Rainy Mornings, Smoked Salmon and a Girl Named Turtle

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The Bean Trees

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I didn’t know this until today, but I love rainy June mornings.

Typically I tend to resent Saturday mornings.  I want to be like normal people.  I want the option of lounging about.  But my constitution won’t allow it. My body clock wakes me at six and I’m immediately consumed by the need to open my laptop and write.  What usually happens, of course, is that I leap out of bed, open my laptop and check emails.  This morning, with the rain tapping at my window, a miracle occurred.  I was convinced to keep my eyes closed for an extra ninety minutes.

When I did finally pull myself together, I was off to see my 90-year-old West Point graduate client for an hour of stretching and movement.  A widower, he’s typically quiet and reserved – except when I crack one of my notoriously bad jokes.  Although I really shouldn’t be encouraged, he’ll reward me with his hoot of a laugh.  Let’s just say there was a bit of hooting going on today.

After that I had brunch with a friend.  Ok, I’ll admit it.  It was with Mr. On Line.  What can I say?  I know this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be done – I think you’re supposed to treat online dating a more like a job.  I’m just not the type of person to set up coffee dates every free second.

To be honest, at this point I’m inclined to put an end to all the OKCupid stuff and consider myself lucky that I’ve made a friend and didn’t meet an ax murderer in the process.  Sort of file it under been there, done that.  Besides, I met Mr. On Line’s amazing cats today.  Any day that involves a cat NOT showing instant disdain for the strange, dripping wet  human standing in the living room is a good day.  It probably helped that I had the lingering odor of smoked salmon on my fingertips but all’s fair in love and meows.

Is this becoming one of those loathsome, tedious, drawn out blog posts that become mind achingly dull in their monotony?  Is it?  IS IT??  Great. Because guess what I did after I bonded with the cats?

I took myself to the Cantor Museum on the Stanford Campus and spent two hours there.  To see this.  Which was amazing.  If you’re in the area and appreciate books, typesetting, paper and etching – don’t miss it.

And then I went home to read.  For pleasure.  From 4:30 to 8:30 PM.  Just me, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees (loved it) and several cups of pu-erh tea.

In other words, with the exception of my morning client, I managed to experience the day without an agenda.  Without the need to cross things off a list. (Ok…I confess… there was a little of that.)  But still it was an extraordinary day for Mimm Patterson.

Ps…by the way, this whole reading for pleasure business is fantastic!  I don’t know why I never considered it before.  Now there are a slew of books in my queue – my next Kingsolver will be The Poisonwood Bible.  After that Steven Harrigan’s Remember Ben Clayton.  Tomorrow it’s Velva Jean Learns to Drive by Jennifer Niven.  And then I’m on to all the books I said I’ve always wanted to read but never have…

Let the Dust Clouds Settle

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Me. In my favorite chair. Sitting still.

Flummoxed.  I’m flummoxed.

Even though the weather in the Bay Area has most of us convinced it is still March, the truth is we’re six months into 2011.   Hard to believe, isn’t it?  I’d love to say that so far it’s been an exciting, productive one hundred and eighty days (give or take) but the truth is so far this year has been about introspection and healing.  At least for me. And, for now, there is very little I want to share about that.  Except maybe to say something we can always count on is change.  Nothing ever stays the same.

Instead I’ll tell you that I emptied my change bucket on Memorial Day and discovered that throwing the days collection of quarters, nickels and dimes into an old water bottle could yield – after sixteen months – three hundred and twenty dollars. Coin Star took a small chunk of that, of course, but I still had enough for two sessions of therapy and a few groceries.

And I’ll tell you about how I arrived for a hair cut at my favorite corner salon and ran out of it thirty minutes later looking not unlike an East German gymnast circa 1964.  Attempts at home to re-style the odd and uneven razor cut with any gel, mousse and wax left in the back of my closet since 1992 failed.

Fortunately, when I returned to the salon today they happily re-cut my hair for free.  Crises averted.  I thought I was going to have pull out my acid washed mom jeans and Sally Jesse Raphael glasses.

And that’s pretty much it.

I’ve not even checked in with eHarmony for new matches or OKCupid to count the arrows in my quiver.

Instead, I’ve begun to consider the benefits of sitting still.  We spend so much of our lives chasing dreams and goals, stirring up dust, racing towards something that at times is impossible to identify.  I think I’d like to find out what happens if I let a little tranquility roll over me.  What will I see if I let the dust settle?  Maybe I’ll find out everything I wanted was right next to me all along.  I was just moving too fast to notice.

The Great Online Dating Experiment of 2011 – Part I

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Somehow I just don't quite see the two of us working out...

If eHarmony is the alleged online dating equivalent to shopping at Neiman Marcus, then OKCupid is Ross Dress for Less – you have to do a bit of digging before you find a potential gem.

I’m about ten days into the Great Online Dating Experiment of 2011 and I have to tell you – it’s not going so well.  Let me rephrase that:  it’s going slower than I expected.  After three days of inappropriate matches from the folks at eHarmony – who seem  under the impression that I would be interested in seventy-year-old men whose dream vacation is a Donny and Marie Concert in Branson, Missouri – I signed up with OKCupid.  I mean no offense to older men, Donny or Marie (whose lips are looking fabulous these days, by the way) or the fine folks in Branson.  But seriously eHarmony – that’s what your big ol’ computer surmised from my profile?  That I was looking for a road trip to the heartland in a kitted out Winnebago?

I exaggerate, of course, and to be honest it’s probably not eHarmony’s fault.  I’m sure the computer did its best with the information I provided.  Here I am, with (according to a friend) a “facility for writing” and I can’t string three words together that describe my wondrousness.  My profile is flatter than a stale matzoh cracker.

Wouldn’t we be better able to rally to the cause of love if profile writing was a group project? I’ve been thinking that it’s not an altogether bad idea for friends to form Profile Writing Groups.  Imagine…a few good friends, a little wine, a couple of laptops and a few hours later one great online profile.  Now that’s my idea of fun.

Of course, meeting a total stranger for coffee might be fun, too.  And, believe it or not, despite painting myself a tepid beige, it looks like that’s what I might be doing this weekend.  My palms are sweating at the very thought.  But it’s good to know that I attract more than sweet, Winnebago owning retirees with a hankerin’ for a road trip.

The Healing Power of Yoga. Any Yoga.

I taught my first Yin Basics Workshop yesterday at the California Yoga Center, my home studio.  One hour of theory followed by an hour of practice.  Nine beautiful yogis joined me.

Teaching a workshop requires a different skill set to teaching a class.  I felt challenged by the task of explaining the theory and practice of Yin in sixty minutes and then further challenged by the questions raised by students coupled with my self-doubt.

It was a great afternoon.

And yet, this morning I’m convinced that despite the training I’ve completed, the workshops I’ve attended and the books I’ve read I really know nothing about Yoga.  After thirty years of practice, my knowledge only scratches the surface of everything there is to know about how Yoga affects the body on a spiritual and cellular level.

It was a wake-up call.

Meanwhile, labels are beginning to irk me.  I’m beginning to get the feeling that we’re all making it up as we go along.

During our workshop the question that is always asked was asked yet again:  What is the difference between Yin Yoga and Restorative Yoga?  I tried to answer by explaining my experience with the restorative class I attended two weeks ago (read about it here).  The student asking the question – who is a yogi for whom I have great admiration – replied:  “That wasn’t restorative.  In my restorative classes we do eight to ten poses in an hour and hold them like we’re holding them today.”

And yet, at the end of my Restorative Yoga experience two weeks ago, I felt restored.  So who’s to say it wasn’t restorative yoga?  And maybe what she’s calling Restorative is really Yin?  And does it really, really matter?

The truth is I want to feel restored at the end of any yoga practice.  I want to feel connected.  Grounded.  Free of doubt and fear.  I want to feel my blood moving and warm, living muscle tissue.  I want to experience an ease of movement in my body, my spirit and my soul – as though I’ve come home to something I longed for.

That’s how yoga heals.

Soul Mates, Online Dating and Therapy

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Milano, Italy

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I did it.  Something I’ve refused to do for years.  On-line dating, eHarmony style.

Oh, and I also began therapy.  But more about that later.

I don’t know when or where or even if I’ll meet my soul mate.  Yes, I believe in soul mates.  I believe there is someone looking for me and when we meet the connection might not be instant but it will be profound and the love we fall into – despite our flaws, our disagreements, the challenges we face in life – will be unfailing.  I believe that.

And for years I believed love and connection was out of my reach.  That somehow I didn’t deserve it.  Besides, I had plenty of platonic love and connection with my yoga students.  Weren’t my cravings for romantic love selfish?

As friends know, I’ve always hoped I’d meet someone – anyone – at the salad bar of whole foods as our tongs tangle over the romaine.  When I mentioned this recently on Facebook, a friend replied, “I think meeting someone at the salad bar is a toss up!”

He’s right.  If I want love and connection – if I want to find the soul mate that at this very moment is looking for me – then I have to increase my chances of finding him.

It’s been forty-eight hours and the potential matches are rolling in.  All eight of them.  One of them is someone I’ve known for years.  How weird is that?  I archived his profile immediately (eHarmony’s lovely euphemism for ‘delete’).  But now I’m asking myself, is online dating for the birds, or does eHarmony know something I don’t?

Now…about that therapy…..

An Old Dog Learns a New Trick

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I may have mentioned once or twice that in Chinese Astrology I am a Yellow Dog.  Not only am I prone to drooling in my sleep but I can also catch a Frisbee between my teeth, forgive instantaneously and love unconditionally.  I am also fiercely loyal.  Loyalty is, at times, a curse.  It makes it difficult for me to try new things without feeling as though I’m being unfaithful.

But on Sunday I overcame those feelings and attended my first ever Restorative Yoga Class.  I was on a quest. I needed calm.  I wanted my mind to clear and my nervous system to unwind.   I didn’t need to break a sweat.  I didn’t need to feel the burn.  I didn’t need my heart pumping within 85% of its maximum rate.

I considered a Yin session at home, but I’ve been making an effort to get out more.  And so that’s how I found myself at my local JCC at 5:15 on a sunny afternoon.

Chihiro is a lovely teacher.  Confident and quiet, she demonstrated all three poses we completed in the hour-long class.  Yes, that’s right.  THREE poses:  the first was a supported chest opener, the second took our legs up the wall and the third was supported relaxation.  As my body melted into the work, Chihiro observed, corrected and comforted students with a whisper.

In my Yin class on Monday, I mentioned the Restorative class.  Several students wanted to know the difference between to two styles of yoga.

Here it is:

The Difference Between Restorative Yoga and Yin Yoga

Restorative Yoga uses props to create support and reduce stress on the body. 

Yin purposely places stress on the connective tissue.

Yin requires that the practitioner open to discomfort rather than requiring comfort in order to open.

It was important for me to allow my inner Yellow Dog to run off leash.  Chihiro’s restorative class offered the support I needed and I learned a valuable lesson.  Even though my yoga loves are Yin and Iyengar, there are times when other schools of yoga are better able to heal my body, mind and spirit.

The Gil Hedley Experience

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Last Monday morning I picked up a scalpel for the first time since seventh grade biology class and made a tentative incision.  Six days later at 3:00 in the afternoon I saw a brain that had been meticulously dissected with the spinal cord intact.  I touched the bundle of nerves in our lower back we call Cauda Equina and watched as the white filament in the middle of it all – the filum terminale – was teased into view.  It was like looking into the center of universe.  It was the Source.  It was what I came to see.

When we meet our cadaver for the first time we begin by lifting a fitted rubber sheet.  This exposes her form, covered in layers of white gauze.  Each layer of the shroud is a long veil.

As the days progress we continue to remove layers. Skin, fat, tissue, viscera, bone, brain.  Each layer is another beautiful veil and each time a layer is eased away, a new secret is revealed.

And as the veils on our form are drawn back, so our own veils are, too.  How we perceive, our beliefs, our longing, our pain – it all floats to the surface, is taken up and the next layer revealed.

Gil Hedley is an unconventional teacher.  For six days we did clinical work, named muscles, found ligaments, traced nerve paths and looked inside the brain.  And while we were doing that, we were listening, too.

On death:

“We are walking in the land of taboo.”

On life:

“We resist the life that we’re given.”

On the body:

“The spine is a string.  It’s not an instrument of compression but an instrument of levity.”

“We don’t need to choose between the heart and brain.  The body is the shape of the heart.  The body is the shape of the brain.  And they’re braided together.”

“How do we feel about the body?  Sometimes we feel we’re a victim of the body.  Sometimes we’re taught to be disgusted by the body.  Sometimes we’re taught to love the body.”

“Instead of thinking ‘look at the body I’ve been given’ why don’t we think ‘look at the body I’ve chosen’.  And aren’t some folks incredibly brave and courageous for making the choices they make?”

On learning and teaching:

“If you’re afraid of making a mistake – of hitting the ball into the net – put down the tennis racket and don’t play.”

“You attract a different crowd of people by being vague.”

“Will you dare to embrace your power?  Dance through all your layers.  Is your heart free to dance?”

So today, after everything I’ve seen this past week, it’s time to ask myself:

“Is my heart free to dance?”

Inner Space

The body is a holy and wondrous thing. Broken or healthy, it is a miracle. I know this to be true – but my belief is something I’ve cobbled together from books and good teachers – not from first hand experience.

In a few hours I’m boarding a train for San Francisco and will spend the week with fifteen or so other somanauts exploring the body’s inner space with Gil Hedley of the popular Fuzz Speech.  Tomorrow we’ll begin with the dermis and superficial fascia.

I will confess to being apprehensive.  Even this morning I ran through excuses that would keep me home. For a moment I convinced myself to head for the City, hide in the apartment I’m borrowing from clients, skip the workshop and treat myself to a week of isolation and stillness.  A silent retreat.  No one would know.

And then I came to my senses.  I would know.

Earlier today I wrote this to a friend:

Taking train to City today for cadaver week…to be able at last to see it all in front of me – to cut into it (which still seems to me such a violation)…I may be making too big a deal of this but I feel as though I’m stepping though a portal and will emerge in six days a different woman.

People ask me why I want to do this.  Some are incredulous.  Those who have worked with the cadaver are excited for me.  To answer their question “why?” I tell them about being a kid and flipping through the volume of Encyclopedia Britannia that had the transparencies of the human body.  Remember those?  You could flip from the circulatory system to the nervous system; you could see all the muscles and count all the bones.  I got lost for entire afternoons just looking, looking, looking. I was so curious.  I’m still curious.

And curiosity trumps apprehension any day.  I’ll see you in a week.

Lists, Love and Epiphanies

An list from a few years ago...I'm exhausted looking at it.

There’s nothing like a Wednesday morning epiphany to get my juices flowing.  I’m still obsessed with the advantage and disadvantages of keeping detailed lists and goals and objectives.  The merits of having a game plan.  (I’m also wondering how we determine what is instinct and what is illusion but that’s for another post).

Yesterday I walked Rose the Labradoodle without my ever-present iPod and discovered that not having my brain bombarded with Green Day, downloads of Michael Krasny (I have a huge crush on his voice) and the occasional Miles Davis opened my brain up to the possibility of – yeegads – random, spontaneous, creative thought.  Who knew?  Unplugging the external cacophony gives us a chance to listen to what’s going on deep inside.

And here’s what I came up with on Rose’s walk yesterday:  Most writers create a story arc – an outline of who their characters are, where they’re going and how they’re going to get there.  A beginning, middle and an end.  The story arc is roughly hewn list that chronicles the events that move the plot forward, the set backs the protagonist may endure, and the big payoff – why the heroine began the journey in the first place.

But a story arc is simply a road map.  It’s malleable.  It’s possible to turn left and venture down an unmarked avenue.

Cue big flash of insight.

When I think of my life as a series of lists, goals and objectives I set myself up for failure and disappointment.  The list is too long, the goals are too high. All I can see in my mind’s eye is that white piece of paper and one bulleted 10-point Helvetica command after another. My self-esteem is fragile enough already.  Why would I do that to myself?

But – if I create a story arc for my life then I acknowledge that there has to be room for uncertainty, moments when I decide to turn left instead of right, unexpected opportunity.  It doesn’t eliminate a game plan – I still want everything I want with all my heart and I know that I have to work for it.  But in my mind’s eye I can see my arc play out like a stunningly framed Ang Lee movie.

So, good-bye dry, boring lists.  Hello, The Story of Mimm.

Take a moment.  If you’re a chronic list maker like me, how does it feel to release those rote set of goals for a moment and instead see your life as an amazing story?

More About Lists, Love and Open Hearts

My Inner Mimm wants to be a slob.  A female Oscar Madison minus the cigar.   Fortunately, living in a studio apartment prevents me from embracing her.  There has to be a sense of order when you live in a small space and although my lack of domestic skills occasionally run amok (as I’m the only dish washer, I’ve been known to wait until I’ve run out of clean bowls before I take care of the dirty ones), by and large I have ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’.

Lists are a guide to putting everything in its place – including, perhaps, our feelings and emotions.  I created a list a few days ago, wrote about it here, then worried that it might corral my recently opened heart safely back into the archival box it had sheltered in for the past five years.  I guess, too, a list tethers us in the present.  There’s still enough slack on the line to look at the past or float into the future, but the list will always gently tug us back to the here and now.

Maybe that’s part of the reason opening ourselves to the possibility of love and connection is so frightening. It’s too easy to abandon the here and now.  We abandon what we believed was certain (our list) to share the care and feeding of our heart and emotions with someone else.  We acknowledge our vulnerability.

It feels a bit like dropping into Wheel or Upward Bow Pose.  We arch back, unable to see our destination and yet we still reach.  We trust.  We know that our hands will find the floor, and that we won’t be hurt.  Midway through, however, there’s a moment of doubt – Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea? But just when we consider letting go of the pose – losing the faith that brought us this far – our hands blindly reach one more inch.  Our back bends deeper than we thought it could – we’re capable of more than we ever believed – and our heart opens wide.