Lists, Love and Equilibrium

At last, the dust seems to be settling.  How do I know?  I made a list.  This seems like a silly indicator that equilibrium is coming home to roost.  But I am the self-proclaimed Mother of All List Makers. My last impressive list was created in the middle of January from the Embarcadero Hyatt when, disillusioned by the Yoga Journal Conference, I hid out in my hotel room for the weekend and pretended I was on a writer’s retreat. Before that I had my list of New Year’s Resolutions.  And before that it was Fifty Things to Accomplish in My Fiftieth Year (that one began three years ago – I’m still working on it).

Lists are about control.  They make me feel safe.  If I have my list I know where I am supposed to be.  I know where I am going.  Nothing can hurt me or distract me or pull me from my path.  I have my list.  Here’s my list for today:

Monday 11 April

  • 6:00 Rise: Shower, eat, feed Rose & Bella, walk Rose, meditate, post blog
  • 9:00:  Tom in Sunnyvale; d/o new clothes and stuff at home
  • Leave car at Sarah’s (walk)
  • Credit Union
  • 11:00:  FMG
  • Lunch
  • 1:00:  Avenidas
  • Sarah’s:  Rest, write, walk Rose; flowers for Bobbie & Harkins
  • 7:30:  Yin
  • TO DO:  contact Ann re. workshop; follow through on lost paycheck, poop scoop,  look at Abby’s letters from week 4, check submissions, think about query letter for cadaver workshop, drop off envelopes at CYC

It’s very routine.  Nothing exciting.  And it continues to Sunday, when I leave for San Francisco and my weeklong cadaver intensive with Gil Hedley.  The most exciting moment is when I break from my Wednesday evening tradition (staying at home) in order to leave the house for a home cooked dinner with Bettie, Richard and Dena.

This week’s list reminds me of an incident that happened about eight years ago.  I was going though another difficult time and decided I needed to talk with someone.  At my first meeting with a therapist, I brought The Ultimate List. I was so proud.  It proved I really wasn’t troubled.  It proved I had my act together.  The list was eight pages of 10-point single-spaced Helvetica and covered the next five years of my life.  I can still see the astonishment behind the therapist’s attempt to remain neutral. She looked at me and asked,

“Why do you feel you need a list?”

Wasn’t it obvious?

I didn’t remain in therapy for very long – eight years ago there were too many doors I was unwilling to open and the ability to bore cyberspace with musings on some wacky thing called a ‘blog’ was merely a twinkle in some geek’s eye.

We all experience periods of difficulty (even yoga teachers).  The goal, I suppose, is to remain functional while processing the events in our lives that have knocked us off-center.  Lists keep me functional.

The danger is that they can shut us down.  Put us in a box. Lists can create a life so ordered and precise that there is no room for an open heart.  For love and joy.  For connection.

I want love and connection.  But for now, what I need is the safety of my list.

My yoga practice this week will nurture the equilibrium I’m returning to.  There will be plenty of balance poses – including my favorite, Garudasana – and strong standing sequences.  I feel I need the grounding precision of an alignment-based practice this week.  I also need to comfort my heart, and for that I’ll turn to the organic fluidity of Yin.

When you step on your mat this week, take a moment to check in with your emotional state.  If you’re leaning too far to one side, how can your practice help bring you back to center?

Learning from the Past to Connect with the Present

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My parents divorced when I was two years old.  That is not unique.  Plenty of parents divorce.  But this was 1960.  My mom and her new husband JD put my sister and I in the back of the family Buick and headed north, away from Texas toward my mother’s parent’s home in Pennsylvania.

I never saw my biological father again.  It was as if he never existed, and I was too young to know any different.  In fact, until I was twelve years old I believed JD was my real dad.  I overheard a private conversation between my Mom and JD and discovered the truth.  To avoid punishment, because I shouldn’t have been listening, I kept the discovery to myself.  I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t confront or throw a tantrum.

But I did what I think most twelve-year-old girls would do – I fantasized about meeting the man whom I was part of one day and calling him ‘Dad’. I didn’t know the circumstances of his divorce from my mother. I didn’t know he was prone to violence.  And I didn’t know I was too late and that a woman he had pushed too far had picked up a gun and shot him three times in the back.

When I was sitting at my mother’s kitchen table this past September I asked to see a photo of my dad.  She looked at me, sighed then walked back to the end of her double-wide trailer and retrieved three thick scrapbooks.  Over the next four hours I looked at images burnished by time of people I never met but somehow felt connected to.  I searched faces hoping to find someone who looked like me.  Maybe I had Annie Barber’s nose; or maybe my blue eyes came from a cousin in Colorado. Mom told me about their talents “he was a musician”  “she loved to paint”  “your Great Aunt Mimm was a real cut up” and then, when we reached the third photo album, “here’s your father.”

She handed me a black and white photo about the size of a matchbox.  A man wearing flannel pajamas holds a tiny baby to his chest.  The baby is me.  There’s a small Christmas tree standing on a table behind him, and evidence of torn wrapping paper.  I was born in November.  I am one month old.

My reaction caught my mother and I by surprise.  I did not inherit my mother’s talent for stoic rationalization.  I began to sob.

“What are you crying about?” she asked.

I could not stop looking at the photograph.

“I’m trying to figure out where I fit in.”  I took a breath and sucked back my tears.  “I don’t know where I fit.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

Of course she didn’t.  This was something I had to discover for myself.

I continued to examine the image.  I searched his dark eyes for any sign of anger.  I examined the angle of his head – did he seem annoyed?  And then I looked at his hands.  His huge hands cradled me carefully.  In that moment, as the click of the shutter captured darkness and light, my father loved me.

So often in our Yoga practice we are asked to ‘stay present’.  We’re told to not venture into a past we can do nothing about and cautioned against veering into a future we can’t predict.  But if we don’t understand how our past has shaped us it becomes more difficult to understand the choices we make in the present.

In order to be fully grounded and engaged with our authentic self, we must keep a connection with our past.

How has your past shaped your present?  How does your past influence how you feel about your future?

There’s Healing in Staying Still

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In late May of 2005, on my first full day in America after a decade away in Donegal’s cool and rainy climate I stood outside of my hotel room in the Nebraska sun with my former college art professor.  I was wearing a short-sleeved cotton blouse and cotton trousers.  I remember how those clothes felt strange to me.  Too light.  Too feathery and thin against my skin.  But as we walked to Richard’s car across the blacktopped parking lot at ten o’clock in the morning the sun began to penetrate.  It began to heat my blood and wrap around my bones. I felt my body melt and become limber.  My damp and moldy joints began to flex. For the first time in ten years I felt warm.  Warm through and through.

Today is one of those breezy and blue Northern California days that beg a person to come outside to play.  And while I’m not so much in the mood for playing – despite Rosie the Labradoodle’s persistent attempts – I am in the mood to feel warmth wrap around my bones.  I’m in the mood to be still.  I’m in the mood to close my eyes and experience the change of temperature on my skin as the clouds roll over the sun.

I’ll practice yoga today, but not on the mat.  Today I’ll find my yoga practice in the sound of a kid practicing violin a few doors down, the shouting squawk of two blue jays in the plum tree and the persistent hum of traffic on Homer Street.

While life spins around me, today my body, my heart and my spirit will stay still.

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Ouch.  OUCH.  May I please say it one more time?  Ouch.

You may have noticed that my posts have been all over the emotional map for the past ten weeks.  I tried to stay on topic.  But I couldn’t. I was too preoccupied by wildly fluctuating hope, joy and despair.  Manic would be an appropriate description.  And what else other than out-of-control peri-menopausal hormones would bring on such mood swings?  Well, you know what?  I don’t really want to go into it.  Let’s just say it’s time to dust myself off and resume regularly scheduled programming.

As the weeks progressed and it became clear that I was not going to have the happy ending I wanted, I found myself seeking solace in the things I love:  teaching yoga and writing.

My mind would not settle long enough to write anything more than a few short essays.

But the yoga?  The yoga was a blessing.

I filled classes with gentle heart openers and soothing forward bends.  When I needed grounding I took classes through strong Warrior sequences.  When the friendship was going well I celebrated with Flying Dragons.  And when it wasn’t we did Flying Dragons anyway.  In my Yin classes I challenged myself to teach poses that wouldn’t be my favorite.

At home, I began the meditation practice I’ve been talking about since August.

But the last two and half months have left me in this strange place of being grateful for the experience of love and connection – no matter how brief the time was – yet mourning for the tremendous loss.  I’ll admit it.  I’m sad.

It seems sometimes that because we practice yoga, because we are teachers, we somehow have the means to rise above heartache.  It’s not true.  I teach yoga. And I’m human.

Adventures in Seeing

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For the optically challenged: plastic orbs that I'll use on the 3-D collages I'm working on. Whoo-hoo!

I’M BACK!!!

The one thing we can count on – the one thing we can be certain of – is that things change.

Yes, I spent a good chunk of rainy March wallowing in the mire.  But I knew that somehow, someway, it would cycle through and I’d come home to me again.

I felt the first inkling of an attitude adjustment on Tuesday.  On Wednesday I began to believe it was more than my imagination and this morning – this wonderful, beautiful, sun draped Thursday morning – I jumped out of bed with a smile on my face and charged into the day.

While I can’t put my finger on what triggered it, I can narrow it down to three things:

1.   Six weeks are my limit when it comes to moping around.  I simply can’t stand it any longer.

2.   Something resonated inside when I said to my friend over the weekend “I’m stronger than you.” Perhaps the idea of strength reminded my psyche of the other qualities I have and hold dear – my resilience and my loving nature, the ease with which I forgive, my cheerfulness (it wouldn’t be prudent to begin listing the qualities I possess yet don’t hold as dear…like my predisposition toward envy and my lack of cooking skills…)

3.   And the gift of a coffee mug from a friend and yoga student:

I’m riding the crest of a creative surge.  My kitchen has become an art studio.  I’m juggling three essays, a magazine article and homework for an online course I’m enrolled in.  Tonight I spent a couple of hours doing voice over work for a friend’s website.  She and her husband have an incredible home recording studio and it didn’t take long before we were thinking about creating a new yoga CD.

Tomorrow I’m tackling ‘The Dish’ with a friend.

It feels weird, because it was actually me who opened the laptop and emailed ‘hey, do you want to take a walk?’ I guess I didn’t actually expect him to say ‘yes’.  And yet, he did.  Go figure.

Life can be good.

But things change.  I know they do.  So I’m going to grab this high and hang on for the ride and enjoy it for as long as I can.

Pu-erh, Genmaicha and the Hero’s Journey

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Beeng Cha teacake pu erh tea and Japanese teapot

Image by Scott MacLeod Liddle via Flickr

I’ve been thinking about tea. Real tea.  My favorite teas are black Pu-erh and green Genmaicha.

Pu-erh is an earthy tea. Its scent alone transports me to a dark woods.  One sip and I feel I’m walking on a soft forest floor inches thick with fallen, decaying leaves and pine needles.  Moss grows around tree trunks and drapes over the rocks that line my trail.

Genmaicha is light and clear by comparison.  It’s roasted with brown rice that softens bitterness and adds a warm, contented note. When I drink Genmaicha I think of standing in an open field with the sun on my back and a broad, cloudless sky above.

But to enjoy the complexity of these teas, they must be brewed correctly. Pu-erh can be brewed forever.  Manhandled.  Genmaicha requires more finesse, water just below the boil and a short brew time.

Thirty-six hours ago, when I posted Mani/Pedi Om, I didn’t know it would be my penultimate weekly (sometimes daily) post.  But as I moved through the day I couldn’t shake the feeling that while I was good at observing life, I wasn’t doing so well at living it.  My life had become as weak and diluted as a cup of tea brewed from a used, day old bag.  Sound familiar?

There’s something missing and I mean to find it.  There’s a gap between what my life is supposed to be and what it has become.

Every time I sit down to write a poem or work on a book proposal or even think about composing a query letter and instead become distracted by Facebook or Twitter or this blog, I’m throwing another bucket of sand on the fire I used to burn with.

I’ve lost track of who I am.  I’m not brave anymore.  I used to be brave.

If I remain glued to this chair, this desk and this laptop engaging in barely witty repartee with people I’ve never met; or if I struggle to be profound in one hundred forty characters or less, I’ll never see Norman Foster’s Millau Viaduct.  I’ll never walk through Tate Modern again, or cry when I see Prague’s St. Vitus’ Cathedral for the first time.  I’ll not drink a pint of the black stuff at a session in Donegal, toss back too much sake and belt out bad karaoke in New York, or play guitar with Mike in Reno.

I’ll never be published.

And I won’t find someone to read to me.  And that is my favorite thing in the world, when someone reads to me.

If I stay here, doing this, I’ll never find out what happens next.  I won’t ever really know how my story is supposed to end.  My only view of the world will come courtesy of Wikipedia.

I learned about Pu-erh and Genmaicha in the garden of the Santa Cruz Zen Center five spring times ago.  A man I knew and maybe loved read TS Elliot’s J Alfred Prufrock to me in the afternoon sun.  We brewed the Pu-erh and Genmaicha.  And then he served sliced oranges dressed in rose water and cinnamon.  I’ve not seen the man for years, but I’ll never forget that quiet, perfect afternoon.

So I’m taking a break for awhile.  It’s time for me to dig a little deeper instead of tossing off six hundred easy words because I can.

Last night I finished reading Karen Armstrong‘s The Spiral Staircase (for the second time).  Towards the end, she talks about the hero’s journey:

The hero has to set off by himself, leaving the old world and the old ways behind.  He must venture into the darkness of the unknown, where there is no map and no clear route.  He must fight his own monsters, not somebody else’s, explore is own labyrinth, and endure his own ordeal before he can find what is missing in his life.  Thus transfigured, he (or she) can bring something of value to the world that has been left behind.

I’m not going on a hero’s journey – at least I don’t think I am – but Armstrong’s words certainly inspire. So do these:

“Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.”

And I, for one, have no intention of leaving anything out.

Mani/Pedi Om

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Last Thursday I indulged in a gel French manicure and a pedicure.

My unrecognizable hands now look as though they’re ready to become the newest cast members of any Real Housewives franchise.  My toes, tipped in red, are perky little Phalanges of Joy.

I didn’t stop there.  Lady Clairol stopped by and washed the blossoming swath of grey on the right side of my head away with a box of Medium Cool Brown.

Next stop?  Oh, I think I’ll have someone apply and then brutally rip away molten wax on my lip, chin and a few other places I’d rather not mention. It’s time to take care of the excess hair that has plagued me since puberty.  It’s just what my self-esteem ordered.

If only I could nurture my inner beauty with the same zeal.

I have a difficult time with balance.  I sometimes ignore the shades of gray and go right for the black and white.

This is not a particularly strong quality for a yoga teacher to have.

But I’ve been working on it.

I’ve figured out that I CAN have a pedicure AND care about Japan.  I can wear nice yoga togs and buy the guy who sits in front of Whole Foods a sandwich.  It’s not one or the other.  I can do both.

I can care about my Self without sacrificing compassion for others.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m never going to win any awards for altruism.  I don’t give a percentage of my income to charity, I don’t tithe, and to be honest, the guy outside of Whole Foods sort of bugs me.

Maybe it boils down to give and take, checks and balances.  Or maybe I never quite figured out that we all deserve to have a little fun – a little joy in life.  That includes the guy outside of Whole Foods.  But it includes me, too.

Mani/Pedi Om.

Margaret’s Brain on Ice

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One year ago today it was standing room only in Emancipation Hall on the lower floor of our nation’s capital. I was there, with most of Margaret’s family, to see her receive her Congressional Gold Medal for service as a civilian WASP pilot during World War II. Twelve months later, Margaret and I still meet every other Thursday at 10:00 in the morning for a yoga lesson.   Her body doesn’t move as easily as it did last spring. Her joints ache, especially her shoulders.  Her mind, however, is as sharp and sassy as ever.

Today I suggested icing her shoulder after our workouts.

“But I can’t be fiddling with that stuff – it leaves no time for poetry.”

Her voice was a layered mix of smoke from the ten cigarettes she treats herself to each day and 87-year-old ornery mischief.

“What?”

“If I’m messing around with those damn ice bags, Mimm, I can’t think of the lines of poetry.”

“You mean having a bag of ice on your shoulder…”

“It muddles my brain, Mimm.”  She laughed and cleared her throat.  “If I’m doing all that ice and heat stuff to keep things moving, well, it’ll move those lines right out of my brain.”

I shook my head in disbelief and began to pack up my equipment.  That’s when she began:

She is as in a field a silken tent

At midday when the sunny summer breeze

Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,

So that in guise it gently sways at ease,

And its supporting central cedar pole,

That is its pinnacle to heavenward

And signifies the sureness of the soul,

Seems to owe naught to any single cord,

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound

By countless silken ties of love and thought

To every thing on earth the compass round,

And only by one’s going slightly taut

In the capriciousness of summer air

Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

“That’s Robert Frost.”

“That’s beautiful, Margaret.”

“How am I supposed to remember that with a bag of ice on my shoulder?”

“I don’t know, Margaret.”

I was all packed but I didn’t want to leave.  I love Margaret.  Sometimes when I arrive and she opens the door she’ll stand for a moment.  Her nearly sightless eyes will look me up and down and she’ll ask,

“What fresh hell is this?”

How could I not love her?

We laugh together.  We solve the world’s problems.  We work on solving mine, too. She does not give me a single inch of leeway.

Today we talked about death.

Margaret taking a look at her Congressional Gold Medal with her magnifier.

“I’m not ready to go yet,” she said.  “I like what’s here, and I don’t know what’s there.”  And then she began to recite Emily Dickinson.

In 1944 this tiny, pixie haired woman flew military aircraft so large she needed two pillows and a packed parachute to reach the rudder.

If Margaret doesn’t want to ice her shoulder because it muddles her brain, she doesn’t have to.

The Stories We Tell: Open Doors

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We all have stories, don’t we?  Our stories shape us.  They direct us.  I was going to tell you a long-winded tale about how I came to teach yoga but to be honest – it’s a yawn fest.

Let’s cut to the chase:  there have been times in my life when I’ve shown strength and power.  There have been times when I’ve curled up into a ball, terrified.  It’s the human experience.  But I’ve always tried to pay attention to open doors.  In Donegal, when the door to yoga teaching opened, I stepped through.  I was almost two hundred pounds and had trouble reaching the top of Port Road in Letterkenny without stopping for breath.  I had never taught yoga before.

To prepare for my first class, I listened to my teacher’s voices.  My teachers taught with humor and compassion.  That’s how I wanted to teach.  I remembered how their kind words and gentle instruction brought me out of my head and into my body all those years earlier.  I remembered how they opened my heart and changed my perspective.  That was the kind of teacher I wanted to be.  I wanted to open hearts.

I arrived at the housing estate in Raphoe, helped to push back the living room furniture and listened as exhausted mothers chased their children outside to play.  And then, as six women stood in Tadasana, I asked them to close their eyes….

I never looked back.

My point is this.  I wasn’t afraid.  Nervous?  Oh, heck yeah.  But fearless, too.

We’re taught to make peace with the past, not to dwell in it.  We’re advised to not worry about a future we cannot predict.  We’re asked to flow in the present.

But how?  I guess it comes down to this:  we can’t be afraid to step through the open doors, even if we’re unable to see what’s on the other side.

If I can abandon my craving for control, if I can embrace the flow of the present, if I can charge blindly through the open doors, then maybe – just maybe – I’ll discover once again the girl who danced with arm flailing reckless abandon.

Fate, Faith and Free Will, Part II…sort of…

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Donegal, Ireland

I don’t dance, but I remember dancing.  The last time I danced – and I mean really danced with full on arms flailing wild abandon – was in 1996 at a wedding reception in Dundalk, Ireland. I had been in Ireland for two years. The tuxedoed disc jockey, per my request and to the annoyance of everyone else, was playing Kula Shaker. I weighed a good one hundred ninety pounds at the time. And while I whirled my fat half-drunk dervish on the empty dance floor the rest of the wedding party laughed and chugged pints by the sidelines or slipped outside for a smoke until the Macarena was cued up for the fifteenth time.  Oh sure, there have been a few half-hearted attempts since then:  my awkward shuffle at Derek’s Halloween birthday party three years ago or that time the August before at the bar up in the City with Una and Forrest.

But reckless abandon?  Not even close.

When did I start taking myself so seriously?  When did I forget how to dance?

When fear snuck up on me and began to run my life.

Free Will

I have friends who like to tell me I was brave when I sold everything, packed up and moved to Ireland. There was nothing brave about it.  I was running away.  I had some half-cocked plan about being an artist, about reinventing myself, but the truth was that I was full of despair for the lack of direction in my life.  And that despair went back fifteen years to college, when I chose art over academia.  I loved art, but I loved books more.  I wanted to be a history major.  I was too afraid.

But doing something daring, like moving to a different country in my mid-thirties, would somehow make up for my fear of failure at eighteen.

I knew one person in Dublin, a scummy chef who chain-smoked Rothmans.  I arrived in Dublin on December 7th. It only took two weeks before I never wanted to see him again.  I was truly alone.  Free to become whomever I wanted.

I lived in a cheap hotel for a month and then found a ten by six-foot bedsit above a chippy on Parnell Street.  I began making crafts to sell at Mother Redcap’s Market. That’s the market near Christ Church, just up the hill from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Did you know Handel himself used the choir from St. Patrick’s for his début of the Messiah in 1742?

At the same time I found work as a coat check girl at Rumour’s Nightclub next to the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street.  I did not last.  But not long after I was hired by the National School of Art and Design as an artist’s model.  I had plenty of experience in California and it wasn’t long before my skills as a model were in demand.  But, after two years, I was done with Dublin.

I found my way from Dublin to Donegal.  For a time I made furniture with a boyfriend.  When that ended I took work at the local health food store.  I studied nutritional counseling, massage therapy and reflexology.  I taught yoga and I opened a clinic in the spare bedroom of my rented house.  That’s how all this began.  By my learning how to survive.

I also have friends who tell me that I was brave when, eleven years later, I packed everything up for a second time and moved back to California.  Again, I wasn’t being brave. I was admitting defeat.  Moving to Ireland had been an experiment.  As much as I love the friends I know there, Ireland was a mistake.  It was time to come back to the closest thing I had to a home.

I returned to California in late spring 2005 with some books, the clothes on my back, a few thousand dollars and a few new skills. I was a different woman.  The difficulties I had in Ireland somehow purged me of envy.  I knew how far I could fall and I was grateful to be alive. Rather than being burned by envy all I wanted now was to feel the heat of California sun on my bones. I was happy to be a witness to the success of friends I had not seen for more than a decade. And I had faith that after everything I had seen and done, fear would no longer rule my life.

It didn’t quite work out that way…