel, blushing and mumbling “What?  Little ol’ me?”  But why?  How often am I going to win an award for writing?  Yeah.  You read that right.  I won an award.  For writing!

My essay, Memories are Made of This, was one among several essays presented First Place Awards from the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club.

You can read the essay here.

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Twelve Months

CIMG2733I didn’t see that one coming.  Looking back over my posts and reading what I was up to twelve months ago I discovered that I failed to write a final farewell to 2012. Not only that, but my last entry for the year espoused the benefits of eating meat.

Really? Seriously. Did not see that one coming.

It just goes to show you. Things change.

Three months later I wrote about my life as the accidental vegan.

By autumn I was a happy vegetarian 98% of the time. And that’s where I’ve settled. For now.

Like I said. Things change.

The year we say goodbye to this week is the year I began graduate school. Graduate school is challenging and I yearn for the day that I will once again read for pleasure.  But I love it.  It’s the year Samyama Yoga Center opened. Teaching at Samyama has changed my practice. Teaching there encourages me to try harder. To be better.

And yet, this was the year I gained and lost twenty pounds. It was the year I broke promises to myself, made new ones to replace the ones I allowed to slide and then broke those promises, too. I didn’t break every promise. But I broke enough of them to notice.

This was, then, the year I tried too hard and didn’t try hard enough. It was the year I found out I can juggle an amazing amount of metaphorical balls and it was the year I found out that sometimes when you drop a few of those balls the world keeps spinning.

In these twelve months I directed a fundraiser and produced a book. I raised money for two local charities. I didn’t do it alone and the process taught me important lessons about community and coöperation.

But at the end of the day, 2013 was a year like any other year. It brought joy and sadness. Excitement and disappointment. Hope and worry. I was fiercely loyal to friends and sometimes mean to acquaintances. I discovered my sense of humor was, on occasion, less funny and more hurtful. But I also discovered that I have a deep well of compassion.

I believe that in a decade’s time when I look back on this year I will say that 2013 was the year I finally had a clear vision of the woman I am meant to be (better late than never). I will say that it was the year I found the path that led me to her and that it was the year I realized it was the path I’d been walking on all along.

Many blessing to you all for a wondrous 2014.

Keeping Promises

IMG_2207I promised myself Hawk Mountain when I forced myself to book my airline tickets. I was going back to Breinigsville to visit my mother for a week in spring.

She didn’t like the idea of my going to the mountain. She felt slighted. A bit abandoned.

But if I was being inconsiderate, I didn’t care. I had to give myself a few short hours to visit a place I loved as a girl, when I was desperate to find a refuge from a violent home. Hawk Mountain spoke to my heart decades ago when I was a child. All these years later I still long for its beauty. To deny my heart time on the mountain would have broken it.

The place I love is part of the Appalachian Trail in eastern Pennsylvania. Opened as a bird sanctuary in 1934, its trails skirt the edge of the Blue Ridge and are situated beneath a major migratory path for raptors and other soaring winged wonders.

The climb to North Lookout was easier than I remembered.  The trail was wide and clean with rough-hewn benches every hundred yards or so.  The limestone outcrop my high school friends and I huddled beneath on chilly Saturdays during our senior year was now fenced off and deemed too dangerous to climb.  Stairs to the lookout helped those who could not manage the boulders I scrambled over at sixteen.  But the view from the lookout was untouched and stretched in front of me as it had for generations  I could follow the course of the Schuylkill River and the train tracks from Kempton.  I could see Bake Oven Knob in the distance and below me the bare plowed earth.

I climbed the rocks and searched the skies.  I breathed the late spring air made damp by rain clouds moving in from the next town over.  I crawled beneath boulders to photograph the stalks and spores of spawning green moss and then knelt next to the grey lichen clinging to glacial debris ten thousand years old.

During my morning on the mountain I opened to the space around me.  I pushed against the wind and felt the wind push back.  I stretched into the sky and curled under rocks.  Hard granite pressed against my bones and when the sky finally opened the rain washed my skin.

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There was new life on that mountain. The new growth of a warm spring. I was new life on that mountain, too. I returned home to visit a mother I don’t know, to learn about a family who are strangers to me. On that grey morning, the morning I gave to myself as a gift, I listened to what the mountain had to teach me about memories and moving on.

And as I drove away from Hawk Mountain through the slashing rain, I knew I was ready at last to hear the stories my mother needed to tell.

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 As part of an assignment for the class Psychology of the Body, I was asked to write about my relationship with the land.  We all have a landscape we hold in our soul.  A place we love and return to if not with our bodies then in spirit.  I feel so lucky to have had the chance to walk Hawk Mountain once again.

Everything is Different.

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IMG_0035This morning, for the first time in six weeks, I took an hour’s walk at Shoreline. Everything is different. The colors, the sounds, the temperature. I saw a young Avocet – still fuzzy and tentative and brand new to the world – take a walk on the mudflats while its protective parents kept guard. And I saw five scarlet winged blackbirds. As they landed on the spring green bushes the flash of red from the underside of their extended wings startled my eyes.

Shoreline was warm and wonderful and it felt brand new.

This morning, for the first time in six weeks, I looked at this blog and knew it was time to post. I was away for a while, attending to other parts of my life. Now I’m back, everything is different, and I don’t know where to begin my story.

Maybe with this question:

How do you inhabit your body?

And this one:

Where does intuition rest?

 

 

 

Words, Walking and Making Art

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One of the best things about my Spiritual Perspectives class are the projects we’re asked to complete. For example, on Tuesday I enjoyedAsh of a Lost Heart a three-hour walk as a meditation on the idea of ‘journey’. Today I began work on my spiritual autobiography. This project can take any form: song, essay, collage. We were asked simply to be authentic and inspired. I’m using the idea of reliquaries. I’m selecting one or two events from each decade of my life and creating an assemblage from found materials, text and photographs. The project is immensely challenging but creatively refreshing. Thinking in terms of symbols and images instead of words is a tonic for my brain.

It’s easy to look back on life and list by rote, “This happened and then that happened.” The challenge is to look back on life, remember the difficult moments and remember the astounding moments, too. And then contemplate how those moments transformed the spirit. Contemplate how those moments made you a better person. I’ve had so many stops and starts on the path – from a “Jesus-freak” in the 1970’s to a wannabe-atheist in the 1990’s. But in the past few years I’ve learned the lesson that so many of us have: that religion and spirituality are two very different things. I’ve learned that our journeys are intensely personal. I’ve learned that there is no one true path and that it’s all right to wander off the trail a bit from time to time.

I thought I’d share a bit of my essay about the walk I took on Tuesday.

Take ShelterThe wonderful thing about walking is that the rhythm of the foot falls become like a meditation. The chatter in the mind stops and the head suddenly has room to consider new ways of seeing. That happened to me around the two-hour mark. I remembered that, unlike all my other walks, this walk was different. This walk was not about non-stop movement. It was about a journey. A journey’s pace ebbs and flows, just like the tide. It slows down and it speeds up. Sometimes it even stops. And that’s what I did.

I stopped. Pedometer be damned I stopped right where I was. I looked across the water. I examined the banked earth for signs of burrowing owls. My eyes followed the small hawk who took off from the grass in front of me clutching her rodent lunch. And I took photographs of the bloated grey clouds blustering over the East Bay hills.

And nothing bad happened.

On our journey it’s fine to stop from time to time. To take it in. To witness from a fresh perspective. Today I was a witness.

 

The Pen Collector

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Just a few of my several dozen pens.

Just a few of my several dozen pens.

The thing about tolerating a cold is that in between blowing the nose and hacking up phlegm balls, you have quite a bit of time for thinking.

On November 19th a cold took hold at 38,000 feet over the Pacific when a stranger a few rows behind let loose with a wet and righteous sneeze. At the time I remember calmly telling myself, “I’m going to get that.” Repeated slaps to the forehead while silently screaming “NO NO NO NO you idiot WHAT were you thinking?!?!” were not enough to talk my immune system down from the inevitable and, sure enough, on the evening of Tuesday the 20th while watching a DVD with my friend, I began to cough.

By the following morning I had a full-blown excuse for staying in bed with the duvet tucked tight for the next seven days.

But, like I said, it gave me time to think. Perhaps it was feverish delirium, but the one thing I thought most about were the two flowerpots full of pens I keep on the right hand corner of my desk next to the twelve spiral notebooks I keep stacked at attention in the event I should have just one brilliant thought worth noting (there at least a dozen more notebooks awaiting active duty in a dresser drawer). “Why on earth,” I muttered, “do I have so many pens and notebooks?”

I’m a pen snob. I prefer an ultra fine Pilot G2 gel point in black. They have good glide.

I’m not as picky about my spiral notebooks, although I prefer the 9 ½ by 7 inch Callbers. Yes, I have a couple of those fancy black notebooks – the one Hemingway preferred – but I’m afraid of them. They’re a bit too pretty. I wouldn’t dare deface them with my chicken scratch – even with a black inked ultra fine Pilot G2 gel point.

Yes, I recognize my obsession with notebooks and pens is a symptom of something more troubling.

When I recovered from my cold I took a good look around me. In my medicine cabinet were six different brands of hair ointment all promising to do the same thing for my curls. In my closet? Sixteen pairs of shoes. There are three more pairs in a basket by my front door. Four tubes of toothpaste. Five brands of antiperspirants. An assortment of travel sized bottles of shampoo, conditioner and moisturizer.

You see where I’m going with this. I feel a little New Year’s challenge coming on.

I’m going to try to survive 2013 without making any new purchases.

Before you think I’ve gone around the twist, here are the guidelines:

Obviously I will need to pay rent, purchase food, gas for my car, electricity. I will also be spending money on books and tuition this year as well as airfare for a trip back East.

What I won’t allow myself to buy is any item bought to replace an item that I already have and that is still in good working order. I can only replace personal care items like soap, shampoo, deodorant and moisturizer when what I have is within a use or two of running out.

No new pens or notebooks.

No new clothes or shoes – I have more than I need.

But what about entertainment? Meals out? The occasional over-priced coffee?

I’m not trying to live the life of an ascetic. I still want to live well and enjoy life fully. I will set a budget over the next few days to accommodate life’s little frills.

This is a simple exercise in mindfulness. Ours is a greedy and wasteful society. I want to pay better attention to how much I waste and what I truly need.

Anyone care to join me?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fessin’ Up and Clearing the Decks

My…ahem…tens of readers will know that over the past few months I’ve attempted to take a proactive approach to self-improvement.  Improving one’s ‘Self’ is unique to each individual.  Some folks want to abandon bad habits; others look to be more social.  If you read THIS post or THIS one, you’ll remember that I wanted to let go of my addiction to Hulu.  Having already given my television to Goodwill I had slipped into the bad habit of watching Hulu from bed with the laptop perched on my belly. I hoped the hours formerly spent glued to the boob tube would now be spent reading.  I went so far as to challenge myself to read one book per week.

I also wanted to create a meditation practice.

Now that winter has turned to spring, how am I doing?  Just fine.  Thanks for asking.

It took a bit of negotiation with my psyche and more than a little self-compassion, but I’m doing just fine.

My 21-hours per week television/Hulu addiction is down to about two or three hours per week (unless I’m house sitting – who can ignore a flat screen TV the size of a wall and surround sound???)

Did I read all the books I wanted to read?  No.  But I’m reading.  All the time.  But a little necessity called work prevented me from maintaining the breakneck pace I set for myself.

The meditation practice is blossoming.  Establishing a good habit is a process of repetition.  For several weeks I struggled to remember to practice.  But then the corner was turned and now I miss it when my practice slips.  And it does slip.

Last week was one of those weeks when I fell off the wagon.  Nothing prevented me from enjoying my regular daily mediation except the story I was spinning in my head about being overwhelmed and overworked.  A few days into my lapsed practice a friend turned to me and said, “You haven’t been meditating.”

How could he have noticed?  How could he not have noticed?

I slipped back into regular practice the next day.

We make choices about how we want to live our lives.  We set goals, we plot a course.  We hope.

And then life happens.  Extraordinary, brilliant, tragic, wonderful life.

Sometimes we fall.  Sometimes we need to change course.  But always we pick ourselves back up and head into the wind.  And then we soar.

And that’s how I’m doing.

ps…in my quest to crush my writer’s block I’ve given an old blog a new name:  Your Daily Prompt.  If you’re a writer – even if you’re not – take a look.