Heart, Soul and Purple Doc Marten Boots

I prefer to not surround myself with too much stuff.  I hesitate to put down roots and hold the belief that I can pack up and take off at a moment’s notice.  A friend tells me I’m looking for something that I haven’t found.  I’m more inclined to think I suffer from chronic commitment issues and spiritual claustrophobia.

And so I clear my closet of clothes not worn for years.  I purge the shelves of books rarely opened and cull the desk of knick-knacks whose sole purpose for existing is to catch dust.

With the space around me cleared, so somehow is my heart.  Yet what I’ve done is create a fleeting illusion of space that requires tender care.  Only mindful vigilance will prevent a new collection of bits and bobs from building a jumbled barrier that distracts and blocks my path.

It has been one hundred and eighty days since my last hefty donation to Goodwill. Pride in accomplishment allowed my guard to drop.    The space around me has filled. As a consequence, so has my spirit.  It’s time.   Time to plunge into the mess.  Time to choose.  Time to let go.  Again.

The questions I’m asking are simple.  What do I need for my life to have heart and meaning?  How many layers do I have to strip away before I find Truth?

I am beginning to realize that my constant craving to pare back the physical layers is not enough.  Taking away the stuff around me – breaking down the barriers – isn’t enough.  Maybe my friend is right.  Maybe I am looking for something.  But I won’t find it in the space where my purple Doc Marten boots used to be.

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.

The Baffling Case of the Rigid Mimm Day

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I had the day marked on my calendar.  Sunday the 4th of March.  Mimm Day.  My first day of freedom.  No teacher training.  No dog sitting.  No private clients.  I was commitment free for the first time in months.  Come hell or high water I was going to celebrate and it was going to be perfect.

The day I planned included an early morning drive to Santa Cruz with a friend.

After a few hours of Dance Church at the 418 Project we take a leisurely stroll downtown until we find the perfect café where we enjoy a quiet brunch.  A table is waiting for us under the shade of a tree with the sunlight filtered to shield our eyes but not so much that it can’t keep us warm.  My friend reaches down and pulls a book from his grey backpack and with our second cup of tea we take turns reading to one another.  We’re generous with our tip – a compensation for keeping the café table too long. We continue our stroll and find an old record shop around the corner or maybe a shop full of bric-a-brac to bury ourselves in for a bit before making our way to a pristine beach that, miraculously, is empty except for an older couple and their two Golden Retrievers. The sound of the gulls, the crashing waves and the solar warmth of the sand lulls us to sleep just long enough to refresh but not so long as to make us cranky when we wake.

Another bite to eat and then a drive home along Highway 1 with a few stops to enjoy the view of a setting sun as the credits roll…

Mimm Day.  My perfect day.

But on designated Mimm Day I opened my eyes and discovered the alarm clock had never been set and we were already two hours too late to attend Dance Church. I cried like a ten-year-old who had slept through Christmas.  It was only 9:30 but the day, as far as I was concerned, was ruined.  And if I was wrong – if the day wasn’t really ruined – I was still going to nurture my disappointment and bad temper.  I didn’t get what I wanted and I was too swept up into the movie I had written in my head about what Mimm Day was supposed to be that I couldn’t see that the day was still perfect.  It was sunny and warm, it was a gorgeous morning – there was plenty of day left.  And I was still free to do whatever I wanted.

But I couldn’t see it.   I was blind to what I had right in front of me: my best friend, a blue sky and eight more hours of sunlight.

How many times are we guilty of placing emotional importance on an unpredictable future?  How often do we trip over ourselves reaching for paper tigers and ghosts that we can never hold and that never live up to the movies we make in our mind?

I’ve been reading to my students from Sharon Salzberg’s book Lovingkindness:  The Revolutionary Art of Happiness.  She writes:

When we become lost in desire, we are put firmly into the framework of linear time.  We become focused on getting what we do not yet have or on keeping what we do have.  We become oriented toward the future.  To be caught in this concept of linear time brings us to what in Buddhist teachings is called bhava, or becoming, always falling into the next moment.  It is as if before each breath ends, we are leaning forward to grasp at the next breath.

On March 4th I leaned so far forward I fell flat on my face.

Thinking about the future is not a bad thing.  But clinging to an ideal of what I believe the future should be does not allow room for change or perspective.  It leaves no room for living.

And isn’t it time to live a little?

Avalon Teacher Training Program

This past Sunday marked the end of my six-month teacher-training course at Avalon Yoga Studio in Palo Alto, California. While I don’t often speak for a couple dozen or so other people (at least not all at once) I believe it’s a safe bet they’re as ecstatic as I am to see the return of a weekend for the first time since the beginning of September. I’d be lying, however, if I didn’t confess there is a part of me that will miss the gathering – the friends I made, the philosophies I embraced and the moments that tested and challenged me.

The teacher training at Avalon is unique.  Where other programs train to a certain method or school, the comprehensive 200-hour program at Avalon introduces participants to the major styles of modern yoga.  Guest instructors lead us in sessions of Iyengar, Jivamukti, Restorative, Dharma Mittra and more.

The program places a heavy emphasis on recent scholarly research that suggest the asana practice we believed was thousands of years old is actually a 20th century construct.  Not everyone is ready to accept this radical re-thinking of our discipline’s history.  For me, however, knowing Surya Namaskar arrived at the beginning of the last century and not centuries before brings a sense of relief. Understanding how asana practice evolved gives me permission to participate in the evolution.

The program also offers an examination of the yogic texts.  Most of us won’t be scholars on the subject but yoga teachers should at least be familiar with the Sutra’s, the Gita, Pradapika and Upanishads.   Fortunately, the teaching at Avalon made the philosophy of the ancient texts relevant to our hectic 21st century.

The Avalon faculty is a diverse group. Standouts for me are psychologist and author Kelly McGonigal, yoga historian Mark Singleton, restorative yoga doyenne Judith Hanson Lasater and musician Girish.  We can’t forget beloved local Iyengar instructor Shastri and Jivamukti dynamo Giselle Mari. Although Jivamukti doesn’t resonate with me, Giselle is an amazing teacher full of life and energy. She even softened my hard-edged opinion about the use of music during asana practice.

Avalon Studio Owner and Director of the Teacher Training Program Steve Farmer is a generous man.  During the duration of the training participants are invited to attend any yoga class at Avalon for free.  He encourages us to build our teaching skills by inviting us to teach free classes for the community at the Avalon studio.

All this is great.  Without a doubt the Avalon Teacher Training Program is an excellent educational opportunity. But like most teacher training programs it is not without its flaws.

I entered the program with a beginner’s mind and eighteen years of teaching experience.  I wanted to learn.  But there is an art to teaching people how to teach and I found too many guest lecturers did not have that skill.  While they are more than able to teach yoga blind folded with two hands tied behind their back, they don’t have the skill set for teaching people how to teach. I found this frustrating, and a bad attitude began to crowd out my beginner’s mind.

And while the opportunity to practice our teaching skills through the free community classes is a generous one, someone with limited prior teaching experience might find the prospect too intimidating to consider.  My feeling is that the program should offer more opportunities to teach in the classroom right from the start and that those teaching moments should include a peer review.

I am not the only one who feels in-class teaching time was too limited.  The issue was discussed in an open forum on our last day of class.  Steve easily agreed and is working to add more teaching peer reviews.

The Avalon Teacher Training Program is not perfect, but do I recommend the program?

Absolutely.  Without a doubt.  It’s the best non-residential yoga teacher-training program I’ve seen.

Why?

It happened about four months into the training. One of my long time students approached me after class.  She said, “You know, Mimm, I’ve always enjoyed your classes.  But something’s changed. It’s your teaching.  You’ve become a better teacher.”

Wow.

My first thought was “after eighteen years it’s about time.”

But then I realized that despite the moments when my beginner’s mind failed and arrogance overwhelmed me; even when I wore my bad attitude like a heart on my sleeve, I still learned. When I disagreed with an instructor, my faith in what I believe yoga is grew stronger.  And when the words I heard resonated in my heart – which was often – I learned even more.

The Avalon Teacher Training Program stretched my teaching wings.  It pushed, encouraged and enlightened me.  My confidence as a teacher has grown but more than that I now know with unstinting certainty there is room for the style of asana practice I embrace in the continuing evolution of modern yoga.  And I have the Avalon Teacher Training Program to thank for that.

The Care and Feeding of Your Spirit

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If you do anything for yourself this year, let it be that you give yourself just one thing.  I’m not talking about a new car or a pair of shoes.  I don’t mean a night out.

What I mean is this:  give yourself that one thing that feeds your spirit like nothing else can.  And give yourself that gift as often as possible.

If I ask you now, “What is that one thing?  What is the one thing that feeds your spirit?” Do you have an answer?  Do you know?

Back in the 1980’s when I lived in Mountain View a morning walk at Shoreline to watch burrowing owls warming themselves against the rocks as they faced the rising sun warmed me, too.  Those were the days when yoga was a simple asana practice – the days before I understood the depth of yoga.

I walked the path at Shoreline almost every day.  Early in the morning, before anyone else and while remnants of dawn still hung on the water.  But I needed to have a reason for being there or else I wouldn’t make the effort.  Fitness. Weight loss.  Exercise.  There had to be a reason.  A walk at Shoreline was something to tick off my “to do” list for the day.  Another chore.

And then I moved a few miles up the road, my work schedule changed, and walks at Shoreline became less frequent and were finally forgotten.

A few months ago I returned to Shoreline.  This time around it’s different.  I walk at Shoreline a two or three times each week because I walk at Shoreline.  That’s it.  My spirit feels embraced at Shoreline. The flat horizontal lines of the landscape and the calm water soothe me.  I feel nourished.  After a walk along water’s edge I’m ready to walk back into the remainder of my work day.

If you do anything for yourself today find that thing.  Find that one thing that feeds your spirit.

Rainbows and Light and the Absence of Free Will

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1990 photograph of Pluto and Charon. Taken by ...

I want to blame Pluto.

Not Uncle Walt’s golden and gloriously floppy-eared animated canine of indeterminate breed.  Nope.  I mean the recently demoted former planet, now dwarf planet, Pluto.

According to my favorite stargazing Texan Pluto teased its way into my sign back in 1995 a few weeks before I sold everything I owned and took off for my “lost decade” in Ireland with little more than an overstuffed duffel bag and a guitar.  Now, sixteen years later, cold little Pluto has hemmed, hawed and finally committed to leaving the astrological sign of Sagittarius.  I’d like to say “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” and “good luck, Capricorns!” but can I really blame a lump of rock a couple dozen astronomical units away from sunny California for events over the last twelve months?  Given that an astronomical unit is about 92 million miles it seems unlikely.

Then again, 2011 was the year when the thinkers among us speculated that free will doesn’t exit.  Of course, philosophers have always pondered the nature of free will, but for one moment in 2011 the existence of free will garnered more water cooler buzz than a Hollywood tartlet’s lip plumped wedding.

So who knows?  If I had no choice over my choices, then perhaps it was a rock 2 billion miles away that provided all the entertainment the previous twelve months.

Personally, though, I’m putting my money on the absence of free will.  I know.  It sits in my craw kind of funny, too. But isn’t it liberating to discover we’re not the general contractor of our lives?  Knowing that the control we believe we have doesn’t exist eliminates any need for goals or resolutions.  We can stop struggling.  There’s no need to swim upstream.

Surrendering a belief in free will doesn’t mean I’m waving a white flag and crawling under the duvet for the remainder.  On the contrary, the absence of free will has a clarifying effect.  The intentions I’ve set for my life seem certain and reasonable.  Moving toward those intentions in the absence of control makes their achievement all the more precious.

The absence of free will makes all that yoga talk about ‘Being Present’ and ‘Embracing the Now’ sparkle.  If we don’t have free will, then it follows we should be content with this perfect moment because we are exactly where we are meant to be.  If that place is dark and frightening – and sometimes it is – know that things change.  And if that place is light and wondrous? Know that things change.  Embrace it all.

What About the Space Between ‘Here’ and ‘There’?

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English: Wall sculptures at Ellora Caves. A sc...

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In between Downward Dogs my client Bob told me that to celebrate his 70th birthday this autumn he and his wife were going to take a trip around the world.

A trip around the entire world!

I immediately thought of all the places I’d like to see:  the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Grand Viaduc du Millau designed by Norman Foster, the South Island of New Zealand, Uluru (Ayers Rock), Petra, Prague and thanks to recent photographs posted by a friend the Ellora Caves in India.  Closer to home I’d like to visit the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and the state of Maine and Montana, too…

We moved from Downward Dog to Child’s Pose and I asked Bob where he planned to go.  He rattled off a few places:  Shanghai, London and Paris. The way he named cities seemed strangely nonchalant. I handed him a bolster and we moved into a supported Fish Pose.

“Aren’t you missing a pretty big chunk of the world?”

Bob laughed and explained,

“It’s not about where we’re going, Mimm, it’s about how we’re getting there.”

My client is a plane geek.  Bob will celebrate his 70th birthday by taking a seat in all the aircraft he’s every wanted to fly in, including the new Airbus A380.  And he wants to use his Frequent Flyer Miles, too.  We laughed and I asked Bob to take a reclining twist.  He complained, of course (“You want me to do what?“), and then we laughed again.

The twist was released and we held our knees to our chests.  Quiet at last,  I thought about what Bob said:

It’s not about where we’re going; it’s about how we’re getting there.

Maybe life is really all about the space between here and there.

Follow the Signs: Reconsidering the Resolution

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There was a time I was the Queen of Setting Goals.  I had rigid lists, sub-lists and categories:  goals for writing, goals for yoga, goals for saving money.  A five-year-plan and – always – the goal to lose ten pounds.  A complex map for my life.  A set of instructions to follow.

That’s how this year began.  With a list of detailed plans.  Such plans.  All typed neatly, printed on bright white paper, color coded and taped to my linen closet door.  I reviewed them each day and charted my progress: word counts, workouts, submissions and queries. I knew where I had been and where I was headed.  Didn’t I?  Of course I did – it was right there in black and white on my linen closet door.

That lasted about six weeks.  I stopped looking at my linen closet door around the beginning of February.  By late spring they were history.

I thought I had failed.  The truth is I hadn’t learned the lesson.

 

Yesterday I was in Sunnyvale, headed back to Palo Alto.  It was the morning of the day after Christmas.  Traffic

A historical marker situated along El Camino Real.

was light and I drove north on El Camino Real.  I was content to let my CRV stroll the six miles back home, even if I hit every red light.  Until I reached the intersection of Highway 237. On a whim, I turned right.

For those of you who know the area this is no big deal.  Unless you also know me.  When I’m driving I don’t do “whims.”  The car doesn’t move unless I know where I’m going.  I need to see that the path ahead is clear.  Last September the suggestion that I should drive an unfamiliar car, on an unfamiliar freeway following an unknown route was enough to turn me into a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  So turning right on 237 was a very big deal indeed.

And guess what happened?

I followed the signs, avoided heading toward Milpitas and sure enough, after taking the Middlefield exit and turning left on Ferguson I found Central Expressway – a faster, easier way to my home.

I know.  It was a simple thing, turning right on 237 instead of driving straight ahead.  But it revealed a big truth.  Narrowing our focus to a list of resolutions taped to a closet door has nothing to do with life.

There will be no list this year.  This year I have only one resolution.

This year I’m going to follow the signs and find my way home.

Eknath Easwaren’s Passage Meditation

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At first I was put off by Eknath Easwaran’s Passage Meditation.  The prose was too anecdotal, the advice too simple.  The book was for beginners.  Didn’t I already know all of this?  I wanted the answers to my deeper questions, not a parable on the hectic pace of life.

But because I promised my meditation teacher I would finish the book, I continued to read. And once I tucked my ego and arrogance away (and admitted I am a beginner!) I discovered that this book is a gem of subtle yet powerful insights.

Embracing a daily meditation practice requires discipline that, quite honestly, isn’t easy for me to summon.  I keep trying.  There are rare mornings when finding my seat and watching my breath feels like my natural state.  As if this is how it has always been and always will be.  On most mornings, however, the clarity and stillness I’m looking for spends most of the thirty minutes competing with random thoughts about clients, classes and topics for my next blog post.  On these days I sit, I breathe, I wait and then, when the timer sounds, I smile.  Have I failed?  No.  I showed up.  And as long as I continue to show up I know that eventually the days I feel meditation is my natural state will outnumber the days when stillness has to compete with my chattering mind.

Tonight I was reading about the power of thoughts and control of the senses.  Easwaran writes that this is our goal:

 

When we stimulate the senses unduly, vitality flows out through them like water from a leaky pail, leaving us drained physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Those who indulge themselves in sense stimulation throughout their lives often end up exhausted, with an enfeebled will and little capacity to love others.  But when we train the senses we conserve our vital energy, the very stuff of life.  Patient and secure within we do not have to look to externals for satisfaction.  No matter what happens outside – whether events are for or against us, however people behave towards us, whether we get what pleases us or do not – we are in no way dependent. 

Then it is that we can give freely to others; then it is that we can love.

 

Initially I thought I’d write that Passage Meditation is a simple book.  It feels like a simple book.  But once the heart and mind are open to its teaching, it becomes a rich and layered set of ideas that will move us forward in our practice.

 

 

This Present Moment: Adventures in Meditation and the Arrival of a Mantra

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English: All Solutions By Yogi Tamby Chuckrava...

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It began with the purchase of my iPhone, this new bad habit.  The cold weather, this cold apartment and my laptop encouraged me.  I began to love curling up under the blanket and surfing in the hour before sleep.  And if I woke in the night, which I do sometimes, I’d pick up the phone or the computer and surf again.  When the harp sounded on my iPhone alarm in the morning, guess what?  Out came the laptop.  I just needed to know if Matt’s gig in Oxford was a success, if it was snowing in Michigan or if I could chat with a friend in Nevada I’ve never met.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve a stack of books next to my bed, too.  And sometimes I even read them.  I jest.  Of course I read.  Since ditching the cable and television I’ve had plenty of time to read.  But it’s clear to me this new bad habit is filling the gap those ten-year-old episodes of “That 70’s Show” once held.

If I really want to quiet Monkey Mind and to have a life long, transformative meditation practice, then I need to break this new bad habit and begin a new good habit.

Here’s where I’ve gone wrong:

Rather than dedicating the same time each day to practice, I’ve been fitting it in when I can – four or five days a week, ten or twenty minutes at a time.  The only dedicated periods of meditation are the forty-five minutes a friend of mine and I take prior to a yoga class we attend and the hour of practice I enjoy on Thursday evenings with a local Daoist Meditation Group (I’m new to this group and have only attended twice.  Still, it feels as though I’ll continue indefinitely).

I don’t want meditation in my life as something I practice on a whim.  Meditation should be who I am, not something that simply hovers around me.

Fortunately, I have a mentor who is gently guiding me in the right direction.  He’s the teacher who recommended Eknath Easwaran’s Passage Meditation to me – a book I’m now recommended to anyone who is on a path similar to mine.

Last night my mentor gave me the gift of a mantra.  He said it would change my life.  He said it would settle me (how did he know I was unsettled?) and that if I repeated this mantra each day very soon nothing would ever again ruffle my feathers (how did he know my feathers were ruffled?).

Seriously.  All that from one word? Almost less than a word – my mantra is one single syllable. He’s telling me one single sound can change my life?

I surfed before sleep last night.  And when I dreamed about earthquakes I woke and checked the USGS website.

But when my iPhone’s harp began to play this morning I swung around, placed my feet flat on the floor and set the timer for thirty minutes.  I let my hands rest on my lap, right hand nestled in the left with my thumbs touching and I closed my eyes.  And then, for one hundred and eight rounds, I began to repeat…